Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Early-life exposure to ambient fine particulate air pollution and infant mortality: pooled evidence from 43 low- and middle-income countries.

BACKGROUND Many low- and middle-income countries are experiencing high and increasing exposure to ambient fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5). The effect of PM2.5 on infant and child mortality is usually modelled using concentration response curves extrapolated from studies conducted in settings with low ambient air pollution, which may not capture its full effect. METHODS We pool data on more than half a million births from 69 nationally representative Demographic and Health Surveys that were conducted in 43 low- and middle-income countries between 1998 and 2014, and we calculate early-life exposure (exposure in utero and post partum) to ambient PM2.5 using high-resolution calibrated satellite data matched to the child's place of residence. We estimate the association between the log of early-life PM2.5 exposure, both overall and separated by type, and the odds of neonatal and infant mortality, adjusting for child-level, parent-level and household-level characteristics. RESULTS We find little evidence that early-life exposure to overall PM2.5 is associated with higher odds of mortality relative to low exposure to PM2.5. However, about half of PM2.5 is naturally occurring dust and sea-salt whereas half is from other sources, comprising mainly carbon-based compounds, which are mostly due to human activity. We find a very strong association between exposure to carbonaceous PM2.5 and infant mortality, particularly neonatal mortality, i.e. mortality in the first 28 days after birth. We estimate that, at the mean level of exposure in the sample to carbonaceous PM2.5-10.9 µg/m3-the odds of neonatal mortality are over 50% higher than in the absence of pollution. CONCLUSION Our results suggest that the current World Health Organization guideline of limiting the overall ambient PM2.5 level to less than 10 µg/m³ should be augmented with a lower limit for harmful carbonaceous PM2.5.
Cosmic infrared background and Population III: an overview

We review the recent measurements on the cosmic infrared background (CIB) and their implications for the physics of the first stars era, including Population III. The recently obtained CIB results range from the direct measurements of CIB fluctuations from distant sources using deep Spitzer data to strong upper limits on the near-IR CIB from blazar spectra. This allows to compare the Population III models with the CIB data to gain direct insight into the era of the first stars and the formation and evolution of Population III and the microphysics of the feedback processes in the first halos of collapsing material. We also discuss the cosmological confusion resulting from these CIB sources and the prospects for resolving them individually with NASA's upcoming space instruments such as the JWST.
Structural, vibrational and electronic properties of SnMBO4 (M  =  Al, Ga): a predictive hybrid DFT study

We propose two new members of the mullite-type family, SnAlBO4 and SnGaBO4, and carry out an in-depth study of their crystal properties using the hybrid method PW1PW. Both are isostructural to PbMBO4 (M = Fe, Mn, Al, Ga), which show axial negative linear compressibility (ANLC), among other interesting features. We find that, although Sn2+ is susceptible of being oxidized by oxygen, a suitable range of experimental parameters exists in which the compounds could be synthesized. We observe absence of ANLC below 20 GPa and explain it by the small space occupied by the lone electron pairs, as indicated by the small length of the corresponding Liebau Density Vectors. In agreement with this fact, the structures present a low number of negative mode-Grüneisen parameters, which may also suggest lack of negative thermal expansion. The electronic properties show a remarkable anisotropic behaviour, with a strong dependence of the absorption spectra on light polarization direction.
A Reflective PN-Based Approach to Dynamic Workflow Change

The design of dynamic workflows needs adequate modeling/specification formalisms and tools to soundly handle possible changes occurring during workflow operation. A common approach is to pollute design with details that do not regard the current workflow behavior, but rather its evolution. That hampers analysis, reuse and maintenance in general. We propose and discuss the adoption of a recent Petri Net based reflective model (based on classical PN) as a support to dynamic workflow design, by addressing a localized problem: how to determine what tasks should be redone and which ones do not when transferring a workflow instance from an old to a new template. Behind there is the idea that keeping functional aspects separated from evolutionary ones, and applying evolution to the (current) workflow template only when necessary, results in a simple reference model on which the ability of formally verifying typical workflow properties is preserved, thus favoring a dependable adaptability.
Genetic Analyses of Heme Oxygenase 1 (HMOX1) in Different Forms of Pancreatitis

Background Heme oxygenase 1 (HMOX1) is the rate limiting enzyme in heme degradation and a key regulator of inflammatory processes. In animal models the course of pancreatitis was ameliorated by up-regulation of HMOX1 expression. Additionally, carbon monoxide released during heme breakdown inhibited proliferation of pancreatic stellate cells and might thereby prevent the development of chronic pancreatitis (CP). Transcription of HMOX1 in humans is influenced by a GT-repeat located in the promoter. As such, HMOX1 variants might be of importance in the pathogenesis of pancreatitis. Methods The GT-repeat and SNP rs2071746 were investigated with fluorescence labelled primers and by melting curve analysis in 285 patients with acute pancreatitis, 208 patients with alcoholic CP, 207 patients with idiopathic/hereditary CP, 147 patients with alcoholic liver cirrhosis, and in 289 controls, respectively. GT-repeat analysis was extended to a total of 446 alcoholic CP patients. In addition, we performed DNA sequencing in 145 patients with alcoholic CP, 138 patients with idiopathic/hereditary CP, 147 patients with alcoholic liver cirrhosis, and 151 controls. Exon 3 screening was extended to additional patients and controls. Results S- and L-alleles of the GT-repeat, genotypes and alleles of SNP rs2071746 and non-synonymous variants detected by sequencing were found with similar frequencies in all groups. Conclusions Although functional data implicate a potential influence of HMOX1 variants on the pathogenesis of pancreatitis, we did not find any association. As rare non-synonymous HMOX1 variants were found in patients and controls, it is rather unlikely that they will have functional consequences essential for pancreatitis development.
Mid-infrared materials and devices on a Si platform for optical sensing

Abstract In this article, we review our recent work on mid-infrared (mid-IR) photonic materials and devices fabricated on silicon for on-chip sensing applications. Pedestal waveguides based on silicon are demonstrated as broadband mid-IR sensors. Our low-loss mid-IR directional couplers demonstrated in SiNx waveguides are useful in differential sensing applications. Photonic crystal cavities and microdisk resonators based on chalcogenide glasses for high sensitivity are also demonstrated as effective mid-IR sensors. Polymer-based functionalization layers, to enhance the sensitivity and selectivity of our sensor devices, are also presented. We discuss the design of mid-IR chalcogenide waveguides integrated with polycrystalline PbTe detectors on a monolithic silicon platform for optical sensing, wherein the use of a low-index spacer layer enables the evanescent coupling of mid-IR light from the waveguides to the detector. Finally, we show the successful fabrication processing of our first prototype mid-IR waveguide-integrated detectors.
An Evaluation of Automated Theorem Proving in Regular Algebra ( Extended Abstract )

Introduction The Isabelle/HOL environment [8] combines the power of automated reasoning with higher-order features for theory engineering and proof management. Its built-in Sledgehammer tool integrates state of the art ATP and SMT tools, allowing for powerful automated reasoning in proofs [2]. Theory engineering features such as typeclasses and locales support the effective design of large theory hierarchies and allow for theorem propagation in these hierarchies [6]. They also allow for the connection between abstract algebras and concrete models. When using regular algebras such as ∗-continuous Kleene algebras or quantales, many proof obligations can be discharged using only first-order axioms. There are many first-order regular algebras, such as Kleene algebras, Pratt’s action algebras and Boffa’s algebras. Action algebras are particularly interesting as they have an axiomatisation based on Galois connections and an equivalent purely equational axiomatisation [9]. This result is interesting, as one might expect that purely equational axioms might be more amenable to ATP than other sets of axioms. However, this purely equational axiomatisation requires a large signature. This paper attempts to ascertain which of action or Kleene algebras are better from an ATP standpoint, providing insight into the trade-off between an equational axiomatisation and a larger signature. To achieve this, Isabelle’s built in benchmarking tool Mirabelle is used on facts from a large repository for algebraic methods in Isabelle which has been documented in previous papers [5]. Recently the repository has been extended to support higher-order regular algebra, and many higher-order order concepts such as Galois connections have been implemented in this setting [1]. We have also begun work on extending this repository with explicit carrier sets, allowing us to formalise concepts such as Galois connections between different partial orders, subalgebras and other concepts from universal algebra. Even in this higher-order setting, automated reasoning remains a valuable tool. However, a question remains—exactly how much does the carrier set based axiomatisation these features require impact the usefulness of ATP and SMT tools?
Captcha Solver : A Generative Adversarial Network Based Approach

Despite several attacks have been proposed, text-based CAPTCHAs1 are still being widely used as a security mechanism. One of the reasons for the pervasive use of text captchas is that many of the prior attacks are scheme-specific and require a labor-intensive and time-consuming process to construct. This means that a change in the captcha security features like a noisier background can simply invalid an earlier attack. This paper presents a generic, yet effective text captcha solver based on the generative adversarial network. Unlike prior machine-learning-based approaches that need a large volume of manually-labeled real captchas to learn an effective solver, our approach requires significantly fewer real captchas but yields much better performance. This is achieved by first learning a captcha synthesizer to automatically generate synthetic captchas to learn a base solver, and then fine-tuning the base solver on a small set of real captchas using transfer learning. We evaluate our approach by applying it to 33 captcha schemes, including 11 schemes that are currently being used by 32 of the top-50 popular websites including Microsoft, Wikipedia, eBay and Google. Our approach is the most capable attack on text captchas seen to date. It outperforms four state-of-the-art text-captcha solvers by not only delivering a significantly higher accuracy on all testing schemes, but also successfully attacking schemes where others have zero chance. We show that our approach is highly efficient as it can solve a captcha within 0.05 second using a desktop GPU. We demonstrate that our attack is generally applicable because it can bypass the advanced security features employed by most modern ∗Corresponding faculty authors: Zhanyong Tang and Zheng Wang. 1To aid readability, we will use the acronym in lowercase thereafter. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from permissions@acm.org. CCS ’18, October 15–19, 2018, Toronto, ON, Canada © 2018 Association for Computing Machinery. ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-5693-0/18/10. $15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3243734.3243754 text captcha schemes. We hope the results of our work can encourage the community to revisit the design and practical use of text captchas.
Local Recurrence in Mismatch Repair–Proficient Colon Cancer Predicted by an Infiltrative Tumor Border and Lack of CD8+ Tumor-Infiltrating Lymphocytes

Purpose: The identification of colon cancer patients at high risk of local recurrence is necessary to improve the selection of patients for more tailored treatment protocols. The aim of this study was to develop a predictive model of local recurrence by assessing the independent predictive effect of 7 clinicopathologic features, 24 protein markers of tumor progression, and their multifeature combinations in mismatch repair–proficient colon cancers. Experimental Design: Immunohistochemistry for 24 protein markers was done on 269 patients with complete clinicopathologic data. After univariate and multivariable analyses, independent predictors of local recurrence were identified and their multifeature combinations were analyzed. Kaplan-Meier and Cox proportional hazards regression were done for survival analysis. Results: Local recurrence was observed in 119 patients (55.8%). Independent predictors of tumor recurrence were lymph node involvement (P = 0.006), absence of CD8+ tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL; P < 0.001), and infiltrative tumor margin (P < 0.001). This independent effect persisted after adjusting for adjuvant therapy. Risk of recurrence was 0.75 and the 5-year survival rate was 8.8% in patients with these three adverse features. Node-negative patients with an infiltrative tumor margin and absence of CD8+ TILs were identified as high risk with a probability of 0.55 for recurrence and a 60% 5-year survival rate. The remaining node-negative cases fared significantly better with risks ranging from 8% to 26% and 5-year survival rates reaching 97.6%. Conclusions: An infiltrative tumor margin and absence of CD8+ TILs are highly predictive of local recurrence in node-negative mismatch repair–proficient colon cancer and may help to identify high-risk patients who may benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy.
Differential Proteomic Profiles of Pleurotus ostreatus in Response to Lignocellulosic Components Provide Insights into Divergent Adaptive Mechanisms

Pleurotus ostreatus is a white rot fungus that grows on lignocellulosic biomass by metabolizing the main constituents. Extracellular enzymes play a key role in this process. During the hydrolysis of lignocellulose, potentially toxic molecules are released from lignin, and the molecules are derived from hemicellulose or cellulose that trigger various responses in fungus, thereby influencing mycelial growth. In order to characterize the mechanism underlying the response of P. ostreatus to lignin, we conducted a comparative proteomic analysis of P. ostreatus grown on different lignocellulose substrates. In this work, the mycelium proteome of P. ostreatus grown in liquid minimal medium with lignin, xylan, and carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) was analyzed using the complementary two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE) approach; 115 proteins were identified, most of which were classified into five types according to their function. Proteins with an antioxidant function that play a role in the stress response were upregulated in response to lignin. Most proteins involving in carbohydrate and energy metabolism were less abundant in lignin. Xylan and CMC may enhanced the process of carbohydrate metabolism by regulating the level of expression of various carbohydrate metabolism-related proteins. The change of protein expression level was related to the adaptability of P. ostreatus to lignocellulose. These findings provide novel insights into the mechanisms underlying the response of white-rot fungus to lignocellulose.
The vertebrate fauna, biostratigraphy and biocrhonology of the type Revultian land vertebrate faunachron, Bull Canyon Formation (Upper Triassic), east-central New Mexico

The Bull Canyon Formation of east-central New Mexico contains a large vertebrate fauna that is the type fauna of the Revueltian land-vertebrate faunachron. The Bull Canyon vertebrate fauna includes ? Colobodontidae indet. , Redfieldiidae indet. , Semionotus cf. S. brarmi, ? Tanaocrossus lwllilwski, Actinopterygii indet. , ? Arganodontidae indet. , Quayia zideki, Apachesaurus gregorii, Metoposauridae indet. (large), ? Squamata indet. , Rhynchosauridae indet. , Vancleavia campi, Pseudopalatus pristinus, P. andersoni, P. n. sp. , Typothorax coccinanmr, Aetosaunrs arcuallls, Stagonolepididae ? gen. et sp. nov., Paratypothorax sp. , Desmatosuchus n. sp. , Postosuchus kirkpatricki, Shuvosaurus inexpectatus, Sphenosuchidae indet. , Crocodylotarsi gen. et sp. nov., Herrerasauridae gen. et sp. nov. (2), Gojirasaunrs quayi, Theropoda gen. et sp. nov., Revueltosaurus cal/enderi, Lucianosaurus wildi and Pseudotriconodon chatterjeei. The Revueltian can be divided into a lower Rl (Barrancan) defined by the FAD of Pseudopalaflls and R2 (Lucianoan) defined by the FAD of Lucianosaurus. There is possibly an RO (Rainbowforestan) interval which has the co-occurrence of Typothorax and Nicrosaurus prior to the FAD of Pseudopalatus. The Revueltian represents most of Norian time.
Membrane-anchored growth factor, HB-EGF, on the cell surface targeted to the inner nuclear membrane

Heparin-binding EGF-like growth factor (HB-EGF) is synthesized as a type I transmembrane protein (proHB-EGF) and expressed on the cell surface. The ectodomain shedding of proHB-EGF at the extracellular region on the plasma membrane yields a soluble EGF receptor ligand and a transmembrane-cytoplasmic fragment (HB-EGF-CTF). The cytoplasmic domain of proHB-EGF (HB-EGF-cyto) interacts with transcriptional repressors to reverse their repressive activities. However, how HB-EGF-cyto accesses transcriptional repressors is yet unknown. The present study demonstrates that, after exposure to shedding stimuli, both HB-EGF-CTF and unshed proHB-EGF translocate to the nuclear envelope. Immunoelectron microscopy and digitonin-permeabilized cells showed that HB-EGF-cyto signals are at the inner nuclear membrane. A short sequence element within the HB-EGF-cyto allows a transmembrane protein to localize to the nuclear envelope. The dominant-active form of Rab5 and Rab11 suppressed nuclear envelope targeting. Collectively, these data demonstrate that membrane-anchored HB-EGF is targeted to the inner nuclear membrane via a retrograde membrane trafficking pathway.
Bitmap Indexing-based Clustering and Retrieval of XML Documents

This paper describes a bitmap indexing based technique to cluster XML documents. XML documents can be hierarchically represented by elements. To improve performance of information retrieval, documents can be indexed using bitmap techniques. Such a bitmap index is sparse, meaning it contains unnecessarily many zero bits, especially for the word dimension. To remove zero bits and improve the performance of information retrieval, we propose to generate several small bitmap indexes that are not sparse. Using the similarity and popularity operations available in bitmap indexes, three clustering techniques are discussed: topdown clustering, bottom-up clustering, and mixed clustering. Experimental results are also shown in this paper.
ℂP2 and ℂP1 sigma models in supergravity: Bianchi type IX instantons and cosmologies

We find instanton/cosmological solutions with biaxial Bianchi-IX symmetry, involving nontrivial spatial dependence of the CP 1 - and CP 2 -sigma-models coupled to gravity. Such manifolds arise in N = 1, d = 4 supergravity with supermatter actions and hence the solutions can be embedded in supergravity. There is a natural way in which the standard coordinates of these manifolds can be mapped into the four-dimensional physical space. Due to its special symmetry, we start with CP 2 with its corresponding scalar ansatz; this further requires the spacetime to be SU(2) × U(1)-invariant. The problem then reduces to a set of ordinary differential equations whose analytical properties and solutions are discussed. Among the solutions there is a surprising, special family of exact solutions which owe their existence to the nontrivial topology of CP 2 and are in 1-1 correspondence with matter-free Bianchi-IX metrics. These solutions can also be found by coupling CP 1 to gravity. The regularity of these Euclidean solutions is discussed-the only possibility is bolt-type regularity. The Lorentzian solutions with similar scalar ansatz are all obtainable from the Euclidean solutions by Wick rotation.
Reheating of the Universe and Population III

We note that current observational evidence strongly favors a conventional recombination of ionized matter subsequent to redshift z = 1200, followed by reionization prior to redshift z = 5 and compute how this would have occurred in a standard scenario for the growth of structure. Extending prior semianalytic work, we show by direct, high-resolution numerical simulations (of a COBE normalized CDM + Λ model) that reheating will occur in the interval 20 > z > 7, followed by reionization and accompanied by a significant increase in the Jeans mass. However, the evolution of the Jeans mass does not significantly affect star formation in dense, self-shielded clumps of gas, which are detached from the thermal evolution of the rest of the universe. On average, the growth of the Jeans mass tracks the growth of the nonlinear mass scale, a result we suspect is due to nonlinear feedback effects. Cooling on molecular hydrogen leads to a burst of star formation prior to reheating, which produces Population III stars with Ω* reaching 10-5.5 and Z̄/Z☉ reaching 10-3.7 by z ~ 14. Star formation subsequently slows down as molecular hydrogen is depleted by photodestruction and the rise of the temperature. At later times, z < 10, when the characteristic virial temperature of gas clumps reach 104 degrees, star formation increases again as hydrogen line cooling become efficient. Objects containing Population III stars accrete mass with time and, as soon as they reach 104 K virial temperature, engage in renewed star formation and turn into normal Population II objects having an old Population III metal-poor component.
A state-space view on locally-stable, globally-unstable nonlinear models driven by Gaussian burst inputs

In this paper, the behaviour of nonlinear dynamic systems driven by stationary random excitations is studied from a model-based perspective - i.e. starting from a perfect knowledge of the system under study and its driving random input - over a finite time interval (a burst excitation is assumed). For a given discrete-time nonlinear state-space model operating in the neighbourhood of a stable equilibrium, a “blow-up” is seen as the event of escaping out of a region of attraction. Based on Laplace integration, a method is outlined to approximate a future state's probability density function (pdf) at low excitation amplitudes. Inspection of this pdf can reveal additional insights into the complex behaviour of an abstract state-space model, compared with the simulation approach. The probability of staying inside the region of attraction (viz. obtaining a bounded operation subject to an input active in a finite time interval) can be obtained by integration of this pdf. The state pdf estimation is illustrated with numerical Monte-Carlo simulation experiments.