Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Electronic Behaviors of Individual Defects and Boundaries in 2D Materials: A Spatially Resolved Study with Multi-Probe Scanning Tunneling Microscopy

Electronic properties at the nanoscale are the key to the novel applications of low-dimensional materials in electronic and energy technologies. Due to the restricted dimensionality, one distinctive character of these nano-systems is that the electronic properties are critically dependent on the structural and compositional heterogeneities such as defects and boundaries. Therefore, an important aspect of nanoresearch is to examine the role of defects and boundaries, particularly the correlation between defect structures and electronic properties.
Mental Simulation as Substitute for Experience

People spend a considerable amount of their time mentally simulating experiences other than the one in which they are presently engaged, as a means of distraction, coping, or preparation for the future. In this integrative review, we examine four (non-exhaustive) cases in which mentally simulating an experience serves a different function, as a substitute for the corresponding experience. In each case, mentally simulating an experience evokes similar cognitive, physiological, and/or behavioral consequences as having the corresponding experience in reality: (i) imagined experiences are attributed evidentiary value like physical evidence, (ii) mental practice instantiates the same performance benefits as physical practice, (iii) imagined consumption of a food reduces its actual consumption, and (iv) imagined goal achievement reduces motivation for actual goal achievement. We organize these cases under a common superordinate category and discuss their different methodological approaches and explanatory accounts. Our integration yields theoretical and practical insights into when and why mentally simulating an experience serves as its substitute.
Getting real with the upcoming challenge of electronic nicotine delivery systems: The way forward for the South-East Asia region

Electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) are being marketed to tobacco smokers for use in places where smoking is not allowed or as aids similar to pharmaceutical nicotine products to help cigarette smokers quit tobacco use. These are often flavored to make them more attractive for youth – ENDS use may lead young nonsmokers to take up tobacco products. Neither safety nor efficacy as a cessation aid of ENDS has been scientifically demonstrated. The adverse health effects of secondhand aerosol cannot be ruled out. Weak regulation of these products might contribute to the expansion of the ENDS market – in which tobacco companies have a substantial stake – potentially renormalizing smoking habits and negating years of intense tobacco control campaigning. The current situation calls for galvanizing policy makers to gear up to this challenge in the Southeast Asia Region (SEAR) where the high burden of tobacco use is compounded by large proportion of young vulnerable population and limited established tobacco cessation facilities. Banning ENDS in the SEAR seems to be the most plausible approach at present. In the SEAR, Timor-Leste, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and Thailand have taken the lead in banning these products. The other countries of the SEAR should follow suit. The SEAR countries may, however, choose to revise their strategy if unbiased scientific evidence emerges about efficacy of ENDS as a tobacco cessation aid. ENDS industry must show true motivation and willingness to develop and test ENDS as effective pharmaceutical tools in the regional context before asking for market authorization.
Constitutive Modelling of Damage Evolution and Martensitic Transformation in 316L Stainless Steel

Abstract In this work, the constitutive model, derived with the use of thermodynamic of irreversible processes framework is presented. The model is derived under the assumption of small strains. Plastic strain induced martensitic phase transformation is considered in the austenitic matrix where the volume fraction of the martensite is reflected by a scalar parameter. The austenitic matrix is assumed as the elastic-plastic material and martensitic phase is assumed as randomly distributed and randomly oriented inclusions. Both phases are affected by damage evolution but there is no distinction in the model between damage in austenite and martensite.
Unique Phenotypic Characteristics of Recently Transmitted HIV-1 Subtype C Envelope Glycoprotein gp120: Use of CXCR6 Coreceptor by Transmitted Founder Viruses

ABSTRACT Adequate information on the precise molecular and biological composition of the viral strains that establish HIV infection in the human host will provide effective means of immunization against HIV infection. In an attempt to identify the transmitted founder (TF) virus and differentiate the biological properties and infectious potential of the TF virus from those of the population of the early transmitted viruses, 250 patient-derived gp120 envelope glycoproteins were cloned in pMN-K7-Luc-IRESs-NefΔgp120 to obtain chimeric viruses. Samples were obtained from eight infants who had recently become infected with HIV through mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) and two adults who acquired infection through the heterosexual route and were in the chronic stage of infection. Among the 250 clones tested, 65 chimeric viruses were infectious, and all belonged to HIV-1 subtype C. The 65 clones were analyzed for molecular features of the envelope, per-infectious-particle infectivity, coreceptor tropism, drug sensitivity, and sensitivity to broadly neutralizing antibodies. Based on genotypic and phenotypic analysis of the viral clones, we identified 10 TF viruses from the eight infants. The TF viruses were characterized by shorter V1V2 regions, a reduced number of potential N-linked glycosylation sites, and a higher infectivity titer compared to the virus variants from the adults in the chronic stage of infection. CXCR6 coreceptor usage, in addition to that of the CCR5 coreceptor, which was used by all 65 chimeric viruses, was identified in 13 viruses. The sensitivity of the TF variants to maraviroc and a standard panel of neutralizing monoclonal antibodies (VRC01, PG09, PG16, and PGT121) was found to be much lower than that of the virus variants from the adults in the chronic stage of infection. IMPORTANCE Tremendous progress has been made during the last three and half decades of HIV research, but some significant gaps continue to exist. One of the frontier areas of HIV research which has not seen a breakthrough yet is vaccine research, which is because of the enormous genetic diversity of HIV-1 and the unique infectious fitness of the virus. Among the repertoire of viral variants, the virus that establishes successful infection (transmitted founder [TF] virus) has not been well characterized yet. An insight into the salient features of the TF virus would go a long way toward helping with the design of an effective vaccine against HIV. Here we studied the biological properties of recently transmitted viruses isolated from infants who acquired infection from the mother and have come up with unique characterizations for the TF virus that establishes infection in the human host.
Infodemiology and Infoveillance: Framework for an Emerging Set of Public Health Informatics Methods to Analyze Search, Communication and Publication Behavior on the Internet

Infodemiology can be defined as the science of distribution and determinants of information in an electronic medium, specifically the Internet, or in a population, with the ultimate aim to inform public health and public policy. Infodemiology data can be collected and analyzed in near real time. Examples for infodemiology applications include: the analysis of queries from Internet search engines to predict disease outbreaks (eg. influenza); monitoring peoples' status updates on microblogs such as Twitter for syndromic surveillance; detecting and quantifying disparities in health information availability; identifying and monitoring of public health relevant publications on the Internet (eg. anti-vaccination sites, but also news articles or expert-curated outbreak reports); automated tools to measure information diffusion and knowledge translation, and tracking the effectiveness of health marketing campaigns. Moreover, analyzing how people search and navigate the Internet for health-related information, as well as how they communicate and share this information, can provide valuable insights into health-related behavior of populations. Seven years after the infodemiology concept was first introduced, this paper revisits the emerging fields of infodemiology and infoveillance and proposes an expanded framework, introducing some basic metrics such as information prevalence, concept occurrence ratios, and information incidence. The framework distinguishes supply-based applications (analyzing what is being published on the Internet, eg. on Web sites, newsgroups, blogs, microblogs and social media) from demand-based methods (search and navigation behavior), and further distinguishes passive from active infoveillance methods. Infodemiology metrics follow population health relevant events or predict them. Thus, these metrics and methods are potentially useful for public health practice and research, and should be further developed and standardized.
Long-Term Depression Is Independent of GluN2 Subunit Composition

NMDA receptors (NMDARs) mediate both long-term potentiation and long-term depression (LTD) and understanding how a single receptor can initiate both phenomena remains a major question in neuroscience. A prominent hypothesis implicates the NMDAR subunit composition, specifically GluN2A and GluN2B, in dictating the rules of synaptic plasticity. However, studies testing this hypothesis have yielded inconsistent and often contradictory results, especially for LTD. These inconsistent results may be due to challenges in the interpretation of subunit-selective pharmacology and in dissecting out the contributions of differential channel properties versus the interacting proteins unique to GluN2A or GluN2B. In this study, we address the pharmacological and biochemical challenges by using a single-neuron genetic approach to delete NMDAR subunits in conditional knock-out mice. In addition, the recently discovered non-ionotropic nature of NMDAR-dependent LTD allowed the rigorous assessment of unique subunit contributions to NMDAR-dependent LTD while eliminating the variable of differential charge transfer. Here we find that neither the GluN2A nor the GluN2B subunit is strictly necessary for either non-ionotropic or ionotropic LTD. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT NMDA receptors are key regulators of bidirectional synaptic plasticity. Understanding the mechanisms regulating bidirectional plasticity will guide development of therapeutic strategies to treat the dysfunctional synaptic plasticity in multiple neuropsychiatric disorders. Because of the unique properties of the NMDA receptor GluN2 subunits, they have been postulated to differentially affect synaptic plasticity. However, there has been significant controversy regarding the roles of the GluN2 subunits in synaptic long term depression (LTD). Using single-neuron knock-out of the GluN2 subunits, we show that LTD requires neither GluN2A nor GluN2B.
Subitizing: an analysis of its component processes.

SUMMARY The term subitizing was coined by Kaufman, Lord, Reese, and Volkmann in 1949 to describe the rapid, confident, and accurate report of the numerosity of arrays of elements presented for short durations. They noted that this process, different from counting and estimating, was restricted to arrays with 6 or fewer elements. Ever since the general awareness of some such process in the nineteenth century, the phenomenon has been a benchmark for the limited capacity of human consciousness, Previous research, as well as the data in these experiments, shows that the reaction time function for different arrays (ranging in size from 1 to 15) has a shallow slope for arrays with 1 to 3 elements followed by a straight line slope for arrays of 4 to 6 or 7, at which point the reaction time discontinuity typically occurs; reaction times then stay fairly constant as the array size increases, and the numerosity response becomes much less accurate. When the array is exposed for unlimited presentation time, the reaction time slope is a straight line from size 4 to as large as 30 or 40. In the latter case, subjects are clearly counting the array. Apart from replicating the previous findings under a variety of conditions, we have shown that subjects can make a very fast "countability" judgment indicating whether or not they could, if requested, give an accurate numerosity response. These judgments are fast and produce a yes response within the subitizing range, and a no response thereafter. Developmental data had indicated that children count arrays as small as 2 and 3; adults seem to give a more automatic response, shown ajso in the fast reaction times to those array sizes. The suggestion that this response is an acquired one to certain frequently appearing canonical patterns of two and three events (pairs/lines and triples/ triangles) was explored in another experiment in which subjects were given canonical patterns for arrays of up to 10. These data showed that within very few trials the response to these canonical patterns was just as fast and accurate as the response to the smaller (1 to 3) array sizes. Finally, the data demonstrated that the slope for array sizes from 4 to 6 with short exposure time was indistinguishable from the slope for array sizes from 4 to 15 under an unlimited exposure condition. We concluded that the reaction time function found in subitizing consists of three processes: a response to arrays of 1 to 3 that is fast and accurate and is based on acquired canonical patterns; a,response to arrays of 4 to 6 or 7 that is based on mental counting, that is, the counting of arrays that can be kept in consciousness (attention); and an estimating response for arrays larger than 6 that cannot be held in consciousness for mental counting.
Physical Metallurgy I

Skripta Fizikalna metalurgija I je sažeti prikaz znanosti o materijalima u kojoj se na znanstvenim i inženjerskim principima tumaci kristalna građa metala, dizajniranje legura i mikrostrukture, te odnos između strukture metala i njegovih mehanickih i fizickih svojstava.
Assessment of polyparasitism with intestinal parasite infections and urinary schistosomiasis among school children in a semi-urban area of south eastern Nigeria

Polyparasitism with intestinal parasites and schistosomiasis constitutes a major pubic health challenge in Nigeria especially among school age children. Using standard parasitological techniques, intestinal parasitic infections and urinary schistosomiasis were assessed among school age children in Edda a semi-urban area of south-eastern Nigeria. Of the 300 children screened, 32(10.7%) had intestinal parasitic infections while 41(13.6%) of the children were infected with S. haematobium. Up to seven intestinal parasites were identified. E. histolytica was more commonly observed than other parasites. Children of age group 11-12years old were more infected with intestinal parasites than other age categories, statistically, there was a significant difference in the trend (χ= 16.48, df=2, P<0.05). Males had slightly higher prevalence (14.7%) of S. haematobium infection than the females (12.5%) and age-specific prevalence showed that those aged 10-11 years old had the highest prevalence (14.6%). School-based treatment campaigns and health education can improve children health.
Factors Affecting the Effective Management of Acute Stroke: A Prospective Observational Study

Background : Stroke, characterized by sudden loss of cerebral function, is among one of the leading cause of death and disability world over. The newer treatment modalities have changed the landscape of stroke treatment but are very much time bound. Aim: To characterize pre-hospital and in-hospital factors affecting acute stroke management thus defining lacunae in stroke management. Subjects and Methods: A prospective observational study, conducted at the emergency department of a tertiary care center in southern India from August 2015 to July 2016. All stroke patients presenting within first 24 hours of onset were included. A pre -defined Knowledge-Attitude-Practice (KAP) questionnaire was used. Results: Total of 133 patients were eligible out of which 28 were excluded for various reasons. Majority were >60 years age and male (61%). About 60% arrived within window. Distance from the hospital was one of the major factors for arrival within the window period. When compared by KAP questionnaire, bystanders of those arriving within window period had better awareness of stroke symptoms. Conclusions: Improving awareness of stroke symptoms and increasing availability of EMS is likely increase chances of stroke patients receiving appropriate acute management.
Preventing Imminent Collisions between Co-Located Users in HMD-Based VR in Non-Shared Scenarios

This paper presents two experiments set in a multi-user HMD-based VR system where users navigate by real walking in a large real and virtual area. We investigate a case that could be used in a multi-user VR game or a training application: several users are walking in the same physical space without seeing each other in the virtual environment. Such a scenario involves the risk of collisions between users. In the first experiment, we investigate the strategy of stopping a walking user in a dangerous situation. In particular, we compare the effectiveness and the perceived difficulty of two visual and two auditory stopping signals. The results of this comparison show that the tested visual and auditory signals are equally effective in stopping users. With both visual and auditory signals, participants prefer the signal to contain a ”stop” command. In the second experiment, avatars are displayed at users’ positions if the distance between users is dangerously small. The method is tested with four avatars of various degrees of anthropomorphism and in two different application scenarios. Our results suggest that the type of scenario influences users’ preference of a notification avatar. It is sufficient to display an area occupied by other users in scenarios with specific goals and interactive content. If users are exploring a virtual world without having any other goal, they prefer to see humanlike avatars as a possible collision notification.
Hippocampus and amygdala morphology in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

CONTEXT Limbic structures are implicated in the genesis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) by the presence of mood and cognitive disturbances in affected individuals and by elevated rates of mood disorders in family members of probands with ADHD. OBJECTIVE To study the morphology of the hippocampus and amygdala in children with ADHD. DESIGN A cross-sectional case-control study of the hippocampus and amygdala using anatomical magnetic resonance imaging. SETTINGS University research institute. PATIENTS One hundred fourteen individuals aged 6 to 18 years, 51 with combined-type ADHD and 63 healthy controls. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Volumes and measures of surface morphology for the hippocampus and amygdala. RESULTS The hippocampus was larger bilaterally in the ADHD group than in the control group (t = 3.35; P < .002). Detailed surface analyses of the hippocampus further localized these differences to an enlarged head of the hippocampus in the ADHD group. Although conventional measures did not detect significant differences in amygdalar volumes, surface analyses indicated the presence of reduced size bilaterally over the area of the basolateral complex. Correlations with prefrontal measures suggested abnormal connectivity between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex in the ADHD group. Enlarged subregions of the hippocampus tended to accompany fewer symptoms. CONCLUSIONS The enlarged hippocampus in children and adolescents with ADHD may represent a compensatory response to the presence of disturbances in the perception of time, temporal processing (eg, delay aversion), and stimulus seeking associated with ADHD. Disrupted connections between the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex may contribute to behavioral disinhibition. Our findings suggest involvement of the limbic system in the pathophysiology of ADHD.
Energy efficient oxide confined VCSELs for optical interconnects in data centers and supercomputers

This dissertation provides the first systematic analysis of the dynamic energy efficiency of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) for optical interconnects. Energy-efficient VCSELs are the key component to address the pressing ecological and economic issues of the exponentially growing energy consumption in data centers via energy-efficient optical interconnects. Energy-efficient data communication is one of the most important fields in “Green Photonics” enabling higher bit rates at significantly reduced energy consumption per bit. General rules of how to achieve energy-efficient data transmission with VCSELs are derived by the systematic investigation of the static and dynamic VCSEL properties of different oxide-confined VCSEL designs emitting at 850nm and 980-nm. These rules are applicable to all oxide-confined VCSELs of any wavelength. The derived rules are verified via data transmission experiments leading to record energy-efficient error-free data transmission at room temperature of 56 fJ/bit at 25Gb/s. It is demonstrated that energy-efficient operation can also be achieved at high bit rates up to 40Gb/s and across long multimode fiber transmission distances of up to 1000m at 25Gb/s, and over distances of 5m at 46Gb/s at 85◦C and 50Gb/s at 25◦C with record VCSEL modulation bandwidths of 24.7 and 23.0GHz at 25 and 85◦C, respectively. One main conclusion of this work is that the future required performance goals in terms of energy efficiency, bit rate, and temperature stability can be achieved with oxide-confined VCSELs. In order to achieve these goals simultaneously, the VCSELs must have small oxide-aperture diameters of 35μm and must be operated at low current densities. Prior to this dissertation work the main focus of oxide-confined VCSEL research was on VCSELs with larger oxide-aperture diameters of 7-10μm as these devices are currently employed in commercial optical interconnects, because these oxide-aperture diameters typically yield the largest modulation bandwidths. It has been the conventional wisdom that in order to meet the future bandwidth demands such large oxide-aperture diameter VCSELs will be used in future optical interconnects. In this dissertation it is demonstrated that such large oxide-aperture diameter VCSELs are not suited for energy-efficient operation especially not at the required high bit rates and at high ambient temperatures and low current densities. For those VCSELs trade-offs between energy efficiency and all other performance goals exist. This dissertation work demonstrates that VCSELs with smaller oxide-aperture diameters are more energy-efficient than similar VCSELs with larger oxide-aperture diameters. At the required low current densities for reliable commercial application small oxide-aperture diameter VCSELs are simultaneously faster and significantly more energy-efficient than similar VCSELs with larger oxide-aperture diameters and the modulation bandwidth and energy efficiency are more temperature stable as well. This paradigm change has stimulated the work of other