nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
DHEA-S selectively impairs contextual-fear conditioning: support for the antiglucocorticoid hypothesis.

The authors had reported that glucocorticoids play a selective role in fear conditioning. The adrenal steroid dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) has been reported to act as a functional antiglucocorticoid. If DHEA has antiglucocorticoid properties, then its effects on fear conditioning might resemble those produced by adrenalectomy. The authors now report that chronic exposure to high levels of dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEA-S; converted in vivo to DHEA) produced the same pattern of results as adrenalectomy. Specifically, treatment with DHEA-S impaired contextual fear conditioning 24 hr after conditioning but not immediately after conditioning, and like adrenalectomy, DHEA-S had no effect on auditory-cue fear conditioning. Preexposure to the context before drug treatment eliminated the amnestic effects of DHEA-S, suggesting that, like adrenalectomy, DHEA-S exerted its effect by interfering with the construction of a contextual memory representation. Thus, DHEA appears to act as a functional antiglucocorticoid in the processes that mediate learning and memory.

Field of study: Biology, Psychology
Faunal dietary response to the Heinrich Event 4 in southwestern Europe

The dietary traits of the ungulates from the Canyars assemblage (Late Pleistocene; Gava, Barcelona, Spain) are analysed through tooth mesowear and microwear to study their feeding behaviour as well as the climatic conditions during the time of the arrival of the early modern Europeans in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula. During the Heinrich Event 4 (HE4, between 39 and 40 kyr B.P.), the dietary adaptations of ungulates to grazing dominated the community, and included horses, as well as some red deer, aurochs, and ibex. Results show a rigorous climate, with the presence of grasslands capable of sustaining a high ungulate biomass. The composition of the Canyars ungulate community and its dietary adaptations clearly reveals some particularity of the HE4 in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula. These open landscapes certainly favoured the migration routes of large mammals along the Mediterranean basin, and also favoured the dispersal of modern humans into the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula.

Field of study: Environmental science, Geography
Energy-aware virtual machine allocation for cloud with resource reservation

To reduce the price of pay-as-you-go style cloud applications, an increasing number of cloud service providers offer resource reservation-based services that allow tenants to customize their virtual machines (VMs) with specific time windows and physical resources. However, due to the lack of efficient management of reserved services, the energy efficiency of host physical machines cannot be guaranteed. In today’s highly competitive cloud computing market, such low energy efficiency will significantly reduce the profit margin of cloud service providers. Therefore, how to explore energy efficient VM allocation solutions for reserved services to achieve maximum profit is becoming a key issue for the operation and maintenance of cloud computing. To address this problem, this paper proposes a novel and effective evolutionary approach for VM allocation that can maximize the energy efficiency of a cloud data center while incorporating more reserved VMs. Aiming at accurate energy consumption estimation, our approach needs to simulate all the VM allocation updates, which is time-consuming using traditional cloud simulators. To overcome this, we have designed a simplified simulation engine for CloudSim that can accelerate the process of our evolutionary approach. Comprehensive experimental results obtained from both simulation on CloudSim and real cloud environments show that our approach not only can quickly achieve an optimized allocation solution for a batch of reserved VMs, but also can consolidate more VMs with fewer physical machines to achieve better energy efficiency than existing methods. To be specific, the overall profit improvement and energy savings achieved by our approach can be up to 24% and 41% as compared to state-of-the-art methods, respectively. Moreover, our approach could enable the cloud data center to serve more tenant requests.

Field of study: Computer science, Engineering
Magnetically coupled Josephson D/A converter

Precise, accurate D/A conversion becomes increasingly difficult at high frequencies, especially for low-power devices. The authors have developed a superconducting D/A converter based on the Josephson effect. Following a design of Hamilton et al. (1995), they have added magnetic coupling of the digital input lines to simplify the input interface. In addition, they have converted to a balanced two superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) unit cell, which allows input-to-output isolation and isolation between input lines white doubling output voltages. Their initial demonstration consists of a 2-bit NbN D/A pumped at 12 GHz, producing output levels of 0, 50, 100, and 150 microvolts into a 50-ohm load with low-speed digital input.

Field of study: Physics
The Effect of Hand Dominance on Functional Outcome Following Single Row Rotator Cuff Repair

Rotator cuff tears are a common cause of shoulder disability and pain. Excellent outcomes can be obtained with surgical treatment although this outcome is affected by several factors. We sought to investigate the effect of hand dominance on subjective functional outcome post rotator cuff repair.  All patients who had rotator cuff repair over a calendar year were identified and followed up at 3 years post operatively. Patients were consented for inclusion in the study and demographic data, hand dominance and functional outcome data was collected. L’insalata shoulder questionnaire was used for outcome data collection. SPSS version 22 was used for statistical analysis where appropriate.  144 patients were included in this study. Mean age was 63 +/- 10.1 years in the dominant side group and 62 +/- 8.6 years in the non-dominant group. 92 patients had dominant side surgery and 52 had non-dominant side surgery. There was a statistically significant correlation between dominant hand and operated side (P=0.005). The mean overall outcome score was marginally higher in the dominant surgery group with a mean of 89.8 +/- 14.2 compared with a mean of 87.4 +/- 17.5 in the non-dominant group. Multi-variate linear regression analysis revealed this difference to be non-significant (p = 0.4).  No difference was found in the functional outcome of rotator cuff repair between dominant and non-dominant side surgery. This information will help in counselling patients who are concerned about the potential impact of rotator cuff repair on the function of their dominant hand.

Field of study: Medicine
Enhancement of the photoproperties of solid-state TiO2|dye|CuI cells by coupling of two dyes

The electronic coupling of a natural pigment extracted from pomegranate fruits (rich with cyanin and exist as flavylium at natural PH) with an organic dye mercurochrome enhanced the performance of solid-state TiO2|dye|CuI-type photovoltaic cells sensitized from pomegranate pigments or mercurochrome individually.

Field of study: Materials science
Chemical reactions and Schottky barrier formation at Cr/n-CdTe interfaces

The formation of Schottky barriers at Cr/n-CdTe interfaces has been investigated in detail using angle-resolved ultraviolet photo-emission, soft X-ray photo-emission and current-voltage techniques. The CdTe surfaces studied were prepared by cleaving in ultra-high vacuum, cleaving in air, and by chemical etching. The results indicate strong chemical reactions between both CdTe and its native oxide (TeO2) with evaporated Cr layers. A typical high-coverage Cr/clean-CdTe interface consists of a mixture of cadmium chromium telluride and metallically bonded cadmium. In the case of oxidised CdTe surfaces, oxides of chromium and chromium telluride also exist at the interface. The resulting barriers are less than about 0.35 eV, showing Ohmic behaviour, and are almost independent of the surface preparation. These chemical reactions at the interface are discussed on the basis of the published bulk thermodynamic data.

Field of study: Materials science
The N(1710)P11 state is confirmed in the re-analysis of the pi N --> K Lambda production; it is a good candidate for a non-strange pentaquark

Re-analyzing the old pi N --> K Lambda data, the additional proof is given for the existence of the N(1710) P11 state, critically needed in light of reported observations of exotic Theta(1539) and Xi(1862) pentaquarks. An existing single-resonance model with S11, P11 and P13 Breit-Wiegner resonances in the s-channel has been applied. It has been shown that the standard set of resonant parameters fails to reproduce the shape of the differential cross section. The new resonance parameter determination has been performed keeping in mind the most recent knowledge about nucleon resonances. The extracted set of parameters has confirmed the need for the strong contribution of a N(1710) P11 resonance. The need for any significant contribution of the P13 resonance has been eliminated. To reproduce the total cross section at the same time with the linear dependence of the differential cross sections with the cos(theta) in the energy range 1650 MeV < W < 1800 MeV the P11 resonance can not but be quite narrow.

Field of study: Physics
Stress-associated modulation of proto-oncogene expression in human peripheral blood leukocytes.

Changes in the cellular immune response associated with psychological stress were studied by using an academic stress model with medical students. The authors examined the expression of 2 proto-oncogenes, c-myc and c-myb, in peripheral blood leukocytes (PBLs) obtained from medical students at the time of examinations and at a baseline period approximately 1 month prior to the examinations. The level of messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) expression of both protooncogenes was significantly lower in PBLs obtained during examinations than in those from the baseline period. In addition, a significant decrease in the level of mRNA to the glucocorticoid receptor and gamma interferon was also found in the same preparations. The decrease in mRNA content of c-myc, c-myb, the glucocorticoid receptor, and gamma interferon in PBLs obtained from subjects during examinations is consistent with data from previous studies using the same model that have demonstrated a down-regulation of T-lymphocyte activation and proliferation in response to mitogens.

Field of study: Biology, Psychology
Improved SIFTER v2 algorithm for long-term GOME-2A satellite retrievals of fluorescence with a correction for instrument degradation

Solar-induced fluorescence (SIF) data from satellites are increasingly used as a proxy for photosynthetic activity by vegetation, and as a constraint on gross primary production. Here we develop an improved retrieval algorithm to retrieve mid-morning (09:30 hrs local time) SIF estimates on the global scale from GOME-2 sensor on the Metop-A satellite (GOME-2A) for the period 2007–2019. Our new SIFTER v2 algorithm improves over a previous version by using a narrower spectral window that avoids strong oxygen absorption and is less sensitive to water vapour absorption, by constructing stable reference spectra from a 6-year period (2007–2012) of atmospheric spectra over the Sahara, and by applying a latitude-dependent zero-level adjustment that accounts for biases in the data product. We generated stable, good-quality SIF retrievals between January 2007 and June 2013, when GOME-2A degradation in the near infrared was still limited. After the narrowing of the GOME-2A swath in July 2013, we characterized the throughput degradation of the level-1 data in order to derive reflectance corrections and apply these for the SIF retrievals between July 2013 and December 2018. SIFTER v2 data compares well with the independent NASA v2.8 data product. Especially in the evergreen tropics, SIFTER v2 no longer shows the underestimates against other satellite products that were seen in SIFTER v1. The new data product includes uncertainty estimates for individual observations, and is best used for mostly clear-sky scenes, and when spectral residuals remain below a certain spectral autocorrelation threshold. Our results support the use of SIFTER v2 data to be used as an independent constraint on photosynthetic activity on regional to global scales.

Field of study: Environmental science
Chromatographic methods in solid surface investigations

The application of chromatography as a testing method for properties of surfaces is considered. Examples are provided of employing chromatography for studying the geometry and surface chemistry of solids and sorbents of various nature, such as non-porous silica, non-porous ionic adsorbent on barium sulfate base, porous The high sensitivity of the chromatographic method in investigating the changes in the texture and the chemical state of the surface are shown. Y-iron oxide and polymer sorbents.

Field of study: Chemistry
Dynamical Nucleon-Pion System via Basis Light-Front Quantization

We present the first application of the Basis Light-Front Quantization method to study a simple chiral model of the nucleon-pion system via an ab initio, non-perturbative, Hamiltonian approach. As a test problem, we consider the physical proton as the relativistic bound state of the nucleon-pion system. Based on the chiral model of the nucleon-pion system, we construct the mass-squared matrix of the system within our light-front basis representation. We obtain the proton's mass and the corresponding light-front wave function by solving the eigenvalue problem of the mass-squared matrix. With the resulting boost-invariant light-front wave function, we also compute the proton's parton distribution function.

Field of study: Physics
Superior vena cava syndrome in a patient with severe thrombocytopenia.

A 75-year-old woman was admitted with a suspected superior vena cava syndrome. She was diagnosed with Stage IV progressive ovarian carcinoma and has been treated for the last 2 weeks with topotecan as third-line chemotherapy. A week earlier, she noticed that the right-sided chest skin was becoming progressively demarcated with venous congestions. On examination, we found that her right jugular vein was fully congested (10 cm) with engorged veins of the skin on the right anterior chest. Her blood pressure was 120/80 …

Field of study: Medicine
Bit Allocation Law for Multiantenna Channel Feedback Quantization: Single-User Case

This paper studies the design and optimization of a limited feedback single-user system with multiple-antenna transmitter and single-antenna receiver. The design problem is cast in form of the minimizing the average transmission power at the base station subject to the user's outage probability constraint. The optimization is over the user's channel quantization codebook and the transmission power control function at the base station. Our approach is based on fixing the outage scenarios in advance and transforming the design problem into a robust system design problem. We start by showing that uniformly quantizing the channel magnitude in dB scale is asymptotically optimal, regardless of the magnitude distribution function. We derive the optimal uniform (in dB) channel magnitude codebook and combine it with a spatially uniform channel direction codebook to arrive at a product channel quantization codebook. We then optimize such a product structure in the asymptotic regime of B → ∞, where B is the total number of quantization feedback bits. The paper shows that for channels in the real space, the asymptotically optimal number of direction quantization bits should be (M-1)/2 times the number of magnitude quantization bits, where M is the number of base station antennas. We also show that the performance of the designed system approaches the performance of the perfect channel state information system as 2-2B/(M+1). For complex channels, the number of magnitude and direction quantization bits are related by a factor of (M-1) and the system performance scales as 2-B/M as B → ∞.

Field of study: Engineering
Latest Cretaceous cone-in-cone structures and soft-sediment deformation (Basque-Cantabrian Basin, north Spain): A record of deep-marine paleoseismicity?

Unusual cone-in-cone structures are preserved in fibrous celestite veins hosted by carbonatic rocks. The veins are early diagenetic features formed near the water-sediment interface in a deep-marine environment of latest Cretaceous (early Maastrichtian) age. New field and microscopic evidence on the veins and their host rocks indicates that they predate sediment compaction and were related to synsedimentary, soft-sediment deformation structures. The mechanism of cone-in-cone formation has been related to fluid-pressure drops following sediment overpressurization, but instantaneous loading during emplacement of submarine slides or other mechanisms might be viable alternatives. We argue that this cone-in-cone structure is an overprinting feature (penetrative conical fractures) that resulted from seismic wave propagation through a mechanically anisotropic medium. Submarine amplification of seismic surface waves (Rayleigh waves) induced shock wave formation in the contacts between veins and the bounding lithified calcarenite and unlithified marl sediment layers. Fracture front wave propagation (normal to the seafloor and the Rayleigh source) across the veins and along the celestite crystal fibers induced crack nucleation in heterogeneities and penetrative conical fracturation. The cone-in-cone structure might thus be regarded as a new paleoseismological indicator in deep-sea sediments.

Field of study: Geology
Epidermal transpiration and stomatal responses to humidity: Some hypotheses explored

Stomatal responses to humidity as affected by both evaporation from the epidermis and the hydraulic conductance of the transpiration stream to evaporation sites on the epidermis are discussed. Recent estimates of evaporation from the inner walls of the epidermis are too high because the cell wall surfaces were assumed completely wet, and leaves have usually been considered isothermal. It is suggested that a fall in humidity increases evaporation from the epidermis, and that stomata respond to the consequent fall in water potential. Cuticular transiration is inversely related to stomatal conductance. Thus, evaporation from the epidermis is dependent on the stomatal, boundary layer, and cuticular conductances, and on evaporation from the inner walls of the epidermis. Stomatal responses to humidity will change as the boundary layer conductance changes. The conductance of the transpiration stream is a determinant of the water potential of the epidermis. Water potentials of adjacent cells will be more similar if flow is symplastic than if it is apoplastic. It is concluded that flow in living tissues is primarily symplastic over long distances, but over shorter distances it is increasingly apoplastic, and that stomatal responses to humidity are mediated by the water potential of the whole epidermis.

Field of study: Environmental science
Bounds for Expectations of Differences of Generalized Order Statistics Based on General and Life Distributions

Let X * (r), r ≥ 1, denote generalized order statistics based on an arbitrary distribution function F with finite pth absolute moment for some 1 ≤ p ≤ ∞. We present sharp upper bounds on E(X * (s) − X * (r)), 1 ≤ r < s, for F being either general or life distribution. The bounds are expressed in various scale units generated by pth central absolute or raw moments of F, respectively. The distributions achieving the bounds are specified.

Field of study: Mathematics
Type II superlattices for infrared detectors and devices

Superlattices consisting of combinations of III-V semiconductors with type II band alignments are of interest for infrared applications because their energy gaps can be made smaller than those of any 'natural' III-V compounds. Specifically, it has been demonstrated that both InSb/InAsxSb1-x superlattices and Ga1-xInxSb/InAs superlattices can possess energy gaps in the 8-14 mu m range. The efforts have focused on the Ga1-xInxSb/InAs system because of its extreme broken gap band alignment, which results in narrow energy gaps for very short superlattice periods. The authors report the use of in situ chemical doping of Ga1-xInxSb/InAs superlattices to fabricate p-n photodiodes. These diodes display a clear photovoltaic response with a threshold near 12 mu m. They have also attained outstanding structural quality in Ga1-xInxSb/InAs superlattices grown on radiatively heated GaSb substrates. Cross-sectional transmission electron microscope images of these superlattices display no dislocations, while high resolution X-ray diffraction scans reveal sharp high-order superlattice satellites and strong Pendellosung fringes.

Field of study: Materials science
Enantioseparation, in vitro testing, and structural characterization of triple-binding reactivators of organophosphate-inhibited cholinesterases.

The enantiomers of racemic 2-hydroxyimino-N-(azidophenylpropyl)acetamide-derived triple-binding oxime reactivators were separated, and tested for inhibition and reactivation of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) inhibited with tabun (GA), cyclosarin (GF), sarin (GB), and VX. Both enzymes showed the greatest affinity toward the methylimidazole derivative (III) of 2-hydroxyimino-N-(azidophenylpropyl)acetamide (I). The crystal structure was determined for the complex of oxime III within human BChE, confirming that all three binding groups interacted with active site residues. In the case of BChE inhibited by GF, oximes I (kr = 207 M-1 min-1) and III (kr = 213 M-1 min-1) showed better reactivation efficiency than the reference oxime 2-PAM. Finally, the key mechanistic steps in the reactivation of GF-inhibited BChE with oxime III were modelled using the PM7R6 method, stressing the importance of proton transfer from Nε of His438 to Oγ of Ser203 for achieving successful reactivation.

Field of study: Biology, Computer science
Influence of magnetic pressure on performance of cylinder-taper cascaded HMFCGs

In order to study the basic physical process and energy conversion mechanism of helical magnetic flux compression generators(HMFCG) of the two-stage cylinder-taper configuration, a series of HMFCG models were simulated and analyzedusing the code MFCG(Ⅴ).The influence of the magnetic pressure on the radial velocity and the expanding process of the armature were particularly analyzed.The simulation results show that during most time of the magnetic flux compression process,the radial velocity of the expanding armature is determined by detonation pressure,but with the current increase the effects of magnetic pressure become more and more important,which should be considered in designing the second stage of the HMFCG.

Field of study: Physics
The Role of Flexible Production in Earnings Inequality

Increasing tention from economists. The broad consensus is that the main reason earnings inequality has increased in the United States over the past two decades is technical change, leading to an increased relative demand for skilled workers. The specific change in technology most often cited is improvements in computer technology (Krueger 1993; Berman, Bound, and Griliches 1994; Auter, Katz, and Krueger 1997). This paper argues that a different type of technological change, the shift from mass to flexible production, has been a more important cause of increasing inequality. Flexible production increases the relative demand for skilled, highly paid workers and decreases the demand for unskilled, lowwage workers, thereby creating greater earnings inequality.

Field of study: Economics