cometadata/datacite-rtg-text-other-reclassification-records huggingface dataset:
MacFormer: Map-Agent Coupled Transformer for Real-time and Robust Trajectory Prediction
Creators: name: Feng, Chen
name: Zhou, Hangning
name: Lin, Huadong
name: Zhang, Zhigang
name: Xu, Ziyao
name: Zhang, Chi
name: Zhou, Boyu
name: Shen, Shaojie
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV)
subject: Robotics (cs.RO)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: Predicting the future behavior of agents is a fundamental task in autonomous vehicle domains. Accurate prediction relies on comprehending the surrounding map, which significantly regularizes agent behaviors. However, existing methods have limitations in exploiting the map and exhibit a strong dependence on historical trajectories, which yield unsatisfactory prediction performance and robustness. Additionally, their heavy network architectures impede real-time applications. To tackle these problems, we propose Map-Agent Coupled Transformer (MacFormer) for real-time and robust trajectory prediction. Our framework explicitly incorporates map constraints into the network via two carefully designed modules named coupled map and reference extractor. A novel multi-task optimization strategy (MTOS) is presented to enhance learning of topology and rule constraints. We also devise bilateral query scheme in context fusion for a more efficient and lightweight network. We evaluated our approach on Argoverse 1, Argoverse 2, and nuScenes real-world benchmarks, where it all achieved state-of-the-art performance with the lowest inference latency and smallest model size. Experiments also demonstrate that our framework is resilient to imperfect tracklet inputs. Furthermore, we show that by combining with our proposed strategies, classical models outperform their baselines, further validating the versatility of our framework.
description: Accepted by IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. 8 Pages, 9 Figures, 9 Tables. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY388iI6sPQ
q-VAE for Disentangled Representation Learning and Latent Dynamical Systems
Creators: name: Kobayashi, Taisuke
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Machine Learning (cs.LG)
subject: Robotics (cs.RO)
subject: Machine Learning (stat.ML)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: A variational autoencoder (VAE) derived from Tsallis statistics called q-VAE is proposed. In the proposed method, a standard VAE is employed to statistically extract latent space hidden in sampled data, and this latent space helps make robots controllable in feasible computational time and cost. To improve the usefulness of the latent space, this paper focuses on disentangled representation learning, e.g., $β$-VAE, which is the baseline for it. Starting from a Tsallis statistics perspective, a new lower bound for the proposed q-VAE is derived to maximize the likelihood of the sampled data, which can be considered an adaptive $β$-VAE with deformed Kullback-Leibler divergence. To verify the benefits of the proposed q-VAE, a benchmark task to extract the latent space from the MNIST dataset was performed. The results demonstrate that the proposed q-VAE improved disentangled representation while maintaining the reconstruction accuracy of the data. In addition, it relaxes the independency condition between data, which is demonstrated by learning the latent dynamics of nonlinear dynamical systems. By combining disentangled representation, the proposed q-VAE achieves stable and accurate long-term state prediction from the initial state and the action sequence. The dataset for hexapod walking is available on IEEE Dataport, doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.21227/99af-jw71.
description: 8 pages, 8 figures
Analysis of the anthropogenic contribution to mineral aerosols
Creators: name: De Rivera Rivera, Garymar
name: Mahowald, Natalie
name: Golden, Mary
Publisher: name: University Corporation For Atmospheric Research (UCAR)
Year: 2004
Subjects: desert dust
soil particles
radiative forcing
climate system
dust storm frequency

Mineral aerosols, also referred to as desert dust or soil particles, represent an important radiative forcing agent on the climate system, but the anthropogenic contribution to total dust loading is not well known. Results of several studies attempting to constrain the landuse portion of mineral aerosols suggest a range of 10% to 50% (Tegen and Fung, 1995; Prospero et al., 2002; Mahowald et al., 2002; Mahowald and Luo, 2003; Luo et al., 2003; Tegen et al., 2004). The main purpose of our study is to reduce that uncertainty to improve our understanding of mineral aerosols. Correlation coefficients between the observed data and the model data in the12 scenarios examined were calculated to identify which scenario best correlates with the observations of dust storm frequency compiled at 2249 stations during the years 1950-2000 from the International Stations Meteorological Climate Summary (ISMCS). The analyses were performed globally and regionally. Globally, the 10% landuse - 90% natural scenario, using the concentration criterion, represents the best match to the observations, with a correlation coefficient of 0.73. However, no statistically significant difference between this scenario and the 0% - 40% landuse scenario was identified. Regionally, there are no statistically significant higher correlations for any given scenario as opposed to the other scenarios, except for Africa where 50% was statistically significantly different. As a general conclusion, we found that the mobilization scenarios show less correlation with the observed data than the concentration scenarios.
Height corrections of lower tropospheric wind profiles
Creators: name: Rivera Rivera, Nancy
name: Hartten, Leslie
Publisher: name: University Corporation For Atmospheric Research (UCAR)
Year: 2004

Several differences in velocity profiles were observed in the high- and low-mode data collected by the 915-MHz wind profiler at San Cristóbal Island, Galápagos. Those differences are important because they prevent us from merging the data into one set. Some types of differences are expected because of the different volumes averaged by each mode. Others, however, are caused by violations of the assumptions behind the radar equation. The radar equation has two main assumptions that are violated: (1) the reflectivity is constant over the volume and (2) the range to the volume is large with respect to the pulse length. Johnston et al. (2002) proposed a more general radar equation without those assumptions. This research is based on Coleman’s (2002) work, which assumes that the reflectivity gradient (RG) beyond 1.5 km was –2.17 dB/km, and on Burt’s (2003) results that found a linearly varying profile from 1.0 to 1.5 km. We test 3 different RG profiles in order to get an idea of how much impact the variations in the RG found by Burt have in a practical sense. The heights assigned to the high-mode data were corrected during eight 10-day long cases that we selected based on the warm and cold season. The results show a slightly better agreement with low-mode winds from 1.0 to 1.5 km. This suggests that the method applied works but needs some additional corrections and further research to determine what new corrections are necessary to complete the goals.
Suez and Sterling, 1956
Creators: name: Klug, Adam
name: Smith, Gregor W.
name: Klug, Adam
name: Smith, Gregor W.
Publisher: name: Unknown
Year: 1999
Subjects: subject: Financial Economics
subject: Suez crisis
subject: Bretton Woods system
subject: foreign exchange market intervention

description: Daily data on spot and forward dollar/sterling exchange rates and on Britain’s foreign exchange reserves are used to reassess the financial history of the 1956 Suez crisis. We find that support of sterling at its Bretton Woods lower bound lost credibility as early as July. Reserve losses also are consistent with an exchange rate crisis. We provide the first econometric study of foreign exchange market intervention in the pre-convertibility phase of the Bretton Woods system. The Bank of England’s interventions reacted strongly both to official sterling and to the transferable sterling market in New York, which suggests that convertibility was a central goal of policy.
Climatology of superrefraction observed by GPS radio occultation
Creators: name: Rossiter, Dione
name: Kuo, Ying-Hwa
name: Rocken, Christian
name: Schreiner, William
Publisher: name: University Corporation For Atmospheric Research (UCAR)
Year: 2004
Subjects: refractivity
planetary boundary layer
dry air sinks
gradient

Global Positioning System (GPS) radio occultation (RO) is a new technique for obtaining profiles of atmospheric properties, specifically: refractivity, temperature, pressure, water vapor, and electron density. Low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, equipped with a GPS receiver, track GPS radio signals as they set behind the Earth. The atmosphere refracts GPS signals traveling to the receiver and these data can be used to infer information about atmospheric refractivity. Because GPS RO will be utilized in an array of atmospheric models, attaining the highest level of accuracy is essential. Therefore, this research provides insight to the challenges for GPS RO within the planetary boundary layer (PBL), due to the phenomenon of superrefraction (SR). SR is caused by a sharp decrease in refractivity with an increase of altitude, normally present at the top of the PBL, and results in a loss of the radio signal acquired by a LEO satellite. Consequently, the retrieval technique produces a refractivity profile that is negatively biased compared to global models. By examining the negative refractivity biases (as compared to the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecast model) in different seasonal periods, geographic regions, and altitude regimes, this research determined that SR is most probable off the west coast of continents where dry air sinks from above and creates a sharp vertical gradient in water vapor near the top of the PBL. Identifying regions that have a high occurrence of SR was a first step in preventing the use of negatively-biased RO profile data for future missions.
Governmental transparency and the National Performance Review: Implementing the Freedom of Information Act
Creators: name: Piotrowski, Suzanne Jean
Publisher: name: American University
Year: 2023

description: This dissertation analyzes the impacts of federal results-oriented administrative reforms on implementation of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Transparency of government, which promotes democratic-accountability, is embodied in FOIA. The National Performance Review (NPR) supported initiatives that affected FOIA implementation in a variety of ways. These initiatives include (1) a push for performance management that at times comes at the expense of nonmission-based values, including governmental transparency; (2) an increased attention to customers and, possibly, FOIA requestors; (3) the encouragement of privatizing functions, which subsequently are not covered under FOIA; and (4) the empowerment of employees to make decisions within the implementation phase of the policy process. The unintended and unforeseen consequences of these initiatives on FOIA activities are highlighted. The research draws on a number of different data sources including key performance indicators pulled from federal agencies' Annual FOIA Reports submitted to Congress over a twenty-five year period (1976--2001); interviews of federal FOIA officers and FOIA requestors; a content analysis of historical documents; and a survey of the access community. Relying on a triangulation of data and methods, the project identifies how FOIA activities have adapted to management initiatives. This study is important to our understanding of how mission-based management reforms can affect fundamental democratic values and governmental functions such as freedom of information.
Investigating the temperature variability of the middle and upper atmosphere over the equator using SABER and NCAR TIME-GCM
Creators: name: Singleton, Tamara
name: Hagan, Maura
name: Henson, Robert
Publisher: name: University Corporation For Atmospheric Research (UCAR)
Year: 2004

The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Electrodynamics General Circulation Model (TIME-GCM) simulated diurnal tides also observed in National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetic Dynamics (TIMED) satellite measurements of the middle and upper atmosphere at the equator. This study examined the temperature structure and day to day temperature perturbations between 40 and 120 kilometers over the equator during 2002 using the Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broad-band Emissions Radiometry (SABER) instrument of the TIMED satellite and NCAR TIME-GCM. We also quantified the diurnal tide as it propagates upwards into the middle and upper atmosphere. The performance of the TIME-GCM was assessed by comparing its analysis to the SABER analysis. The SABER atmospheric tides are analyzed in terms of ascending and descending orbit nodes. The TIME-GCM atmospheric tides were sampled along the SABER instrument measurement track and analyzed in terms of ascending and descending orbit nodes. Contour plots of two times the equatorial mean temperature profile for the SABER temperature measurements and TIME-GCM temperature predictions were constructed. IDL programs also generated contour plots of the estimated diurnal tide amplitude for the SABER temperature measurements and TIME-GCM temperature predictions. During this study we assumed the difference between the ascending local solar time and descending local solar time is approximately 12 hours. This research also assumed that the ascending and descending temperature profiles consist of a diurnal mean and perturbation. We find from observing the contour plots day to day diurnal tidal variability, but no seasonal variability. We also discovered a vertical wavelength of 25 kilometers in the estimate of the diurnal tide amplitude contour plots.
An improved method for filtering the measured stable oxygen isotope ratios from carbon dioxide of the NOAA/CMDL Network
Creators: name: Zauscher, Melanie
name: White, James
name: Barnes, Timothy
name: Lefer, Barry
Publisher: name: University Corporation For Atmospheric Research (UCAR)
Year: 2004
Subjects: carbon sinks

Stable oxygen isotope ratios (δ¹⁸O) can be used to better quantify sources and sinks of carbon dioxide (CO₂), a major greenhouse gas. Furthermore, because δ¹⁸O serves as a link between water and carbon cycles, it can be used to understand how climate change will impact precipitation. The Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), in collaboration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Monitoring Diagnostics Lab (CMDL), has been analyzing atmospheric sample from the NOAA/CMDL network for δ¹⁸O since 1989. However, measuring δ¹⁸O from CO₂ is no straight forward. Because it is known that oxygen isotopically exchanges between CO₂ and liquid water, especially in humid sites, CMDL has recently started drying the air during collection. Since there be good data from sites that may have not dried their samples, and since we desire to make the best use of the 15 years of collected data, we wanted to find a selection method by which we can use historical data with confidence. Therefore, a quality control filtering routine was developed, which takes sample site location and collection method information, to identify the most reliable δ¹⁸O – CO₂ samples. The validated dataset can now be used to further our understanding of CO₂ and the relationships between water and carbon cycles.
Epimelissodes (Epimelissodes) obliquus
Creators: name: Pedro, Diego De
name: Ceccarelli, Fadia Sara
name: Sagot, Philippe
name: López-Reyes, Eulogio
name: Mullins, Jessica L.
name: Mérida-Rivas, Jorge A.
name: Falcon-Brindis, Armando
name: Griswold, Terry
name: Ascher, John S.
name: Gardner, Joel
name: Ayala, Ricardo
name: Vides-Borrell, Eric
name: Vandame, Rémy
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy

description: Epimelissodes (Epimelissodes) obliquus (Say, 1837)
[♂ Indiana, USA]
Epimelissodes obliquus is distributed across a vast expanse of North America. This species specializes on a few plant genera in the family Asteraceae (Fowler 2020). In the BCP, it has only been recorded in the Lower Colorado Desert in Mexicali (LaBerge 1956). See fig. 100.
description: Published as part of Pedro, Diego De, Ceccarelli, Fadia Sara, Sagot, Philippe, López-Reyes, Eulogio, Mullins, Jessica L., Mérida-Rivas, Jorge A., Falcon-Brindis, Armando, Griswold, Terry, Ascher, John S., Gardner, Joel, Ayala, Ricardo, Vides-Borrell, Eric & Vandame, Rémy, 2024, Revealing the Baja California Peninsula's Hidden Treasures: An Annotated checklist of the native bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Anthophila), pp. 1-391 in Zootaxa 5522 (1) on page 163, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5522.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/13920532
Governmental transparency and the National Performance Review: Implementing the Freedom of Information Act
Creators: name: Piotrowski, Suzanne Jean
Publisher: name: ProQuest
Year: 2023
Subjects: classificationCode: 44
subject: Human society
classificationCode: 4407
subject: Policy and administration
classificationCode: 4408
subject: Political science
subject: FOS: Political science

description: This dissertation analyzes the impacts of federal results-oriented administrative reforms on implementation of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Transparency of government, which promotes democratic-accountability, is embodied in FOIA. The National Performance Review (NPR) supported initiatives that affected FOIA implementation in a variety of ways. These initiatives include (1) a push for performance management that at times comes at the expense of nonmission-based values, including governmental transparency; (2) an increased attention to customers and, possibly, FOIA requestors; (3) the encouragement of privatizing functions, which subsequently are not covered under FOIA; and (4) the empowerment of employees to make decisions within the implementation phase of the policy process. The unintended and unforeseen consequences of these initiatives on FOIA activities are highlighted. The research draws on a number of different data sources including key performance indicators pulled from federal agencies' Annual FOIA Reports submitted to Congress over a twenty-five year period (1976--2001); interviews of federal FOIA officers and FOIA requestors; a content analysis of historical documents; and a survey of the access community. Relying on a triangulation of data and methods, the project identifies how FOIA activities have adapted to management initiatives. This study is important to our understanding of how mission-based management reforms can affect fundamental democratic values and governmental functions such as freedom of information.
Branching geodesics in sub-Riemannian geometry
Creators: name: Mietton, Thomas
name: Rizzi, Luca
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Differential Geometry (math.DG)
subject: Metric Geometry (math.MG)
subject: FOS: Mathematics
subject: 53C17, 49J15

description: In this note, we show that sub-Riemannian manifolds can contain branching normal minimizing geodesics. This phenomenon occurs if and only if a normal geodesic has a discontinuity in its rank at a non-zero time, which in particular for a strictly normal geodesic means that it contains a non-trivial abnormal subsegment. The simplest example is obtained by gluing the three-dimensional Martinet flat structure with the Heisenberg group in a suitable way. We then use this example to construct more general types of branching.
description: 11 pages, 1 figure. Final version, to appear on Geometric And Functional Analysis (GAFA)
Quantum many-body scars in the Bose-Hubbard model with a three-body constraint
Creators: name: Kaneko, Ryui
name: Kunimi, Masaya
name: Danshita, Ippei
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas)
subject: Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
subject: Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We uncover the exact athermal eigenstates in the Bose-Hubbard (BH) model with a three-body constraint, motivated by the exact construction of quantum many-body scar (QMBS) states in the $S=1$ $XY$ model. These states are generated by applying an $\rm SU(2)$ ladder operator consisting of a linear combination of two-particle annihilation operators to the fully occupied state. By using the improved Holstein-Primakoff expansion, we clarify that the QMBS states in the $S=1$ $XY$ model are equivalent to those in the constrained BH model with additional correlated hopping terms. We also find that, in the strong-coupling limit of the constrained BH model, the QMBS state exists as the lowest-energy eigenstate of the effective model in the highest-energy sector. This fact enables us to prepare the QMBS states in a certain adiabatic process and opens up the possibility of observing them in ultracold-atom experiments.
description: 6+11 pages, 2+7 figures
Augmenting Colonoscopy using Extended and Directional CycleGAN for Lossy Image Translation
Creators: name: Mathew, Shawn
name: Nadeem, Saad
name: Kumari, Sruti
name: Kaufman, Arie
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Image and Video Processing (eess.IV)
subject: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV)
subject: FOS: Electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: Colorectal cancer screening modalities, such as optical colonoscopy (OC) and virtual colonoscopy (VC), are critical for diagnosing and ultimately removing polyps (precursors of colon cancer). The non-invasive VC is normally used to inspect a 3D reconstructed colon (from CT scans) for polyps and if found, the OC procedure is performed to physically traverse the colon via endoscope and remove these polyps. In this paper, we present a deep learning framework, Extended and Directional CycleGAN, for lossy unpaired image-to-image translation between OC and VC to augment OC video sequences with scale-consistent depth information from VC, and augment VC with patient-specific textures, color and specular highlights from OC (e.g, for realistic polyp synthesis). Both OC and VC contain structural information, but it is obscured in OC by additional patient-specific texture and specular highlights, hence making the translation from OC to VC lossy. The existing CycleGAN approaches do not handle lossy transformations. To address this shortcoming, we introduce an extended cycle consistency loss, which compares the geometric structures from OC in the VC domain. This loss removes the need for the CycleGAN to embed OC information in the VC domain. To handle a stronger removal of the textures and lighting, a Directional Discriminator is introduced to differentiate the direction of translation (by creating paired information for the discriminator), as opposed to the standard CycleGAN which is direction-agnostic. Combining the extended cycle consistency loss and the Directional Discriminator, we show state-of-the-art results on scale-consistent depth inference for phantom, textured VC and for real polyp and normal colon video sequences. We also present results for realistic pendunculated and flat polyp synthesis from bumps introduced in 3D VC models. Code/models: https://github.com/nadeemlab/CEP.
description: CVPR 2020. **First two authors contributed equally to this work
Additional file 1 of Modeling methylation dynamics with simultaneous changes in CpG islands
Creators: name: Grosser, Konrad
name: Metzler, Dirk
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Biophysics
subject: Biochemistry
subject: Genetics
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: Molecular Biology
subject: 69999 Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: 19999 Mathematical Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Mathematics
subject: Cancer
subject: Hematology

description: Additional file 1 Online appendix.
The design, optimization and testing of Y chromosome short tandem repeat megaplexes
Creators: name: Schoske, Richard
Publisher: name: ProQuest
Year: 2023
Subjects: classificationCode: 34
subject: Chemical sciences
subject: FOS: Chemical sciences
classificationCode: 3401
subject: Analytical chemistry

description: A multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay capable of the simultaneous amplifying 20 Y chromosome short tandem repeat (STR) markers has been developed and tested to aid human testing and population studies. These markers include all of the Y-STR markers that make up the "extended haplotype" used in Europe (DYS19, DYS385 a/b, DYS389I/II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, DYS393, and YCAII a/b) plus the additional polymorphic Y-STR markers (DYS437, DYS438, DYS439, DYS447, DYS448, DYS388, DYS460, and GATA H4). The Y-STR 20plex is the first to include a simultaneous amplification of all the markers within the European "minimal" and "extended haplotype." A subset of the Y-STR 20plex primers, the Y-STR 9plex was also developed and tested. The Y-STR 9plex contains only the markers within the European minimal haplotype. Lastly, a Y-STR 11plex was designed and tested. The markers within the Y-STR 11plex are DYS385 a/b, DYS447, DYS448, DYS450, DYS456, DYS458 and DYS 464 a/b/c/d. Validation experiments were performed in order to assess the reliability of the haplotypes generated by these newly designed Y-STR multiplexes. The validation experiments included concordance, precision, specificity and sensitivity studies. Additionally, a total of 647 male samples from three different U.S. populations were analyzed for all the loci included in the Y-STR 20plex and Y-STR 11plex. Allelic frequencies for all of the Y-STR markers were tabulated as well as haplotype diversity data for various combinations of markers. Y-STR multiplexes were tested against samples from forensic cases that have already been closed. Analysis of these samples demonstrate that the Y-STR multiplexes developed here can handle real casework samples. Finally, the prototype Y Standard Reference Material (SRM) 2395 was characterized. SRMs are often used to validate a laboratory's measurement capability. SRM 2395 is a Y-STR profiling standard that consists of five components, four male (A-D) and one female (E). The characterization included the DNA sequencing of 18 different Y-STR loci for each component (including all of the markers in the European minimal haplotype), presenting a suggested nomenclature for allele designations, and running these components against commercially available Y-STR kits and the Y-STR multiplexes designed in this study.
Epimelissodes (Epimelissodes) sila
Creators: name: Pedro, Diego De
name: Ceccarelli, Fadia Sara
name: Sagot, Philippe
name: López-Reyes, Eulogio
name: Mullins, Jessica L.
name: Mérida-Rivas, Jorge A.
name: Falcon-Brindis, Armando
name: Griswold, Terry
name: Ascher, John S.
name: Gardner, Joel
name: Ayala, Ricardo
name: Vides-Borrell, Eric
name: Vandame, Rémy
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy

description: Epimelissodes (Epimelissodes) sila (LaBerge, 1956)
[Holotype: SEMC; ♂ Near San Simon, Arizona, USA; July 12, 1952]
This species thrives in the xeric regions of northern Mexico and the southwestern USA. There is only one known record of this species from the BCP from September 1941 in the Central Desert near San Ignacio, BCS (LaBerge 1958). See fig. 101.
description: Published as part of Pedro, Diego De, Ceccarelli, Fadia Sara, Sagot, Philippe, López-Reyes, Eulogio, Mullins, Jessica L., Mérida-Rivas, Jorge A., Falcon-Brindis, Armando, Griswold, Terry, Ascher, John S., Gardner, Joel, Ayala, Ricardo, Vides-Borrell, Eric & Vandame, Rémy, 2024, Revealing the Baja California Peninsula's Hidden Treasures: An Annotated checklist of the native bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Anthophila), pp. 1-391 in Zootaxa 5522 (1) on page 165, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5522.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/13920532
Parameter space investigation for spin-dependent electron diffraction in the Kapitza-Dirac effect
Creators: name: Wang, Yang
name: Ahrens, Sven
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We demonstrate that spin-dependent electron diffraction is possible for a smooth range of transverse electron momenta in a two-photon Bragg scattering scenario of the Kapitza-Dirac effect. Our analysis is rendered possible by introducing a generalized specification for quantifying spin-dependent diffraction, yielding an optimization problem which is solved by making use of a Newton gradient iteration scheme. With this procedure, we investigate the spin-dependent effect for different transverse electron momenta and different laser polarizations of the standing light wave Kapitza-Dirac scattering. The possibility for using arbitrarily low transverse electron momenta, when setting up a spin-dependent Kapitza-Dirac experiment allows longer interaction times of the electron with the laser and therefore enables less constraining parameters for an implementation of the effect.
description: 11 pages, 9 figures
Clueless Politicians
Creators: name: Cotton, Christopher
name: Li, Cheng
name: Cotton, Christopher
name: Li, Cheng
Publisher: name: Unknown
Year: 2016
Subjects: subject: Financial Economics
subject: Marketing
subject: FOS: Economics and business
subject: lobbying
subject: strategic ignorance
subject: campaign finance reform

description: We develop a model of policymaking in which a politician decides how much expertise to acquire or how informed to become about issues before interest groups engage in monetary lobbying. For a range of issues, the policymaker prefers to remain clueless about the merits of reform, even when acquiring expertise or better information is costless. Such a strategy leads to intense lobbying competition and larger political contributions. We identify a novel benefit of campaign finance reform, showing how contribution limits decrease the incentives that policymakers have to remain uninformed or ignorant of the issues on which they vote.
Biotechnological applications of microalgal oleaginous compounds: current trends on microalgal bioprocessing of products
Creators: name: Mutanda, T.
name: Naidoo, D.
name: Bwapwa, J. K.
name: Anandraj, A.
Publisher: name: Mangosuthu University of Technology (MUT)
Year: 2022
Subjects: Biotechnology

description: The microalgal biotechnology industry is expanding rapidly and currently gaining attention due to multiple availabilities of high-value products such as pigments, carbohydrates, proteins, nutraceuticals, biopharmaceuticals, and unique oleaginous compounds fractionated by biomass biorefinery. Microalgae are efficient primary producers in the terrestrial and marine biotopes. They are major sources of global oxygen and are gaining topical prominence due to their concomitant role in the phycoremediation of wastewater effluents and biomass production. Despite their minuscule size, microalgae critically contribute to climate change mitigation through carbon fixation and play a major role in bioenergy applications. Furthermore, carotenoids and phycobiliproteins are the main accessory light-harvesting complexes in microalgae and cyanobacteria. The topical biomedical and pharmaceutical applications of microalgae include anticancer, antidiabetic, antiHIV, antimalarial, antimicrobial, inter alia. The endowment of unique indigenous microalgae and utilization of these biological resources must be harnessed by the biorefinery industry to exploit microalgal biomass opportunities. Therefore, this manuscript factually and critically explores the current status of the biorefinery approach, topical biomedical and pharmaceutical applications, biofuel applications, genetic manipulation of microalgae for enhancement of product yield, challenges and presents prospects, pros and cons, and outlook of the microalgal biotechnology industry
The design, optimization and testing of Y chromosome short tandem repeat megaplexes
Creators: name: Schoske, Richard
Publisher: name: American University
Year: 2023

description: A multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay capable of the simultaneous amplifying 20 Y chromosome short tandem repeat (STR) markers has been developed and tested to aid human testing and population studies. These markers include all of the Y-STR markers that make up the "extended haplotype" used in Europe (DYS19, DYS385 a/b, DYS389I/II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, DYS393, and YCAII a/b) plus the additional polymorphic Y-STR markers (DYS437, DYS438, DYS439, DYS447, DYS448, DYS388, DYS460, and GATA H4). The Y-STR 20plex is the first to include a simultaneous amplification of all the markers within the European "minimal" and "extended haplotype." A subset of the Y-STR 20plex primers, the Y-STR 9plex was also developed and tested. The Y-STR 9plex contains only the markers within the European minimal haplotype. Lastly, a Y-STR 11plex was designed and tested. The markers within the Y-STR 11plex are DYS385 a/b, DYS447, DYS448, DYS450, DYS456, DYS458 and DYS 464 a/b/c/d. Validation experiments were performed in order to assess the reliability of the haplotypes generated by these newly designed Y-STR multiplexes. The validation experiments included concordance, precision, specificity and sensitivity studies. Additionally, a total of 647 male samples from three different U.S. populations were analyzed for all the loci included in the Y-STR 20plex and Y-STR 11plex. Allelic frequencies for all of the Y-STR markers were tabulated as well as haplotype diversity data for various combinations of markers. Y-STR multiplexes were tested against samples from forensic cases that have already been closed. Analysis of these samples demonstrate that the Y-STR multiplexes developed here can handle real casework samples. Finally, the prototype Y Standard Reference Material (SRM) 2395 was characterized. SRMs are often used to validate a laboratory's measurement capability. SRM 2395 is a Y-STR profiling standard that consists of five components, four male (A-D) and one female (E). The characterization included the DNA sequencing of 18 different Y-STR loci for each component (including all of the markers in the European minimal haplotype), presenting a suggested nomenclature for allele designations, and running these components against commercially available Y-STR kits and the Y-STR multiplexes designed in this study.
Additional file 2 of American foulbrood in a honeybee colony: spore-symptom relationship and feedbacks between disease and colony development
Creators: name: Stephan, Jörg G.
name: Miranda, Joachim R. De
name: Forsgren, Eva
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Microbiology
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: Genetics
subject: Ecology
subject: Immunology
subject: FOS: Clinical medicine
subject: 69999 Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: Marine Biology
subject: Cancer
subject: 110309 Infectious Diseases
subject: FOS: Health sciences
subject: Computational Biology

description: Additional file 2: Additional Figures S2 to S10.
Eucera (Synhalonia) acerba
Creators: name: Pedro, Diego De
name: Ceccarelli, Fadia Sara
name: Sagot, Philippe
name: López-Reyes, Eulogio
name: Mullins, Jessica L.
name: Mérida-Rivas, Jorge A.
name: Falcon-Brindis, Armando
name: Griswold, Terry
name: Ascher, John S.
name: Gardner, Joel
name: Ayala, Ricardo
name: Vides-Borrell, Eric
name: Vandame, Rémy
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy

description: Eucera (Synhalonia) acerba (Cresson, 1879) **
[ANSP; ♀ Nevada, USA]
Eucera acerba specializes on pollen from Arctostaphylos Adans. (Fowler 2020). This species represents a new record for Mexico. The BBPT collected one female specimen in the Baja California Mountains within Sierra San Pedro Mártir in April 2023 (MABC). See fig. 102.
description: Published as part of Pedro, Diego De, Ceccarelli, Fadia Sara, Sagot, Philippe, López-Reyes, Eulogio, Mullins, Jessica L., Mérida-Rivas, Jorge A., Falcon-Brindis, Armando, Griswold, Terry, Ascher, John S., Gardner, Joel, Ayala, Ricardo, Vides-Borrell, Eric & Vandame, Rémy, 2024, Revealing the Baja California Peninsula's Hidden Treasures: An Annotated checklist of the native bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Anthophila), pp. 1-391 in Zootaxa 5522 (1) on page 167, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5522.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/13920532
Additional file 3 of American foulbrood in a honeybee colony: spore-symptom relationship and feedbacks between disease and colony development
Creators: name: Stephan, Jörg G.
name: Miranda, Joachim R. De
name: Forsgren, Eva
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Microbiology
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: Genetics
subject: Ecology
subject: Immunology
subject: FOS: Clinical medicine
subject: 69999 Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: Marine Biology
subject: Cancer
subject: 110309 Infectious Diseases
subject: FOS: Health sciences
subject: Computational Biology

description: Additional file 3: Colony treatment, spore counting, motivation of using Bayesian approach, model building and validation.
Sustainable Food Choices : What’s on your plate, Vancouver?
Creators: name: Law, Matthew
name: Zhou, Yun
name: Anorico, Kim Ysabel
name: Wang, Cindy
name: Hsieh, Chi-Han
Publisher: name: The University of British Columbia
Year: 2017

description: Our choices in the supermarket could affect the carbon footprints we leave behind. Purchasing organic foods not only benefits our health, but also the environment (Loo et al, 2013) This study investigated the following research questions: What do people in Vancouver believe to be the most sustainable food? What kind of food are they currently purchasing? What kind of food are they willing to purchase? The study collected data using survey sampling and online questionnaires. The survey was designed to test the participant’s knowledge on sustainable foods, the participant’s current food choices, and how willing or reluctant they are to purchase sustainable foods. Using within subject design we asked the participants to rate 1-10 on how sustainable they believe locally grown, Beans and peas, Green Leaf Vegetables, and Read meat are. We found that most participants are willing to purchase organic and sustainable foods, however they do not have sufficient knowledge as to what kind of foods are sustainable. Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Coordinator about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report.”
Which explanations for gender differences in competition are consistent with a simple theoretical model?
Creators: name: Cotton, Christopher
name: Li, Cheng
name: McIntyre, Frank
name: Price, Joseph
name: Cotton, Christopher
name: Li, Cheng
name: McIntyre, Frank
name: Price, Joseph
Publisher: name: Unknown
Year: 2015
Subjects: subject: Financial Economics
subject: contests
subject: gender differences
subject: effort and productivity

description: A number of recent studies show that males may increase their performance by more than females in response to competitive incentives. The literature suggests that such a male competitive advantage may contribute to observed gender gaps in labor force pay and achievement. Understanding which factors may be driving these gender differences is essential for designing policies that promote equality. Using a game theoretic model of contests, we consider a variety of explanations for the male competitive advantage that have been proposed in the empirical and experimental literature. Comparing the testable predictions of the model with the empirical evidence from past papers, we reject explanations involving male over-confidence, misperceptions about relative ability, and some types of preference differences. Explanations involving female under-confidence and differences in risk aversion are consistent with the significant evidence. Two explanations provide perfect matches to observed performance patterns: (i) males are better than females at handling competitive pressure, and (ii) males enjoy competition more or have greater desire to win than females.
Stop-and-Go: Exploring Backdoor Attacks on Deep Reinforcement Learning-based Traffic Congestion Control Systems
Creators: name: Wang, Yue
name: Sarkar, Esha
name: Li, Wenqing
name: Maniatakos, Michail
name: Jabari, Saif Eddin
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Cryptography and Security (cs.CR)
subject: Machine Learning (cs.LG)
subject: Systems and Control (eess.SY)
subject: Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph)
subject: Machine Learning (stat.ML)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences
subject: FOS: Electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: Recent work has shown that the introduction of autonomous vehicles (AVs) in traffic could help reduce traffic jams. Deep reinforcement learning methods demonstrate good performance in complex control problems, including autonomous vehicle control, and have been used in state-of-the-art AV controllers. However, deep neural networks (DNNs) render automated driving vulnerable to machine learning-based attacks. In this work, we explore the backdooring/trojanning of DRL-based AV controllers. We develop a trigger design methodology that is based on well-established principles of traffic physics. The malicious actions include vehicle deceleration and acceleration to cause stop-and-go traffic waves to emerge (congestion attacks) or AV acceleration resulting in the AV crashing into the vehicle in front (insurance attack). We test our attack on single-lane and two-lane circuits. Our experimental results show that the backdoored model does not compromise normal operation performance, with the maximum decrease in cumulative rewards being 1%. Still, it can be maliciously activated to cause a crash or congestion when the corresponding triggers appear.
Inducing Subtle Mutations with Program Repair
Creators: name: Schwander, Florian
name: Gopinath, Rahul
name: Zeller, Andreas
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2021

description: Mutation analysis is the gold standard for assessing the effectiveness of a test
 suite to prevent bugs.
 It involves injecting syntactic changes in the program, generating variants
 (mutants) of the program under test, and checking whether the test suite detects
 the mutant.
 Practitioners often rely on these live mutants to decide what test cases to
 write for improving the test suite effectiveness. While a majority of such syntactic changes result in semantic differences from
 the original, it is possible that such a change fails to induce a corresponding
 semantic change in the mutant.
 Such equivalent mutants can lead to wastage of manual effort. We describe a novel technique that produces high-quality mutants while avoiding
 the generation of equivalent mutants for input processors.
 Our idea is to generate plausible, near correct inputs for the program, collect
 those rejected, and generate variants that accept these rejected strings.
 This technique allows us to provide an enhanced set of mutants along with newly
 generated test cases that kill them. We evaluate our method on eight python programs and show that our technique can
 generate new mutants that are both interesting for the developer and guaranteed
 to be mortal.
Pulsar Radio Emission Altitude from Curvature Radiation
Creators: name: Gangadhara, R. T.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2003
Subjects: subject: Astrophysics (astro-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We assume that the relativistic sources moving along the dipolar magnetic field lines emit curvature radiation. The beamed emission occurs in the direction of tangents to the field lines, and to receive it, the sight line must align with the tangent within the beaming angle 1/gamma, where gamma is the particle Lorentz factor. By solving the viewing geometry in an inclined and rotating dipole magnetic field, we show that, at any given pulse phase, observer tends to receive radiation only from the specific heights allowed by the geometry. We find outer conal components are emitted at higher altitudes compared to inner components including the core. At any pulse phase, low frequency emission comes from higher altitudes than high frequency emission. We have modeled the emission heights of pulse components of PSR B0329+54, and estimated field line curvature radii and particle Lorentz factors in the emission regions.
description: 14 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for Astrophysical Journal, 2004
Imaging spatio-temporal Hong-Ou-Mandel interference of bi-photon state of extremely high Schmidt number
Creators: name: Devaux, Fabrice
name: Mosset, Alexis
name: Moreau, Paul-Antoine
name: Lantz, Eric
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
subject: Optics (physics.optics)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We report the experimental observation of a spatio-temporal Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interference of bi-photon states of extremely high Schmidt number. Two-photon interference of 1500 spatial modes and a total of more than 3x10^6 spatio-temporal modes is evidenced by measuring momentum spatial coincidences between the pixels of the far-field images of two strongly multimode spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) beams propagating through a HOM interferometer. The outgoing SPDC beams are recorded onto two separate detectors arrays operating in the photon-counting regime. The properties of HOM interference are investigated both in the time and space domains. We show that the two-photon interferences exhibit temporal and two-dimensional spatial HOM dips with visibilities of 30% and widths in good agreement with the spatio-temporal coherence properties of the bi-photon state. Moreover, we demonstrate that a peak of momentum spatial coincidences is evidenced inside each image, in correspondence with this dip.
description: 10 pages, 8 figures
Epimelissodes (Idiomelissodes) duplocinctus
Creators: name: Pedro, Diego De
name: Ceccarelli, Fadia Sara
name: Sagot, Philippe
name: López-Reyes, Eulogio
name: Mullins, Jessica L.
name: Mérida-Rivas, Jorge A.
name: Falcon-Brindis, Armando
name: Griswold, Terry
name: Ascher, John S.
name: Gardner, Joel
name: Ayala, Ricardo
name: Vides-Borrell, Eric
name: Vandame, Rémy
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy

description: Epimelissodes (Idiomelissodes) duplocinctus (Cockerell, 1905)
[Lectotype: SEMC; ♂ Bill Willams’ Fork, Arizona; August]
Epimelissodes duplocinctus is found throughout northern Mexico and the southwestern USA (LaBerge, 1956). The CARCIB team collected this species in the Gulf Coast (1 ♂) in September 2016, and April 2017, and Magdalena Plains (2 ♂) in September 2016. Additionally, ECOAB team collected one male in the Lower Colorado Desert in Valle de Mexicali, BC in June 2019. See fig. 101.
description: Published as part of Pedro, Diego De, Ceccarelli, Fadia Sara, Sagot, Philippe, López-Reyes, Eulogio, Mullins, Jessica L., Mérida-Rivas, Jorge A., Falcon-Brindis, Armando, Griswold, Terry, Ascher, John S., Gardner, Joel, Ayala, Ricardo, Vides-Borrell, Eric & Vandame, Rémy, 2024, Revealing the Baja California Peninsula's Hidden Treasures: An Annotated checklist of the native bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Anthophila), pp. 1-391 in Zootaxa 5522 (1) on page 166, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5522.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/13920532