Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Water Storage Variations in Tibet from GRACE, ICESat, and Hydrological Data

The monitoring of water storage variations is essential not only for the management of water resources, but also for a better understanding of the impact of climate change on hydrological cycle, particularly in Tibet. In this study, we estimated and analyzed changes of the total water budget on the Tibetan Plateau from the Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission over 15 years prior to 2017. To suppress overall leakage effect of GRACE monthly solutions in Tibet, we applied a forward modeling technique to reconstruct hydrological signals from GRACE data. The results reveal a considerable decrease in the total water budget at an average annual rate of −6.22 ± 1.74 Gt during the period from August 2002 to December 2016. In addition to the secular trend, seasonal variations controlled mainly by annual changes in precipitation were detected, with maxima in September and minima in December. A rising temperature on the plateau is likely a principal factor causing a continuous decline of the total water budget attributed to increase melting of mountain glaciers, permafrost, and snow cover. We also demonstrate that a substantial decrease in the total water budget due to melting of mountain glaciers was partially moderated by the increasing water storage of lakes. This is evident from results of ICESat data for selected major lakes and glaciers. The ICESat results confirm a substantial retreat of mountain glaciers and an increasing trend of major lakes. An increasing volume of lakes is mainly due to an inflow of the meltwater from glaciers and precipitation. Our estimates of the total water budget on the Tibetan Plateau are affected by a hydrological signal from neighboring regions. Probably the most significant are aliasing signals due to ground water depletion in Northwest India and decreasing precipitation in the Eastern Himalayas. Nevertheless, an integral downtrend in the total water budget on the Tibetan Plateau caused by melting of glaciers prevails over the investigated period.
Microparticles: Key Protagonists in Cardiovascular Disorders

Microparticles (MP) are shed membrane vesicles released by various cell types following apoptosis or activation. MP circulate in human plasma and also accumulate in atherosclerotic lesions. A growing body of evidence has highlighted their involvement in inflammation, angiogenesis, coagulation, and the regulation of vascular tone. MP may therefore contribute to the initiation and development of atherosclerosis and its complications. Plasma MP originate from platelets, leukocytes, erythrocytes, and endothelial cells, and their levels increase in patients with cardiovascular diseases; specific cardiovascular medications also affect plasma MP levels. Most recent data suggest a potential prognostic role of circulating MP for identification of subjects prone to develop cardiovascular complications.
Andrés Bello y la Gramática Castellana latinoamericana

Con apoyo en las propias palabras del autor, se da cuenta, por un lado, de las motivaciones, estrategia, teoria gramatical, normativa y preocupacion pedagogica presentes en la Gramatica Castellana de Andres Bello, asi como de la valoracion que tuvo en su epoca (siglo XIX) y en decadas posteriores hasta llegar al siglo XXI, y, por otro, se evalua el concepto de normatividad utilizado por Bello a la luz de recientes enfoques linguisticos sobre el tema, y la validez actual de una gramatica normativa para los latinoamericanos.
Vesicovaginal fistula in Uganda

Abstract Kitovu Hospital in Masaka, Uganda, is a leading obstetric fistula repair centre in the country with the highest rates of fistula in the world. In this retrospective case review, the regional incidence and causative factors were studied in patients with vesicovaginal fistula (VVF) who were admitted at Kitovu Hospital. Fistula history included severity (ICIQ score), causes and outcomes of VVF were measured. Women suffered with symptoms of VVF for an average of 4.97 years with an average ICIQ severity score of 7.21. Patients travelled an average distance of 153 km and the majority travelled by public transport. Rates of prolonged labour were high. 69% of fistula-causing delivery resulted in stillbirth and 12% resulted in early neonatal death. Following surgery, 94% of patients were dry on discharge. Impact statement What is already known on this subject? Vesicovaginal fistula (VVF) is a severe, life-changing injury. Although largely eradicated from the Western world thanks to modern obstetric practice, VVF is still highly prevalent in developing countries where factors such as young childbearing age and poor access to emergency obstetric care increase the incidence (Wall et al. 2005). At the current rate of fistula repair, it is estimated that it would take 400 years to treat those already suffering with fistula, providing that no new cases emerged (Browning and Patel 2004). What do the results of this study add? The Ugandan women in this study reiterate tales of foetal loss, social isolation and epic journeys in search of fistula repair, as previously described in the literature. The study offers some hope for prompt help-seeking during labour and after fistulas are developed. It demonstrates the success of fistula repairs at Kitovu Hospital but highlights the paucity of service provision across Uganda. What are the implications of these findings for clinical practice and/or further research? Further epidemiological research is required to quantify the true burden of the disease. Only by raising the profile of VVF in both developing and developed countries, can there be a collaborative effort to make universal change. To embark upon the prevention and cure of the disease it is necessary to continue tackling issues of poverty and gender inequality.
The stimulation of the cholesterol esterification pathway by atherogenic lipoproteins in macrophages

Cholesteryl-ester-loaded macrophages, or foam cells, are prominent features of atherosclerotic lesions and undoubtedly play important roles in lesion development. Foam cell formation involves the uptake of atherogenic lipoproteins or other cholesterol-rich particles by pathways that are downregulated incompletely or not at all by cholesterol. In addition, postreceptor events that affect intracellular cholesterol metabolism play a critical role in foam cell formation. Increasing evidence shows that the ability of lipoproteins to stimulate cholesterol esterification is dependent upon a regulated and complex pathway that most likely involves one or more proteins in addition to the cholesterol esterifying enzyme itself. The molecular characterization of these proteins, as well as the study of intracellular cholesterol metabolism in vivo, represent important goals for our further understanding of foam cell biology and atherogenesis.
Applications of ultrafast laser spectroscopy for the study of biological systems

The discovery of mode-locked laser operation now nearly two decades ago has started a development which enables researchers to probe the dynamics of ultrafast physical and chemical processes at the molecular level on shorter and shorter time scales. Naturally the first applications were in the fields of photophysics and photochemistry where it was then possible for the first time to probe electronic and vibrational relaxation processes on a sub-nanosecond timescale. The development went from lasers producing pulses of many picoseconds to the shortest pulses which are at present just a few femtoseconds long. Soon after their discovery ultrashort pulses were applied also to biological systems which has revealed a wealth of information contributing to our understanding of a broadrange of biological processes on the molecular level.It is the aim of this review to discuss the recent advances and point out some future trends in the study of ultrafast processes in biological systems using laser techniques. The emphasis will be mainly on new results obtained during the last 5 or 6 years. The term ultrafast means that I shall restrict myself to sub-nanosecond processes with a few exceptions.
Short‐ and Long‐Term Variations in the Reykjanes Geothermal Reservoir From Seismic Noise Interferometry

The Reykjanes Geothermal System (RGS) is a high‐temperature geothermal system located on the Reykjanes peninsula, a transtensional plate‐boundary zone located on the southwestern tip of Iceland. The area is characterized by high seismicity, recent volcanism, and high‐temperature geothermal fields. We use seismic noise records from April 2014 to August 2015 to study stress changes and potential deformation of the subsurface caused by injection and production operations at RGS through seismic interferometry. We retrieve continuous time series of waveform similarity values and seismic velocity changes during this period. The S‐transform of the similarity values allows us to clearly identify three variations in the mechanical properties of the Reykjanes peninsula related to rapid changes of RGS production. In addition, we observe a slow seismic velocity decrease of 0.36%/year in the reservoir due to the water deficit and seasonal variations associated with the energy production demand.
Iterative decoding of one-step majority logic deductible codes based on belief propagation

Previously, the belief propagation (BP) algorithm has received a lot of attention in the coding community, mostly due to its near-optimum decoding for low-density parity check (LDPC) codes and its connection to turbo decoding. In this paper, we investigate the performance achieved by the BP algorithm for decoding one-step majority logic decodable (OSMLD) codes. The BP algorithm is expressed in terms of likelihood ratios rather than probabilities, as conventionally presented. The proposed algorithm fits better the decoding of OSMLD codes with respect to its numerical stability due to the fact that the weights of their check sums are often much higher than that of the corresponding LDPC codes. Although it has been believed that OSMLD codes are far inferior to LDPC codes, we show that for medium code lengths (say between 200-1000 bits), the BP decoding of OSMLD codes can significantly outperform BP decoding of their equivalent LDPC codes. The reasons for this behavior are elaborated.
Objectness ranking by uniform Bayesian model with multimodal and global cues

Category-independent object detection and localisation plays an important role in many computer vision tasks. In this study, an efficient method is proposed for generic objectness ranking by fusing two dimension (2D) or 3D information. A novel Bayesian model is designed to integrate multimodal cues and global cues to estimate object location, scale and number. In the pure trichannel colour space, the authors employ global spatial information as new global cues. From the colour+depth (red, green and blue+D) aspect, the authors compute multimodal saliency and oversegments to find two new multimodal cues. Local and regional depth cues are also explored and combined with them together so that a reliable objectness ranking scheme can be implemented. The proposed method is evaluated on web-public common 2D and RGB+D datasets. In RGB+D cases, the experimental results show that the proposed method achieves an average 5% improvement over state-of-the-art methods. Furthermore, for achieving the similar recall rates, the authors’ method only needs 30% amounts of sampled windows with respect of other available methods.
A study of throughput degradation following single node failure in a data sharing system

The data sharing approach to building distributed database systems is becoming more common because of its potentially higher processing power and flexibility compared to data partitioning. However, due to the large amounts of hardware and complex software involved, the likelihood of a single node failure in the system increases. Following a single node failure, some processing has to be done to determine the set of locks held by transactions which were executing at the failed node. These locks cannot be released until database recovery has completed on the failed node. This phenomenon can cause throughput degradation even if the processing power on the surviving nodes is adequate to handle all incoming transactions. This paper studies the throughput dropoff behavior following a single node failure in a data sharing system through simulations and analytical modeling. The analytical model reveals several important factors affecting post-failure behavior and is shown to match simulations quite accurately. The effect of hot locks (locks which are frequently accessed) on post-failure behavior is observed. Simulations are performed to observe system behavior after the set of locks held by transactions on the failed node has been determined and show that if the delay in obtaining this information is too large, the system is prone to thrashing. <<ETX>>
Some probabilistic restatements of the Four Color Conjecture

With every triangulation of sphere, we associate a probabilistic space in a natural way and define several random events. The Four Color Conjecture (4CC) turns out to be equivalent to different statements about positive correlation among some pairs of these events. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 46: 167–179, 2004
Proteins Specified by bovine herpesvirus 1 (infectious bovine rhinotracheitis virus)

An electrophoretic analysis of radioactively labeled, purified, "empty" and DNA-containing infectious bovine rhinotracheitis virions revealed the presence of 25 to 33 structural (virion) polypeptides. A total of 11 of these polypeptides could be labeled with [3H]glucosamine and were identified as glycoproteins. In addition to the 25 structural polypeptides, infectious bovine rhinotracheitis virus infected cells also contained at least 15 nonstructural (nonvirion) polypeptides that were not present in purified virions. Expression of the viral polypeptides in infected cells was controlled temporally. Thus, most viral polypeptides could be categorized as "alpha" (immediate early), "beta" (early), or "gamma" (late) on the basis of their order of appearance in infected cells and whether their syntheses were dependent upon prior viral protein or DNA synthesis. None of the glycoproteins belongs to the alpha class, although at least one (GVP11) was synthesized in the absence of viral DNA synthesis. Serum from a cow in which infectious bovine rhinotracheitis virus lesions were reactivated by dexamethasone precipitated both structural and nonstructural polypeptides.
A new Secondary metabolites of the crinoid (Comanthina schlegeli) associated fungus Alternaria brassicae 93

Abstract Fungus Alternaria brassicae 93 isolated from crinoid (Comanthina schlegeli), which was collected from the South China Sea. Six compounds were isolated from A. brassicae 93, including one new compound (1), along with five known compounds, ochratoxin A methyl ester (2), cis-4-hydroxym-ellein (3), (R)-7-hydroxymellein (4), trans-2-anhydromevalonic (5) and protocatechuic acid (6). Their structures were determined by spectroscopic methods and comparison with reported data. Cytotoxicity against two human cancer cell lines and antibacterial activity against twelve aquatic bacteria of compound 1 were also tested. The fungus Alternaria brassicae 93 separated from crinoid (Comanthina schlegeli) produced one new compound (1).
Filtering of Noise in Electrocardiographic Signals Using An Unbiased and Normalized Adaptive Artifact Cancellation System

The electrocardiogram (ECG) is routinely used for the diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases. The removal of artifacts in ambulatory ECG recordings is essential in many biomedical applications. In this paper, we present the design of an unbiased linear filter with normalized weight coefficients in an adaptive artifact cancellation (UNAAC) system. We also develop a new weight coefficient adaptation algorithm that normalizes the filter coefficients, and utilize the steepest-descent algorithm to effectively cancel the artifacts present in ECG signals. The proposed UNAAC system was tested through experiments on the benchmark MIT-BIH database. Empirical results demonstrate that the UNAAC system can effectively eliminate two types of predominant artifacts: baseline wander and muscle-contraction artifact. Furthermore, the proposed UNAAC system achieved significantly higher signal-to-noise and signal-to-error ratios in the enhanced ECG signals, as compared with the normalized least-mean-square (NLMS) filter.
Chest Tube–Related Empyema Due to Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus: Could the Chest Tube Be Coated With Antiseptics?

We reviewed the epidemiology, clinical manifestations, and outcomes of 3 cases of chest tube–related empyema due to methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Antiseptic-impregnated chest tubes were inserted in cultures containing MRSA isolates from these 3 patients, and zone of inhibition were measured. Chest tube–related MRSA empyema might complicate tube thoracostomy, and coating the chest tube with antiseptic agents could prevent this complication.
Immunohistochemical Study of Matrix Metalloproteinase 9 and Tissue Inhibitor of Matrix Metalloproteinase 1 in Benign and Malignant Breast Tissue – Strong Expression in Intraductal Carcinomas of the Breast

Objective: Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) are involved in carcinogenesis due to their tissue remodeling capability, and there is convincing evidence linking gelatinase B (MMP-9) with malignant cell invasion. Tissue inhibitor 1 of MMP (TIMP-1) is a strong inhibitor of MMP-9 but has also tumor-enhancing effects. Only few data exist on MMP-9 or TIMP-1 expression in tissue samples of different breast histology. Methods: MMP-9 and TIMP-1 immunoreactivity was examined in a wide range of breast tissue samples differing in histology from usual ductal hyperplasia (UDH) to fully developed ductal breast carcinoma. Immunohistochemical expression of MMP-9 was studied in 178 samples: 31 UDH samples, 29 atypical ductal hyperplasia (ADH) samples, 28 ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) samples and 90 ductal invasive carcinoma samples (30 samples of malignancy grades I, II and III, respectively). TIMP-1 expression was also analyzed in 178 breast tissue samples: 41 UDH, 21 ADH and 34 DCIS lesions, and 82 invasive ductal breast carcinomas (25 in grade I, 30 in grade II and 27 in grade III). Results: A significantly distinctive pattern of MMP-9 protein expression was shown in DCIS samples, where 85.7% of the cases showed moderate or strong positivity and negative staining was rare (p = 0.021). Negative or weakly positive MMP-9 staining was the most prominent finding in UDH (71%), ADH (69%) as well as in invasive carcinoma samples (64.4%). Various degrees of TIMP-1 expression were seen in 86.5% of all cases. DCIS and invasive carcinoma samples revealed similar immunostaining: at least some positivity was seen in 91.1% of the DCIS samples and 91.5% of infiltrative carcinomas. Thus, TIMP-1 negativity (22.2%) was significantly associated with hyperplastic lesions (p = 0.026). Conclusions: These results suggest that MMP-9 and TIMP-1 overexpression are early markers of breast carcinogenesis preceding tumor invasion. Apparently, DCIS carries the risk to evolve into a malignant phenotype according to these markers. The clinical importance of these findings is discussed.
The Home Treatment as a Supporting Method of Bobath for Treatment of Children with Cerebral Palsy in Kuwait

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Photocatalytic hydrogen generation using a nanocomposite of multi-walled carbon nanotubes and TiO2 nanoparticles under visible light irradiation

Nanocomposite catalysts (MWNT–TiO2) were prepared hydrothermally from multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) and titanium sulfate as the titanium source, and then systematically analyzed using electron microscopy, Raman, FT-IR, and UV–vis spectroscopy. Pt-loaded nanocomposites, pristine TiO2 and MWNTs were examined for their photocatalytic activity on splitting water with triethanolamine as an electron donor. Under visible light irradiation (λ>420 nm), hydrogen was successfully produced over the Pt/MWNT–TiO2, while no capacity to split water showed on the Pt-loaded pristine TiO2 and MWNTs. Under full spectral irradiation of a Xe-lamp, a hydrogen generation rate of up to 8 mmol g−1 h−1 or more was achieved. The significant photocatalytic activity of the nanocomposites was attributed to the synergetic effect of the intrinsic properties of its components such as an excellent light absorption and charge separation on the interfaces between the modified MWNTs and TiO2, resulting from direct growth of TiO2 nanoparticles on the surface of the MWNTs during the hydrothermal process.
Zombies , Brains , and Tweets : The Neural and Emotional Correlates of Social Media

What constitutes audience engagement? What elements of a show produce the most social activity? Much attention has been paid to Twitter’s ability to capture real-time audience reactions and sentiment towards a television show, but little is known about what subjects drive an individual to tweet (or conversely, not to tweet). Though common sense may suggest that especially provocative, humorous, or emotional moments generate the most activity on social media, are these moments also the most neurologically stimulating? By combining social media data, content analysis, and brain scans, this study attempts to answer these questions using AMC’s hit show, The Walking Dead, as a case study.
Alcácer do Sal durante o periodo muçulmano (IX-XIII)

O objectivo deste trabalho e fazer uma analise da fortificacao da cidade de al-Qasr, tracando a sua evolucao, entre os seculos IX e XIII e, ao mesmo tempo, fazer uma aproximacao ao conhecimento do espaco urbano. A cronologia escolhida tem a ver com o facto de ter sido durante o seculo IX que se instalou em Alcacer a familia berbere dos Banu Danis, dando-se um impulso ao crescimento urbanistico, e, posteriormente, no seculo XIII, a cidade foi reconquistada definitivamente pelos cristaos.
Identification of electronic traps in AlGaN/GaN HEMTs using UV light-assisted trapping analysis

UV light-assisted trapping analysis in conjunction with electroluminescence studies was employed to identify the location of traps generated in AlGaN/GaN HEMTs submitted to on-state stress. Our results indicate that UV light-assisted trapping is closely related to traps in the access region close to the gate edges. An increase in the dominant electronic trap density spatially located within the AlGaN layer underneath the gate and in the access region close to the drain side of the gate edge was found to be the most pronounced degradation mechanism for the stress conditions investigated. This trap level was found to be located 0.5 eV below the AlGaN conduction band.