Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Maximum wind speeds and US hurricane losses

There is academic, commercial, and public interest in estimating loss from hurricanes striking land and understanding how loss might change as a result of future variations in climate. Here we show that the relationship between wind speed and loss is exponential and that loss increases with wind speed at a rate of 5% per m s−1. The relationship is derived using quantile regression and a data set comprising wind speeds of hurricanes hitting the United States and normalized economic losses. We suggest that the “centercepts” for the different quantiles account for exposure‐related factors such as population density, precipitation, and surface roughness, and that once these effects are accounted for, the increase in loss with wind speed is consistent across quantiles. An out‐of‐sample test of this relationship correctly predicts economic losses from Hurricane Irene in 2011. The exponential relationship suggests that increased wind speeds will produce significantly higher losses; however, increases in exposed property and population are expected to be a more important factor for near future losses.
The 7.7‐year North Atlantic Oscillation

We present a statistical method, the extended canonical correlation analysis, to extract intermittent propagative coupled oscillations. We have applied this technique to a 136‐year‐long North Atlantic sea‐level‐pressure and sea‐surface‐temperature dataset. Nine ocean–atmosphere coupled oscillations with periods between 2.3 and 18 years were found. The 7.7 y period oscillation is presented in some detail and its links with the North Atlantic Oscillation are discussed. Copyright © 2002 Royal Meteorological Society.
The Role of Estrogen Receptors and Their Signaling across Psychiatric Disorders

Increasing evidence suggests estrogen and estrogen signaling pathway disturbances across psychiatric disorders. Estrogens are not only crucial in sexual maturation and reproduction but are also highly involved in a wide range of brain functions, such as cognition, memory, neurodevelopment, and neuroplasticity. To add more, the recent findings of its neuroprotective and anti-inflammatory effects have grown interested in investigating its potential therapeutic use to psychiatric disorders. In this review, we analyze the emerging literature on estrogen receptors and psychiatric disorders in cellular, preclinical, and clinical studies. Specifically, we discuss the contribution of estrogen receptor and estrogen signaling to cognition and neuroprotection via mediating multiple neural systems, such as dopaminergic, serotonergic, and glutamatergic systems. Then, we assess their disruptions and their potential implications for pathophysiologies in psychiatric disorders. Further, in this review, current treatment strategies involving estrogen and estrogen signaling are evaluated to suggest a future direction in identifying novel treatment strategies in psychiatric disorders.
Free radical scavenging activity of methanolic extract of brown alga

The methanolic extract of Spatoglossum asperum show ed radical scavenging activity against DPPH, ABTS, superoxide and nitric oxide radicals. Although the concentrations of methanolic extract of S.asperum. for antioxidant activity were much higher than that of standard drugs when tested in various assays, their maximal effects were approximately the same. For antioxidan t activities, the methanolic extracts showed an inc rease with increasing concentration (between 100 and 900 μg/ml ) indicating the dose dependency of these algal ext ract. The significant free radical scavenging activity of Spa toglossum asperum indicated that it could be a pote ntial source of natural antioxidant lead molecules.
Recent Advances in Single Crystal Diamond Device Fabrication for Photonics, Sensing and Nanomechanics

In the last two decades, the use of diamond as a material for applications in nanophotonics, optomechanics, quantum information, and sensors tremendously increased due to its outstanding mechanical properties, wide optical transparency, and biocompatibility. This has been possible owing to advances in methods for growth of high-quality single crystal diamond (SCD), nanofabrication methods and controlled incorporation of optically active point defects (e.g., nitrogen vacancy centers) in SCD. This paper reviews the recent advances in SCD nano-structuring methods for realization of micro- and nano-structures. Novel fabrication methods are discussed and the different nano-structures realized for a wide range of applications are summarized. Moreover, the methods for color center incorporation in SCD and surface treatment methods to enhance their properties are described. Challenges in the upscaling of SCD nano-structure fabrication, their commercial applications and future prospects are discussed.
Comparative evaluation of hemodynamic stability and recovery during conscious sedation by dexmedetomidine with fentanyl versus ketamine with fentanyl dilatation and curettage

Conscious sedation is a technique of providing analgesia, sedation and anxiolysis while ensuring rapid recovery without side effects. Conscious sedation is administered with the dual goals of rapidly and safely establishing satisfactory procedural condition for the performance of therapeutic or diagnostic procedures while ensuring rapid, predictable recovery with minimal post-operative sequels. Dexmedetomidine is a highly selective alpha-2 agonist that provides anxiolysis and cooperative sedation without respiratory depression. it inhibits the release of norepinephrine via actions on the alpha2A (α-2A) adrenoceptors located in the locus ceruleus and the spinal cord, resulting in sedation and analgesia via sympatholysis. It was to study the effect of dexemdetornidine with fentanyl versus ketamine with fentanyl on hemodynamic stability and recovery during conscious sedation in dilatation and curettage procedure. The comparison included the vital data and recovery time. The effect of the drugs on hemodynamics and monitoring the occurrence of any complication were also done. In our study, 50 patients were randomly divided into 2 equal groups; group DF received dexmedtomidine loading dose 1 πg/kg over 10 min and followed by 0.5 πg/kg/hr infusion till completion of surgery and group KF received ketamine 0.5 mg/kg slow intravenous Bolus. Dexmedetomidine is a safe drug with good hemodynamic and recovery time, also exerts sedative and analgesic effects without respiratory depression, unlike most analgesic/sedative drugs, such as ketamine, opioids, benzodiazepines and propofol. This study demonstrates that dexrnedetomidine is a safe drug with good hemodynamic and recovery profile. Dexmedetomidine better preserved MBP and SpO2.
Motivation and Ability? A Behavioral Perspective on the Pursuit of Radical Invention in Multi-Technology Incumbents

We examine the role of incumbent firms in developing radical technologies, distinguishing between their motivation and ability to develop radical inventions. We argue that the motivation to pursue radical invention will be strongest when performance is moderately below aspiration, and will weaken as performance either falls substantially below aspiration or rises substantially above aspiration. At the same time, ability will increase with performance, resulting in a behavioral mismatch between ability and motivation – firms overinvest in radical invention when performance is moderately below aspiration and underinvest when performance is substantially above aspiration, with these effects being stronger for multi-technology firms. We show empirical support for our arguments using patent data, adopting a novel empirical approach that distinguishes the potential radicalness of an invention from its eventual success. Our study highlights the role of established firms as a source of radical invention, and examines the behavioral biases that may limit firms from pursuing competence-enhancing radical technologies.
Heterotopic Ossification of the Vascular Pedicle after Maxillofacial Reconstructive Surgery Using Fibular Free Flap: Introducing New Classification and Retrospective Analysis

Heterotopic ossification (HO) is one of the described phenomena after maxillofacial reconstructive surgery using fibular free flap (FFF) at the reception-site. The aim of this study was to determine the radiological incidence and form of HO along the fibular vascular pedicle as well as the rate of clinical symptoms if present. CT-scans of 102 patients who underwent jaw reconstructive surgery by using FFF from January 2005 to December 2019 were evaluated concerning the presence of HO. Subsequently, the patient files were evaluated to identify the cases with clinical signs and complications related to the presence of HO. A radiological classification of four different HO types was developed. Out of 102 patients, 29 (28.43%) presented radiological findings of HO. Clinical symptoms were recorded in 10 cases (9.8%) (dysphagia (n = 5), trismus (n = 3), bony masses (n = 2)) and from these only five (4.9%) needed surgical removal of calcified structures. HO occurs significantly in younger patients (mean 52.3 year). In maxillary reconstructions, HO was radiologically visible six months earlier than after mandibular reconstruction. Furthermore, HO is observed after every third maxilla and every fourth mandible reconstruction. This study developed for the first time a classification of four distinct HO patterns. HO types 1 and 2 were mostly observed after mandible reconstruction and type 4 predominantly after maxilla reconstruction.
Prediction of critical flashover voltage of polluted insulators under sec and rain conditions using least squares support vector machines (LS-SVM)

This paper describes a methodology that was developed for the prediction of the critical flashover voltage of polluted insulators under sec and rain conditions least squares support vector machines (LS-SVM) optimization. The methodology uses as input variable characteristics of the insulator such as diameter, height, creepage distance, and the number of elements on a chain of insulators. The estimation of the flashover performance of polluted insulators is based on field experience and laboratory tests are invaluable as they significantly reduce the time and labour involved in insulator design and selection. The majority of the variables to be predicted are dependent upon several independent variables. The results from this work are useful to predict the contamination severity, critical flashover voltage as a function of contamination severity, arc length, and especially to predict the flashover voltage. The validity of the approach was examined by testing several insulators with different geometries. A comparison with the Grouping Multi-Duolateration Localization (GMDL) method proves the accuracy and goodness of LS-SVM. Moreover LS-SVMs give a good estimation of results which are validated by experimental tests.
Targeted Alpha Therapy: Progress in Radionuclide Production, Radiochemistry, and Applications

This review outlines the accomplishments and potential developments of targeted alpha (α) particle therapy (TAT). It discusses the therapeutic advantages of the short and highly ionizing path of α-particle emissions; the ability of TAT to complement and provide superior efficacy over existing forms of radiotherapy; the physical decay properties and radiochemistry of common α-emitters, including 225Ac, 213Bi, 224Ra, 212Pb, 227Th, 223Ra, 211At, and 149Tb; the production techniques and proper handling of α-emitters in a radiopharmacy; recent preclinical developments; ongoing and completed clinical trials; and an outlook on the future of TAT.
Resonant Inductive Coupling Wireless Power Transfer

Recent research on wireless power transfer (WPT) using resonant inductive coupling has demonstrated very promising efficiencies (above 80%) [1] at large distances compared to the antenna dimensions (more than three times the receiver/transmitter diameters). Due to the number of applications that could benefit from WPT: from electric vehicles to sensor networks, commercial electronic devices, health equipment, biomedical implants, in-space systems and so on, the development and optimization of this technology is of great interest. Since RIC is still a very novel technology, different models should be proposed to analyze and predict the behavior of these systems and to increase the overall efficiencies and transmission ranges.
Empirical Evaluation and Combination of Punctuation Prediction Models Applied to Broadcast News

Natural language processing techniques are dependent upon punctuation to work well. When their input is taken from speech recognition, it is necessary to reconstruct the punctuation; in particular sentence boundaries. We define a range of features from low level acoustics to those with high level lexical semantics, including deep and recurrent models; these in turn are representative of a broad range of approaches used by previous authors for punctuation prediction. We combine the features using a gradient boosting machine that is also capable of indicating the relative importance of each feature. In an empirical study, we show that features from different semantic levels are in fact complementary, that combining statistical and deep learning methods yields better prediction results, and that generalization across different speaking styles is difficult to achieve without adaptation. Our best model achieves an F-Measure of 82.8 on a challenging broadcast news dataset.
Polyphenol characterization, anti-oxidant, anti-proliferation and anti-tyrosinase activity of cranberry pomace

Background: Cranberry pomace (CP), an underutilized by-product from juice processing, contains a wide range of biologically active compounds that can be recovered and used in a variety of applications in functional foods and nutraceuticals. Methods: In this study, analytical chemical techniques such as solvent extractions and characterization of extracts in respect with their phenolic content were performed using ultra-high performance liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS) and spectrophotometry. Crude CP extract and its phenolic acids, flavonols, anthocyanins and proanthocyanidins–rich fractions were then evaluated for their anti-oxidant capacity, tyrosinase inhibitory activity, and anti-proliferation activity against hepatocellular carcinoma HepG2 cells. Results: On a dry weight basis, the different CP fractions contained seven major anthocyanins (0.1-125 mg/g), six major phenolic acids (0.8-31 mg/g), seven flavonols (1-126 mg/g) and five flavan-3-ols (0.1-12 mg/g). Fractions rich in flavonols exhibited the most potent antioxidant capacities with ferric ion reducing antioxidant power values of 1.8-1.9 mmole/g and 2, 2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl radical scavenging IC 50 values of 15.1-15.2 mg/L respectively. On the other hand, fractions rich in phenolic acids and flavan-3-ol monomers demonstrated the most potent anti-tyrosinase activity (IC 50 =6.1-6.2 mg/L) and anti-proliferative activity (IC 50 =7.8-15.8 mg/L). Generally, all the fractions exhibited a dose-response relationship in the selected biological activity assays. Conclusion: This study suggests an effective utilization of CP to obtain biologically active fractions with potential to be used in functional foods and nutraceuticals designed for the prevention of chronic diseases associated with oxidative stress. Keywords: cranberry pomace, polyphenol, anti-tyrosinase, anti-proliferation, nutraceuticals, functional foods
OTFS Performance on Static Multipath Channels

Orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) modulation is known to achieve excellent error performance in delay–Doppler channels. However, its performance over static multipath channels has never been fully investigated. In this letter, we show that, in static multipath channels, the system structure of OTFS is equivalent to the asymmetric orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (A-OFDM), a scheme proposed by Zhang et al., bridging between cyclic prefix single carrier (CPSC) and traditional OFDM. We derive a condition on the parameters of OTFS to guarantee that all the transmitted symbols experience uniform channel gains, as in CPSC. Finally, we apply a low-complexity message passing detection to OTFS/A-OFDM and show a significant performance improvement over ZF and MMSE detection originally proposed for A-OFDM.
Title An object-based approach to image / video-based synthesis andprocessing for 3-D and multiview televisions

This paper proposes an object-based approach to a class of dynamic image-based representations called “plenoptic videos,” where the plenoptic video sequences are segmented into image-based rendering (IBR) objects each with its image sequence, depth map, and other relevant information such as shape and alpha information. This allows desirable functionalities such as scalability of contents, error resilience, and interactivity with individual IBR objects to be supported. Moreover, the rendering quality in scenes with large depth variations can also be improved considerably. A portable capturing system consisting of two linear camera arrays was developed to verify the proposed approach. An important step in the object-based approach is to segment the objects in video streams into layers or IBR objects. To reduce the time for segmenting plenoptic videos under the semiautomatic technique, a new object tracking method based on the level-set method is proposed. Due to possible segmentation errors around object boundaries, natural matting with Bayesian approach is also incorporated into our system. Furthermore, extensions of conventional image processing algorithms to these IBR objects are studied and illustrated with examples. Experimental results are given to illustrate the efficiency of the tracking, matting, rendering, and processing algorithms under the proposed objectbased framework.
Combining CNN and Classical Algorithms for Music Genre Classification

In this study, we combine Convolutional Neural Networks and classical classification algorithms such as Softmax Logistic Regression, SVM, GDA, and Random Forests for music genre classification. By training a Dilated CNN as a feature extractor for classical algorithms, we obtain a comparison of different classical algorithms using different input features (which corresponds to the different layers of the Dilated CNN). We find that this method allows us to greatly improve the performance of classical algorithms, even allowing them to exceed the the performance of the Dilated CNN. We noticed that classical algorithms have a regularization effect so even with a non-optimal CNN we can improve its performance by feeding the layer outputs as features to classical algorithms.
Distributional Impacts of Fat Taxes and Thin Subsidies

We conducted an experiment to study the fiscal impacts of unhealthy food taxes and healthy food subsidies on very low and medium income women in France. The policies tend to be regressive and favour higher income consumers. Unhealthy food taxes increase prices paid more for lower than higher income women. Healthy food subsidies reduce the prices paid more for higher than lower income women. The effects arise because the pre‐policy diets of the higher income women tend to be healthier but also because the choices of the higher income women are more responsive to price changes.
Dithiocarbamate Fungicides and Ethylenethiourea Residue Levels in Tomato and Sweet Pepper from Markets: Kirinyaga and Nairobi Counties, Kenya

Vegetables are a major source of essential nutrients such as minerals, proteins, energy and also a source of roughage. Some vegetables such as tomato and sweet pepper can be eaten raw or cooked. These vegetables are affected by pests and diseases that are controlled using pesticides among which are fungicides such as dithiocarbamates (DTCs) that are toxic to human and animals at high concentrations. DTCs are commonly used in different combinations in Kenya and one of their metabolites ethylenthiourea (ETU) a carcinogenic compound has a long residual time of between five to ten weeks. This study determined the residue levels of propineb, mancozeb and its metabolite ETU on tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill) and sweet pepper (Capsicum annum L) during wet and dry seasons. The analyte was extracted from the vegetable using acetonitrile-dichloromethane-chloroform mixture and analyzed using HPLC together with method validation. The method of analysis had R2 values (0.948-0.999) and recoveries ranging from 91.26-95.89 %. The levels of mancozeb in tomato were ranging from 2.56±0.12 mg/kg in the wet season to below detection limit (BDL) in the dry season while in sweet pepper the levels ranged from 2.69±0.57 mg/kg in wet season to 0.16±0.00 mg/kg in dry season. Propineb levels ranged from 3.97±0.50 mg/kg in wet season to BDL in dry season in tomato while in sweet pepper the range was 6.54±0.72 mg/kg in wet season to BDL in dry season. The ETU levels in tomato samples were significantly higher in dry season than wet season and ranged from 27.94±0.39 mg/kg to BDL in wet season while in sweet pepper the levels ranged from 8.88±1.55 mg/kg in dry season to BDL in wet season. Two out of four markets had propineb residues in tomato above maximum residue limit (MRL) set by WHO/FAO and EU of 3 mg/kg while there were no levels of mancozeb above MRL. ETU mean residue levels exceeding the MRL of 0.05 mg/kg were noted in all vegetable samples. The results from this study indicates high residue levels of mancozeb, propineb and ethylenethiourea with significantly higher levels of dithiocarbamates in wet season and significantly higher levels of ETU in dry season.