Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Observational calibration of the projection factor of Cepheids - II. Application to nine Cepheids with HST/FGS parallax measurements

The distance to pulsating stars is classically estimated using the parallax-of-pulsation (PoP) method, which combines spectroscopic radial velocity measurements and angular diameter estimates to derive the distance of the star. An important application of this method is the determination of Cepheid distances, in view of the calibration of their distance scale. However, the conversion of radial to pulsational velocities in the PoP method relies on a poorly calibrated parameter, the projection factor (p-factor). We aim to measure empirically the value of the p-factors of a homogeneous sample of nine Galactic Cepheids for which trigonometric parallaxes were measured with the Hubble Space Telescope Fine Guidance Sensor. We use the SPIPS algorithm, a robust implementation of the PoP method that combines photometry, interferometry, and radial velocity measurements in a global modeling of the pulsation. We obtained new interferometric angular diameters using the PIONIER instrument at the Very Large Telescope Interferometer, completed by data from the literature. Using the known distance as an input, we derive the value of the p-factor and study its dependence with the pulsation period. We find the following p-factors: 1.20 $\pm$ 0.12 for RT Aur, 1.48 $\pm$ 0.18 for T Vul, 1.14 $\pm$ 0.10 for FF Aql, 1.31 $\pm$ 0.19 for Y Sgr, 1.39 $\pm$ 0.09 for X Sgr, 1.35 $\pm$ 0.13 for W Sgr, 1.36 $\pm$ 0.08 for $\beta$ Dor, 1.41 $\pm$ 0.10 for $\zeta$ Gem, and 1.23 $\pm$ 0.12 for $\ell$ Car. These values are consistently close to p = 1.324 $\pm$ 0.024. We observe some dispersion around this average value, but the observed distribution is statistically consistent with a constant value of the p-factor as a function of the pulsation period. The error budget of our determination of the p-factor values is presently dominated by the uncertainty on the parallax, a limitation that will soon be waived by Gaia.
Integrated Perception and Planning for Autonomous Vehicle Navigation: An Optimization-based Approach

We propose an optimization-based integrated perception and planning framework for autonomous vehicle navigation that achieves real-time state estimation and path planning with high accuracy and robustness. Our Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) module is based on Error-State Extended Kalman Filter (ES-EKF) for LiDAR-Inertial sensor fusion. The SLAM system generates a cost map using Euclidean Distance Transform (EDT) that directly encodes environmental constraints as a cost map. A non-linear trajectory optimization problem is formulated with the cost function and solved in real-time using the direct collocation approach. Our results on the KITTI dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework.
Anthraquinone Derivatives and Other Aromatic Compounds from Marine Fungus Asteromyces cruciatus KMM 4696 and Their Effects against Staphylococcus aureus

New anthraquinone derivatives acruciquinones A–C (1–3), together with ten known metabolites, were isolated from the obligate marine fungus Asteromyces cruciatus KMM 4696. Acruciquinone C is the first member of anthraquinone derivatives with a 6/6/5 backbone. The structures of isolated compounds were established based on NMR and MS data. The absolute stereoconfigurations of new acruciquinones A–C were determined using ECD and quantum chemical calculations (TDDFT approach). A plausible biosynthetic pathway of the novel acruciquinone C was proposed. Compounds 1–4 and 6–13 showed a significant antimicrobial effects against Staphylococcus aureus growth, and acruciquinone A (1), dendryol B (4), coniothyrinone B (7), and ω-hydroxypachybasin (9) reduced the activity of a key staphylococcal enzyme, sortase A. Moreover, the compounds, excluding 4, inhibited urease activity. We studied the effects of anthraquinones 1, 4, 7, and 9 and coniothyrinone D (6) in an in vitro model of skin infection when HaCaT keratinocytes were cocultivated with S. aureus. Anthraquinones significantly reduce the negative impact of S. aureus on the viability, migration, and proliferation of infected HaCaT keratinocytes, and acruciquinone A (1) revealed the most pronounced effect.
New results on restricted static output feedback controller design with regional pole placement

This study addresses the design of static output feedback (SOF) controller for continuous time linear systems. New sufficient conditions are derived for designing SOF controllers. The development involves suitable decomposition of Lyapunov matrices and deriving linear matrix inequality (LMI) criterion that ensures H ∞ performance. LMI criteria for pole placement in the LMI region are also derived. The proposed criteria can be used for restricted SOF controller design effectively. Several numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed results.
Nickel limitation and zinc toxicity in a urea‐grown diatom

When growing on urea as a nitrogen source, diatoms must accumulate nickel (Ni), a cofactor in the urease enzyme, which hydrolyzes urea. The uptake of Ni at low ambient concentrations is particularly challenging in view of the slow rate of reaction of the Ni2+ ion with uptake ligands. As expected, cultures of the model diatoms Thalassiosira weissflogii and Thalassiosira pseudonana become limited at very low Ni concentrations when growing on urea but not on nitrate or ammonium as a nitrogen source. At high Ni concentrations, urea‐grown cultures of T. weissflogii exhibit similar accumulation of various other metals to nitrate‐grown cultures and the same sensitivity to zinc and copper (Zn and Cu) concentrations. But at low Ni concentrations, T. weissflogii cells growing on urea accumulate excess Zn and exhibit extreme sensitivity to Zn toxicity. It appears that Zn accumulates in cells growing at low Ni concentrations by uptake through the up‐regulated Ni transport system. The resulting sensitivity of Ni‐limited cells to Zn (or to other metals that may be taken up via the Ni transport system) may limit the use of urea as a source of nitrogen in the oceans by some phytoplankton species.
Reinforcement Learning of TSP Heuristics with Message Passing Neural Networks

The TSP is a hard combinatorial optimization problem, which requires heuristics to be solved in practice. We create two types of reinforcement learning environments that allow an agent to find feasible solutions for this problem, which correspond to two different approaches to design TSP heuristics. These environments represent the current state of the solution as graphs, so we employ graph neural networks to control our agents. These graphs are dense and contain multidimensional edge attributes. We find that existing graph attention layers struggle to extract information from these edge attributes, and implement an extension which overcomes these problems.
Efficacy versus safety: the dilemma of using novel platelet inhibitors for the treatment of patients with ischemic stroke and coronary artery disease

: Coronary and cerebrovascular atherothrombosis are the leading cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide. Novel antiplatelet agents have been established for the management of patients with clinically evident coronary atherothrombosis and are increasingly used in these patients. These agents, however, have shown limited efficacy in the prevention of cerebrovascular events and potential harm in patients with history of stroke or transient ischemic attack. Herein, the efficacy and safety of two established antiplatelet agents in patients with stroke – aspirin and clopidogrel – are reviewed with a focus on the use and challenges related to novel antiplatelet agents – prasugrel, ticagrelor, and vorapaxar – in patients at risk for and with a history of stroke or transient ischemic attack.
UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL WORK SOCI AL CAPITAL FORMATION AMONG WOMEN GROUPS IN N AIROBI COUNTY: ITS EFFECTS ON GROUP PERFORMANCE ̂ BY:

The purpose of the study was to identify the factors that are associated with relatively good performance of women groups in Kenya, in particular those associated with the growing literature on social capital. The study was guided by the following objectives; to examine the characteristics of the groups and their members: to examine support sendees are used among the groups which influence group performance; to establish the group members' perceived and actual benefits from their group; to determine the levels of social capital formation in the self help groups and lastly to determine the levels of overall group performance. The target population included 16 women groups in Kibera, Nairobi County. These were groups assisted by Faulu Kenya and Action Now Kenya. For this study a sample of 5 groups was selected using purposive sampling design. The study adapted a descriptive research study design. Each group had an average of 9 members. The key informants were 2 officials from Faulu Kenya and 2 officials from Action Now Kenya. Both questionnaire and in depth interview's were used as data collection instruments. The raw data was computed using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS). From the findings and discussions, the study concludes that successful women groups in Kibera use social capital resources in their day to day operations. Social capital is articulated and utilized in forms of networks, relationships, norms, values and collective action to facilitate the daily operations of the women groups. Women groups w'hich perform better will had higher levels of social capital than those which had lower levels of social capital. Groups must of necessity be formed of homogeneous membership. This will occur if groups are formed around some concrete specific problem of interest. The study also concludes that the levels of social capital were determined by latent variables or factors among observed variables, these are characteristics of the groups and their
A limited sampling strategy for estimating mycophenolic acid area under the curve in adult heart transplant patients treated with concomitant cyclosporine

Objective: Heart transplantation studies have shown a relationship between the mycophenolic acid area under the curve (AUC) 0–12 h (MPA AUC0–12h) values and risk of acute rejection episodes and fewer side‐effects in patient receiving cyclosporine during the first year post‐transplant. However, measurement of full AUC is costly and time consuming and in this case it is an impractical approach to drug monitoring. Therefore, the authors describe a limited sampling strategy to estimate the MPA AUC0–12h value in adult heart transplant recipients.
Generative adversarial networks for scintillation signal simulation in EXO-200

: Generative Adversarial Networks trained on samples of simulated or actual events have been proposed as a way of generating large simulated datasets at a reduced computational cost. In this work, a novel approach to perform the simulation of photodetector signals from the time projection chamber of the EXO-200 experiment is demonstrated. The method is based on a Wasserstein Generative Adversarial Network — a deep learning technique allowing for implicit non-parametric estimation of the population distribution for a given set of objects. Our network is trained on real calibration data using raw scintillation waveforms as input. We find that it is able to produce high-quality simulated waveforms an order of magnitude faster than the traditional simulation approach and, importantly, generalize from the training sample and discern salient high-level features of the data. In particular, the network correctly deduces position dependency of scintillation light response in the detector and correctly recognizes dead photodetector channels. The network output is then integrated into the EXO-200 analysis framework to show that the standard EXO-200 reconstruction routine processes the simulated waveforms to produce energy distributions comparable to that of real waveforms. Finally, the remaining discrepancies and potential ways to improve the approach further are highlighted.
Goldstone Radar Observations of Horseshoe-orbiting Near-Earth Asteroid 2013 BS45, a Potential Mission Target

We report radar observations of near-Earth asteroid 2013 BS45 obtained during the 2013 apparition. This object is in a resonant, Earth-like orbit, and it is a backup target for NASA’s NEA Scout mission. 2013 BS45 belongs to the Arjuna orbital domain, which currently has ∼20 discovered representatives. These objects tend to be small and difficult to characterize, and 2013 BS45 is only the third Arjuna object observed with radar to date. We observed 2013 BS45 on three days at Goldstone (8560 MHz, 3.5 cm) between 2013 February 10 and 13. The closest approach occurred on February 12 at a distance of 0.0126 au. We obtained relatively weak echo power spectra and ranging data at resolutions up to 0.125 μs (18.75 m px−1). The Doppler broadening of the echo power spectra strongly suggests an upper bound on the rotation period of 1.9 minutes. The radar data, in combination with an assumption that the asteroid’s radar albedo is no higher than that of metallic NEA 1986 DA, constrain the equivalent diameter to 15 m ≤ D ≤ 38 m. The circular polarization ratio is 0.21 ± 0.06, which implies a near-surface that is relatively smooth on decimeter spatial scales. We bounded the OC radar albedo to ηOC ≥ 0.09 and the optical albedo remains relatively unconstrained at 0.05 ≤ pV ≤ 0.35. The Yarkovsky acceleration has not been detected but, due to the object’s rapid rotation, would be dominated by a seasonal component whose direction and magnitude depends on the currently unknown pole orientation and thermal inertia.
The Prevalence of and Factors Associated with Neck, Shoulder, and Low-Back Pains among Medical Students at University Hospitals in Central Saudi Arabia

Aim The study aim was to determine the prevalence of neck, shoulder, and low-back pains and to explore the factors associated with musculoskeletal pain (MSP) among medical students at university hospitals in central Saudi Arabia. Method This cross-sectional study was conducted at a government institution using an online self-administered, modified version of the Standardised Nordic Questionnaire in the English language. Results A total of 469 students responded to our survey. The prevalence of MSP in at least one body site at any time, in the past week, and in the past year was 85.3%, 54.4%, and 81.9%, respectively. Factors significantly associated with MSP in at least one body site at any time were being in the clinical year (P = 0.032), history of trauma (P = 0.036), history of depressive symptoms (P < 0.001), and history of psychosomatic symptoms (P < 0.001). On multivariable regression analysis, factors associated with MSP were history of trauma (P = 0.016) and depressive (P = 0.002) or psychosomatic symptoms (P = 0.004). Conclusion MSP among Saudi medical students is high, particularly among those in the clinical years and those with history of trauma and with depressive or psychosomatic symptoms. Medical institutions should be aware of this serious health issue and preventive measures are warranted.
Bayesian Estimation of Surface Information from Radar Images

BAYESIAN ESTIMATION OF SURFACE INFORMATION FROM RADAR IMAGES MAY 1993 KEITH DAVID HARTT, B.S.E.E. , UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS M.S.E.E. , UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS Directed by: Professor Donald Geman The dissertation presents a method for deriving the shape of a surface from a radar image of the surface. An appropriate model of radar image formation is derived from physical principles. A Bayesian formulation of the inversion problem is developed upon which a computational strategy is based. Theoretical results on random surfaces relevant to the prior distribution are presented, and convergence and optimality properties of a new sampling algorithm are described. The technique is applied to Magellan data of Venus.
Variable rates of hybridization among contact zones between a pair of topminnow species, Fundulus notatus and F. olivaceus

Abstract Pairs of species that exhibit broadly overlapping distributions, and multiple geographically isolated contact zones, provide opportunities to investigate the mechanisms of reproductive isolation. Such naturally replicated systems have demonstrated that hybridization rates can vary substantially among populations, raising important questions about the genetic basis of reproductive isolation. The topminnows, Fundulus notatus and F. olivaceus, are reciprocally monophyletic, and co‐occur in drainages throughout much of the central and southern United States. Hybridization rates vary substantially among populations in isolated drainage systems. We employed genome‐wide sampling to investigate geographic variation in hybridization, and to assess the possible importance of chromosome fusions to reproductive isolation among nine separate contact zones. The species differ by chromosomal rearrangements resulting from Robertsonian (Rb) fusions, so we hypothesized that Rb fusion chromosomes would serve as reproductive barriers, exhibiting steeper genomic clines than the rest of the genome. We observed variation in hybridization dynamics among drainages that ranged from nearly random mating to complete absence of hybridization. Contrary to predictions, our use of genomic cline analyses on mapped species‐diagnostic SNP markers did not indicate consistent patterns of variable introgression across linkage groups, or an association between Rb fusions and genomic clines that would be indicative of reproductive isolation. We did observe a relationship between hybridization rates and population phylogeography, with the lowest rates of hybridization tending to be found in populations inferred to have had the longest histories of drainage sympatry. Our results, combined with previous studies of contact zones between the species, support population history as an important factor in explaining variation in hybridization rates.
Mechanisms underlying the Effects of Heat Stress on Intestinal Integrity, Inflammation, and Microbiota in Chickens

ABSTRACT Poultry meat and egg production benefits from a smaller carbon footprint, as well as feed and water consumption, per unit of product, than other protein sources. Therefore, maintaining a sustainable production of poultry meat is important to meet the increasing global demand for this staple. Heat stress experienced during the summer season or in tropical/subtropical areas negatively affects the productivity and health of chickens. Crucially, its impact is predicted to grow with the acceleration of global warming. Heat stress affects the physiology, metabolism, and immune response of chickens, causing electrolyte imbalance, oxidative stress, endocrine disorders, inflammation, and immunosuppression. These changes do not occur independently, pointing to a systemic mechanism. Recently, intestinal homeostasis has been identified as an important contributor to nutrient absorption and the progression of systemic inflammation. Its mechanism of action is thought to involve neuroendocrine signaling, antioxidant response, the presence of oxidants in the diet, and microbiota composition. The present review focuses on the effect of heat stress on intestinal dysfunction in chickens and the underlying causative factors. Understanding these mechanisms will direct the design of strategies to mitigate the negative effect of heat stress, while benefiting both animal health and sustainable poultry production.
A nova definição do quilograma em termos da constante de Planck

Resumo A partir de 2019, a unidade de massa do Sistema Internacional de Unidades (SI), o quilograma, terá sua definição modificada. Deixará de ser o artefato metálico guardado na sede do BIPM, nos arredores de Paris, para ser baseado na constante de Planck (h). Qual é a necessidade desta mudança? E como as medidas são realizadas? São algumas das perguntas que respondemos nesta comunicação, onde descrevemos a operação do experimento denominado Balança de Watt utilizado para a nova maneira de realizar a unidade de massa. Também detalhamos como montamos uma Balança para fins didáticos, utilizada em apresentações sobre o tema. O tópico é de interesse de todos, mas em especial para alunos que recebem aulas de física em qualquer uma das áreas de formação.
The impact of expanded access to direct acting antivirals for Hepatitis C virus on patient outcomes in Canada

Background Hepatitis C virus (HCV) has high global prevalence and can lead to liver complications and death. Access to direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) in Canada increased following several policy changes, however the real-world impact of expanded DAA access and increased use of these drugs is unknown. Objective We aimed to determine the early change in rates of HCV-related hospitalizations overall and HCV-related hospitalizations with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) after expanded DAA access. Methods We conducted a population-based time series analysis using national administrative health databases in Canada. Rates of HCV-related hospitalizations and HCV-related hospitalizations with HCC were enumerated monthly between April 2006 and March 2020. We used Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) models with ramp functions in October 2014 and January 2017 to evaluate the impact of policies to expand DAA access on hospitalization outcomes. Results Rates of HCV-related hospitalizations in Canada increased between 2006 and 2014, and gradually declined thereafter. The decrease after October 2014, or the first policy change, was significant (p = 0.0355), but no further change was found after the second policy change in 2017 (p = 0.2567). HCV-related hospitalizations with HCC increased until end of 2013, followed by a plateau, before declining in 2016. No significant shifts were found after the first policy change in 2014 (p = 0.1291) nor the second policy change in 2017 (p = 0.6324). Subgroup analyses revealed that those aged 50–64 and males had observable declines in rates of HCV-related hospitalizations in the year prior to the first policy change. Conclusions Expanding DAA access was associated with a drop in HCV-related hospitalizations in the overall Canadian population coinciding with the 2014 policy change. In light of the time required for HCV-related complications to manifest, continued ongoing research examining the real-world effectiveness of DAAs is required.