Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Linear stability of viscoelastic Taylor–Couette flow: Influence of fluid rheology and energetics

In this study we have theoretically investigated the effect of detailed fluid rheology (e.g., spectrum of relaxation times, shear thinning of first normal stresses, finite second normal stresses, and ratio of solvent to total viscosity) and energetics on the purely elastic instability of Taylor–Couette flow. The isothermal analysis showed that irrespective of the details of the fluid rheology, solvent to total viscosity ratio and gap width, the secondary flow is time-dependent and nonaxisymmetric. However, as the number of relaxation times is increased, the critical Deborah number reaches an asymptotic value which is approximately half of the critical Deborah number predicted by the single-mode constitutive equation. These results strengthen the conclusions of Al-Mubaiyedh et al. (1999) that have attributed the existence of a stationary secondary flow in the experiments of Baumert and Muller (1995, 1997) to the effect of energetics. The nonisothermal analyses predicted, for experimentally realizable values of Peclet and Brinkman numbers, the instability to be caused by stationary and axisymmetric disturbances as observed in the experiments of Baumert and Muller (1995, 1997). Moreover, it has been shown that although the details of the fluid rheology can influence the onset conditions in the nonisothermal viscoelastic Taylor–Couette flow, the mechanism of the instability as well as the structure of the bifurcated solutions are relatively insensitive to the details of the fluid rheology.In this study we have theoretically investigated the effect of detailed fluid rheology (e.g., spectrum of relaxation times, shear thinning of first normal stresses, finite second normal stresses, and ratio of solvent to total viscosity) and energetics on the purely elastic instability of Taylor–Couette flow. The isothermal analysis showed that irrespective of the details of the fluid rheology, solvent to total viscosity ratio and gap width, the secondary flow is time-dependent and nonaxisymmetric. However, as the number of relaxation times is increased, the critical Deborah number reaches an asymptotic value which is approximately half of the critical Deborah number predicted by the single-mode constitutive equation. These results strengthen the conclusions of Al-Mubaiyedh et al. (1999) that have attributed the existence of a stationary secondary flow in the experiments of Baumert and Muller (1995, 1997) to the effect of energetics. The nonisothermal analyses predicted, for experimentally realizable value.
Guide-specific loss of efficiency and off-target reduction with Cas9 variants

High-fidelity Cas9 variants have been developed to reduce the off-target effects of CRISPR systems at a cost of efficiency loss. To systematically evaluate the efficiency and off-target tolerance of Cas9 variants in complex with different single guide RNAs (sgRNAs), we applied high-throughput viability screens and a synthetic paired sgRNA-target system to assess thousands of sgRNAs in combination with two high-fidelity Cas9 variants HiFi and LZ3. Comparing these variants against WT SpCas9, we found that ~20% of sgRNAs are associated with a significant loss of efficiency when complexed with either HiFi or LZ3. The loss of efficiency is dependent on the sequence context in the seed region of sgRNAs, as well as at positions 15-18 in the non-seed region that interacts with the REC3 domain of Cas9, suggesting that the variant-specific mutations in REC3 domain account for the loss of efficiency. We also observed various degrees of sequencedependent off-target reduction when different sgRNAs are used in combination with the variants. Given these observations, we developed GuideVar, a transfer-learning-based computational framework for the prediction of on-target efficiency and off-target effect with high-fidelity variants. GuideVar facilitates the prioritization of sgRNAs in the applications with HiFi and LZ3, as demonstrated by the improvement of signal-to-noise ratios in high-throughput viability screens using these high-fidelity variants.
Polygenic pathogen networks control of host and pathogen transcriptional plasticity in the Arabidopsis-Botrytis pathosystem

Bidirectional flow of information shapes the outcome of the host-pathogen interactions and depends on the genetics of each organism. Recent work has begun to use co-transcriptomic studies to shed light on this bidirectional flow, but it is unclear how plastic the co-transcriptome is in response to genetic variation in both the host and pathogen. To study co-transcriptome plasticity, we conducted transcriptomics using natural genetic variation in the pathogen, Botrytis cinerea, and large effect genetic variation abolishing defense signaling pathways within the host, Arabidopsis thaliana. We show that genetic variation in the pathogen has a greater influence on the co-transcriptome than mutations that abolish defense signaling pathways in the host. Genome wide association mapping using the pathogens genetic variation and both organisms’ transcriptomes allowed an assessment of how the pathogen modulates plasticity in response to the host. This showed that the differences in both organism’s responses were linked to trans-eQTL hotspots within the pathogen’s genome. These hotspots control gene sets in either the host or pathogen and show differential allele sensitivity to the hosts genetic variation rather than qualitative host specificity. Interestingly, nearly all the trans-eQTL hotspots were unique to the host or pathogen transcriptomes. In this system of differential plasticity, the pathogen mediates the shift in the co-transcriptome more than the host.
A Machine Learning approach to study plant functional trait divergence

Premise of the study Plant functional traits are often used to describe spectra of ecological strategies among species. Here we demonstrate a machine learning approach for identifying the traits that contribute most to interspecific phenotypic divergence in multivariate trait space. Methods Descriptive and predictive machine learning approaches were applied to trait data for the genus Helianthus, including Random Forest and Gradient Boosting Machine classifiers, Recursive Feature Elimination, and the Boruta algorithm. These approaches were applied at the genus level as well as within each of the three major clades within the genus to examine the variability in major axes of trait divergence in three independent species radiations. Key Results Machine learning models were able to predict species identity from functional traits with high accuracy, and differences in functional trait importance were observed between the genus level and clade levels indicating different axes of phenotypic divergence. Conclusions Applying machine-learning approaches to identify divergent traits can provide insights into the predictability or repeatability of evolution through comparison of parallel diversification of clades within a genus. These approaches can be implemented in a range of contexts across basic and applied plant science from interspecific divergence to intraspecific variation across time, space, and environmental conditions.
Neural Selectivity for Real-World Object Size In Natural Images

Real-world size is a functionally important high-level visual property of objects that supports interactions with our physical environment. Critically, real-world-size is robust over changes in visual appearance as projected onto our retinae such that large and small objects are correctly perceived to have different real-world sizes. To better understand the neural basis of this phenomenon, we examined whether the neural coding of real-world size holds for objects embedded in complex natural scene images, as well as whether real-world size effects are present for both inanimate and animate objects, whether low- and mid-level visual features can account for size selectivity, and whether neural size tuning is best described by a linear, logarithmic, or exponential neural coding function. To address these questions, we used a large-scale dataset of fMRI responses to natural images combined with per-voxel regression and contrasts. Importantly, the resultant pattern of size selectivity for objects embedded in natural scenes was aligned with prior results using isolated objects. Extending this finding, we also found that size coding exists for both animate and inanimate objects, that low-level visual features cannot account for neural size preferences, and size tuning functions have different shapes for large versus small preferring voxels. Together, these results indicate that real-world size is an ecologically significant dimension in the larger space of behaviorally-relevant cortical representations that support interactions with the world around us.
Incoherent turbulence structure in the near wake of a normal plate

In this paper experimentally studied characteristics of various frequency components of incoherent velocity fluctuations in the near wake behind a thin normal plate immersed in a uniform flow are described. Measurements were made at a position 8 plate heights downstream of the plate where the wake had a marked periodicity, so that coherent vortices shed from the plate are expected to have a small dispersion in streamwise spacing, transverse location, strength and shape. Shearing stress associated with the incoherent fluctuations is mainly contributed by components with frequencies around half of the vortex-shedding frequency fs on one side of the wake. The ½fs frequency component appears to be caused by the spanwise locations of ribs, which are connected to the coherent vortices, being different from vortex to vortex. A probable spanwise arrangement of the ribs is suggested.
3D Trajectory Registration for Sensor Calibration

Automatic sensor calibration is ubiquitous for robots and autonomous vehicles. Traditional target-based calibration methods typically require multiple registrations of an object in the field of view. However, by moving the object continuously while recording, the 3D positions of the target generate a path that may improve the calibration quality. Inthiswork, we proposeanovelcurve-basedtrajectoryregistrationmethodto enhance calibrationaccuracywithspherical and checkerboard targets. This approach supplements the existing target position point set with estimated intermediate points after applying spline fitting techniques to the measurements. The curvature of the movement is aligned between the point sets resulting in reduced error between the registered point clouds and more accurate extrinsic calibration parameters. We validate these properties in indoor and outdoor real-world scenarios.
On the asphericity of a symplectic M^3 x S^1

C. H. Taubes asked whether a closed (i.e. compact and without boundary) connected oriented three-dimensional manifold whose product with a circle admits a symplectic structure must fiber over a circle. An affirmative answer to Taubes' question would imply that any such manifold either is diffeomorphic to the product of a two-sphere with a circle or is irreducible and aspherical. In this paper, we prove that this implication holds up to connect sum with a manifold which admits no proper covering spaces with finite index. It is pointed out that Thurston's geometrization conjecture and known results in the theory of three-dimensional manifolds imply that such a manifold is a three-dimensional sphere. Hence, modulo the present conjectural picture of three-dimensional manifolds, we have shown that the stated consequence of an affirmative answer to Taubes' question holds.
VinVL+L: Enriching Visual Representation with Location Context in VQA

In this paper, we describe a novel method – VinVL+L – that enriches the visual representations (i.e. object tags and region features) of the State-of-the-Art Vision and Language (VL) method – VinVL – with Location information. To verify the importance of such metadata for VL models, we (i) trained a Swin-B model on the Places365 dataset and obtained additional sets of visual and tag features; both were made public to allow reproducibility and further experiments, (ii) did an architectural update to the existing VinVL method to include the new feature sets, and (iii) provide a qualitative and quantitative evaluation. By including just binary location metadata, the VinVL+L method provides incremental improvement to the State-of-the-Art VinVL in Visual Question Answering (VQA). The VinVL+L achieved an accuracy of 64.85% and increased the performance by +0.32% in terms of accuracy on the GQA dataset; the statistical significance of the new representations is verified via Approximate Randomization. The code and newly generated sets of features are available at https://github.com/vyskocj/VinVL-L.
Effect of extrusion with molasses on the rumen undegradable protein fraction of canola oilcake meal and sweet lupins

The effect of the extrusion of canola oilcake meal (COM) and crushed sweet lupins (CSL) with molasses on the dry matter (DM) and crude protein (CP) degradability was determined in situ. Locally sourced (SOILL Moorreesburg, South Africa) COM and CSL, with the addition of 6% molasses, were extruded at a maximum temperature of 116 °C. A total of six Dohne Merino wethers (± 80 kg), fitted with rumen cannula, were used in this trial. Samples in polyester bags (5 g) were incubated in the rumen of the sheep at intervals of 0, 2, 4, 8, 16, 24, and 48 h. The DM and CP disappearances from the rumen were determined and degradability parameters were estimated. Extrusion increased the potentially degradable CP fraction by 43.5%. At each outflow rate, the average CP effective degradability of COM (68.2%) was lower than that of CSL (78.0%). Extrusion substantially lowered the CP effective degradability for both protein sources at every outflow rate tested. The biggest effect was seen at 0.08/h, where effective degradation was lowered by 25.6%. Extrusion with molasses was found to modify ruminal degradation parameters of both canola oilcake meal and crushed sweet lupins, while also decreasing the effective rumen degradation, especially at faster outflow rates. Thereby, the rumen undegradable protein fraction was increased by 85.4%. This study shows that COM and CSL extruded with 6% molasses can substantially increase RUP.
Binaural Bark subband preprocessing of nonstationary signals for noise robust speech feature extraction

A two channel approach to noise robust feature extraction for speech recognition in the car is proposed. The coherence function within the Bark subbands of the mel-frequency-cepstral-transform is calculated to estimate the spectral similarity of two statistic processes. It is illustrated how the coherence of speech in binaural signals is used to increase the robustness against incoherent noise. The introduced preprocessing method of nonstationary signals in two microphones results in an additive correction term of the mel-frequency-cepstral-coefficients.
Physical model, theoretical aspects and applications of the flight of a ball in the atmosphere. Part I: Modelling of forces and torque, and theoretical prospects

A model of the forces and the torque operating on a ball that is flying with rotation in the atmosphere of the Earth, and the resulting system of ordinary differential equations, are derived from mechanics and aerodynamics. The system of equations allows the theoretical aspects of the flight of a ball, such as the boundedness of its kinetic energy, the curvature of the orbit or the velocity function, to be investigated using certain transformations of the variables. The solutions of the corresponding ordinary or boundary value problems, computed numerically, are used to treat certain tasks in international ball games, for example, the maximum and minimum velocities of a volleyball service.
Solar Stereoscopy and Tomography

We review stereoscopic and tomographic methods used in the solar corona, including ground-based and space-based measurements, using solar rotation or multiple spacecraft vantage points, in particular from the STEREO mission during 2007–2010. Stereoscopic and tomographic observations in the solar corona include large-scale structures, streamers, active regions, coronal loops, loop oscillations, acoustic waves in loops, erupting filaments and prominences, bright points, jets, plumes, flares, CME source regions, and CME-triggered global coronal waves. Applications in the solar interior (helioseismic tomography) and reconstruction and tracking of CMEs from the outer corona and into the heliosphere (interplanetary CMEs) are not included.
Spatial parallelism of a 3D finite difference, velocity-stress elastic wave propagation code

Finite difference methods for solving the wave equation more accurately capture the physics of waves propagating through the earth than asymptotic solution methods. Unfortunately, finite difference simulations for 3D elastic wave propagation are expensive. The authors model waves in a 3D isotropic elastic earth. The wave equation solution consists of three velocity components and six stresses. The partial derivatives are discretized using 2nd-order in time and 4th-order in space staggered finite difference operators. Staggered schemes allow one to obtain additional accuracy (via centered finite differences) without requiring additional storage. The serial code is most unique in its ability to model a number of different types of seismic sources. The parallel implementation uses the MPI library, thus allowing for portability between platforms. Spatial parallelism provides a highly efficient strategy for parallelizing finite difference simulations. In this implementation, one can decompose the global problem domain into one-, two-, and three-dimensional processor decompositions with 3D decompositions generally producing the best parallel speedup. Because I/O is handled largely outside of the time-step loop (the most expensive part of the simulation) the authors have opted for straight-forward broadcast and reduce operations to handle I/O. The majority of the communication in the code consists of passing subdomain face information to neighboring processors for use as ghost cells. When this communication is balanced against computation by allocating subdomains of reasonable size, they observe excellent scaled speedup. Allocating subdomains of size 25 x 25 x 25 on each node, they achieve efficiencies of 94% on 128 processors. Numerical examples for both a layered earth model and a homogeneous medium with a high-velocity blocky inclusion illustrate the accuracy of the parallel code.
CdS nanobelts as photoconductors

Mass production of single-crystalline CdS nanobelts is achieved by thermal evaporation of CdS powders with the presence of Au catalyst. The as-synthesized CdS nanobelts are usually hundreds of nanometers to tens of micrometers in width, tens of nanometers in thickness, and several hundreds of micrometers in length. CdS nanobelts have a pronounced increase in conductance of up to four orders of magnitude upon exposure to white light, and also very fast response time about 1–3 s. The photoconductivity mechanism of CdS nanobelts is discussed. The results demonstrate the potential of fabricating nanosized photoconductors and optical switches using the integrity of a single CdS nanobelt.
ON THE MULTI-DIMENSIONAL CENTRAL LIMIT THEOREM

For a sequence of identically distributed independent random variables with finite third moments estimates of the rate of convergence in the multi-dimensional central limit theorem which are uniform with respect to the class of convex sets, are obtained. In the special case corresponding to convergence of distribution functions a better estimate than that given by the general theorem is obtained. An example is given showing that the estimate obtained in this case, in some sense, cannot be improved.
A radio continuum study of the ‘Engraved Hourglass’ nebula, MyCn 18

We present the first radio continuum images of the 'Engraved Hourglass' planetary nebula (PN) MyCn 18 from multifrequency observations with the Australia Telescope. The radio emission is strongly core-dominated at all frequencies investigated. At the three higher observing frequencies, the radio emission is seen to trace the optically-visible hourglass lobes. In the highest resolution image, the position of peak radio brightness is found in a region which we show to be geometrically off-centre in the same sense as the offset of the 'central' star seen in the WFPC2 HST images of Sahai et al. The brightness temperatures measured are surprisingly low and this is interpreted as an effect of beam dilution and nebular clumpiness. We have attempted to separate the contributions to the integrated flux density from the lobes and the core and we present individual plots of the radio spectrum for these regions and also for the total nebular emission. These plots are used to obtain (lower, upper) limits to the turnover frequency of the core and the lobes, which in turn are used to derive (lower, upper) limits to the emission measure, density and ionized mass of the respective regions. Assuming the PN is at a distance of 2.4 kpc, we derive (lower, upper) limits to the total ionized mass of the PN of (0.2, 0.8) M O .
Ellipsoidal Topology, Orientation Diversity and Correlation Length in Bianisotropic Composite Mediums

Summary The bilocal-approximated strong-property-fluctuation theory(SPFT) was implemented in the long-wavelength regime for biaxial bianisotropic and chiroferrite composite mediums endowed with ellipsoidal microstructural topology and orientation diversity. Small differences exist between the estimates afforded currently by the SPFT on the one hand and the Bruggeman as well as the incremental Maxwell Garnett homogenisation formalisms on the other hand – as functions of volume fraction, inclusion shape, andorientation diversity. In contrast, the effect of the correlation length issignificant, and is likely to yield to experimental clarification.
Rectal Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors

Rectal gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) are rare types of tumors, but the incidence is increasing, and we now know more about the pathogenesis and management of rectal GIST. The main goal is to resect the tumor with negative microscopic margins. With the development of neoadjuvant Imatinib therapy, preoperative reduction in tumor size has become possible, thus introducing the chance for anus-preserving surgery, with better quality of life. We present a case of a 55-year-old female who presented to the emergency department with complaints of bleeding per rectum, abdominal pain, and pain on defecation. A 6-cm mass was detected during the rectal examination and a biopsy confirmed the diagnosis of GIST. The patient was given neoadjuvant imatinib chemotherapy for four months followed by trans-anal resection of the mass. The procedure was done successfully, and she received further adjuvant imatinib for a course of three years. Follow-up by magnetic resonance imaging and a colonoscopy after two years showed no recurrence. The patient is living healthily and doing well.
Tables of the Refractive Index for Standard Air and the Rayleigh Scattering Coefficient for the Spectral Region between 0.2 and 20.0 μ and Their Application to Atmospheric Optics

The refractive index of standard air has been tabulated for the range 0.2 to 20.0 μ, namely, 0.2(0.01)0.8; 0.8(0.1)2.0; 2.0(0.5)10.0; 10(1)20 μ. The values are based on Edlen’s formula. For computations of Rayleigh scattering, the scattering cross sections, the mass and volume scattering coefficients have been tabulated for the same values of wavelength as for the refractive index. The optical thickness and the transmissivity of the standard atmosphere is given next, and finally, the mean scattering coefficient for visual observations which is βv=1.23×10−7 (cm−1).