Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Earthquake induced landslides in the Sikkim-Darjeeling Himalayas - An aftermath of the 18 th September 2011 Sikkim earthquake

September 2011 with its epicenter (27.7 o N, 88.2 o E) lying near the Sikkim-Nepal border, about 68 km northwest of Gangtok, Sikkim with the depth of its hypocenter at about 10 km. As per the USGS estimates 2 , the epicenter of this strong earthquake (6.9 Mw) lies slightly west of the location shown by IMD. This earthquake was widely felt in Sikkim, West Bengal to Rajasthan in the west and the northeastern states of India, and also in Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. This major earthquake triggered several landslides in the region and a large number of which were studied during a recent post-earthquake fieldtrip (22-29 September 2011) to the Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalayas. The fieldwork was planned within four days’ of the event to the worst-affected areas in Sikkim-Darjeeling Himalayas that are accessible by roads. The aim of this study was to rapidly assess the damage caused by these earthquake induced landslides along with collection of the relevant landslide-related attributes for inventory and further study.
Phase-Incremented Steady-State Free Precession as an Alternate Route to High-Resolution NMR

Pulsed Fourier transform nuclear magnetic resonance (FT-NMR) has reigned supreme in high-resolution, high-field spectroscopy—particularly when targeting complex liquid-state samples involving multiple sharp peaks spread over large spectral bandwidths. It is known, however, that if spectral resolution is not a must, the FT-based approach is not necessarily the optimal route for maximizing NMR sensitivity: if T2 ≈ T1, as often found in solutions, Carr’s steady-state free-precession (SSFP) approach can in principle provide a superior signal-to-noise ratio per √(acquisition_time) (SNRt). A rapid train of pulses will then lead to a transverse component that reaches up to 50% of the thermal equilibrium magnetization, provided that pulses are applied at repetition times TR ≪ T2, T1, and that a single suitable offset is involved. It is generally assumed that having to deal with multiple chemical shifts deprives SSFP from its advantages. The present study revisits this assumption by introducing an approach whereby arbitrarily short SSFP-derived free induction decays (FIDs) can deliver high-resolution spectra, without suffering from peak broadenings or phase distortions. To achieve discrimination among nearby frequencies, signals arising from a series of regularly phase-increased excitation pulses are collected. Given SSFP’s amplitude and phase sensitivity to the spins’ offset, this enables the resolution of sites according to their chemical shift position. In addition, the extreme fold-over associated with SSFP acquisitions is dealt with by a customized discrete FT of the interpulse time-domain signal. Solution-state 13C NMR spectra which compare well with FT-NMR data in terms of sensitivity, bandwidth, and resolution can then be obtained.
Nineteenth-century ceramics and consumer behavior among the “mountain folk” of the Upper Cumberland Plateau, Tennessee

ABSTRACT The Massengale site near Rugby, Tennessee was the nineteenth-century residence of one of the earliest white settler families to the Upper Cumberland Plateau of north central Tennessee, the Massengales. Archaeological excavations at their home site and historical document research into the family provided an opportunity to study their lifeways in this remote region. Initially, the Massengale ceramic assemblage appeared unusual, as a vast majority of their ceramics were undecorated. This study includes a comparison of the Massengale’s ceramic assemblage with those from four nearby, contemporary sites. Results indicate that the Massengale’s ceramic assemblage was not as unique as originally believed, and is representative of Appalachian farming families in this part of the Cumberland Plateau. Rather than attributing the lack of decorated ceramics simply to socioeconomic status, this paper examines a number of other factors that likely influenced their choice of ceramics.
Subject-Independent Deep Architecture for EEG-Based Motor Imagery Classification

Motor imagery (MI) classification based on electroencephalogram (EEG) is a widely-used technique in non-invasive brain-computer interface (BCI) systems. Since EEG recordings suffer from heterogeneity across subjects and labeled data insufficiency, designing a classifier that performs the MI independently from the subject with limited labeled samples would be desirable. To overcome these limitations, we propose a novel subject-independent semi-supervised deep architecture (SSDA). The proposed SSDA consists of two parts: an unsupervised and a supervised element. The training set contains both labeled and unlabeled data samples from multiple subjects. First, the unsupervised part, known as the columnar spatiotemporal auto-encoder (CST-AE), extracts latent features from all the training samples by maximizing the similarity between the original and reconstructed data. A dimensional scaling approach is employed to reduce the dimensionality of the representations while preserving their discriminability. Second, a supervised part learns a classifier based on the labeled training samples using the latent features acquired in the unsupervised part. Moreover, we employ center loss in the supervised part to minimize the embedding space distance of each point in a class to its center. The model optimizes both parts of the network in an end-to-end fashion. The performance of the proposed SSDA is evaluated on test subjects who were not seen by the model during the training phase. To assess the performance, we use two benchmark EEG-based MI task datasets. The results demonstrate that SSDA outperforms state-of-the-art methods and that a small number of labeled training samples can be sufficient for strong classification performance.
Impacts of Smartphone Transit Applications on Transit Ridership Applications to Los Angeles County and Berlin

of the Thesis Impacts of Smartphone Transit Applications on Transit Ridership Applications to Los Angeles County and Berlin By Priyoti Ahmed Master of Science in Civil Engineering and Urban and Regional Planning University of California, Irvine 2015 Professor Jean-Daniel Saphores, Chair This research investigates the influence of smart phones applications on transit ridership and transit riders’ behavior in Los Angeles and in Berlin. In Los Angeles County, monthly ridership is observed before and after the emergence of smartphone applications (apps). A fixed effects panel model is estimated to explain monthly ridership using variables that likely affect monthly ridership to estimate the impact of smartphone apps. I find that, train ridership increased by 0.02 due to the emergence of smartphone apps but that bus ridership was not impacted. In Berlin, the effect of smartphone application is captured through various interviews and a survey of students and faculty of Humboldt University. An analysis of the results shows that transit riders mostly seek and value information related to bus, transfer connectivity, and leisure activities.
Mycobacterial FtsEX-RipC interaction is required for normal growth and cell morphology in rifampicin and low ionic strength conditions

ABSTRACT Tuberculosis, a lung disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), remains a major global health problem ranking as the second leading cause of death from a single infectious agent. One of the major factors contributing toward Mtb’s success as a pathogen is its unique cell wall and its ability to counteract various arms of the host’s immune response. A recent genome-scale study profiled a list of candidate genes that are predicted to be essential for Mtb survival of host-mediated responses. One candidate was FtsEX, a protein complex composed of an ATP-binding domain, FtsE, and a transmembrane domain, FtsX. FtsEX functions through interaction with a periplasmic hydrolase, RipC. Homologs of FtsEX exist in other bacteria and have been linked with playing a key role in regulating peptidoglycan hydrolysis during cell elongation and division. Here, we report on Mycobacterium smegmatis, FtsE, FtsX, and RipC and their protective roles in stressful conditions. We demonstrate that the individual genes of FtsEX complex and RipC are not essential for survival in normal growth conditions but conditionally essential in low-salt media and antibiotic-treated media. Growth defects in these conditions were characterized by short and bulgy cells as well as elongated filamentous cells. Our results suggest that FtsE, FtsX, and RipC are required for both normal cell elongation and division and ultimately for survival in stressful conditions. IMPORTANCE Mycobacterial cell growth and division are coordinated with regulated peptidoglycan hydrolysis. Understanding cell wall gene complexes that govern normal cell division and elongation will aid in the development of tools to disarm the ability of mycobacteria to survive immune-like and antibiotic stresses. We combined genetic analyses and scanning electron microscopy to analyze morphological changes of mycobacterial FtsEX and RipC mutants in stressful conditions. We demonstrate that FtsE, FtsX, FtsEX, and RipC are conditionally required for the survival of Mycobacterium smegmatis during rifampicin treatment and in low-salt conditions. Growth defects in these conditions were characterized by short and bulgy cells as well as elongated filamentous cells. We also show that the FtsEX-RipC interaction is essential for the survival of M. smegmatis in rifampicin. Our results suggest that FtsE, FtsX, and RipC are required for normal cell wall regulation and ultimately for survival in stressful conditions.
Comparison of Quality Measures for Building Outline Extraction

To date, numerous automatic building detection methods using lidar data have been developed. However, in most cases the parameters used for the evaluation of the results are not specified, accuracy assessment results cannot be readily compared or no result evaluation is performed at all. In this study, accuracy assessment aspects have been analysed in order to find a generally applicable approach for the comparison of building outline extraction methods. An area‐based evaluation of accuracy has been selected as the most suitable due to its robustness, predictability and comparability between datasets. This assessment can be further supplemented with both object‐ and area‐based evaluations, procured solely with those buildings that were classified as true positives, in order to interpret the extraction results in more detail. In cases where a reference dataset of superior quality (such as low‐altitude aerial imagery) is available, an absolute accuracy evaluation is also relevant.
Protocol for camera-trap surveys of mammals at CTFS-ForestGEO sites

This document outlines procedures for surveying large terrestrial mammals at sites of CTFS-ForestGEO 3, a global network of large Forest Dynamics Plots (FDPs) in which all trees >1 cm diameter are mapped, tagged, identified and monitored. Large terrestrial mammals – here defined as mediumto large-sized mammals, with a body mass >1 kg that spend at least some portion of their daily cycle on ground – are a key component of tropical forest communities. For CTFS-ForestGEO, large mammals are of special interest because they influence the vital rates of plants in multiple ways, such as through pollination, seed dispersal, seed predation and herbivory, through redistribution of nutrients and physical alteration of the abiotic conditions, and by controlling abundances of natural enemies (Power et al. 1996; Dobson et al. 2006). Large mammals can thus have a strong influence role in the composition and structure of vegetation.
Validación del test de Hoff en futbolistas universitarios a 2600 metros sobre el nivel del mar

espanolObjetivo: determinar la validez del test de Hoff para valorar la potencia aerobica de futbolistas universitarios localizados a 2600 metros sobre el nivel del mar. Metodos: se evaluaron 20 futbolistas de genero masculino (edad: 21,5 ± 2,8 anos, peso: 70,7 ± 6,7 Kg, Talla: 174,8 ± 5,8 cm) con un test incremental en banda rodante (laboratorio) con estadio incrementales y el test de Hoff (campo), considerando la distancia maxima recorrida –con balon– durante 10 minutos, en un circuito de 290 metros. En ambas pruebas se evaluo el comportamiento del consumo maximo de oxigeno (VO2), la produccion de dioxido de carbono (VCO2), la frecuencia cardiaca (FC) y la ventilacion maxima (Vmax). Resultados: las correlaciones encontradas entre las variables VO2max (r = 0,854 p EnglishAim: to establish the validity of the Hoff test to assess the aerobic power of University soccer players at 2600 meters above sea level. Methods: 20 male soccer players (age: 21.5 ± 2.8 years, weight: 70.7 ± 6.7 Kg, height: 174.8 ± 5.8 cm) were evaluated with an incremental treadmill test (laboratory test), and the Hoff test (field test), maximum distance –with the ball– in 10 minutes, using a path of 290 meters. Maximum oxygen consumption (VO2max), the CO2 production (VCO2), Heart rate (HR) and maximum ventilation (Vmax) were evaluated in both tests. Results: correlations between the variables VO2max (r = 0.854 p
World Journal of Gastroenterology

Crohn’s disease (CD) is caused by immune, environmental, and genetic factors. It can involve the entire gastrointestinal tract, and although its prevalence is rapidly increasing its etiology remains unclear. Emerging biological and small-molecule drugs have advanced the treatment of CD; however, a considerable proportion of patients are non-responsive to all known drugs. To achieve a breakthrough in this field, innovations that could guide the further development of effective therapies are of utmost urgency. In this review, we first propose the innovative concept of pan-lymphatic dysfunction for the general distribution of lymphatic dysfunction in various diseases, and suggest that CD is the intestinal manifestation of pan-lymphatic dysfunction based on basic and clinical preliminary data. The supporting evidence is fully summarized, including the existence of lymphatic system dysfunction, recognition of the inside-out model, disorders of immune cells, changes in cell plasticity, partial overlap of the underlying mechanisms, and common gut-derived fatty and bile acid metabolism. Another benefit of this novel concept is that it proposes adopting the zebrafish model for studying intestinal diseases, especially CD, as this model is good at presenting and mimicking lymphatic dysfunction. More importantly, the ensuing focus on improving lymphatic function may lead to novel and promising therapeutic strategies for CD.
Neural processing of social reciprocity in autism

Social reciprocity and interpersonal synchrony implicitly mediate social interactions to facilitate natural exchanges. These processes are altered in autism, but it is unclear how such alterations manifest at the neural level during social interaction processing. Using task-based fMRI, we investigated the neural correlates of interpersonal synchrony during basic reciprocal interactions in a preregistered study. Participants communicated with a virtual partner by sending visual signals. Analyses showed comparable activation patterns and experienced synchrony ratings between autistic and non-autistic participants, as well as between interactions with virtual partners who had high or low synchronous responses. An exploratory whole brain analysis for the effect of task revealed significant activation of the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and left anterior inferior parietal lobe (IPL); areas associated with cognitive control, temporal coordination, and action observation. This activation was independent of the virtual partner's response synchrony and was similar for autistic and non-autistic participants. These results provide an initial look into the neural basis of processing social reciprocity in autism, particularly when individuals are part of an interaction, and hint that the neural processing of social reciprocity may be spared in autism when their partners' behavior is predictable.
Pan-cancer analyses reveal molecular and clinical characteristics of TET family members and suggests that TET3 maybe a potential therapeutic target

The ten eleven translation (TET) family genes involve a wide range of biological functions in human cancers. However, few studies have comprehensively analyzed the correlation between TET family members and the molecular phenotypes and clinical characteristics of different cancers. Based on updated public databases and integrated several bioinformatics analysis methods, we evaluated expression level, somatic variation, methylation level, prognostic values of TET family gene and explore the association between expression of TET family genes and pathway activity, TME, stemness score, immune subtype, clinical staging, drug sensitivity in pan-cancer. Molecular biology and cytology experiments were used to validate the potential role of TET3 in tumor progression. Each TET family gene exhibits differentiated expression in at least ten detected tumors. The frequency of single nucleotide variation (SNV) of TETs gene was 91.24%, with most missense mutation type, and the main types of copy number variation (CNV) are heterozygous amplification and deletion. The TET1 gene is highly methylated, while the TET2 and TET3 genes are hypomethylated in most cancers, and that closely related to patient prognosis. Pathway activity analysis shows that the TET family genes are involved in multiple signaling pathways such as cell cycle, apoptosis, DNA damage response, hormone AR, PI3K/AKT, and RTK. In addition, the expression level of TET family genes also affects the clinical stage of tumor patients, increases or inhibits the sensitivity of chemotherapy drugs, and then affects the prognosis of patients by participating in the regulation of tumor microenvironment (TME), cellular stemness potential, and the immune subtype. It is particularly pointed out that TET3 plays a role in promoting cancer progression in various tumors, and silencing TET3 can inhibit tumor malignancy and increase chemotherapy sensitivity. These findings may elucidate the role of TET family genes in cancer progression and provide insights for further research on TET3 as a potential target for pan-cancer.
Multipath parsing in the brain

Humans understand sentences word-by-word, in the order that they hear them. This incrementality entails resolving temporary ambiguities about syntactic relationships. We investigate how humans process these syntactic ambiguities by correlating predictions from incremental generative dependency parsers with timecourse data from people undergoing functional neuroimaging while listening to an audiobook. In particular, we compare competing hypotheses regarding the number of developing syntactic analyses in play during word-by-word comprehension: one vs more than one. This comparison involves evaluating syntactic surprisal from a state-of-the-art dependency parser with LLM-adapted encodings against an existing fMRI dataset. In both English and Chinese data, we find evidence for multipath parsing. Brain regions associated with this multipath effect include bilateral superior temporal gyrus.
Polarized ZZ pairs in gluon fusion and vector boson fusion at the LHC

Pair production of helicity-polarized weak bosons $(V_\lambda=W^\pm_\lambda, Z_\lambda)$ from gluon fusion $(gg\to V_\lambda V'_{\lambda'})$ and weak boson fusion $(V_1V_2\to V_\lambda V'_{\lambda'})$ are powerful probes of the Standard Model, new physics, and properties of quantum systems. Measuring cross sections of polarized processes is a chief objective of the Large Hadron Collider's (LHC) Run 3 and high luminosity programs, but is limited by the simulation tools that are presently available. We propose a method for computing polarized cross sections that works by directly modifying Feynman rules instead of (squared) amplitudes. The method is applicable to loop-induced computations and includes both interference and off-shell effects. As a demonstration, we report the prospect of observing and studying polarized $Z_\lambda Z_{\lambda'}$ pairs when produced via gluon fusion and electroweak processes in final-states with four charged leptons at the LHC. Our Feynman rules are publicly available as a set of Universal FeynRules Object libraries called SM_Loop_VPolar.
SpeechComposer: Unifying Multiple Speech Tasks with Prompt Composition

Recent advancements in language models have significantly enhanced performance in multiple speech-related tasks. Existing speech language models typically utilize task-dependent prompt tokens to unify various speech tasks in a single model. However, this design omits the intrinsic connections between different speech tasks, which can potentially boost the performance of each task. In this work, we propose a novel decoder-only speech language model, SpeechComposer, that can unify common speech tasks by composing a fixed set of prompt tokens. Built upon four primary tasks -- speech synthesis, speech recognition, speech language modeling, and text language modeling -- SpeechComposer can easily extend to more speech tasks via compositions of well-designed prompt tokens, like voice conversion and speech enhancement. The unification of prompt tokens also makes it possible for knowledge sharing among different speech tasks in a more structured manner. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed SpeechComposer can improve the performance of both primary tasks and composite tasks, showing the effectiveness of the shared prompt tokens. Remarkably, the unified decoder-only model achieves a comparable and even better performance than the baselines which are expert models designed for single tasks.
A Scoping Study of Evaluation Practices for Responsible AI Tools: Steps Towards Effectiveness Evaluations

Responsible design of AI systems is a shared goal across HCI and AI communities. Responsible AI (RAI) tools have been developed to support practitioners to identify, assess, and mitigate ethical issues during AI development. These tools take many forms (e.g., design playbooks, software toolkits, documentation protocols). However, research suggests that use of RAI tools is shaped by organizational contexts, raising questions about how effective such tools are in practice. To better understand how RAI tools are -- and might be -- evaluated, we conducted a qualitative analysis of 37 publications that discuss evaluations of RAI tools. We find that most evaluations focus on usability, while questions of tools' effectiveness in changing AI development are sidelined. While usability evaluations are an important approach to evaluate RAI tools, we draw on evaluation approaches from other fields to highlight developer- and community-level steps to support evaluations of RAI tools' effectiveness in shaping AI development practices and outcomes.