Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
PAT-Questions: A Self-Updating Benchmark for Present-Anchored Temporal Question-Answering

Existing work on Temporal Question Answering (TQA) has predominantly focused on questions anchored to specific timestamps or events (e.g."Who was the US president in 1970? "). Little work has studied questions whose temporal context is relative to the present time (e.g."Who was the previous US president? "). We refer to this problem as Present-Anchored Temporal QA (PATQA). PATQA poses unique challenges: (1) large language models (LLMs) may have outdated knowledge, (2) complex temporal relationships (e.g. 'before', 'previous') are hard to reason, (3) multi-hop reasoning may be required, and (4) the gold answers of benchmarks must be continuously updated. To address these challenges, we introduce the PAT-Questions benchmark, which includes single and multi-hop temporal questions. The answers in PAT-Questions can be automatically refreshed by re-running SPARQL queries on a knowledge graph, if available. We evaluate several state-of-the-art LLMs and a SOTA temporal reasoning model (TEMPREASON-T5) on PAT-Questions through direct prompting and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). The results highlight the limitations of existing solutions in PATQA and motivate the need for new methods to improve PATQA reasoning capabilities.
Integrality ratio for group Steiner trees and directed steiner trees

We present an Ω(log2k) lower bound on the integrality ratio of the flow-based relaxation for the Group Steiner Tree problem, where k denotes the number of groups; this holds even for input graphs that are Hierarchically Well-Separated Trees, introduced by Bartal [Symp. Foundations of Computer Science, pp. 184--193, 1996], in which case this lower bound is tight. This relaxation appears to be the only one that have been studied for the problem, as well as for its generalization, the Directed Steiner Tree problem. For the latter problem, our results imply an Ω(log2n/(log logn)2) integrality ratio, where n is the number of vertices in the graph. For both problems, this is the first known lower bound on the integrality ratio that is superlogarithmic in the input size. We also show algorithmically that the integrality ratio for Group Steiner Tree is much better for certain families of instances, which helps pinpoint the types of instances that appear to be most difficult to approximate.
The Art of Learning to Teach: Preservice Teacher Narratives

Introduction. 1. Beginning the Inquiry: Documenting the Journey of Professional Learning. SECTION I. CREATING A PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY: CONNECTING THE PERSONAL AND THE PROFESSIONAL. 2. Making Room for the Aesthete: Accommodating the Self in Teaching. 3. Believing in the Self: Teaching and Individual Talent. 4. Synthesizing Hyacinths and Biscuits: Creating the Artist-Teacher. 5. Learning Self-Respect and Self-Worth: Professional Learning and Personal Past Experience. SECTION II. CREATING RELATIONSHIPS AND MAKING NEW RELATIONS: LEARNING FROM AND WITH OTHERS. 6. Some Experience of a Lifelong Learner: Teachers I Have Known. 7. Making Connections: Creating New Relationships. 8. Creating Relationships: Learning from and with Students in the Classroom. 9. The Community in the Classroom. SECTION III. CREATING NEW NARRATIVES: CONNECTING SELF, SCHOOL, AND SOCIETY. 10. Teaching Transformations: Merging Self and Teacher. 11. Confronting Challenge with Creativity, Collegiality, and Compassion. 12. Creating Community: Seeking Common Ground. 13. Writing a Narrative. 14. Contributing to the Existing Literature. References.
Distributed under Creative Commons Cc-by 4.0 Evidence-based Recommendations on Storing and Handling Specimens for Analyses of Insect Microbiota

Research on insect microbiota has greatly expanded over the past decade, along with a growing appreciation of the microbial contributions to insect ecology and evolution. Many of these studies use DNA sequencing to characterize the diversity and composition of insect-associated microbial communities. The choice of strategies used for specimen collection, storage, and handling could introduce biases in molecular assessments of insect microbiota, but such potential influences have not been systematically evaluated. Likewise, although it is common practice to surface sterilize insects prior to DNA extraction, it is not known if this time-consuming step has any effect on microbial community analyses. To resolve these methodological unknowns, we conducted an experiment wherein replicate individual insects of four species were stored intact for two months using five different methods—freezing, ethanol, dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), cetrimonium bromide (CTAB), and room-temperature storage without preservative—and then subjected to whole-specimen 16S rRNA gene sequencing to assess whether the structure of the insect-associated bacterial communities was impacted by these different storage strategies. Overall, different insect species harbored markedly distinct bacterial communities, a pattern that was highly robust to the method used to store samples. Storage method had little to no effect on assessments of microbiota composition, and the magnitude of the effect differed among the insect species examined. No single method emerged as " best, " i.e., one consistently having the highest similarity in community structure to control specimens, which were not stored prior to homogenization and DNA sequencing. We also found that surface sterilization did not change bacterial community structure as compared to unsterilized insects, presumably due to the vastly greater microbial biomass inside the insect body relative to its surface. We therefore recommend that researchers can use any of the methods tested here, and base their choice according to practical considerations such as prior use, cost, and availability in the field, although we still advise that all samples within a study be handled in an identical manner when possible. We also suggest that, in large-scale molecular studies of hundreds of insect specimens, surface sterilization may not be worth the time and effort involved. This information should help researchers design sampling strategies and will facilitate cross-comparisons and meta-analyses of microbial community data obtained from insect specimens preserved in different ways. How to cite this article Hammer et al. (2015), Evidence-based recommendations on storing and handling specimens for analyses of insect microbiota.
Syndecan-4 Modulates Focal Adhesion Kinase Phosphorylation*

The cell-surface heparan sulfate proteoglycan syndecan-4 acts in conjunction with the α5β1 integrin to promote the formation of actin stress fibers and focal adhesions in fibronectin (FN)-adherent cells. Fibroblasts seeded onto the cell-binding domain (CBD) fragment of FN attach but do not fully spread or form focal adhesions. Activation of Rho, with lysophosphatidic acid (LPA), or protein kinase C, using the phorbol ester phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate, or clustering of syndecan-4 with antibodies directed against its extracellular domain will stimulate formation of focal adhesions and stress fibers in CBD-adherent fibroblasts. The distinct morphological differences between the cells adherent to the CBD and to full-length FN suggest that syndecan-4 may influence the organization of the focal adhesion or the activation state of the proteins that comprise it. FN-null fibroblasts (which express syndecan-4) exhibit reduced phosphorylation of focal adhesion kinase (FAK) tyrosine 397 (Tyr397) when adherent to CBD compared with FN-adherent cells. Treating the CBD-adherent fibroblasts with LPA, to activate Rho, or the tyrosine phosphatase inhibitor sodium vanadate increased the level of phosphorylation of Tyr397 to match that of cells plated on FN. Treatment of the fibroblasts with PMA did not elicit such an effect. To confirm that this regulatory pathway includes syndecan-4 specifically, we examined fibroblasts derived from syndecan-4-null mice. The phosphorylation levels of FAK Tyr397 were lower in FN-adherent syndecan-4-null fibroblasts compared with syndecan-4-wild type and these levels were rescued by the addition of LPA or re-expression of syndecan-4. These data indicate that syndecan-4 ligation regulates the phosphorylation of FAK Tyr397 and that this mechanism is dependent on Rho but not protein kinase C activation. In addition, the data suggest that this pathway includes the negative regulation of a protein-tyrosine phosphatase. Our results implicate syndecan-4 activation in a direct role in focal adhesion regulation.
Theoretical evaluation of electron delocalization in aromatic molecules by means of atoms in molecules (AIM) and electron localization function (ELF) topological approaches.

Benzene is the emblematic example of an aromatic molecule, and the problem of its structure has given rise to a chemical serial story running over several decades. The epistemological digest of this story written by Stephen G. Brush1,2 shows how this problem has been at the root of important concepts such as those of mesomery and resonance. Before the advent of quantum mechanics, chemists had thought of the benzene structures in terms of two center bonds attempting to preserve the valence of the carbon atom and to explain its chemical properties. Kekulé’s theory of the structure of the benzene molecule3 invokes the oscillatory hypothesis in which “the fourth valence of each carbon oscillates between its neighbors, synchronously with all the other fourth valences, so that the structure switches rapidly between the two structures”,1 whereas Claus proposed a diagonal hypothesis4 in which the fourth valence of each carbon is directed toward the carbon in the para position. The latter hypothesis has been rejected because it enables only two derivatives, and it has been revised to remove this inconsistency: instead of forming a bond, the fourth valence stops near the center of the ring in the Armstrong-Baeyer formula,5 or there is only one bridging bond as in the Dewar’s bridged benzene formula.6 In Thiele’s partial valence model,7 the adjacent carbon-carbon bonds are considered as intermediate between single and double bonds. These formulas were later considered by K. C. Ingold to set up his intra-annular tautomerism,8 which appears to be the generalization of Kekulé’s oscillatory hypothesis. Ingold’s tautomerism hypothesis was later called mesomerism.9 The mesomery is an important concept in chemistry, which implicitly introduces the electron delocalization in the context of the prequantum electronic theory. The first applications of quantum chemistry to the benzene problem led on the molecular orbital (MO) side Erich Hückel to propose his famous 4n + 2 rule10 and on the valence bond (VB) side Pauling and Wheland to identify resonance with Ingold’s mesomerism.11,12 An enlighting contribution of modern VB theory on the benzene structure has been brought by Shaik et al.,13 who have shown that the hexagonal symmetry of benzene is due to the σ-system because the π component is distortive along a Kekulean distortion. * Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed (telephone +34-972-418912; fax +34-972-418356; e-mail miquel.sola@ udg.es or silvi@lct.jussieu.fr). ‡ Universitat de Girona. § Université Pierre et Marie Curie. 3911 Chem. Rev. 2005, 105, 3911−3947
Rationale for Implementation of Warm Cardiac Surgery in Pediatrics

Cardiac surgery was developed thanks to the introduction of hypothermia and cardiopulmonary bypass in the early 1950s. The deep hypothermia protective effect has been essential to circulatory arrest complex cases repair. During the early times of open-heart surgery, a major concern was to decrease mortality and to improve short-term outcomes. Both mortality and morbidity dramatically decreased over a few decades. As a consequence, the drawbacks of deep hypothermia, with or without circulatory arrest, became more and more apparent. The limitation of hypothermia was particularly evident for the brain and regional perfusion was introduced as a response to this problem. Despite a gain in popularity, the results of regional perfusion were not fully convincing. In the 1990s, warm surgery was introduced in adults and proved to be safe and reliable. This option eliminates the deleterious effect of ischemia–reperfusion injuries through a continuous, systemic coronary perfusion with warm oxygenated blood. Intermittent warm blood cardioplegia was introduced later, with impressive results. We were convinced by the easiness, safety, and efficiency of warm surgery and shifted to warm pediatric surgery in a two-step program. This article outlines the limitations of hypothermic protection and the basic reasons that led us to implement pediatric warm surgery. After tens of thousands of cases performed across several centers, this reproducible technique proved a valuable alternative to hypothermic surgery.
Leveraging phonetic context dependent invariant structure for continuous speech recognition

Speech acoustics intrinsically vary due to linguistic and non-linguistic factors. The invariant structure extracted from a given utterance is one of the long-span acoustic representations, where acoustic variation caused by non-linguistic factors can be removed reasonably. It expresses spectral contrasts between acoustic events in an utterance. In previous studies, the invariant structure was leveraged in continuous speech recognition for reranking the N-best candidates hypothesized by a traditional automatic speech recognition (ASR) system. Use of the invariant structure features for reranking showed good effects, however, the features were defined or labeled in a phonetic-context-independent way. In this paper, use of phonetic context to define invariant structure features is examined. The proposed method is tested in two tasks of continuous digits speech recognition and large vocabulary continuous speech recognition (LVCSR). The performances are improved relatively by 4.7% and 1.2%, respectively.
Galaxy Morphology Through Texture Analysis

Galaxy Morphology is the study of how a galaxy form its shape and how the morphology relates to its evolutionary history. The goal of my thesis is to derive a quantitative, rich, and physically meaningful description of galaxy morphology, particularly, the description of bar and spiral structure of a galaxy, so that astronomers can study, with much higher efficiency and accuracy, the relationship between the morphological properties of galaxies and the local environment with which they interact, such as local density of galaxies, and other features of galaxies, such as redshift. We will gain insight into how galaxies evolve by investigating such relationships. Modern studies of galaxy morphology began in 1920’s when Edwin Hubble, based on his observation of galaxies, proposed a classification scheme. (see section 2.1). He tried to relate a galaxy’s morphological type to its evolutionary stage, but his proposed relationship is now believed to be wrong. Nevertheless, the attempt to understand the evolutionary history of galaxies from their morphology has continued . Recent advances in telescope and theory of galaxy evolution have given new momentum to the research in galaxy morphology. The Hubble Space Telescope has taken very deep snapshots of the sky, revealing galaxies down to unprecedentedly faint levels. Meanwhile, new hypothesis on Dark Matter opens a new door to understand the evolution of galaxies and the Universe. (see section 2). In addition, the modern large scale sky surveys like Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), have been producing enormous number of galaxy images along with other data which allow cosmologists to study the evolutionary history of galaxies. A main problem in studying galaxy morphology is that we do not have an objective and quantitative description of morphological properties. Hubble’s scheme and its extensions are subjective. Apart from their imprecision in categorizing galaxies, it is also not suitable for study enormous amount of digital images from the modern sky surveys. Hence a quantitative scheme is needed to conduct research on galaxy morphology. There are attempts to describe Galaxy images using different measures, like Bulge-to-Disk ratio and Principal Components. (see section 2.2) which however cannot give sufficiently rich description of galaxy morphology, e.g. they cannot distinct subcategories of spiral structure.
Cancer Management and Research Dovepress Clinical Utility of Rapidarc Tm Radiotherapy Technology

RapidArc TM is a radiation technique that delivers highly conformal dose distributions through the complete rotation (360°) and speed variation of the linear accelerator gantry. This technique, called volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT), compared with conventional radiotherapy techniques, can achieve high-target volume coverage and sparing damage to normal tissues. RapidArc delivers precise dose distribution and conformity similar to or greater than intensity-modulated radiation therapy in a short time, generally a few minutes, to which image-guided radiation therapy is added. RapidArc has become a currently used technology in many centers, which use RapidArc technology to treat a large number of patients. Large and small hospitals use it to treat the most challenging cases, but more and more frequently for the most common cancers. The clinical use of RapidArc and VMAT technology is constantly growing. At present, a limited number of clinical data are published, mostly concerning planning and feasibility studies. Clinical outcome data are increasing for a few tumor sites, even if only a little. The purpose of this work is to discuss the current status of VMAT techniques in clinical use through a review of the published data of planning systems and clinical outcomes in several tumor sites. The study consisted of a systematic review based on analysis of manuscripts retrieved from the PubMed, BioMed Central, and Scopus databases by searching for the keywords " RapidArc " , " Volumetric modulated arc radiotherapy " , and " Intensity-modulated radiotherapy " .
Children's Health and Social Mobility

Children from low-income families are more likely than other children to have serious health problems. And, as Anne Case and Christina Paxson show, childhood health problems can prevent poor children from achieving economic success as adults. Income-related disparities in childhood health are evident at birth or even before, and the disparities grow more pronounced as children grow older. Not only do poor children have more severe health problems than wealthier children, but they fare less well than wealthier children who have the same problems. They also receive less and lower-quality medical care for their problems. And poor families may be less well equipped to manage their children's health problems, which could worsen their effects. The available U.S. data sets do not allow researchers to track individuals' health and economic well-being from birth into adulthood, but three British data sets are producing growing evidence that health in childhood is a determinant of educational attainment, which in turn affects adults' employment opportunities and wages. Children in poor health are also more likely to have poor health as adults, and their health as adults adversely affects their economic status. Case and Paxson note that eliminating income-related disparities in health problems in childhood would do little to reduce earnings disparities between richer and poorer adults. However, they emphasize that, for children in poor health, improvement in physical condition in childhood would lead to substantial improvement in economic circumstances. The authors cite several areas, including expanded prenatal care, maternal smoking cessation programs, and nutrition programs, as deserving particular attention. They contend that increased access to health care is not sufficient to improve children's health. The next wave of policies should focus on improving the quality of health care and strengthening the ability of parents to manage their children's health problems.
Pairs Trading: Quantitative Methods and Analysis

Preface. Acknowledgments. PART ONE: BACKGROUND MATERIAL. Chapter 1. Introduction. The CAPM Model. Market Neutral Strategy. Pairs Trading. Outline. Audience. Chapter 2. Time Series. Overview. Autocorrelation. Time Series Models. Forecasting. Goodness of Fit versus Bias. Model Choice. Modeling Stock Prices. Chapter 3. Factor Models. Introduction. Arbitrage Pricing Theory. The Covariance Matrix. Application: Calculating the Risk on a Portfolio. Application: Calculation of Portfolio Beta. Application: Tracking Basket Design. Sensitivity Analysis. Chapter 4. Kalman Filtering. Introduction. The Kalman Filter. The Scalar Kalman Filter. Filtering the Random Walk. Application: Example with the Standard & Poor Index. PART TWO: STATISTICAL ARBITRAGE. Chapter 5. Overview. History. Motivation. Cointegration. Applying the Model. A Trading Strategy. Road Map for Strategy Design. Chapter 6. Pairs Selection in Equity Markets. Introduction. Common Trends Cointegration Model. Common Trends Model and APT. The Distance Measure. Interpreting the Distance Measure. Reconciling Theory and Practice. Chapter 7. Testing for Tradability. Introduction. The Linear Relationship. Estimating the Linear Relationship: The Multifactor Approach. Estimating the Linear Relationship: The Regression Approach. Testing Residual for Tradability. Chapter 8. Trading Design. Introduction. Band Design for White Noise. Spread Dynamics. Nonparametric Approach. Regularization. Tying Up Loose Ends. PART THREE: RISK ARBITRAGE PAIRS. Chapter 9. Risk Arbitrage Mechanics. Introduction. History. The Deal Process. Transaction Terms. The Deal Spread. Trading Strategy. Quantitative Aspects. Chapter 10. Trade Execution. Introduction. Specifying the Order. Verifying the Execution. Execution During the Pricing Period. Short Selling. Chapter 11. The Market Implied Merger Probability. Introduction. Implied Probabilities and Arrow-Debreu Theory. The Single-Step Model. The Multistep Model. Reconciling Theory and Practice. Risk Management. Chapter 12. Spread Inversion. Introduction. The Prediction Equation. The Observation Equation. Applying the Kalman Filter. Model Selection. Applications to Trading. Index.
The More You Look, the More You See: Towards General Object Understanding Through Recursive Refinement

Comprehensive object understanding is a central challenge in visual recognition, yet most advances with deep neural networks reason about each aspect in isolation. In this work, we present a unified framework to tackle this broader object understanding problem. We formalize a refinement module that recursively develops understanding across space and semantics - "the more it looks, the more it sees. " More concretely, we cluster the objects within each semantic category into fine-grained subcategories; our recursive model extracts features for each region of interest, recursively predicts the location and the content of the region, and selectively chooses a small subset of the regions to process in the next step. Our model can quickly determine if an object is present, followed by its class ("Is this a person? "), and finally report finegrained predictions ("Is this person standing? "). Our experiments demonstrate the advantages of joint reasoning about spatial layout and fine-grained semantics. On the PASCAL VOC dataset, our proposed model simultaneously achieves strong performance on instance segmentation, part segmentation and keypoint detection in a single efficient pipeline that does not require explicit training for each task. One of the reasons for our strong performance is the ability to naturally leverage highly-engineered architectures, such as Faster-RCNN, within our pipeline. Source code is available at https://github.com/ jingyanw/recursive-refinement.