Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
OBSERVED LUMINOSITY SPREAD IN YOUNG CLUSTERS AND FU Ori STARS: A UNIFIED PICTURE

The idea that non-steady accretion during the embedded phase of protostar evolution can produce the observed luminosity spread in the Herzsprung–Russell diagram (HRD) of young clusters has recently been called into question. Observations of FU Ori, for instance, suggest an expansion of the star during strong accretion events, whereas the luminosity spread implies a contraction of the accreting objects, decreasing their radiating surface. In this paper, we present a global scenario based on calculations coupling episodic accretion histories derived from numerical simulations of collapsing cloud prestellar cores of various masses and subsequent protostar evolution. Our calculations show that, assuming an initial protostar mass Mi ∼ 1 MJup, typical of the second Larson's core, both the luminosity spread in the HRD and the inferred properties of FU Ori events (mass, radius, accretion rate) can be explained by this scenario, providing two conditions. First, there must be some variation within the fraction of accretion energy absorbed by the protostar during the accretion process. Second, the range of this variation should increase with increasing accretion burst intensity and thus with the initial core mass and final star mass. The numerical hydrodynamics simulations of collapsing cloud prestellar cores indeed show that the intensity of the accretion bursts correlates with the mass and initial angular momentum of the prestellar core. Massive prestellar cores with high initial angular momentum are found to produce intense bursts characteristic of FU Ori-like events. Our results thus suggest a link between the burst intensities and the fraction of accretion energy absorbed by the protostar, with some threshold in the accretion rate, of the order of 10−5 M☉ yr−1, delimitating the transition from “cold” to “hot” accretion. Such a transition might reflect a change in the accretion geometry with increasing accretion rate, i.e., a transition from magnetospheric or thin-disk to thick-disk accretion, or in the magnetospheric interaction between the star and the disk. Conversely, the luminosity spread can also be explained by a variation of the initial protostar mass within the ∼1–5 MJup range, although it is unclear for now whether such a spread among the second Larson's core can be produced during the prestellar core second collapse. This unified picture confirms the idea that early accretion during protostar and proto-brown dwarf formation/evolution can explain the observed luminosity spread in young clusters without invoking any significant age spread, and that the concept of a well-defined birthline does not apply for low-mass objects. Finally, we examine the impact of accretion on the determination of the initial mass function in young clusters.
Etude de guides d'onde dopes terres rares en optique integree sur verre en vue de realiser un amplificateur optique

Le developpement des telecommunications optiques a entraine un besoin grandissant en composants actifs. La realisation de composants integres utilisant des verres dopes avec des terres rares est une solution interessante pour repondre a ce besoin. L'utilisation de verres fluores sous la forme de fibres optiques a permis de realiser des amplificateurs optiques de tres bonne qualite, l'emploi de tels verres en optique integree planaire semble donc tres prometteur. Dans ce rapport, nous presentons l'etude que nous avons menee pour realiser des guides d'ondes par echange d'ions dans des substrat de verres fluores big et zbla. Pour mener a bien notre travail, nous avons mis au point une procedure technologique propre aux verres fluores puis nous avons caracterise les guides ainsi obtenus. L'utilisation d'un echange anionique od/f a permis d'obtenir les premier guides d'onde monomode en optique integree planaire sur verre fluore. Cependant, une optimisation des parametres technologiques de realisation des guides est encore necessaire pour diminuer les pertes par propagation qui sont encore de l'ordre de 3db/cm. La mesure des proprietes spectroscopiques des ions nd#3#+ incorpores dans le verre a permis de demontrer l'influence nefaste des ions od sur la duree de vie du niveau metastable des ions actifs presents dans le guide. Une solution a ete proposee grace a l'utilisation d'ions ci pour remplacer les ions od. D'apres les premiers resultats obtenus, le comportement des ions actifs est meilleur avec ce type d'echange mais les pertes par propagation sont encore trop elevee pour permettre de reaslier un amplificateur optique. Finalement, pour permettre de realiser des amplificateurs optiques performants alliant de faibles pertes a de bonnes performances des ions de terres rares, nous avons propose et demontre une structure hybride active-passive. Cette structure, composee d'un guide passif realise par echange d'ions et d'une couche active guidante, devrait permettre a terme de concilier les avantages des technologies de type couches minces avec ceux des technologies de type echanges d'ions.
Teaching clinical reasoning to physiotherapists in Saudi Arabia: a theoretical report

Background: Clinical reasoning (CR) is an essential skill that should be taught to all healthcare professionals. In physiotherapy, it is a cognitive process whereby physiotherapists collect and assess patient data to make a diagnosis and develop an effective treatment plan. Several teaching and learning theories have been developed and used in healthcare education. The purpose of teaching is to facilitate the learning process and the successful development of practitioners in the community. Learning is defined as a knowledge process that is developed through experience which is used to manage daily life situations. The aim of this report is to explore teaching and learning theories and strategies to teach clinical reasoning to physiotherapy students in Saudi Arabia. Discussion: Although it is challenging to completely change the teaching methods in Saudi universities due to the education system rules already in place, some modules in physiotherapy are different, as they are practical and based mainly in a clinical hospital setting. As such, certain teaching and learning theories could be employed to facilitate student teaching. Indeed, a mixed method based on several theories taking into consideration the context, culture, students’ learning styles and the type of knowledge would be most appropriate. Conclusion: There is a debate about the best theory for teaching physiotherapy students. In the context of clinical reasoning, a behaviorism approach is not suitable, in contrast, constructivism is more appropriate, and thus, Saudi physiotherapy educators should consider constructivism strategies for teaching clinical reasoning.
Bloggerati, Twitterati

As timely as the latest tweet, this book tracks the digital revolution as a paradigm shift that is transforming popular culture in as yet unforeseen ways. Bloggerati, Twitterati: How Blogs and Twitter Are Transforming Popular Culture explores the ongoing digital revolution and examines the way it is changing—and will change—the way people live and communicate. Starting from the proposition that the Internet is now the center of popular culture, the book offers descriptions of blogs and Twitter and the online behavior they foster. It looks at the demographics of users and the impact of the Internet on knowledge, thinking, writing, politics, and journalism. A primary focus is on the way blogs and tweets are opening up communication to the people, free from gatekeepers and sanctioned rhetoric. The other side of the coin is the online hijacking of the news and its potential for spreading misinformation and fomenting polarization, topics that are analyzed even as the situation continues to evolve. Finally, the book gathers predictions from cultural critics about the future of digital popular culture and makes a few predictions of its own.
THE UIP HYPOTHESIS FOR ARGENTINA, BRAZIL, CHILE AND MEXICO WITH THE USE OF THE RATIONAL EXPECTATION HYPOTHESIS: NEW EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

The aim of this study is to test uncovered interest parities for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico, for the Jan/1990 to Dec/2001 period, with the use of the rational expectation hypothesis. We also intend to evaluate the degree of mobility of foreign capital in these political jurisdictions, using panel data estimations, with unit root tests proposed by Levin and Lin (1992), and Im, Pesaran, and Shin (1997). The econometric results indicate the rejection of UIR for the period under study, for the group comprised of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. However, the UIP hypothesis is not rejected for the group comprised of Argentina, Chile, and Mexico for the Jan/1991 to Dec/2000 period.
Skull variation of the vampire bat Desmodus rotundus (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae): Taxonomic implications for the Cuban fossil vampire bat Desmodus puntajudensis

The Cuban fossil vampire bats of the Neotropical genus Desmodus have been recently raised to specific rank. However, the dichotomous taxonomic history of the Cuban Desmodus fossils, plus the discovery of additional and more complete specimens prompted a reanalysis of the previous taxonomic arrangements. Here I document the range of skull variation in Desmodus rotundus geographical populations through a study of qualitative and quantitative osteological analysis to find the taxonomic affinity of the Cuban fossil Desmodus. It was found that the shape and size of D. rotundus skulls are widely variant, especially in the shape of the rostrum, palatal construction, zygomatic morphology, and occipital orientation; characters that have been often employed to separate the Cuban fossils from the extant form. This study demonstrates that the discrete morphology and measurements used to separate the Cuban fossils from the extant D. rotundus do not support the new taxonomic arrangement. The Cuban sample falls instead within the variation range observed in D. rotundus, implying that the fossil Desmodus sample from Cuba belong to the extant D. rotundus. Additionally, sexual dimorphism and minor geographical variation in the size of D. rotundus skulls was statistically supported. These results imply a probable revision of at least one of the fossil species (i.e., D. archaeodaptes), and supports the importance of quantitative and qualitative studies in fossil bat systematic taxonomy.
Two numerical methods for nonlinear constrained quadratic optimal control problems using linear B-spline functions

This paper presents two numerical methods for solving the nonlinear constrained optimal control problems including quadratic performance index. The methods are based upon linear B-spline functions. The properties of B-spline functions are presented. Two operational matrices of integration are introduced for related procedures. These matrices are then utilized to reduce the solution of the nonlinear constrained optimal control to a nonlinear programming one to which existing well-developed algorithms may be applied. Illustrative examples are included to demonstrate the validity and applicability of the presented techniques.
BeFo 382 - Detailed Comparison Study of 3D-characterized Rock Mass and Geophysical Models

This paper presents a study where resistivity and integral chargeability three-dimensional (3D) models, representing a volume in the vicinity of a rock quarry is compared to a quasi-3D characterization of rock mass volume. By repeating geological mapping, i.e. with unmanned aerial vehicles, ground based high resolution photography and sampling, as the quarry operation reaches further into the rock volume mapped with geophysics, we retrieve a semi-continuous geological characterization of the same rock mass volume characterized by the geophysical investigations. This enables a detailed comparison between geophysical results and rock volume, where factors such as fracture and weathering zones or rock type is being considered.
DUSP26 (dual specificity phosphatase 26)

The DUSP26 gene encodes for an atypical dual specificity phosphatase commonly referred to as Dusp26 or MPK8. Although its physiological role is poorly understood, different substrates have been reported to be dephosphorylated by Dusp26, including p53, Kif3, Erk and p38. In this report we summarize the current knowledge on DUSP26 gene, its transcripts, the encoded protein and its function in normal and tumorous tissues. Notably, the phosphatase is overexpressed in neuroblastoma and ATC cells, where it promotes chemoresistance by inhibiting the p53 and the p38 proteins, respectively. Dusp26 represents a promising novel therapeutic target to be integrated with others and with conventional medicine, to improve survival outcome in patients and to reduce toxicity.
Effect of evaluation on SMMEs’ new technology decision-making processes

The complex nature of difficulties and constraints encountered by small businesses in their operations identified Information Technology (IT) as a tool with the potential ability to enhance small, micro and medium enterprises (SMMEs) productivity, efficiency and growth. Despite the increased spend on IT, many SMMEs still do not understand the importance of IT investment evaluation in decision-making processes to realise potential and expected benefits. This study aimed at exploring the impact of evaluation and non-evaluation on the decisionmaking process of SMMEs when adopting new technology. A further aim of the study was to contribute to decision-making of SMMEs by proposing a set of guidelines for IT adoption. A multiple case study was employed as the research strategy. SMMEs were selected using nonprobability sampling techniques and purposive method. The unit of analysis consisted of 15 managers and/or owners of the selected SMMEs. Data were collected in the form of semistructured interviews and analysed using thematic analysis whilst employing hermeneutics to derive deeper and richer meanings. SMMEs risk failing because of the impulsive and excessive buying of technology when disregarding evaluation of the technology for the business process. SMMEs often base their decision to adopt new technology on speculative and empirical knowledge from their personal judgement, communication preferences and individual experiences. The lack of proper understanding of the implications of adopting new technology for the business in entirety may lead to the adoption of inappropriate technology or the nonadoption of a potential new technology. The study therefore recommends a set of guidelines to assist SMMEs in the process of new technology decision-making.
A Graph Based Methodology for Temporal Signature Identification from EHR

Data driven technology is believed to be a promising technique for transforming the current status of healthcare. Electronic Health Records (EHR) is one of the main carriers for conducting the data driven healthcare research, where the goal is to derive insights from healthcare data and utilize such insights to improve the quality of care delivery. Due to the progression nature of human disease, one important aspect for analyzing healthcare data is temporality, which suggests the temporal relationships among different healthcare events and how their values evolve over time. Sequential pattern mining is a popular tool to extract time-invariant patterns from discrete sequences and has been applied in analyzing EHR before. However, due to the complexity of EHR, those approaches usually suffers from the pattern explosion problem, which means that a huge number of patterns will be detected with improper setting of the support threshold. To address this challenge, in this paper, we develop a novel representation, namely the temporal graph, for event sequences like EHR, wherein the nodes are medical events and the edges indicate the temporal relationships among those events in patient EHRs. Based on the temporal graph representation, we further develop an approach for temporal signature identification to identify the most significant and interpretable graph bases as temporal signatures, and the expressing coefficients can be treated as the embeddings of the patients in such temporal signature space. Our temporal signature identification framework is also flexible to incorporate semi-supervised/supervised information. We validate our framework on two real-world tasks. One is predicting the onset risk of heart failure. The other is predicting the risk of heart failure related hospitalization for patients with COPD pre-condition. Our results show that the prediction performance in both tasks can be improved by the proposed approaches.
Is liver fibrosis reversible?

Liver fibrosis and cirrhosis result from the majority of chronic liver insults and represent a common and difficult clinical challenge of worldwide importance. At present, the only curative treatment for end stage cirrhosis is transplantation, but even in the developed world, the number of donor organs available and the clinical condition of the potential recipient limit the applicability of this technique. The alternative clinical course is one familiar to gastroenterologists—that of a progressive damage limitation exercise in which the complications of fibrosis and cirrhosis are treated with greater or lesser success. The development of fibrosis, and particularly cirrhosis, is associated with a significant morbidity and mortality. Thus, there is a considerable imperative to develop antifibrotic strategies that are applicable to liver fibrosis. Such an approach is attractive precisely because it is aimed at the final common pathological pathway of chronic liver disease, regardless of aetiology. However, because fibrotic liver disease may not present clinically until an advanced or cirrhotic stage, the possibility of reversing the fibrosis is an essential issue for developing therapeutic approaches. Liver fibrosis represents the wound healing response of the liver, as such it demonstrates generic aspects that characterise tissue healing elsewhere in the body — a wound healing response that is dynamic and has the potential to resolve without persistent scarring. This may seem at odds with the clinical impression that advanced fibrosis and cirrhosis are at best irreversible and at worst progressive. However, recent developments in our understanding of the process of hepatic fibrogenesis confirm that the process is dynamic with respect to both cell and extracellular matrix (ECM) turnover and suggest that a capacity for recovery from advanced cirrhosis and fibrosis is possible. Moreover, with the advent of effective antiviral therapies, biopsy documented examples of improvements in fibrosis and in some examples resolution, including …
Infective endocarditis in adults.

The clinical features of this complex infection have changed in the past several decades. It is now an infection of older people, and mitral-valve prolapse is the most common predisposing cardiovascular problem in developed countries. In contrast, rheumatic heart disease is an important predisposing problem in developing countries. This review article provides a comprehensive assessment of this serious infectious disease, including diagnostic challenges, cardiovascular and neurologic complications, and approaches to therapy.
Simplification polyédrique optimale pour le rendu

En informatique, les images sont numeriques et donc composees de pixels en 2D et de voxels en 3D. Dans une scene virtuelle 3D, il est impossible de manipuler directement les objets comme des ensembles de voxels en raison du trop gros volume de donnees. Les objets sont alors polyedrises, c’est-a-dire remplaces par une collection de facettes. Pour ce faire, il est primordial de savoir decider si un sous-ensemble de voxels peut etre transforme en une facette dans la representation polyedrique. Ce probleme est appele reconnaissance de plans discrets. Pour le resoudre, nous mettons en place un nouvel algorithme specialement adapte pour les ensembles de voxels denses dans une boite englobante. Notre methode atteint une complexite quasi-lineaire dans ce cas et s’avere efficace en pratique. En parallele, nous nous interessons a un probleme algorithmique annexe intervenant dans notre methode de reconnaissance de plans discrets. Il s’agit de calculer les deux enveloppes convexes des points de Z2 contenus dans un domaine vertical borne et situes de part et d’autre d’une droite quelconque. Nous proposons une methode de complexite optimale et adaptative pour calculer ces enveloppes convexes. Nous presentons le probleme de maniere detournee : determiner le nombre rationnel a denominateur borne qui approxime au mieux un nombre reel donne. Nous etablissons le lien entre ce probleme numerique et son interpretation geometrique dans le plan. Enfin, nous proposons independamment un nouvel algorithme pour calculer l’epaisseur d’un ensemble de points dans le reseau Zd. Notre methode est optimale en 2D et gloutonne mais efficace en dimension superieure
Estudio de expresión de la familia génica sirtuínas en células de la granulosa humana, y su relación con la calidad oocitaria en técnicas de fecundación in vitro

Nowdays, women tend to delay maternity until the fourth decade of their lives. This delay in the average of reproduction time implies a search for molecular markers in order to predict the physiological state of the oocyte. The croos-talk between the oocyte and the granulosa cells during follicular development allows us to use the granulosa cells to indirectly analyse the state of the oocyte. The NAD+ dependent deacetylases belonging to the Sirtuin gene family have an important role in maintaining metabolic homeostasis, cellular proliferation and protecting cells against oxidative damage. The ojective of this study is to analyse the expression of SirT1, SirT6 and SirT7 in granulosa cells in normal conditions and in the presence of FSH and glucose. qRT-PCR was used to analyze the normal expression pattern and the upregulation of SirT1 in response to glucose and FSH. As a tool for future functional studies the fusion protein expression vector pEFGPc1/SirT6 was constructed, its performance was successful. These results indicate that sirtuin genes participate in the regulation of energy metabolism and the cellular response to FSH.
The culture of flowers

List of illustrations Preface Acknowledgements 1. Flowers in Africa 2. In the beginning: gardens and paradise, garlands and sacrifice 3. The decline of flower culture in Europe 4. Flowers without representation in Islam 5. The return of the rose in medieval Western Europe 6. Icons and iconoclasm in the Renaissance 7. The growth of the market 8. The secret Language of Flowers in France: specialist knowledge or fictive ethnography 9. The Americanisation of the foreign mind 10. The popular culture of flowers in Europe 11. Garlands in India: the marigold and the jasmine 12. The 'four gentlemen of flowers' in China 13. 'Let a hundred flowers bloom': the New Year in South China 14. A distant reading References Index.