Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
RF energy harvesting with multiple sources in wireless sensor network

Energy harvesting (EH) module for wireless sensor network has become a promising feature to prolong the conventional battery inside the devices. This emerging technology is gaining interest from sensor manufacturers as well as academicians across the globe. The concept of employing EH module must be cost effective and practical. In such, the use of EH module type besides RF is more realistic due to the size of the scavenger module, the availability of the resources and conversion efficiency. Most of the oil and gas plants have some drawbacks in scavenging RF from surrounding (i.e. router, Wi-Fi, base station, cell phone) due to its placement in remote area and thus limited energy sources could be a threat in this application. Multiple sources, including co-channel interference (CCI) in any constraint nodes is a feasible way of scavenging several wastes from ambient RF energy via wireless mesh topology. In this paper, a 3-node decode-and-forward (DF) model is proposed where the relay node is subject to an energy constraint. Multiple primary sources and CCI are added in the system model known as Multiple-Source and Single-Relay (MSSR). A mathematical model is derived in Power Splitting Relaying (PSR) schemes to obtain an average system throughput at a destination. Numerical simulation with respect to the average throughput and power ratio was performed and compared with the Single-Source and Single-Relay (SSSR) and ideal receiver. By applying multiple sources and CCI as an energy enhancement at the constraint node, the optimal value of EH ratio for PSR is increased by 10% as compared to the ideal receiver with better system capacity.
Electroencephalographic Variation during End Maintenance and Emergence from Surgical Anesthesia

The re-establishment of conscious awareness after discontinuing general anesthesia has often been assumed to be the inverse of loss of consciousness. This is despite the obvious asymmetry in the initiation and termination of natural sleep. In order to characterize the restoration of consciousness after surgery, we recorded frontal electroencephalograph (EEG) from 100 patients in the operating room during maintenance and emergence from general anesthesia. We have defined, for the first time, 4 steady-state patterns of anesthetic maintenance based on the relative EEG power in the slow-wave (<14 Hz) frequency bands that dominate sleep and anesthesia. Unlike single-drug experiments performed in healthy volunteers, we found that surgical patients exhibited greater electroencephalographic heterogeneity while re-establishing conscious awareness after drug discontinuation. Moreover, these emergence patterns could be broadly grouped according to the duration and rapidity of transitions amongst these slow-wave dominated brain states that precede awakening. Most patients progressed gradually from a pattern characterized by strong peaks of delta (0.5–4 Hz) and alpha/spindle (8–14 Hz) power (‘Slow-Wave Anesthesia’) to a state marked by low delta-spindle power (‘Non Slow-Wave Anesthesia’) before awakening. However, 31% of patients transitioned abruptly from Slow-Wave Anesthesia to waking; they were also more likely to express pain in the post-operative period. Our results, based on sleep-staging classification, provide the first systematized nomenclature for tracking brain states under general anesthesia from maintenance to emergence, and suggest that these transitions may correlate with post-operative outcomes such as pain.
When Worlds Collide: Integrating Different Counterfactual Assumptions in Fairness

Machine learning is now being used to make crucial decisions about people's lives. For nearly all of these decisions there is a risk that individuals of a certain race, gender, sexual orientation, or any other subpopulation are unfairly discriminated against. Our recent method has demonstrated how to use techniques from counterfactual inference to make predictions fair across different subpopulations. This method requires that one provides the causal model that generated the data at hand. In general, validating all causal implications of the model is not possible without further assumptions. Hence, it is desirable to integrate competing causal models to provide counterfactually fair decisions, regardless of which causal "world" is the correct one. In this paper, we show how it is possible to make predictions that are approximately fair with respect to multiple possible causal models at once, thus mitigating the problem of exact causal specification. We frame the goal of learning a fair classifier as an optimization problem with fairness constraints entailed by competing causal explanations. We show how this optimization problem can be efficiently solved using gradient-based methods. We demonstrate the flexibility of our model on two real-world fair classification problems. We show that our model can seamlessly balance fairness in multiple worlds with prediction accuracy.
Hydrolytic activity of human Nudt16 enzyme on dinucleotide cap analogs and short capped oligonucleotides

Human Nudt16 (hNudt16) is a member of the Nudix family of hydrolases, comprising enzymes catabolizing various substrates including canonical (d)NTPs, oxidized (d)NTPs, nonnucleoside polyphosphates, and capped mRNAs. Decapping activity of the Xenopus laevis (X29) Nudt16 homolog was observed in the nucleolus, with a high specificity toward U8 snoRNA. Subsequent studies have reported cytoplasmic localization of mammalian Nudt16 with cap hydrolysis activity initiating RNA turnover, similar to Dcp2. The present study focuses on hNudt16 and its hydrolytic activity toward dinucleotide cap analogs and short capped oligonucleotides. We performed a screening assay for potential dinucleotide and oligonucleotide substrates for hNudt16. Our data indicate that dinucleotide cap analogs and capped oligonucleotides containing guanine base in the first transcribed nucleotide are more susceptible to enzymatic digestion by hNudt16 than their counterparts containing adenine. Furthermore, unmethylated dinucleotides (GpppG and ApppG) and respective oligonucleotides (GpppG-16nt and GpppA-16nt) were hydrolyzed by hNudt16 with greater efficiency than were m7GpppG and m7GpppG-16nt. In conclusion, we found that hNudt16 hydrolysis of dinucleotide cap analogs and short capped oligonucleotides displayed a broader spectrum specificity than is currently known.
MiR-146a polymorphism correlates with lung cancer risk in Chinese nonsmoking females

This study provides evidence that the common rs2910164 polymorphism in miR-146a strongly correlates with lung cancer risk in nonsmoking females in northeast China. The genotypes of miR-146a rs2910164 were determined in 1131 patients with lung cancer and 1003 healthy control subjects. Tissue samples were used to evaluate the association between miRNA expression and lung cancer risk as well as the correlation between rs2910164 genotypes and miR-146a expression. The secondary structures of the wild-type and variant miR-146a sequences were predicted, and luciferase-based target assays were used to test whether miR-146a bound to tumor necrosis factor receptor associated factor 6 (TRAF6) mRNA. Individuals carrying heterozygous CG genotype of miR-146a rs2910164 had less risk of lung cancer than those carrying homozygous wild CC genotype (OR = 0.76, 95% CI = 0.60-0.98, P = 0.032). We found no significant association between miR-146a expression and lung cancer risk. MiR-146a expression differed in those carrying the CC genotype as compared with the CG or the GG genotype (P = 0.032 and 0.001), and the secondary structure of the C allele differed slightly from the G allele. Significantly lower levels of luciferase activity were observed when the TRAF6 3′UTR was cotransfected with miR-146a-3p carrying the rs2910164 C allele (P = 0.001). Thus, miR-146a rs2910164 polymorphism may influence susceptibility to lung cancer in Chinese nonsmoking females through targeting TRAF6.
Effect of Velocity and Temperature Distribution at the Hole Exit on Film Cooling of Turbine Blades

An existing three-dimensional Navier-Stokes code (Arnone et al., 1991), modified to include film cooling considerations (Garg and Gaugler, 1994), has been used to study the effect of coolant velocity and temperature distribution at the hole exit on the heat transfer coefficient on three film-cooled turbine blades, namely, the C3X vane, the VKI rotor, and the ACE rotor. Results are also compared with the experimental data for all the blades. Moreover, Mayle’s transition criterion (Mayle, 1991), Forest’s model for augmentation of leading edge heat transfer due to free-stream turbulence (Forest, 1977), and Crawford’s model for augmentation of eddy viscosity due to film cooling (Crawford et al., 1980) are used. Use of Mayle’s and Forest’s models is relevant only for the ACE rotor due to the absence of shower-head cooling on this rotor. It is found that, in some cases, the effect of distribution of coolant velocity and temperature at the hole exit can be as much as 60% on the heat transfer coefficient at the blade suction surface, and 50% at the pressure surface. Also, different effects are observed on the pressure and suction surface depending upon the blade as well as upon the hole shape, conical or cylindrical.Copyright © 1995 by ASME
Cancer-associated fibroblasts promote an immunosuppressive microenvironment through the induction and accumulation of protumoral macrophages

Stromal cells in the tumor microenvironment (TME) closely interact with tumor cells and affect tumor cell behavior in diverse manners. We herein investigated the mechanisms by which cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) affect the functional polarization of tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) in vitro and in human cancer samples. The expression of CD68, CD14, CD163, CD200R, CD206, HLA-G, CD80, and CD86 was higher in CD14-positive cells co-cultured with the culture supernatants of CAFs established from OSCC specimens (CAF-educated cells) than in control cells. The gene expression level of ARG1, IL10, and TGFB1 was increased in CAF-educated cells. CAF-educated cells suppressed T cell proliferation more strongly than control cells, and the neutralization of TGF-β IL-10, or arginase I significantly restored T cell proliferation. We then investigated the relationship between the infiltration of CAFs and TAMs using tissue samples obtained from patients with OSCC. The infiltration of CAFs was associated with the numbers of CD68-positive and CD163-positive macrophages. It also correlated with lymphatic invasion, vascular invasion, lymph node involvement, and the TNM stage. The infiltration of CAFs was identified as an independent prognostic factor in OSCC. Our results indicate that CAFs play important roles in shaping the tumor immunosuppressive microenvironment in OSCC by inducing the protumoral phenotype of TAMs. Therapeutic strategies to reverse CAF-mediated immunosuppression need to be considered.
Protocol for a randomised controlled implementation trial of point-of-care viral load testing and task shifting: the Simplifying HIV TREAtment and Monitoring (STREAM) study

Introduction Achieving the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS 90-90-90 targets requires models of HIV care that expand antiretroviral therapy (ART) coverage without overburdening health systems. Point-of-care (POC) viral load (VL) testing has the potential to efficiently monitor ART treatment, while enrolled nurses may be able to provide safe and cost-effective chronic care for stable patients with HIV. This study aims to demonstrate whether POC VL testing combined with task shifting to enrolled nurses is non-inferior and cost-effective compared with laboratory-based VL monitoring and standard HIV care. Methods and analysis The STREAM (Simplifying HIV TREAtment and Monitoring) study is an open-label, non-inferiority, randomised controlled implementation trial. HIV-positive adults, clinically stable at 6 months after ART initiation, will be recruited in a large urban clinic in South Africa. Approximately 396 participants will be randomised 1:1 to receive POC HIV VL monitoring and potential task shifting to enrolled nurses, versus laboratory VL monitoring and standard South African HIV care. Initial clinic follow-up will be 2-monthly in both arms, with VL testing at enrolment, 6 months and 12 months. At 6 months (1 year after ART initiation), stable participants in both arms will qualify for a differentiated care model involving decentralised ART pickup at community-based pharmacies. The primary outcome is retention in care and virological suppression at 12 months from enrolment. Secondary outcomes include time to appropriate entry into the decentralised ART delivery programme, costs per virologically suppressed patient and cost-effectiveness of the intervention compared with standard care. Findings will inform the scale up of VL testing and differentiated care in HIV-endemic resource-limited settings. Ethics and dissemination Ethical approval has been granted by the University of KwaZulu-Natal Biomedical Research Ethics Committee (BFC296/16) and University of Washington Institutional Review Board (STUDY00001466). Results will be presented at international conferences and published in academic peer-reviewed journals. Trial registration NCT03066128; Pre-results.
Fast and accurate quantum Monte Carlo for molecular crystals

Significance Computational approaches based on the fundamental laws of quantum mechanics are now integral to almost all materials design initiatives in academia and industry. If computational materials science is genuinely going to deliver on its promises, then an electronic structure method with consistently high accuracy is urgently needed. We show that, thanks to recent algorithmic advances and the strategy developed in our manuscript, quantum Monte Carlo yields extremely accurate predictions for the lattice energies of materials at a surprisingly modest computational cost. It is thus no longer a technique that requires a world-leading computational facility to obtain meaningful results. While we focus on molecular crystals, the significance of our findings extends to all classes of materials. Computer simulation plays a central role in modern-day materials science. The utility of a given computational approach depends largely on the balance it provides between accuracy and computational cost. Molecular crystals are a class of materials of great technological importance which are challenging for even the most sophisticated ab initio electronic structure theories to accurately describe. This is partly because they are held together by a balance of weak intermolecular forces but also because the primitive cells of molecular crystals are often substantially larger than those of atomic solids. Here, we demonstrate that diffusion quantum Monte Carlo (DMC) delivers subchemical accuracy for a diverse set of molecular crystals at a surprisingly moderate computational cost. As such, we anticipate that DMC can play an important role in understanding and predicting the properties of a large number of molecular crystals, including those built from relatively large molecules which are far beyond reach of other high-accuracy methods.
Azo compounds as a family of organic electrode materials for alkali-ion batteries

Significance Organic electrode materials are promising for green and sustainable secondary batteries due to the light weight, abundance, low cost, sustainability, and recyclability of organic materials. However, the traditional organic electrodes suffer from poor cycle stability and low power density. Here, we report a family of organic electrode materials containing azo functional groups for alkali-ion batteries. The azo compound, azobenzene-4,4′-dicarboxylic acid lithium salt, exhibits superior electrochemical performance in Li-ion and Na-ion batteries, in terms of long cycle life and high rate capability. The mechanism study demonstrates that the azo group can reversibly react with Li ions during charge/discharge cycles. Therefore, this work offers opportunities for developing stable and high-rate alkali-ion batteries. Organic compounds are desirable for sustainable Li-ion batteries (LIBs), but the poor cycle stability and low power density limit their large-scale application. Here we report a family of organic compounds containing azo group (N=N) for reversible lithiation/delithiation. Azobenzene-4,4′-dicarboxylic acid lithium salt (ADALS) with an azo group in the center of the conjugated structure is used as a model azo compound to investigate the electrochemical behaviors and reaction mechanism of azo compounds. In LIBs, ADALS can provide a capacity of 190 mAh g−1 at 0.5 C (corresponding to current density of 95 mA g−1) and still retain 90%, 71%, and 56% of the capacity when the current density is increased to 2 C, 10 C, and 20 C, respectively. Moreover, ADALS retains 89% of initial capacity after 5,000 cycles at 20 C with a slow capacity decay rate of 0.0023% per cycle, representing one of the best performances in all organic compounds. Superior electrochemical behavior of ADALS is also observed in Na-ion batteries, demonstrating that azo compounds are universal electrode materials for alkali-ion batteries. The highly reversible redox chemistry of azo compounds to alkali ions was confirmed by density-functional theory (DFT) calculations. It provides opportunities for developing sustainable batteries.
Chronicity of Anterior Cruciate Ligament Deficiency, Part 2: Radiographic Predictors of Early Graft Failure

Background: Accumulating evidence suggests that long-term anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) deficiency can give rise to an abnormal tibiofemoral relationship and subsequent intra-articular lesions. However, the effects of chronic ACL deficiency (ACLD) on early graft failure after anatomic reconstruction remain unclear. Hypothesis: We hypothesized that patients with long-term ACLD lasting more than 5 years would have a greater rate of early graft failure due to insufficient intraoperative reduction of the tibia and that the preoperative and immediately postoperative abnormal tibiofemoral relationship in the sagittal plane, such as anterior tibial subluxation (ATS), would correlate with the graft status on postoperative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Study Design: Cohort study; Level of evidence, 3. Methods: A total of 358 patients who had undergone anatomic ACL reconstruction with hamstring grafts were divided into 5 groups based on chronicity of ACLD: (1) 0 to 6 months, (2) 6 months to 1 year, (3) 1 to 2 years, (4) 2 to 5 years, and (5) longer than 5 years. Preoperatively and immediately postoperatively, lateral radiographs in full extension were taken in all patients to evaluate the tibiofemoral relationship, specifically with regard to ATS, space for the ACL (sACL), and extension angle. All patients underwent MRI at 6 months to reveal graft status. Groups with a high rate of graft failure were further analyzed to compare demographic and radiographic factors between the intact and failure subgroups, followed by multivariate logistic regression analysis to identify predisposing factors. Results: Graft failure without trauma was observed in 4 (1.8%), 0 (0%), 1 (3.7%), 3 (9.7%), and 8 patients (17.7%) in groups 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, respectively. Of the 76 patients in groups 4 and 5, significant differences were noted between the failure and intact subgroups in preoperative ATS (4.9 vs 2.4 mm, respectively; P < .01), side-to-side differences in sACL (sACL-SSD) (4.7 vs 1.9 mm, respectively; P < .01), extension deficit (4.4° vs 1.3°, respectively; P < .01), and chondral lesions (P = .02), while postoperative ATS and sACL-SSD showed no differences. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that of these factors, preoperative sACL-SSD could be a risk factor for early graft failure (odds ratio, 3.2; 95% CI, 1.37-7.46). Conclusion Early graft failure at 6 months increased in patients with ACLD longer than 2 years. In this population, preoperative sACL-SSD was the most significant risk factor for early graft failure on MRI. However, immediately postoperative radiographic measurements had no effect on graft failure rates.
Influence of Routine Slaughtering on the Evolution of BSE: Example of British and French Slaughterings

The aim of this article is to build a methodology allowing the study and the comparison of the potential spread of BSE at the scale of countries under different routine slaughtering conditions in order to evaluate the risk of nonextinction due to this slaughtering. We first model the evolution in discrete time of the proportion of animals in the latent period and that of infectives, assuming a very large branching population not necessarily constant in size, two age classes, less than 1‐year‐old animals, and adult animals. We analytically derive a bifurcation parameter ρ0 allowing us to predict either endemicity or extinction of the disease, which has the meaning of an epidemiological reproductive rate. We show that the classical reproductive number R0 cannot be used for prediction if the size of the population, when healthy, does not remain stable throughout time. We illustrate the qualitative results by means of simulations with either the British routine slaughtering probabilities or the French ones, the other conditions being assumed identical in both countries. We show that the French probabilities lead to a higher risk of spread of the disease than the British ones, this result being mainly due to a smaller value of the routine slaughtering probability of the adult animals in France than in Great Britain.
Identification and characterization of novel PAX8 mutations in Congenital Hypothyroidism(CH) in a Chinese population

Objective Based on mutations in PAX8 is associated with thyroid dysgenesis. We aim to identify and characterize PAX8 mutations in a large cohort of congenital hypothyroidism(CH) from thyroid dysgenesis in Chinese population. Methods We screened 453 unrelated Chinese patients with CH from thyroid dysgenesis for PAX8 mutations by sequencing the whole coding regions of PAX8 on genomic DNA isolated from blood. Cell transfection assays using various vector constructs and induced mutagenesis as well as electrophoretic mobility shift assays were used to investigate the effects of selected mutations on the transcribing and binding activities of PAX8 at the promoters of target genes for thyroglobulin (TG) and thyroperoxidase (TPO). Results Five PAX8 mutations were found, yielding a mutation prevalence of 5/453 (1.1%). We selected two mutations in the critical paired domain of PAX8 and generated mutants D94N and G41V. We demonstrated G41V was unable to bind the specific sequence in the promoters of TG and TPO and activate them. D94N could bind to TG and TPO promoters and normally activate the TG promoter transcription but not the TPO promoter transcription. We also demonstrated a dominant negative role of the PAX8 mutants in impairing the function of the wild-type PAX8. Conclusion We for the first time documented the prevalence and characterized the function of PAX8 mutations in CH in Chinese population. The study specifically demonstrated the role of novel mutations D94N and G41V in impairing the function of PAX8, providing further evidence for genetic PAX8 defects as a disease mechanism in CH.