Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Difference analysis of the structure and functional properties among coix seed prolamin fractions (α-, β-, and γ-coixin).

The differences in proteins in structural characteristics are reported to affect their physicochemical and functional properties. In this study, three types of prolamins (γ-, α-, and β-coixin) derived from coix seed separately distributed among fractions 1-3 extracts. They were studied respecting molecular weight, amino acid composition, secondary structure, microstructure, surface hydrophobicity, solubility, water holding capacity, and oil holding capacity. Results showed that the molecular weights of those three fractions were between 10 and 40 kDa. The secondary structure of those fractions was almost the same, mainly based on β-sheet and irregular structure. The microstructure of α- and γ-coixin presented an irregular shape, whereas β-coixin presented a regular spherical shape. Those three fractions exhibited species of abundant essential amino acids with the same amino acid composition but different contents. The β-coixin fraction had the highest content of hydrophobic amino acids (238.39 mg/g) followed by the α-coixin fraction (235.05 mg/g), whereas the γ-coixin fraction had the lowest content (33.27 mg/g). The γ-coixin fraction has the maximum surface hydrophobicity, whereas the β-coixin fraction has the highest solubility. In addition, the good amphiphilicity of β-coixin fraction made it possible to be used as a surfactant. The excellent functional properties of the β-coixin fraction presented in this research would widen the applications of coix seed prolamins. PRACTICAL APPLICATION: The molecular weights of those three fractions were between 10 and 40 kDa. The secondary structure was almost the same, mainly based on β-sheet and irregular structure. Those three fractions exhibited species of abundant essential amino acids with the same amino acid composition but different contents. The WHC and OHC of β-coixin were the best, indicating its potential as a surfactant and forming stable lotion.
Determination of true null electrode spacing of an extrapolation chamber for x-ray dosimetry

An accurate determination of the true null distance between electrodes, that defines the sensitive volume of an extrapolation chamber, is critical for the establishment of a primary measurement method for absorbed dose in tissue. In this work, a critical analysis of two methodologies for determining the true null electrode spacing of a 23392 Böhm model PTW extrapolation chamber was done.
Carboxymethylcellulose/Hydrotalcite Bionanocomposites as Paraben Sorbents

In this work, we synthesized several bionanocomposites of hydrotalcites containing carboxymethylcellulose as interlayer anion (HT-CMC) to be used as sorbents for parabens, a family of emergent pollutants (specifically, for 4-methyl-, 4-propyl- and 4-benzylparaben). Bionanocomposites were obtained by ultrasound-assisted coprecipitation and characterized by X-ray diffraction analysis, fourier transform infrared and raman spectroscopies, elemental and thermogravimetric analysis, scanning and transmission electron microscopies and X-ray fluorescence. All materials proved to be efficient sorbents for parabens through a process conforming to a pseudo second-order kinetics. The experimental adsorption data fitted the Freundlich model very closely and were also highly correlated with the Temkin model. The effects of pH, adsorbate concentration, amount of sorbent and temperature on the adsorption process was evaluated, obtaining the best results for methylparaben adsorption at pH 7, 25 mg of adsorbent and 348 K. The sorbent, HT-CMC-3, showed the highest adsorption capacity (>70%) for methylparaben. Furthermore, a reusability study showed that the bionanocomposite is reusable after its regeneration with methanol. The sorbent still retained its adsorption capacity for up to 5 times with a little loss of efficiency (<5%).
On the topology of flux transfer events

We present a topological analysis of a simple model magnetic field of a perturbation at the magnetopause that shares magnetic properties with flux transfer events. The aim is to clarify a number of topological aspects that arise in the case of fully three-dimensional magnetic fields. Since the properties discussed can be assumed to be typical for a large class of perturbations, it seems appropriate to illustrate them in terms of a field model that is assumed rather than computed from a special dynamic theory. We show that a localized perturbation at the magnetopause can in principle open a closed magnetosphere by establishing magnetic connections across the magnetopause by the formation of a ropelike magnetic field structure. For this purpose we consider a global topological model of a closed magnetosphere as the unperturbed state. When the perturbation is introduced, it will be evident that, although the model field exhibits neutral points, these are not involved in the localized changes of magnetic connection brought about by the flux rope. The topological substructure of the model flux rope is discussed in detail. The flux rope consists of a tangled subset of magnetic filaments of different magnetic connections. We shall find that the topological substructure of the flux rope becomes increasingly complicated for decreasing magnetic shear field at the magnetopause, i.e., when the inside and outside fields are getting close to antiparallel, leading to a topological mixture reminiscent of chaos. This chaotic mixture of field topologies may provide a mechanism for enhanced dissipation and thus suggests an explanation why magnetic reconnection could be more effective when the magnetosheath and magnetospheric fields are nearly antiparallel. The results bear also on the choice of an appropriate description of magnetic reconnection in flux transfer events.
Videolaryngoscopy as a primary intubation modality in obstetrics: A narrative review of current evidence

Pregnancy-related physiologic and anatomic changes affect oxygenation and airway management, and it is widely believed that airway difficulty may be more common in obstetric patients as a result. In addition, most obstetric intubations are performed under emergency conditions, and preoperative airway assessment poorly predicts airway management outcomes. These considerations necessitate special protocols for airway care in the obstetric population, and the evolution of the videolaryngoscope represents one of the most important milestones in recent decades. However, recommendations for the use of videolaryngoscopy in obstetrics remain unclear. A considerable body of evidence affirms that videolaryngoscopy improves laryngeal visualization, increases first-attempt and overall intubation success rates, shortens intubation time, and facilitates team communication and education. In contrast, a significant number of studies have also reported conflicting results regarding comparative clinical outcomes and have highlighted other limitations regarding the adoption of videolaryngoscopy in routine obstetric care. Nevertheless, considering the peculiarities of obstetric intubation, the Macintosh-style videolaryngoscope can be suggested as the primary intubation device as it offers the benefits of both videolaryngoscopy and direct laryngoscopy. However, more rigorous evidence is needed to clarify the current blind spots and controversies regarding the role of videolaryngoscopy in obstetrics.
On the use of switched linear controllers for stabilizability of implicit recursive equations

Stabilizability of implicit recursive equations is investigated. These equations arise naturally in the context of output dead-beat control for systems described by NARMAX models. Due to non-uniqueness of the solutions of these equations a special kind of a constrained stabilizability problem is considered. We take a hybrid switching control approach in testing the existence of a locally stabilizing controller. A method for the design of a stabilizing switching controller is also presented.
Effect of two additional doses of intrathecal methotrexate during induction therapy on serious infectious toxicity in pediatric patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Although initial central nervous system (CNS) involvement is rarely detected in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), risk-adapted CNS-directed therapy is essential for all patients. Treatment intensity depends on the initial CNS status. In the AIEOP-BFM ALL 2009 trial, patients with cytomorphologic detection of leukemic blasts in initial cerebrospinal fluid were classified as CNS2 or CNS3 and received five intrathecal doses of methotrexate (MTX) in induction therapy compared to patients with CNS1 status (no blasts detected) who received three doses. The impact of additional intrathecal (IT) MTX on systemic toxicity in induction therapy is unknown. Between June 1st 2010 and February 28th 2017, a total of 6,136 ALL patients aged 1-17 years were enrolled onto the AIEOP-BFM ALL 2009 trial. The effect of three versus five doses of IT MTX during induction therapy on the incidence of severe infectious complications was analyzed. Among 4,706 patients treated with three IT MTX doses, 77 (1.6%) had a life-threatening infection during induction as compared to 59 of 1,350 (4.4%) patients treated with five doses (P<0.001; Odds Ratio 2.86 [95% Confidence Interval 1.99-4.13]). In a multivariate regression model, treatment with additional IT MTX proved to be the strongest risk factor for life-threatening infections (Odds Ratio 2.85 [1.96-4.14]). Fatal infections occurred in 16 (0.3%) and 38 (1.6%) patients treated with three or five IT MTX doses, respectively (P<0.001). As the relevance of additional intrathecal MTX in induction for relapse prevention in CNS2 patients is unclear, doses of intrathecal therapy have been reduced for these patients. (Clinicaltrials.gov identifiers: NCT01117441 and NCT00613457).
Chapter 6 The Normalized Quadratic Expenditure Function

A concise introduction to the normalized quadratic expenditure or cost function is provided so that the interested reader will have the necessary information to understand and use this functional form. The normalized quadratic is an attractive functional form for use in empirical applications as correct curvature can be imposed in a parsimonious way without losing the desirable property of flexibility. We believe it is unique in this regard. Topics covered include the problem of cardinalizing utility, the modeling of nonhomothetic preferences, the use of spline functions to achieve greater flexibility, and the use of a “semiflexible” approach to make it feasible to estimate systems of equations with a large number of commodities.
Gravitational lensing effects of vacuum strings - Exact solutions

Exact interior and exterior solutions to Einstein's field equations are obtained for vacuum strings. For a uniform density vacuum string the interior solution (in cross section) is a spherical cap while the exterior solution is conical. If the mass per unit length in the string . mu. is expressed in units of Planck masses per Planck length, then for 0<. mu. <1/4 the exterior metric ds/sup 2/ = -dt/sup 2/+dr/sup 2/+(1-4.mu.)/sup 2/r/sup 2/dphi/sup 2/+dz/sup 2/. A maximum mass per unit length for a string is found: . mu. /sub max/ = 6.73 x 10/sup 27/ g cm/sup -1/. Grand unified vacuum strings with . mu.approx.10/sup 24/ g cm/sup -1/, consistent with the observed isotropy of the microwave background and large enough to promote galaxy formation, would produce equal brightness double images of QSOs with separations of up to 6'. Formulae for lensing probabilities, image splittings, time delays, etc., are derived for strings in a reasonable cosmological setting. String searches using ST, the VLA, and the COBE satellite are discussed.
Vascular Risk Predicts Plasma Amyloid β 42/40 Through Cerebral Amyloid Burden in Apolipoprotein E ε4 Carriers

Background: Understanding the neurobiological underpinnings between established multimodal dementia risk factors and noninvasive blood-based biomarkers may lead to greater precision and earlier identification of older adults at risk of accelerated decline and dementia. We examined whether key vascular and genetic risk impact the association between cerebral amyloid burden and plasma aβ (amyloid β) 42/40 in nondemented older adults. Methods: We used nondemented older adults from the UCD-ADRC (University of California, Davis-Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center) study (n=96) and Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (n=104). Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative was examined as confirmatory study cohort. We followed a cross-sectional design and examined linear regression followed by mediation analyses. Vascular risk score was obtained as the sum of hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, coronary artery disease, and cerebrovascular disease. Apolipoprotein E (APOE) ε4+ risk was genotyped, and plasma aβ42 and aβ40 were assayed. Cerebral amyloid burden was quantified using Florbetapir-PET scans. Baseline age was included as a covariate in all models. Results: Vascular risk significantly predicted cerebral amyloid burden in Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative but not in the UCD-ADRC cohort. Cerebral amyloid burden was associated with plasma aβ 42/40 in both cohorts. Higher vascular risk increased cerebral amyloid burden was indirectly associated with reduced plasma aβ 42/40 in Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative but not in UCD-ADRC cohort. However, when stratified by APOE ε4+ risk, we consistently observed this indirect relationship only in APOE ε4+ carriers across both cohorts. Conclusions: Vascular risk is indirectly associated with the level of plasma aβ 42/40 via cerebral amyloid burden only in APOE ε4+ carriers. Nondemented older adults with genetic vulnerability to dementia and accelerated decline may benefit from careful monitoring of vascular risk factors directly associated with cerebral amyloid burden and indirectly with plasma aβ 42/40.
A Discussion of Permutation Tests Conditional to Observed Responses in Unreplicated 2 M Full Factorial Designs

ABSTRACT In this article we present a new solution to test for effects in unreplicated two-level factorial designs. The proposed test statistic, in case the error components are normally distributed, follows an F random variable, though our attention is on its nonparametric permutation version. The proposed procedure does not require any transformation of data such as residualization and it is exact for each effect and distribution-free. Our main aim is to discuss a permutation solution conditional to the original vector of responses. We give two versions of the same nonparametric testing procedure in order to control both the individual error rate and the experiment-wise error rate. A power comparison with Loughin and Noble's test is provided in the case of a unreplicated 24 full factorial design.
Going Further: Flatness at the Rescue of Early Stopping for Adversarial Example Transferability

Transferability is the property of adversarial examples to be misclassified by other models than the surrogate model for which they were crafted. Previous research has shown that early stopping the training of the surrogate model substantially increases transferability. A common hypothesis to explain this is that deep neural networks (DNNs) first learn robust features, which are more generic, thus a better surrogate. Then, at later epochs, DNNs learn non-robust features, which are more brittle, hence worst surrogate. First, we tend to refute this hypothesis, using transferability as a proxy for representation similarity. We then establish links between transferability and the exploration of the loss landscape in parameter space, focusing on sharpness, which is affected by early stopping. This leads us to evaluate surrogate models trained with seven minimizers that minimize both loss value and loss sharpness. Among them, SAM consistently outperforms early stopping by up to 28.8 percentage points. We discover that the strong SAM regularization from large flat neighborhoods tightly links to transferability. Finally, the best sharpness-aware minimizers prove competitive with other training methods and complement existing transferability techniques.
On the tractability of sampling from the Potts model at low temperatures via Swendsen-Wang dynamics

Sampling from the $q$-state ferromagnetic Potts model is a fundamental question in statistical physics, probability theory, and theoretical computer science. On general graphs, this problem is computationally hard, and this hardness holds at arbitrarily low temperatures. At the same time, in recent years, there has been significant progress showing the existence of low-temperature sampling algorithms in various specific families of graphs. Our aim in this paper is to understand the minimal structural properties of general graphs that enable polynomial-time sampling from the $q$-state ferromagnetic Potts model at low temperatures. We study this problem from the perspective of the widely-used Swendsen--Wang dynamics and the closely related random-cluster dynamics. Our results demonstrate that the key graph property behind fast or slow convergence time for these dynamics is whether the independent edge-percolation on the graph admits a strongly supercritical phase. By this, we mean that at large $p<1$, it has a unique giant component of linear size, and the complement of that giant component is comprised of only small components. Specifically, we prove that such a condition implies fast mixing of the Swendsen--Wang and random-cluster dynamics on two general families of bounded-degree graphs: (a) graphs of at most stretched-exponential volume growth and (b) locally treelike graphs. In the other direction, we show that, even among graphs in those families, these Markov chains can converge exponentially slowly at arbitrarily low temperatures if the edge-percolation condition does not hold. In the process, we develop new tools for the analysis of non-local Markov chains, including a framework to bound the speed of disagreement propagation in the presence of long-range correlations, and an understanding of spatial mixing properties on trees with random boundary conditions.
Shape complexity estimation using VAE

In this paper, we compare methods for estimating the complexity of two-dimensional shapes and introduce a method that exploits reconstruction loss of Variational Autoencoders with different sizes of latent vectors. Although complexity of a shape is not a well defined attribute, different aspects of it can be estimated. We demonstrate that our methods captures some aspects of shape complexity. Code and training details will be publicly available.
Generalized Hypercube Queuing Models with Overlapping Service Regions

We present a generalized hypercube queuing model, building upon the original model by Larson 1974, focusing on its application to overlapping service regions such as police beats. To design a service region, we need to capture the workload and police car operation, a type of mobile server. The traditional hypercube queuing model excels in capturing systems' dynamics with light traffic, as it primarily considers whether each server is busy or idle. However, contemporary service operations often experience saturation, in which each server in the system can only process a subset of calls and a queue in front of each server is allowed. Hence, the simple binary status for each server becomes inadequate, prompting the need for a more intricate state space analysis. Our proposed model addresses this problem using a Markov model with a large state space represented by non-negative integer-valued vectors. By leveraging the sparsity structure of the transition matrix, where transitions occur between states whose vectors differ by one in the $\ell_1$ distance, we can solve the steady-state distribution of states efficiently. This solution can then be used to evaluate general performance metrics for the service system. We validate our model's effectiveness through simulations of various artificial service systems. We also apply our model to the Atlanta police operation system, which faces challenges such as increased workload, significant staff shortages, and the impact of boundary effects among crime incidents. Using real 911 calls-for-service data, our analysis indicates that the police operations system with permitted overlapping patrols can significantly mitigate these problems, leading to more effective police force deployment.
Hyperfine collisional rate coefficients of CN with H2(j= 0)

Modelling of molecular emission spectra from interstellar clouds requires the calculation of rate coefficients for excitation by collisions with the most abundant species. Among the interstellar molecules, the CN radical is of particular interest since it is a good probe of dense region and can be used as a tracer of magnetic fields. We calculate fine- and hyperfine-structureresolved excitation rate coefficients of CN(X 2 � + )b y H 2(j = 0), the most abundant collisional partner in the interstellar medium. The calculations are based on a new potential energy surface obtained from highly correlated ab initio calculations. State-to-state rate coefficients between the first fine and hyperfine levels of CN were calculated for low temperatures ranging from 5 to 100 K. The new results are compared to the CN–He rate coefficients. Significant differences are found between the two sets of rate coefficients. This comparison shows that the CN–H2 rate coefficients have to be used for observation interpretations and we expect that their use will significantly help the astronomers in the interpretation of the CN emission lines observed with current and future telescopes.
Robust, privacy-preserving, transparent, and auditable on-device blocklisting

With the accelerated adoption of end-to-end encryption, there is an opportunity to re-architect security and anti-abuse primitives in a manner that preserves new privacy expectations. In this paper, we consider two novel protocols for on-device blocklisting that allow a client to determine whether an object (e.g., URL, document, image, etc.) is harmful based on threat information possessed by a so-called remote enforcer in a way that is both privacy-preserving and trustworthy. Our protocols leverage a unique combination of private set intersection to promote privacy, cryptographic hashes to ensure resilience to false positives, cryptographic signatures to improve transparency, and Merkle inclusion proofs to ensure consistency and auditability. We benchmark our protocols -- one that is time-efficient, and the other space-efficient -- to demonstrate their practical use for applications such as email, messaging, storage, and other applications. We also highlight remaining challenges, such as privacy and censorship tensions that exist with logging or reporting. We consider our work to be a critical first step towards enabling complex, multi-stakeholder discussions on how best to provide on-device protections.
Logistic-Normal Likelihoods for Heteroscedastic Label Noise in Classification

A natural way of estimating heteroscedastic label noise in regression is to model the observed (potentially noisy) target as a sample from a normal distribution, whose parameters can be learned by minimizing the negative log-likelihood. This formulation has desirable loss attenuation properties, as it reduces the contribution of high-error examples. Intuitively, this behavior can improve robustness against label noise by reducing overfitting. We propose an extension of this simple and probabilistic approach to classification that has the same desirable loss attenuation properties. Furthermore, we discuss and address some practical challenges of this extension. We evaluate the effectiveness of the method by measuring its robustness against label noise in classification. We perform enlightening experiments exploring the inner workings of the method, including sensitivity to hyperparameters, ablation studies, and other insightful analyses.