ethicalabs/Research-Intent-Collab huggingface dataset:
I2V-Adapter: A General Image-to-Video Adapter for Diffusion Models

Text-guided image-to-video (I2V) generation aims to generate a coherent video that preserves the identity of the input image and semantically aligns with the input prompt. Existing methods typically augment pretrained text-to-video (T2V) models by either concatenating the image with noised video frames channel-wise before being fed into the model or injecting the image embedding produced by pretrained image encoders in cross-attention modules. However, the former approach often necessitates altering the fundamental weights of pretrained T2V models, thus restricting the model's compatibility within the open-source communities and disrupting the model's prior knowledge. Meanwhile, the latter typically fails to preserve the identity of the input image. We present I2V-Adapter to overcome such limitations. I2V-Adapter adeptly propagates the unnoised input image to subsequent noised frames through a cross-frame attention mechanism, maintaining the identity of the input image without any changes to the pretrained T2V model. Notably, I2V-Adapter only introduces a few trainable parameters, significantly alleviating the training cost and also ensures compatibility with existing community-driven personalized models and control tools. Moreover, we propose a novel Frame Similarity Prior to balance the motion amplitude and the stability of generated videos through two adjustable control coefficients. Our experimental results demonstrate that I2V-Adapter is capable of producing high-quality videos. This performance, coupled with its agility and adaptability, represents a substantial advancement in the field of I2V, particularly for personalized and controllable applications.
Carbon coating and Al-doping to improve the electrochemistry of Li<sub>2</sub>CoSiO<sub>4</sub> polymorphs as cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries

Conductive carbon framework, stable polymorphs, and the control of impurity are crucial to achieve advanced performance for insulating Li2CoSiO4.
The Clinical and Translational Science Award compendium of dissemination and implementation science resource catalogs: Capacity building tools for clinical and translational scientists

Abstract    This paper describes the development and initial implementation of the Compendium of D&amp;I Catalogs, a tool created by a Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) consortium working group to streamline navigation of the proliferating online resources, catalogs and interactive tools designed to guide application of dissemination and implementation (D&amp;I) science. The Compendium is a curated, dynamically-updated list of 35 D&amp;I resource catalogs organized into eight categories: comprehensive resources; frameworks, theories, and models; methods and measures; funding; practitioner resources; training; CTSA infrastructure; health equity. Eight CTSA hubs volunteered to serve as “early adopters” for the tool and completed an evaluation of its initial implementation. Among these “early adopters,” half had implemented the Compendium within their websites, describing the web implementation process as “easy.” Remaining “early adopter” respondents cited institutional web development capacity concerns and competing priorities as reasons for delayed implementation. All respondents valued the Compendium’s dynamic updates. Among implementing sites, roughly two-thirds directly embedded the Compendium into their institutional websites, with the others providing a link to the Compendium. For CTSAs striving to meet the rising demand for D&amp;I expertise and resources, the Compendium of D&amp;I Catalogs represents a simple, low-cost tool to enhance accessibility of D&amp;I capacity-building resources.
GenSym: A tool for random symmetric structure generation and its application in crystal structure prediction software

Crystal structure prediction (CSP) methods have become essential tools in materials discovery. As the initial step in CSP, the quality of the generated structures critically determines efficiency. It has been increasingly recognized that incorporating symmetry during structure generation can significantly enhance efficiency, as most real materials crystallize in non-P1 symmetries. In this work, we present an open-source package for random symmetric structure generation under user-defined constraints. The program supports bulk, low-dimensional, and molecular crystal generation, with flexible control over parameters such as cell shape, bond length, conventional or primitive symmetry settings, Wyckoff position weighting, and density uniformity adjustment. Furthermore, it interfaces with prototype databases, enabling structure generation based on known prototypes. We demonstrate that its integration with CSP frameworks substantially improves search efficiency, offering strong potential for accelerating novel materials design and discovery.
Search for signals of New Physics in Extensive Air Showers induced by Ultra High Energy Cosmic-Rays

The use of Cosmic Rays (CR) as a benchmark for new physics (beyond the Standard Model of particle physics) search, is an approach based on the fact that historically, the energy reached by the particle colliders has been and continues to be smaller than the energy the CR can achieve.    Nevertheless the energies achieved by the particle colliders are getting closer to those of the CR of the highest energies, as a consequence the possible effects of new physics is now seeking mainly in CR of ultra high energy (UHECR), with an extremely low flux, resulting in a poor statistic but remains an opportunity to research for new physics.    In this work we present a general, model independent, analysis of the behavior of Ultra–High Energy Extensive Air Showers (UHE EAS) when some new effect, represented through the parametrization of a set of observables, are present and we determine on which range of this parameters could be possible to discern these kind of physics.
Uncertainties in regional climate change projections: Part I: Choice of global climate models for regional downscaling

One of the main goals of the ClimaRice II project is to reduce uncertainties in future monsoon projections. The IPRC regional climate model (IPRC_RegCM) has been used to simulate the current and future climates over both Cauvery and Krishna basins. This technical brief summarizes the issues in setting up of a regional climate model such as spin-up time, required climate parameters, selection of model domain and resolution and issues related to lateral boundary conditions. The brief also summarizes the comparison of uncertainties involved in the global climate model and how this will influence the southwest and northeast monsoon seasons over the Indian region. The next brief will investigate the uncertainties in the IPRC_RegCM simulations, particularly over the Cauvery and Krishna basins.
Systems Theory Principles and Complex Systems Engineering Concepts for Protection and Resilience in Critical Infrastructure: Lessons from the Nuclear Sector

ABSTRACTPart of the Presidential Policy Directive 21 (PPD‐21) (PPD 2013) mandate includes evaluating safety, security, and safeguards (or nonproliferation) mechanisms traditionally implemented within the nuclear reactors, materials, and waste sector of critical infrastructure—including a complex, dynamic set of risks and threats within an all‐hazards approach. In response, research out of Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia) explores the ability of systems theory principles (hierarchy and emergence) and complex systems engineering concepts (multidomain interdependence) to better understand and address these risks and threats. This Sandia research explores the safety, safeguards, and security risks of three different nuclear sector‐related activities—spent nuclear fuel transportation, small modular reactors, and portable nuclear power reactors—to investigate the complex and dynamic risk related to the PPD‐21‐mandated all‐hazards approach. This research showed that a systems‐theoretic approach can better identify inter‐dependencies, conflicts, gaps, and leverage points across traditional safety, security, and safeguards hazard mitigation strategies in the nuclear reactors, materials, and waste sector. As a result, mitigation strategies from applying systems theoretic principles and complex systems engineering concepts can be (1) designed to better capture interdependencies, (2) implemented to better align with real‐world operational uncertainties, and (3) evaluated as a systems‐level whole to better identify, characterize, and manage PPD‐21's all hazards strategies.
Land-use changes and biodiversity conservation in agricultural landscapes. A case study

Peer reviewed
Cat, Rat, Meow: On the Alignment of Language Model and Human Term-Similarity Judgments

Small and mid-sized generative language models have gained increasing attention. Their size and availability make them amenable to being analyzed at a behavioral as well as a representational level, allowing investigations of how these levels interact. We evaluate 32 publicly available language models for their representational and behavioral alignment with human similarity judgments on a word triplet task. This provides a novel evaluation setting to probe semantic associations in language beyond common pairwise comparisons. We find that (1) even the representations of small language models can achieve human-level alignment, (2) instruction-tuned model variants can exhibit substantially increased agreement, (3) the pattern of alignment across layers is highly model dependent, and (4) alignment based on models' behavioral responses is highly dependent on model size, matching their representational alignment only for the largest evaluated models.
Stem cell therapy: Advances and future directions in regenerative medicine: A review

Stem cell treatment, an important part of regenerative medicine that may change the way many illnesses and injuries are treated in the future. This review article gives an in-depth analysis of the many kinds of stem cells, including adult, induced pluripotent, and embryonic stem cells, as well as their background, properties, and potential for differentiation. Successful hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, tissue engineering, medications for neurological illnesses, and management of autoimmune diseases are only a few of the current applications of stem cells in therapy that we explore. The report also discusses cutting-edge techniques in stem cell research, such as 3D bioprinting, the game-changing CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing approach, and the manipulation of stem cells using tiny chemicals. However, there are several obstacles on the road to stem cell treatment. We explain how ethical concerns, immunological rejection, and tumorigenicity have influenced public opinion. Future developments in stem cell therapy will be discussed, including the role of stem cell banking, tissue engineering, personalized medicine, and artificial intelligence. In conclusion, despite substantial progress, barriers still need to be eliminated before stem cell treatment can realize its promise to fundamentally alter regenerative medicine.
Carving the transformation pathways to sustainable futures: A novel analytical framework for backcasting in sustainability transitions

Despite the increasing number of climate and sustainability pledges, knowledge of how to reach those targets within a given system – systems and transformation knowledge – is often lacking. Backcasting can be highly relevant for tackling this transformation gap as it starts from future targets and works backwards to uncover how they can be achieved. However, most backcasting applications tend to lack formal tools and assessments, raising concerns over their rigor and traceability. This paper addresses these limitations and presents a novel analytical framework to tackle the what-who-how questions crucial for backcasting. The analytical framework presents a toolkit combining various approaches such as cross-impact balance analysis, actor analysis, network analysis, and stakeholder workshops to generate systems and transformation knowledge. The framework enables the generation of transformation pathways to desirable futures in different cases. Paper recycling serves as an illustrative case study to demonstrate its empirical application. The framework contributes to strengthening of the analytical dimension of backcasting by adding rigor and traceability to the generation of scenarios and assessment of their socio-political feasibility. By providing a novel approach to generate transformation knowledge in formalised, systematic and participatory way, we aim to contribute to closing the transformation gap in science and practice.
Biological Control Agents in Integrated Pest Management: Are They Regulated - A Research Guide

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is a method of coordinating different pest control techniques which balance environmental, economic, and social issues with the traditional use of chemical pesticides. The author predicts expanding implementation of biological control methods of IPM in light of the environmental harm and expense that results from the use of chemical pesticides. This guide to legal and nonlegal resources focuses on research in the area of biological control methods of IPM, and the means of obtaining current information on this topic.
Social media science communication is a nonstop academic conference for all

Jens Foell recently changed careers and began working fulltime for maiLab, Germany’s biggest science communication YouTube channel. In this World View, he shares his experiences as a science communicator and discusses the advantages and challenges.
Achieving Sustainable Food Production in Africa: Roles of Pesticides and Biological Control Agents in Integrated Pest Management

Food production in Africa is declining, while her population is increasing rapidly. Some factors responsible for low food productivity are mentioned; special attention is given to the problem of agricultural pests. The hazards of overuse of pesticides in developed countries are cited to caution farmers in developing countries from getting drawn into a similar situation when attempting to solve pest problems. Integrated pest management (IPM), which aims to increase food productivity and profitability without endangering the environment, is recommended as a sustainable solution to the pesticide problem. The role of biological control agents, i.e., introduction, augmentation and preservation of natural enemies is emphasized. In developing sustainable agriculture through IPM, the importance of incorporating farmers' traditional methods of farming into an IPM package and of identifying farmers' overriding concerns, is recommended as a prerequisite to the acceptability and success of such packages.
Study of systematics effects on the cross power spectrum of 21 cm line and cosmic microwave background using Murchison Widefield Array data

Observation of the 21cm line signal from neutral hydrogen during the Epoch of Reionization is challenging due to extremely bright Galactic and extragalactic foregrounds and complicated instrumental calibration. A reasonable approach for mitigating these problems is the cross correlation with other observables. In this work, we present the first results of the cross power spectrum (CPS) between radio images observed by the Murchison Widefield Array and the cosmic microwave background (CMB), measured by the Planck experiment. We study the systematics due to the ionospheric activity, the dependence of CPS on group of pointings, and frequency. The resulting CPS is consistent with zero because the error is dominated by the foregrounds in the 21cm observation. Additionally, the variance of the signal indicates the presence of unexpected systematics error at small scales. Furthermore, we reduce the error by one order of magnitude with application of a foreground removal using a polynomial fitting method. Based on the results, we find that the detection of the 21cm-CMB CPS with the MWA Phase I requires more than 99.95% of the foreground signal removed, 2000 hours of deep observation and 50% of the sky fraction coverage.
Management of environmental issues for sustainable fisheries production from aquaculture in Nigeria

Aquaculture depends largely upon a good aquatic environment. The quality of the aquatic medium determines success to a large extent in aquaculture. The medium is particularly vulnerable to excessive abstraction (i.e surface or groundwater) and contamination from a range of sources (industrial, agricultural or domestic) as well as risks of self-pollution. Environmental management options proffered so far include: improvements in farming performance (especially related to feed and feeding strategies, stocking densities, water quality management, disease prevention and control, use of chemicals, etc.) and in the selection of sites and culturable species, treatment of effluents, sensitivity of recipient waters and enforcement of environmental regulations and guidelines specific to the culture system. There are presently conceptual frameworks for aquatic environment management backed by legal administrative tools to create or enforce rational system for water management, fisheries and aquaculture development strengthened by adaptive institutionalisation
Libya, the Responsibility to Protect and the Future of Humanitarian Intervention

Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors List of Figures and Tables 1. Introduction: Libya and the Responsibility to Protect Aidan Hehir 2. Humanitarianism, Responsibility or Rationality? Evaluating Intervention as State Strategy Robert W. Murray 3. The Responsibility to Protect as the Apotheosis of Liberal Teleology Aidan Hehir 4. 'My Fears, Alas, Were Not Unfounded:' Africa's Responses to the Libya Conflict Alex de Waal 5. Africa's Emerging Regional Security Culture and the Intervention in Libya Theresa Reinold 6. The Use - and Misuse - of R2P: the Case of Canada Kim Richard Nossal 7. The (D)evolution of a Norm: R2P, the Bosnia Generation and Humanitarian Intervention in Libya Eric A. Heinze and Brent J. Steele 8. The UN Security Council on Libya: Legitimation or Dissimulation? Tom Keating 9. NATO's Intervention in Libya: A Humanitarian Success? Alan Kuperman 10. Conclusion: The Responsibility to Protect after Libya Robert W. Murray
The Role of Human Resource Information System (HRIS) in Improving the Efficiency of the Recruitment Process in the Revolutionary Era 4.0

The era of revolution 4.0 is an era of digitalization, automation and centralization. The use of IOT, big data and cloud computing is starting to be implemented in various fields including Human Resource Management. One form of implementation is the use of AI-based HRIS software in the recruitment process. The implementation of HRIS certainly brings various positive impacts on performance efficiency and increased productivity. The purpose of this research is to analyze the efficiency of HRIS in the recruitment process, find out the various AI-based HRIS software and find out the challenges faced. The method used is a literature study by collecting various relevant sources. The results obtained are that HRIS implementation can increase time efficiency, cost efficiency and user satisfaction. Various HRIS features such as Fetcher, XOR, hireEZ, Eightfold, Pymetrics, Textio, Humanly, AllyO, Loxo, Turbohire and SaaS. These features offer various positive impacts on efficiency such as AllyO with 60% cost efficiency and 92% user satisfaction, SaaS with 42% cost efficiency and 46% user satisfaction and humanly being able to shorten candidate screening time by 60 hours. HRIS implementation also faces challenges such as high initial implementation costs, employee resistance and data security.
Protein Design Using Structure-Prediction Networks: AlphaFold and RoseTTAFold as Protein Structure Foundation Models

Designing proteins with tailored structures and functions is a long-standing goal in bioengineering. Recently, deep learning advances have enabled protein structure prediction at near-experimental accuracy, which has catalyzed progress in protein design as well. We review recent studies that use structure-prediction neural networks to design proteins, via approaches such as activation maximization, inpainting, or denoising diffusion. These methods have led to major improvements over previous methods in wet-lab success rates for designing protein binders, metalloproteins, enzymes, and oligomeric assemblies. These results show that structure-prediction models are a powerful foundation for developing protein-design tools and suggest that continued improvement of their accuracy and generality will be key to unlocking the full potential of protein design.
Clustering, Anisotropy and Spectra of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Ray tracing Z Showering by Relic Neutrino Masses in Dark Halos

The Ultra High Energy Cosmic Ray UHECR, by UHE neutrino-relic neutrino Z showering in Hot Dark Halos HDM, should exhibits an energy spectra and an anisotropy reflecting (also) the relic neutrino masses and their hierarchical HDM halo clustering. A twin light neutrino mass splitting may reflect to twin Z resonance and into a complex UHECR spectra modulation, a twin bump, at the edge at highest GZK energy cut-off. Each possible neutrino mass associates a characteristic dark halo size (galactic, local, Super Cluster) and its local anisotropy due to our peculiar position within that dark matter distribution. A neutrino HDM halo around a Mpc will allow to the UHECR neutron secondary component at E_n> 10^{20} eV (due to Z decay) to arise playing a role comparable with the charged p- anti{p} ones. Their un-deflected n-anti{n} (or decayed p-anti{p}) flight is shorter leading to a prompt and hard UHECR trace pointing toward the original UHECR source direction. The direct p -anti{p} pairs are split and spread by random magnetic fields into a more diluted and smeared UHECR signal around the original source direction. TeVs signals by synchrotron radiation must also mark the Z-WW Showering. The UHE Neutrino- Z showering signatures may be already found in recent (and future) events in AGASA (and Auger) data. The observed hard doublet and triplets spectra, their time and space clustering already favour the rising key role of UHECR neutron secondaries originated by Z tail shower.
Prevalence of HIV Self-Testing Among Men Who Have Sex With Men: Evidence Synthesis by Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

HIV self-testing (HIVST) plays a significant role in addressing the health care needs of high-risk populations, particularly men who have sex with men (MSM). The present systematic review and meta-analysis provide an assessment of the prevalence of HIVST among MSM within the last 5 years. Seven databases (PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane, Scopus, EMBASE, ProQuest, and EBSCOhost) were searched systematically from January 1, 2018 to March 10, 2023. After an independent search and quality assessment, the pooled prevalence was calculated using a random-effects model. Eight relevant studies were finally included in our study from an initial pool of 288 articles identified through a systematic search. Our meta-analysis revealed that the pooled prevalence of HIVST among MSM is 8% (95% CI: 5%–14%). Significant heterogeneity was noticed among the studies, with an I                     2                     value of 99% and a 95% prediction interval of 3% to 11%. Geography emerged as a significant moderator of this heterogeneity ( p &lt; .001). Specifically, studies from China reported a notably higher prevalence of 20% (15%–26%), while other countries reported a lower prevalence of 5% (3%–6%). A symmetrical Doi plot with a Luis–Furuya–Kanamori (LFK) index of −0.57 indicated no publication bias. HIVST has a low take-up among MSM globally. Factors leading to variation in HIVST need to be studied. The coordinated efforts of policymakers, health care providers, and affected communities are required in HIVST promotion.
The cosmic microwave background radiation power spectrum as a random bit generator for symmetric- and asymmetric-key cryptography

9 pages, 1 figure