Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Acculturation and Academic Adjustment of Student Sojourners in the Chinese Higher Education Context

The relationship between acculturation and academic adjustment has been under-investigated. A mixed longitudinal design was used in this article, with study 1 employing a questionnaire survey (N = 642) to explore student sojourners’ academic adjustment status and its predictors, and study 2 adopting qualitative approaches (reflective journal and interview) to track changes in acculturation strategies and adjustment experienced by a sample of 12 participants. Study 1 found that acculturation strategies (integration and marginalization) and social support (from family, Chinese friends, and teachers) were significantly associated with the academic adjustment of student sojourners in the Chinese higher education context. Integration was positively associated with academic adjustment, whereas marginalization was negatively associated. Study 2 revealed that student sojourners experienced changes in their acculturation strategies, students are suggested to embrace the integration strategy to sustain their academic journey in China. This study also provides implications for policymaking and education practices.
Improved Gradient Projection Algorithm for Compressed Sensing

In order to improve efficient of compressed sensing image reconstruction, an improved gradient projection algorithm of compressed sensing theory is proposed. In improved Gradient Projection algorithm, the pursuit direction is updated by search at negative gradient direction, thus the gradient direction is a single direction, because the traditional gradient projection algorithm searching at alternating searching method ,the efficient of gradient projection algorithm is higher than the traditional gradient projection algorithm, Experiment results show that, compared with the GPSR algorithm, the IGPSR algorithm improves the signals reconstruction accuracy, improves PSNR of reconstruction signals, and exhibits higher robustness under different noise intensities.
THEORETICAL STATISTICS OF ZERO-AGE CATACLYSMIC VARIABLES

The distribution of the white-dwarf masses, the distribution of the mass ratios, and the distribution of the orbital periods in cataclysmic variables which are forming at the present time are calculated. These systems are referred to as "zero-age cataclysmic variables". The results show that 60% of the systems being formed contain helium white dwarfs and 40% contain carbon-oxygen white dwarfs. The mean white-dwarf mass in those systems containing helium white dwarfs is 0.34 33IO. The mean white-dwarf mass in those systems containing carbonoxygen white dwarfs is 0.75 3KO. The distribution of white-dwarf masses in zero-age cataclysmic variables is similar to the distribution of masses in single white dwarfs for masses above approximately 0.6 37io. The distribution of white-dwarf masses in zero-age cataclysmic variables is not sufficient to account for the observed high white-dwarf masses in cataclysmic variables, emphasizing the possible importance of selection effects. The orbital period distribution identifies four main classes of zero-age cataclysmic variables: (1) short-period systems containing helium white dwarfs, (2) systems containing carbon-oxygen white dwarfs whose secondaries are convectively stable against rapid mass transfer to the white dwarf, (3) systems containing carbon-oxygen white dwarfs whose secondaries are radiatively stable against rapid mass transfer to the white dwarf, and (4) long-period systems with evolved secondaries. The ranges of progenitor lobe-filling giant masses and radii are also better identified.
GUTZWILLER’S OCTAGON AND THE TRIANGULAR BILLIARD T*(2,3,8) AS MODELS FOR THE QUANTIZATION OF CHAOTIC SYSTEMS BY SELBERG’S TRACE FORMULA

Two strongly chaotic systems are investigated with respect to quantization rules based on Selberg’s trace formula. One of them results from the action of a particular strictly hyperbolic Fuchsian group on the Poincare disk, leading to a compact Riemann surface of genus g=2. This Fuchsian group is denoted as Gutzwiller’s group. The other one is a billiard inside a hyperbolic triangle, which is generated by the operation of a reflection group denoted as T*(2,3,8). Since both groups belong to the class of arithmetical groups, their elements can be characterized explicitly as 2×2 matrices containing entries, which are algebraic numbers subject to a particular set of restrictions. In the case of Gutzwiller’s group this property can be used to determine the geodesic length spectrum of the associated dynamical system completely up to some cutoff length. For the triangular billiard T*(2,3,8) the geodesic length spectrum is calculated by building group elements as products of a suitable set of generators and separating a unique representative for each conjugacy class. The presence of reflections in T*(2,3,8) introduces additional classes of group elements besides the hyperbolic ones, which correspond to periodic orbits of the dynamical system. Due to different choices of boundary conditions along the edges of the fundamental domain of T*(2,3,8), several quantum mechanical systems are associated to one classical system. It has been observed, that these quantum mechanical systems can be divided into two classes according to the behavior of their spectral statistics. This peculiarity is examined from the point of view of classical quantities entering quantization rules. It can be traced back to a subtle influence of the boundary conditions, which introduces contributions from non-periodic orbits for one of the two classes.
Impact of combined electric response on left-handed materials

The transmission coefficient of metamaterial structures, which include a combined system of a single split ring resonator and wire (SRRW) and that of a closed-SRR and wire (CRRW), has been studied by varying the width of the continuous wire. Our numerical results support the analytical arguments made by Koschny et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett., 93 (2004) 107402), i.e., the combined electric response of the SRRW system was approximately identical to that of the corresponding CRRW system. It is important to note that a better picture of transmission and index of refraction can be presented by considering three distinct regions, i.e., fm > fp′, fm′ > fp′ > fm and fp′ > fm′, which appear in order by increasing the width of the wire. This is because only the case of fp′ > fm′ was considered in the previous works.
Classification of the long QT syndrome based on discriminant analysis of T-wave morphology

The long QT syndrome (LQTS) is a genetic disorder, characterized by a long QT interval in the ECG, due to abnormal cardiac repolarization. Apart from the QT interval, various parameters, describing T-wave morphology, have been shown to have diagnostic value, but no single ECG parameter has been sufficient. In this study we present a method for discrimination among normal genotypes and mutations in the KCNQ1 (KvLQT1) and KCNH2 (HERG) genes using parameters describing T-wave morphology in terms of duration, asymmetry, flatness and amplitude. Discriminant analyses based on 3, 4, 5, or 6 parameters all resulted in perfect discrimination in a learning set of 22 subjects with respectively 3, 3, 2, and 3 misclassifications in an evaluation set of 17 subjects. In a combined learning set of all 39 subjects both the 5 and 6 parameter classifiers resulted in a single misclassification
Gathering the Stakeholder’s Perspective: Experiences and Opportunities in Rare Genetic Disease Research

Background: Research participant feedback is rarely collected; therefore, investigators have limited understanding regarding stakeholders’ (affected individuals/caregivers) motivation to participate. Members of the Genes to Mental Health Network (G2MH) surveyed stakeholders affected by copy number variants (CNVs) regarding perceived incentives for study participation, opinions concerning research priorities, and the necessity for future funding. Respondents were also asked about feelings of preparedness, research burden, and satisfaction with research study participation. Methods: Modified validated surveys were used to assess stakeholders´ views across three domains: (1) Research Study Enrollment, Retainment, Withdrawal, and Future Participation; (2) Overall Research Experience, Burden, and Preparedness; (3) Research Priorities and Obstacles. Top box score analyses were performed. Results: A total of 704 stakeholders´ responded from 29 countries representing 55 CNVs. The top reasons for initial participation in the research included reasons related to education and altruism. The top reasons for leaving a research study included treatment risks and side effects. The importance of sharing research findings and laboratory results with stakeholders was underscored by participants. Most stakeholders reported positive research experiences. Conclusions: This study provides important insight into how individuals and families affected with a rare CNV feel toward research participation and their overall experience in rare disease research. There are clear targets for areas of improvement for study teams, although many stakeholders reported positive research experiences. Key findings from this international survey may help advance collaborative research and improve the experience of participants, investigators, and other stakeholders moving forward.
Muon Imaging of Volcanic Conduit Explains Link Between Eruption Frequency and Ground Deformation

Understanding the physical mechanism of ground deformation at a volcano supports the use of deformation data as a monitoring tool. An inverse correlation was observed between eruption frequency and ground deformation of Sakurajima volcano from November 2018 to April 2021. Over the same period, the mass density of magma in the conduit was monitored via muography. Mass density increased during inflation, when eruption frequency was low, and decreased during deflation, when eruption frequency was high. Periods of low eruption frequency are associated with the formation of a dense plug in the conduit, which we infer caused the inflation of the edifice by trapping pressurized magmatic gas. Conversely, periods of high eruption frequency are associated with the absence of the plug, which we infer allows gas to escape, leading to deflation. Muography thus reveals the in‐conduit physical mechanism for the observed correlation, with implications for interpretation of deformation at other volcanoes.
EFFECT OF FERMENTATION PROCESSES ON PHENOLIC CONTENT AND ANTIOXIDANT ACTIVITY DURING PRODUCTION OF BLACK CARROT VINEGAR

Black carrots and black carrot-derived products have gained great popularity in recent years due to their significant content of health-promoting bioactive compounds. Therefore, this study focuses on the production of vinegar from black carrot juice (BCJ) derived from black carrot juice concentrate (BCJC), to attain a food product with nutritional added value. In this study, the effect of alcoholic fermentation by Saccharomyces cerevisiae and acetic acid fermentation by four different vinegar starters (grape, apple, alcohol vinegar, and the mixture of grape and apple vinegar) on some physicochemical properties (pH, total acidity, total dry matter, reducing sugar, total phenolics, and antioxidant activity) of BCJ was investigated. The results obtained indicated that processing the BCJ into black carrot wine (BCW) led to an overall reduction of only 4% in total phenolic contents, and a further decrease of 21-32% in total phenolic content was observed in black carrot vinegars (BCVs) due to the acetification process, on a weight-to-volume basis (mg/L). A similar decreasing trend was also determined for the antioxidant activity throughout the vinegar production process. Total phenolic content was not affected by inoculation with any of the seed vinegars since the difference between the total phenolic contents with respect to the four different vinegar starters was statistically insignificant (P > 0.05). In general, the BCW and BCVs (regardless of the type of inoculum) produced in this study exhibited better bioactive properties compared to their commercial counterparts (C-BCW and C-BCV). In conclusion, vinegar was successfully produced from black carrot by retaining a considerable amount of its nutraceutical components
Circulating tumor cell clusters exhibit enhanced immune evasion from natural killer cells

During cancer metastasis, the ability to evade immunosurveillance is key to the survival of circulating tumor cells (CTCs). Recent studies have found that in addition to single CTCs, multicellular clusters of CTCs can be detected in patient blood. Strikingly, CTC clusters show higher metastatic potential than single CTCs, but the molecular mechanism is unclear. We hypothesize that CTC clusters adopt immune evasive strategies, which enhance their metastatic ability. In mouse models of breast cancer, CTC clusters show enhanced metastatic growth over single cells in immunocompetent mice, but this difference is abrogated in immunodeficient mice lacking NK cells or mice treated with NK cell-depleting antibodies. Adoptive transfer of NK cells into NK cell-deficient hosts selectively suppresses metastatic growth by single CTCs, suggesting that single CTCs are more sensitive to NK cells than clusters. Analysis of cell line and patient RNA-seq data reveal that CTC clusters have elevated expression of cell-cell adhesion and epithelial genes as compared to single cells, which is in turn associated with decreased expression of NK cell-activating NKG2D ligands. Furthermore, modulation of tumor cell epithelial status alters NK ligand expression and sensitivity to NK cell killing, but this effect is attenuated by the addition of an NKG2D-blocking antibody. Taken together, we propose a model in which the epithelial characteristics of CTC clusters promotes their resistance to NK cell attack and thus their overall metastatic success. These findings reveal that NK cells play an important role in determining the fate of CTCs of different epithelial/mesenchymal states, and illuminate our understanding of immune evasion mechanisms by CTCs.
Interplay of polarizations in a cascade EIT system in the presence of vortex coupling light in 87Rb atomic vapor medium

We investigate both experimentally and theoretically the cascade electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in 5S1/2−5P3/2−5D5/2 configuration in 87Rb atomic vapor medium in the presence of vortex coupling Laguerre Gaussian (LG) light. We demonstrated Doppler free double resonance EIT structure in cascade configuration and observed transmission spectra for |H⟩−|H⟩ and σ+−σ+ polarized probe and coupling lights. We demonstrate that the double resonance structure can be identified by two photon transition probabilities and it is found to be F′′=2 and F′′=3 . By considering coupling LG light, several polarization combinations are taken into account, and their effects on amplifying and diminishing the EIT resonances are demonstrated experimentally. In order to understand the polarization effects of vortex coupling light on EIT spectrum in a degenerate multilevel atomic system, a theoretical model is developed by considering a simplified double hut level structure. Semi-classical density matrix analysis is used to understand the dynamics and also to establish the enhancement and reduction of EIT peak height with coupling light polarizations. The impact of two photon transition probabilities, polarization combinations and relative orientations of probe and coupling lights in degenerate multilevel atomic systems leads to modification of EIT resonances significantly. We establish quantitative agreement between our theory and experimental results.
Power Management of Hybrid Energy Storage System Based Wireless Charging System With Regenerative Braking Capability

Electric vehicles (EVs) usually face many challenges such as long charging time, frequent discharging, and battery life deterioration. These can be addressed by introducing the capability of wireless power transfer (WPT) to the unit that can store the regenerative braking energy. A hybrid energy storage system (HESS) model is shown in this research, consisting of a battery and supercapacitor combination, connected through a bi-directional converter. This topology includes three systems connected to the dc-link, namely, BLDC motor drive system, the HESS, and the WPT system where the WPT system supplies power to the system throughout the drive cycle. Battery has limited power density whereas supercapacitors have limited energy density, hence a combination of both the storage units enables us to have an optimized storage system. Apart from that, a supercapacitor also contributes to battery life extension by redirecting the frequent charging and discharging phenomena. The proposed configuration is simulated in MATLAB environment and practically verified by using a BLDC motor. The proposed topology suits low voltage EVs to run in stop-and- go traffic situation or hilly areas. Regenerative braking of BLDC motor allows it to run as a generator for a while allowing the generated power to boost and store back into battery/supercapacitor. This paper proposes a simultaneous wireless charging method to allow the vehicle to charge while in motion. This research is potentially a future prospective of the developing technology in terms of EVs.
Spectrophotometry of Wolf-Rayet stars - Intrinsic colors and absolute magnitudes

Absolute spectrophotometry of about 10-A resolution in the range 3400-7300 A have been obtained for southern Wolf-Rayet stars, and line-free magnitudes and colors have been constructed. The emission-line contamination in the narrow-band ubvr systems of Westerlund (1966) and Smith (1968) is shown to be small for most WN stars, but to be quite significant for WC stars. It is suggested that the more severe differences in intrinsic color from star to star of the same spectral subtype noted at shorter wavelengths are due to differences in atmospheric extent. True continuum absolute visual magnitudes and intrinsic colors are obtained for the LMC WR stars. The most visually luminous WN6-WN7 stars are found to be located in the core of the 30 Doradus region.
Automatic Assessment of Stereotactic Radiation Therapy Outcome in Brain Metastasis Using Longitudinal Segmentation on Serial MRI

The standard clinical approach to assess the radiotherapy outcome in brain metastasis is through monitoring the changes in tumour size on longitudinal MRI. This assessment requires contouring the tumour on many volumetric images acquired before and at several follow-up scans after the treatment that is routinely done manually by oncologists with a substantial burden on the clinical workflow. In this work, we introduce a novel system for automatic assessment of stereotactic radiation therapy (SRT) outcome in brain metastasis using standard serial MRI. At the heart of the proposed system is a deep learning-based segmentation framework to delineate tumours longitudinally on serial MRI with high precision. Longitudinal changes in tumour size are then analyzed automatically to assess the local response and detect possible adverse radiation effects (ARE) after SRT. The system was trained and optimized using the data acquired from 96 patients (130 tumours) and evaluated on an independent test set of 20 patients (22 tumours; 95 MRI scans). The comparison between automatic therapy outcome evaluation and manual assessments by expert oncologists demonstrates a good agreement with an accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of 91%, 89%, and 92%, respectively, in detecting local control/failure and 91%, 100%, and 89% in detecting ARE on the independent test set. This study is a step forward towards automatic monitoring and evaluation of radiotherapy outcome in brain tumours that can streamline the radio-oncology workflow substantially.
Cell-intrinsic Transforming Growth Factor-β signaling mediates virus-specific CD8+ T cell deletion and viral persistence in vivo (39.12)

Chronic viral infections represent a major biomedical problem. Although, in both humans and mice, viral persistence has been associated with insufficient numbers and/or function of CD8+ T cells, the underlying mechanisms are still unclear. By using Lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus in its natural murine host, we found that enhanced and sustained Transforming Growth Factor-β (TGF- β),expression and phosphorylation of its signaling mediator, Smad-2, were distinctive features of virus-specific CD8+ T cells during chronic versus acute viral infections in vivo. Selective attenuation of TGF-β pathway in T cells decreased the expression of the pro-apoptotic protein Bim and increased survival and numbers of virus-specific CD8+ T cells. Under these conditions, virus-specific CD8+ T cells had enhanced cytotoxicity, increased production of anti-viral cytokines, and down-regulation of inhibitory molecules. The end result was rapid virus eradication and generation of an effective memory T cell response that protected the host upon subsequent challenge. Notably, we found that cell-intrinsic TGF-β signaling was responsible for virus-specific-CD8+ T cell apoptosis but was not necessary for their functional exhaustion. Our findings demonstrate that sustained TGF-β-Smad signaling is a hallmark and master regulator of CD8+ T cell responses during chronic viral infections in vivo.
A Hierarchical Deformable Deep Neural Network and an Aerial Image Benchmark Dataset for Surface Multiview Stereo Reconstruction

Multiview stereo (MVS) aerial image depth estimation is a research frontier in the remote sensing field. Recent deep learning-based advances in close-range object reconstruction have suggested the great potential of this approach. Meanwhile, the deformation problem and the scale variation issue are also worthy of attention. These characteristics of aerial images limit the applicability of the current methods for aerial image depth estimation. Moreover, there are few available benchmark datasets for aerial image depth estimation. In this regard, this article describes a new benchmark dataset called the LuoJia-MVS dataset (https://irsip.whu.edu.cn/resources/resources_en_v2.php), as well as a new deep neural network known as the hierarchical deformable cascade MVS network (HDC-MVSNet). The LuoJia-MVS dataset contains 7972 five-view images with a spatial resolution of 10 cm, pixel-wise depths, and precise camera parameters, and was generated from an accurate digital surface model (DSM) built from thousands of stereo aerial images. In the HDC-MVSNet network, a new full-scale feature pyramid extraction module, a hierarchical set of 3-D convolutional blocks, and “true 3-D” deformable 3-D convolutional layers are specifically designed by considering the aforementioned characteristics of aerial images. Overall and ablation experiments on the WHU and LuoJia-MVS datasets validated the superiority of HDC-MVSNet over the current state-of-the-art MVS depth estimation methods and confirmed that the newly built dataset can provide an effective benchmark.
Ultraviolet single-photons on demand and entanglement of photons with a large frequency difference

We investigate an efficient scheme for generating ultraviolet single-photons $(\ensuremath{\sim}300\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{nm})$. The scheme combines the highly efficient single-photon four-wave mixing scheme and fast developing quantum dot single-photons on demand source technology. We show that near maximum, entanglement between two well matched ultraslowly propagating single-photon wave packets can be achieved. This study may lead to research and development opportunities in highly efficient entanglement schemes using photons of very large frequency difference, quantum information processing, and single-photon metrology and single-photon counting sensors in the uv spectra region.