Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
BIOME-BGC simulations of stand hydrologic processes for BOREAS

BIOME-BGC is a general ecosystem model designed to simulate hydrologic and biogeochemical processes across multiple scales. The objectives of this investigation were to compare BIOME-BGC estimates of hydrologic processes with observed data for different boreal forest stands and investigate factors that control simulated water fluxes. Model Iesults explained 62 and 98% of the respective variances in observed daily evapotranspiration and soil water; simulations of the onset of spring thaw and . the dates of snowpack disappearance and accumulation also generally tracked observations. Differences between o6served and simulated evapotranspiration were attributed to model assumptions of constant, growing season, overstory leaf areas that did not account for phenological changes and understory effects on stand daily water fluxes. Vapor pressure deficit and solar radiation accounted for 58-74% of the variances in simulated daily evapotranspiration during the growing season, though low air temperature and photosynthetic light levels were found to be the inajor limiting factors regulating simulated canopy conductances to water vapor. Humidity and soil moisture were generally not low enough to induce physiological wat~r stress in black spruce stands, though low soil water potentials resulted in approXimate 34% reductions in simulated me~n daily canopy conductances for aspen and jack pine stands. The sensitivity of evapotranspiration simulations to leaf area (LAI) was less than expected because of opposing responses of transpiration and evaporation to LAI. The resuJts of this investigation identify several components within boreal forest stands that are sensitive to climate change.
Gyromagnetic switching limitations in thin film media

Micromagnetic modeling is utilized to study the gyromagnetic switching limitations in thin film media. The dependence of switching time on film microstructures under uniform applied field is quantitatively investigated. For media with the same M/sub r/t, reducing the film thickness and increasing intergranular exchange coupling reduces the switching time at damping constants /spl alpha/ less than 0.1. The effect is more significant for smaller /spl alpha/ values. Oriented media have a longer switching time than isotropic media.
Peptidoglycan structure in cell walls of parental and filamentous Streptococcus cremoris HP.

Cell walls were prepared from parental and filamentous cells of Streptococcus cremoris HP. In addition to aspartic acid, glutamic acid, alanine, and lysine in a 1:2:3:1 ratio, such preparations contained hot formamide-extractable material composed of glucosamine, glucosa-mine-6-phosphate, glucose, galactose, and rhamnose. Parental and filamentous cell walls contained, respectively, 210 and 225 disaccharide units per milligram. The ratio of muramic acid: peptide subunits was about 1.3 for both preparations.Enzymic and chemical analyses revealed that glycan strands are incompletely substituted, peptide cross-bridging is not mediated by D-alanyl-L-alanyl linkages, peptide subunits are linked together to form large moieties, and no significant differences in peptidoglycan structure exist between parental and filamentous cell walls.Analysis by dinitrophenylation techniques disclosed the presence of significant quantities of glucosamine and muramic acid residues with free amino groups in the peptidoglycans of b.
A Novel Approach for PAM Clustering Method

and in recent times proposed clustering algorithms are studied and it is known that the k-means clustering method is mostly used for clustering of data due to its reduction of time complexity. But the foremost drawback of k-means algorithm is that it suffers from sensitivity of outliers which may deform the distribution of data owing to the significant values. The drawback of the k-means algorithm is resolved by k-medoids method where the novel approach uses user defined value for k. As a result, if the number of clusters is not chosen suitably, the accuracy will be minimized. Even, K-medoids algorithm does not scale well for huge data set. In order to overcome the above stated limitations, a new grid based clustering method is proposed, where time complexity of proposed algorithm is depending on the number of cells. Simulation results show that, the proposed approach has less time complexity and provides natural clustering method which scales well for large dataset. KeywordsGrid, ADULT Dataset, Partitioning, Time complexity,
Big Data Analytics: A Cognitive Perspectives

Big data are pervasively generated by human cognitive processes, formal inferences, and system quantifications. This paper presents the cognitive foundations of big data systems towards big data science. The key perceptual model of big data systems is the recursively typed hyperstructure RTHS. The RTHS model reveals the inherited complexities and unprecedented difficulty in big data engineering. This finding leads to a set of mathematical and computational models for efficiently processing big data systems. The cognitive relationship between data, information, knowledge, and intelligence is formally described.
Inhibition of Rac GTPases in the Therapy of Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia

Abstract : Chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) is a clonal myeloproliferative disease (MPD) characterized by the expression of the p210-BCR/ABL fusion gene [1]. This gene is produced by the reciprocal translocation (9; 22) (q34; q11) that juxtaposes the 3end of Abelson leukemia virus (ABL) gene with the 5' end of the breakpoint cluster region (Bcr) gene on chromosome 22. The transcript formed as a result encodes for the BCR/ABL fusion protein with constitutively active tyrosine kinase activity [2-6]. Studies with inducible BCR/ABL transgenic mice showed that expression of BCR/ABL in hematopoietic stem cells and progenitors (HSC/P) is required and is sufficient to induce MPD [7]. If untreated, chronic phase (CP) CML patients progress to a poor-prognosis myeloid or lymphoid blastic phase (BP). The only curative treatment for CML is allogeneic HSC transplantation. The long-term survival rate for this procedure is approximately 65%, however, the procedure is only available to a minority of CML patients due to a lack of compatible donors and age [8-10]. Imatinib is an ABL kinase inhibitor that shows significant activity in CP CML and Ph-positive acute leukemias [11]. By selective induction of apoptosis of BCR/ABL-positive cells [12-14], it provides an effective treatment in CML and has rejuvenated the field of rationalized drug design. The selective inhibitory activity of imatinib toward BCR/ABL has been associated with three problems: the emergence of BCR/ABL mutants in the kinase domain that confer resistance to imatinib; the evidence that CML stem cells are the least vulnerable to ABL-targeted therapy and may serve as reservoirs for occult CML progression; and the relatively low impact of imatinib therapy on the outcome of BP CML patients [15-18]. Resistance to imatinib has an incidence of 4% annually [19].
Characterization of a distinct syndrome that associates complex truncal overgrowth, vascular, and acral anomalies: a descriptive study of 18 cases of CLOVES syndrome

Overgrowth syndromes with complex vascular anomalies pose a challenge for diagnosis and management. The purpose of this descriptive study is to present a cohort of patients with congenital lipomatous overgrowth, vascular malformations, and epidermal nevi syndrome, a distinct clinical phenotype characterized by a complex truncal-lipomatous mass, vascular, acral, and other anomalies. This cohort was ascertained following review of patient data entered into the Vascular Anomalies Center database of the Children's Hospital, Boston over a period of 7 years. Clinical data, imaging findings, and the photographic archive were reviewed. The search identified 18 unrelated patients with a distinct phenotype. Variable portions of the truncal masses observed in these patients were composed of a lymphatic malformation. Capillary malformations and high-flow lesions were commonly encountered. The lipomatous mass infiltrated the adjacent anatomic spaces and was associated with capillary, lymphatic, venous, and arteriovenous vascular malformations. Paraspinal–intraspinal extension was associated with morbid sequelae. Acral deformities included large, wide feet and hands, macrodactyly, and a wide sandal gap. Scoliosis and other musculoskeletal, neurologic, renal, and cutaneous malformations were also encountered. The uniform and highly characteristic features of the truncal lipomatous mass, in combination with vascular, acral, and other anomalies, provide evidence of a distinct nosologic and clinical entity. Morbid sequelae of the truncal involvement in this condition can be deforming and disabling; hence, prompt diagnosis and multidisciplinary care are necessary.
Effects of Tyroserleutide on phosphatidylinositol 3′-kinase/AKT pathway in human hepatocellular carcinoma cell

Abstract Tyroserleutide (YSL) is an active, low-molecular-weight polypeptide with in vitro and in vivo anticancer effects on human hepatocellular carcinoma BEL-7402 cells. In this study, we studied the effects of YSL on PI3K/AKT in the BEL-7402 cells to explore its anti-tumor mechanism. Results showed that YSL could up-regulate the mRNA and protein expression of tumor suppressor PTEN and increase their activities, meanwhile inhibited the mRNA and protein expression of oncogene AKT and decreased the kinase activities of AKT and PDK1. The resuming balance effect of YSL between PTEN and AKT could prevent the transmission of tumor cell proliferation signals in the PI3K/AKT pathway. Inhibition of AKT would change the status of downstream effectors in the PI3K/AKT pathway: (1) inhibition of AKT up-regulated expression of cell cycle regulatory factors of downstream – P21 and P27 which repressed cell cycle and inhibited proliferation of tumor cells. (2) Inhibition of AKT decreased the phosphorylation level of MDM2, and then increased the protein level of P53 which would accelerate death proceeding of tumor cells. (3) Inactivation of AKT removed its inhibition effect on phosphorylation of Bad, which might decrease protein level of apoptosis inhibitor Bcl-2 and Bcl-XL, damaging mitochondria of tumor cells and inducing apoptosis.
Liver Transplant Surgery and Transfusion

Uncontrollable bleeding with massive blood transfusion has been a difficult management issue since the early era of orthopic liver transplantation (OLT). In addition to the inherent dangers of acute hemorrhage, massive uncontrollable bleeding worsens the complex circulatory and metabolic problems associated with OLT. It is well-known that massive blood transfusion is associated with lower graft and patient survival rates. Blood usage has been greatly reduced in transplant centers as surgical teams gained experience, and the procedure can occasionally be performed without intraoperative blood transfusion. However, a liver transplantation program still requires a significant amount of blood components and is very demanding on the local blood bank. Despite significant efforts being made to ensure the quality, safety, and efficacy of blood usage, persistent residual risks exist. In addition, the unnecessary and inappropriate use of blood products increases health care costs and contributes to blood shortages. This review will focus on factors that influence blood requirements and on transfusion practices in OLT. Of particular concern is the substantial number of hemostatic blood components transfused to correct the profound coagulation deficiencies related to insufficient hepatic function.
Die unzähmbare Gürbe - Überschwemmungen und Hochwasserschutz seit dem 19. Jahrhundert

Seit Menschen an Fliessgewassern siedeln, bemuhen sie sich, ihr Hab und Gut vor den verheerenden Folgen von Uberschwemmungen zu schutzen. Die Methoden des Hochwasserschutzes haben sich im Laufe der Zeit aber stark gewandelt. Wahrend jahrhundertelang nur lokale, kleinraumige Massnahmen vorgenommen wurden, kamen im 19. Jahrhundert die grossen Gewasserkorrektionen auf. In der Hoffnung, die Uberschwemmungen ganzlich zu verhindern, wurden die Flusse und Bache der Schweiz kanalisiert und verbaut. Gegen Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts setzte ein erneuter Wandel ein und es wurde versucht, den Gewassern wieder mehr Raum zu geben. Diese Entwicklungen lassen sich an der Gurbe, einem rund dreissig Kilometer langen Fluss sudlich von Bern, exemplarisch aufzeigen. Aufgrund der stets wiederkehrenden Uberschwemmungen wurden hier seit der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts fortlaufend grosse Praventionsprojekte umgesetzt. Melanie Salvisberg untersucht die im Zeitraum von 1855 bis 2010 vorgenommenen Schutzmassnahmen und berucksichtigt dabei sowohl die Wildbachverbauung im Oberlauf als auch den Gurbekanal in der Talebene. Thematisiert werden nicht nur Art und Umfang der Praventionsprojekte, sondern auch deren Finanzierung und Konflikte. Als besonders interessant erweisen sich die Auswirkungen der Hochwasserschutzmassnahmen auf die Landschafts-, Wirtschafts-, Verkehrs- und Siedlungsentwicklung im Gurbetal.
Electrochemical pretreatment of waste activated sludge: effect of process conditions on sludge disintegration degree and methane production

ABSTRACT Waste activated sludge (WAS) requires a long digestion time because of a rate-limiting hydrolysis step – the first phase of anaerobic digestion (AD). Pretreatment can be used prior to AD to facilitate the hydrolysis step and improve the efficiency of WAS digestion. This study evaluated a novel application of electrochemical (EC) technology employed as the pretreatment method prior to AD of WAS, focusing on the effect of process conditions on sludge disintegration and subsequent AD process. A superior process condition of EC pretreatment was obtained by reaction time of 30 min, electrolysis voltage of 20 V, and electrode distance of 5 cm, under which the disintegration degree of WAS ranged between 9.02% and 9.72%. In the subsequent batch AD tests, 206 mL/g volatile solid (VS) methane production in EC pretreated sludge was obtained, which was 20.47% higher than that of unpretreated sludge. The AD time was 19 days shorter for EC pretreated sludge compared to the unpretreated sludge. Additionally, the EC + AD reactor achieved 41.84% of VS removal at the end of AD. The analysis of energy consumption showed that EC pretreatment could be effective in enhancing sludge AD with reduced energy consumption when compared to other pretreatment methods.
How is affective instability defined and measured? A systematic review

Background Affective instability (AI) is poorly defined but considered clinically important. The aim of this study was to examine definitions and measures of AI employed in clinical populations. Method This study was a systematic review using the PRISMA guidelines. MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, PsycArticles and Web of Science databases were searched. Also five journals were hand searched. Primary empirical studies involving randomized controlled trials (RCTs), non-RCTs, controlled before and after, and observational investigations were included. Studies were selected, data extracted and quality appraised. A narrative synthesis was completed. Results A total of 11 443 abstracts were screened and 37 studies selected for final analysis on the basis that they provided a definition and measure of AI. Numbers of definitions for each of the terms employed in included studies were: AI (n = 7), affective lability (n = 6), affective dysregulation (n = 1), emotional dysregulation (n = 4), emotion regulation (n = 2), emotional lability (n = 1), mood instability (n = 2), mood lability (n = 1) and mood swings (n = 1); however, these concepts showed considerable overlap in features. A total of 24 distinct measures were identified that could be categorized as primarily measuring one of four facets of AI (oscillation, intensity, ability to regulate and affect change triggered by environment) or as measuring general emotional regulation. Conclusions A clearer definition of AI is required. We propose AI be defined as ‘rapid oscillations of intense affect, with a difficulty in regulating these oscillations or their behavioural consequences’. No single measure comprehensively assesses AI and a combination of current measures is required for assessment. A new short measure of AI that is reliable and validated against external criteria is needed.
Multi-target tracking using appearance models for identity maintenance

Peter Morton Doctor of Philosophy The University of Sydney June 2014 Multi-target tracking using appearance models for identity maintenance This thesis considers perception systems for urban environments. It focuses on the task of tracking dynamic objects and in particular on methods that can maintain the identities of targets through periods of ambiguity. Examples of such ambiguous situations occur when targets interact with each other, or when they are occluded by other objects or the environment. With the development of self driving cars, the push for autonomous delivery of packages, and an increasing reliance on technology for security, surveillance and publicsafety applications, robust perception in crowded urban spaces is more important than ever before. A critical part of perception systems is the ability to understand the motion of objects in a scene. Tracking strategies that merge closely-spaced targets together into groups have been shown to offer improved robustness, but in doing so sacrifice the concept of target identity. Additionally, the primary sensor used for the tracking task may not provide the type of information required to reason about the identity of individual objects. There are three primary contributions in this work. The first is the development of 3D lidar tracking methods with improved ability to track closely-spaced targets and that can determine when target identities have become ambiguous. Secondly, this thesis defines appearance models suitable for the task of determining the identities of previously-observed targets, which may include the use of data from additional sensing modalities. The final contribution of this work is the combination of lidar tracking and appearance modelling, to enable the clarification of target identities in the presence of ambiguities caused by scene complexity. The algorithms presented in this work are validated using established metrics from the literature, and also compared to an additional measure adapted from clustering analysis; V-measure is shown in this thesis to better reflect identity tracking performance. Evaluation is performed on both carefully controlled and unconstrained datasets, comprising 19 labelled scenarios with 89717 observations of 78 targets over a total of 25048 lidar scans, and an unconstrained urban dataset featuring a further 27375 scans. The experiments show that the proposed methods achieve significant improvements in tracking performance, in complex dynamic scenes with interacting targets, such as those commonly found in an urban environment. iii
How many can you see at a glance? The role of attention in visual enumeration

There is considerable controversy as to how the brain extracts numerosity information from a visual scene and as to how much attention is needed for this process. Traditionally, it has been assumed that visual enumeration is subserved by two functionally distinct mechanisms: the fast and accurate apprehension of 1 to about 4 items, a process termed "subitizing", and the slow and error-prone enumeration of larger numerosities referred to as "counting". Further to a functional dichotomy between these two mechanisms, an attentional dichotomy has been proposed. Subitizing has been thought of as a pre-attentive and parallel process, whereas counting is supposed to require serial attention. In this work, the hypothesis of a parallel and pre-attentive subitizing mechanism was tested. To this aim, the amount of attention that could be allocated to an enumeration task was experimentally manipulated. In Experiment 1, attentional set was manipulated such that attention could either be drawn to the relevant of two subsets to enumerate or had to be distributed to both subsets. Furthermore, the relationship of enumeration to perceptual grouping and item discrimination was explored. In Experiment 2, a dual-task approach was employed in which the amount of attentional resources available to enumeration was systematically modulated by imposing an additional task and by varying its attentional load. Experiment 3 investigated the neural correlates of visual enumeration under attentional load using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Results indicated that (1) enumeration, particularly subitizing, was clearly compromised under conditions of distributed or reduced attention. (2) Both the enumeration of small and large numerosities was a�ffected by such attentional manipulations. (3) Subitizing selectively activated brain areas associated with stimulus-driven attention. (4) Enumeration is contingent on other potentially attention-demanding visual processes such as perceptual grouping. The evidence presented here seriously challenges the traditionally held claim of a parallel and preattentive subitizing mechanism and suggests instead that small numerosity judgement requires visual attention. This weakens the argument of an attentional as well as a functional dichotomy and strengthens the idea that enumeration may be subserved by a single, continuous mechanism.
Acute polyarthritis immediately after kidney transplantation: A medication‐induced rheumatoid arthritis flare?

A patient with known steroid‐dependent rheumatoid arthritis (RA) developed an acute symmetrical polyarthropathy of small and medium‐sized joints associated with markedly elevated inflammatory markers suggestive of RA flare, on day 4 after deceased‐donor renal transplantation. The patient received standard induction immunosuppression with methylprednisolone and basiliximab, and had commenced prednisolone, tacrolimus and mycophenolate mofetil. Serological investigations and joint aspirate to exclude infective causes and crystal arthropathy were unremarkable. High‐dose prednisolone (50 mg daily) resulted in partial but unsustained symptomatic improvement. On suspicion of a medication‐related adverse event, tacrolimus and mycophenolate mofetil were changed to cyclosporine A and azathioprine on day 16. This was followed by rapid improvement in symptoms and normalization of inflammatory markers. Unexpected sequelae in the early post‐transplantation period create diagnostic and management challenges. Medication‐related adverse events are not uncommon, and we speculate in this case on the potential for medication‐induced immune system dysregulation stimulating disease activity in a chronic autoimmune condition after introduction of new immunosuppressants.
A spectrogram-based voiceprint recognition using deep neural network

This paper presents a speaker identification algorithm using the deep neural network (DNN) as the classifier to learn the features of the voiceprints represented by spectrogram. The collected speech signals are pre-emphasized, windowed, divided into some chunks, then calculated to obtain the magnitude of the frequency spectrum, which creates the spectrograms. The local binary patterns (LBP) operator is used to obtain the texture features embedded in spectrograms. These texture features, being represented by LBP vectors, are fed to DNN with four hidden layers to learn the speech features. In the learning progress, both of extraction and reconstruction procedures are reduplicated in each hidden layer. Through these extraction and reconstruction procedures of DNN, the speech features of each individual are given as a recognition figure, which offers the recognition results. The numerical experiments indicate that our approach has an acceptable recognition rate with high accuracy.