Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Leptin Levels in Obese and Non-Obese African and Caucasian Subjects With Type 2 Diabetes

• '" t has previously been demonstrated that circu1ating levels of Jeptin show etlmic • . differences when controlled for the con­ founding influence of adiposity. This study examined leptin levels in non-obese and obese subjects with type 2 diabetes of African versus Caucasian origin. Materials and Methods: Non-obese and obese subjects with type 2 diabetes of either African origin living in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (n=22) or Caucasian origin living in Malmo, Sweden (n=24) were studied by taking a fasting sample for analysis of insulin and leptin after an over­ night fast. All subjects were treated with met­ formln alone or with sulfonylurea with or with­ out addition of metformin. Results: It was found that age, BMI, w aist cir­ cumference, blood pressure and fasting glucose or insulin did not differ between Africans and Caucasians, when divided into obese and non­ obese subjects. However, leptin levels were 50% higher in the African subjects than in the Cauca­ sians, when controlled for gender and BMI (P=O.01). Conclusion: We conclude that both in non-obese and obese subjects with type 2 diabetes, leptin levels are higher among subjects of African ori ­ gin than of Caucasian origin. Tills may be re­ lated to higher risk of cardiovascular diseases in these subjects.
The Development Of Flash Program Based Mobile Learning (M-Learning) On Colloidal System Material

This research was aimed to determine the level of feasibility of learning media chemistry that has been developed by using Adobe Flash CS6 program based on Mobile Learning (MLearning) on class XI semester 2 on the material colloidal system, to find out differences in learning outcomes who are taught by the media of learning chemistry on the material colloidal system that has been developed by using Adobe Flash CS6 program based on Mobile Learning (M-Learning) compared with the learning students who taught with learning chemistry media that has been circulated in internet on the same material. This type of research uses Development Research method that uses ADDIE. The research population is all students of class XI Senior High School using curriculum 13. The sample is the students of class XI Senior High School of Nurul Iman. The findings from the analysis show that learning media using Flash which has circulating on the internet sourced for high school class XI semester 2 on the material of colloidal system is feasible to use but need to be developed. Keywords— media learning chemistry, colloidal system, Adobe Flash CS6, mobile learning
Modelling, design and optimisation of connected array antennas

Wideband and widescan array antennas are attractive since they offer multi-function capabilities with a single aperture. In particular, connected array antennas are interesting as they provide broad-band operation in combination with low crosspolarisation. In this thesis, we present a electrically thin connected slot array with dielectric superstrates. The antenna is analysed with the finite element method, where the computational domain is the unit cell of an infinite array antenna. An optimization of the connected array design is performed based on a finite-difference gradient of an objective function with respect to the design parameters. The proposed design achieves more than one octave bandwidth (6.5 − 14.5 GHz) within a scanning range of ±60◦ in all azimuth planes.
Design method and experiment of machinery for combined application of seed, fertilizer and herbicide

This study aimed to resolve the problems of full wheat straw returning to the field, which might readily cause stalk obstruction, poor sowing quality, and serious weeds at the seedling stage, affecting the growth of maize. Based on the idea of “simultaneous seeding and spraying, closed weeding”, this paper presented a design method for designing a corn seed-fertilizer-herbicide simultaneous operation machine, which focuses on the design of vertical active straw-removing anti-blocking device mechanism, design of nozzle key parameters, nozzle selection, seeding monomer analysis and spatial layout design of seed-fertilizer-herbicide mechanism. In addition, the interrelated formulas were deduced and machine design and field experiment were conducted. The experiment results showed that the average variation coefficient of spray uniformity of machines was 17.70%. The post-experiment weed amount was 8.9%, which was lower than that before sowing, 8.5% lower than that before artificially closed weeding, and 14.3% lower than that in unenclosed weeding area. Moreover, the weeds were less in the working area of the machine, and the growth of corn was better. Compared with manual closed weeding, the average plant height uniformity and average stem diameter uniformity increased by 4.4% and 5.1%, respectively. Compared with unclosed weeding, the average plant height uniformity and average stem diameter uniformity increased by 18.3% and 10.8%, respectively. Overall, the rationality of the design method proposed in this paper was validated, and these can lay a foundation for the research and development of the same type of machine.
Low-Order Wavefront Sensing for Future Space-Based Coronagraphic Missions with a Sparse Aperture Mask

In the quest for extra-terrestrial life, we have landed on the moon and sent rovers to other planets in the Solar System. The discovery of the first Jupiter-sized exoplanet, two decades ago, has led to an exponential increase in exoplanet research and public interest in existence of life outside our Solar System. Since then, indirect techniques have led to the discovery of hundreds of exoplanets but are limited in their scope of exoplanet characterization. Direct imaging, however, will provide the capability to thoroughly characterize an exoplanet’s atmosphere, composition, temperature, size, and orbit. This would help scientists look for biomarkers of life. Diffraction due to the finite size of telescopes, 10 difference in brightness between the host star and earth-like planets, and a small angular separation between them pose a huge challenge to direct imaging. The state of the art coronagraphs can create dark holes at smaller inner working angles, making it possible to image dim planets with smaller orbits. The contrast degradation caused by optical aberrations, however, limits the coronagraphs from achieving their theoretical limits. Robust estimation and control algorithms that can estimate and control these aberrations are being tested in various high-contrast imaging labs. However, to achieve the required contrast, it is also essential to estimate and control the dynamic aberrations that degrade the coronagraphic performance. This thesis focuses on a novel technique that estimates these dynamic aberrations. This technique utilizes the starlight rejected by the coronagraph and a sparse aperture mask (SAM) to infer the dynamic aberrations. In this work, we will present the working principle of the SAM wavefront sensor, detail the SAM optimization, and compare its performance with other existing wavefront sensors. We will also present an adaptive estimation and control technique that can be used with a Kalman filter for line-of-sight (LoS) jitter estimation and control in the absence of the jitter frequency data. The work presented in this thesis would help designers pick low-order wavefront sensing and control hardware and software for future coronagraphic missions. iii
Polar codes and polar lattices for multi-terminal communication systems

In the last few years, there have been considerable interests in multi-terminal communication systems as they have been applied in various commercial and military applications. In this thesis, we aim to tackle some important problems in information theory subject to multi-terminal systems, such as source coding and channel coding with side information, multiterminal source coding, and network coding, etc. The key idea of our solution is based on polar codes and lattice codes. The invention of polar codes is considered to be one of the major breakthroughs in coding theory for the past ten years, since they are able to provide explicit and practical code constructions. Lattice codes with good performance have played an important role in communication and source compression over the past 60 years. Polar lattices, as a new method to construct lattices by using polar codes, have been developed in recent years. By employing polar codes and polar lattices, we develop explicit code constructions achieve the rate-distortion function of the Heegard-Berger problem which can be regarded an extension to the classical Wyner-Ziv problem with side information may or may not presented at the decoder. With the use of these two codes, we show practical solutions to extract the Wyner’s common information among two or more random variables for both binary or Gaussian scenarios. Finally, we apply lattice codes as the channel code of the users in the cloud radio access network (C-RAN), where the packets are sent to the cloud for distributed decoding through an AWGN channel. We evaluate the tradeoff between the frame error rate and the decoding latency by giving a calculation of the optimal computation rate to guarantee a reliable transmission.
SYMBOLS: SOFTWARE FOR SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS

The unique possibilities of the online social networks such as real-time data access, knowledge of users’ changing preferences and access to their statuses provide the possibility for innovation in the analysis of people’s behavior and opinions, when compared to classical offline methods. Literature review shows lack of studies about the use of public Facebook data in Serbia for the improvement of different product sale, political or promotional campaigns, recommender systems, etc. In this paper, we present the way how data from Facebook can be collected in order to gain insight into the individuals’ preferences and statuses, as well as their connection to a company's fan pages. In particular, we present data collection framework – Symbols – used for collecting individual specific data. The framework stores data into local database and involves a module for graph and content-based analysis of these data. The proposed framework for social network analysis can be used as a decision-making system in users’ preferences implementation thus creating a space for business improvements in various areas.
Non-locality of the Earth's quasi-parallel bow shock: injection of thermal protons in a hybrid-Vlasov simulation

Abstract. We study the interaction of solar wind protons with the Earth's quasi-parallel bow shock using a hybrid-Vlasov simulation. We employ the high-fidelity global hybrid model Vlasiator to include effects due to bow shock curvature, tenuous upstream populations, and foreshock waves. We investigate the local uncertainty of the position of the quasi-parallel bow shock as a function of several plasma properties, and find that for a significant portion of time, the local bow shock position is challenging to define. Our results support the notion of upstream structures causing patchwork reconstruction of the quasi-parallel shock front in a non-uniform manner. We propose a novel method for spacecraft data to be used to analyze this quasi-parallel reformation. We combine our hybrid-Vlasov results with test-particle studies and show that shock non-locality appears to have little direct efficient on particle injection. We show that proton energization, which is required for injection, takes place throughout a larger shock transition zone. Non-local energization of particles is found regardless of the instantaneous non-locality of the shock front. Distortion of magnetic fields in front of and at the shock is shown to have a significant effect on proton injection. We additionally show that the density of suprathermal reflected particles upstream of the shock may not be a useful metric for the probability of injection at the shock, as foreshock dynamics and particle trapping appear to have a greater effect on energetic particle accumulation at a given position in space. Our results have significant implications for statistical and spacecraft studies of the shock injection problem.
Extremal graph theory via structural analysis

We discuss two extremal problems in extremal graph theory. First we establish a precise characterisation of 4-uniform hypergraphs with minimum codegree close to n/2 which contain a Hamilton 2-cycle. As a corollary we determine the exact Dirac threshold for Hamilton 2-cycles in 4-uniform hypergraphs, and we provide a polynomial-time algorithm which answers the corresponding decision problem for 4-graphs with minimum degree close to n/2. In contrast we also show that the corresponding decision problem for tight Hamilton cycles in dense k-graphs is NP-complete. Furthermore we study the following bootstrap percolation process: given a connected graph G, we infect an initial set A of vertices, and in each step a vertex v becomes infected if at least a p-proportion of its neighbours are infected. A set A which infects the whole graph is called a contagious set. Our main result states that for every pin (0,1] and for every connected graph G on n vertices the minimal size of a contagious set is less than 2pn or 1. This result is best-possible, but we provide a stronger bound in the case of graphs of girth at least five. Both proofs exploit the structure of a minimal counterexample.
Using Herschel and Planck observations to delineate the role of magnetic fields in molecular cloud structure (Corrigendum)

We present a study of the relative orientation between the magnetic field projected onto the plane of sky (B⊥) on scales down to 0.4 pc, inferred from the polarized thermal emission of Galactic dust observed by Planck at 353 GHz, and the distribution of gas column density (NH) structures on scales down to 0.026 pc, derived from the observations by Herschel in submillimeter wavelengths, toward ten nearby (d < 450 pc) molecular clouds. Using the histogram of relative orientation technique in combination with tools from circular statistics, we found that the mean relative orientation between NH and B⊥ toward these regions increases progressively from 0°, where the NH structures lie mostly parallel to B⊥, with increasing NH, in many cases reaching 90°, where the NH structures lie mostly perpendicular to B⊥. We also compared the relative orientation between NH and B⊥ and the distribution of NH, which is characterized by the slope of the tail of the NH probability density functions (PDFs). We found that the slopes of the NH PDF tail are steepest in regions where NH and B⊥ are close to perpendicular. This coupling between the NH distribution and the magnetic field suggests that the magnetic fields play a significant role in structuring the interstellar medium in and around molecular clouds. However, we found no evident correlation between the star formation rates, estimated from the counts of young stellar objects, and the relative orientation between NH and B⊥ in these regions.
Itinerant topological magnons in Haldane Hubbard model with a nearly-flat electron band

We elaborate the first theoretical realization of two dimensional itinerant topological magnons, based on the quarter filled Haldane-Hubbard model with a nearly-flat electron band. By using the exact diagonalization method with a projection onto this band, we obtain the spin wave excitations over the itinerant ferromagnetic ground state. In the flatband limit, the excitation exhibits similar dispersion to the free electron band with Dirac magnons. The nonflatness of the electron band opens a topological gap at Dirac points and leads to an acoustic magnon band with a nonzero Chern number. We further show that tuning the sublattice Hubbard interactions or the next-nearest-neighbor hopping can induce a topological transition characterized by the gap closing and reopening, and the existence of the in-gap magnons on magnetic domain walls. We find an exact set of bases for magnons in the flatband limit constructed from sublattice particle-hole vectors and derive an effective model to explore the origin of the topological magnon which is attributed to the ``mass inversion mechanism''.
The Significance of Circulating Micro RNA-122 as a Non Invasive Diagnostic Marker of Liver Injury in Egyptian Chronic Hepatitis C virus Infected and Cirrhotic Patients with and without Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Background: Micro RNAs (miRNAs) are small RNA molecules that have the ability to regulate gene expression by targeting mRNA degradation or translational repression. miRNAs regulate HCV life cycle either by supporting viral replication or by inhibiting interferon signaling pathway. Purpose: This work was carried out to evaluate the expression level of (miRNA-122) as a non invasive diagnostic marker of liver injury in Egyptian chronic hepatitis C virus infected and cirrhotic patients with and without hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Patients and Methods: This study was conducted on 35 Chronic HCV infected and cirrhotic patients. Patients divided into two groups: Group I comprised 20 patients with cirrhosis, group II comprised 15 patients with HCC. Both groups were compared to 15 (age and sex matched) healthy persons (group III). Patients and control were subjected to detailed history taking, clinical examination, abdominal ultrasonogaphy, CT and Liver biopsy when needed for HCC cases. Laboratory investigation including complete blood picture, Liver function tests, and viral hepatitis markers, serum AFP and Expression levels of Micro RNA-122 in whole blood using Real Time quantitative polymerase chain reaction method (RT-PCR) were determined. Results: Mean expression level of miRNA-122 was significantly higher in both patient groups (I and II) as compared to control group (III) (p<0.001) for each, Patients with HCC showed non significant higher expression level of miRNA-122 as compared to cases with cirrhosis alone. Furthermore, expression levels of Micro RNA-122 was positively correlated with ALT, AST, and Alkaline phosphatse in both patient groups and negatively correlated with prothrombin concentration in both patients groups. While Micro RNA-122 not correlated with total bilirubin, Serum Albumin, and platelets count, or AFP serum level. Conclusion: The study concluded that there was increased expression of miRNA-122 in Egyptian chronic hepatitis C virus (CHCV) infected and cirrhotic patients with and without HCC. Micro RNA 122 can be used as novel biomarkers for liver injury but not specifically for HCC. We recommend further studies on large scale to evaluate the diagnostic, prognostic value of miRNA 122 and to evaluate anti-miRNA 122 as a therapeutic option for hepatitic C virus infection and its related complications.
Machine learning for 3D simulated visualization of laser machining

Laser machining can depend on the combination of many complex and nonlinear physical processes. Simulations of laser machining that are built from first-principles, such as the photon-atom interaction, are therefore challenging to scale-up to experimentally useful dimensions. Here, we demonstrate a simulation approach using a neural network, which requires zero knowledge of the underlying physical processes and instead uses experimental data directly to create the model of the experiment. The neural network modelling approach was shown to accurately predict the 3D surface profile of the laser machined surface after exposure to various spatial intensity profiles, and was used to discover trends inherent within the experimental data that would have otherwise been difficult to discover.
Accurate simulation for finite projected entangled pair states in two dimensions

Projected entangled pair states (PEPS) methods provide promising ways to simulate quantum many-body lattice models in two and higher dimensions. Unfortunately, the expensive computational cost scaling of PEPS has been a stumbling block for accurate simulations in practical applications. In this paper, we develop an optimized finite PEPS algorithm based on the scheme of variational Monte Carlo sampling. Our algorithm makes it possible to simulate quantum spin systems as large as $32 \times 32$ sites accurately. Benchmark results on the square-lattice antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model including ground state energy and spin correlations excellently agree with Quantum Monte Carlo results. For highly frustrated spin models, our results are also in excellent agreement with those obtained from density matrix renormalization group method. Thus, we establish an accurate finite PEPS algorithm in two dimensions, and it potentially opens a new door towards resolving many challenging strongly correlated quantum many-body problems.
Online EEG Seizure Detection and Localization

Epilepsy is one of the three most prevalent neurological disorders. A significant proportion of patients suffering from epilepsy can be effectively treated if their seizures are detected in a timely manner. However, detection of most seizures requires the attention of trained neurologists—a scarce resource. Therefore, there is a need for an automatic seizure detection capability. A tunable non-patient-specific, non-seizure-specific method is proposed to detect the presence and locality of a seizure using electroencephalography (EEG) signals. This multifaceted computational approach is based on a network model of the brain and a distance metric based on the spectral profiles of EEG signals. This computationally time-efficient and cost-effective automated epileptic seizure detection algorithm has a median latency of 8 s, a median sensitivity of 83%, and a median false alarm rate of 2.9%. Hence, it is capable of being used in portable EEG devices to aid in the process of detecting and monitoring epileptic patients.
Continuously Variable Stiffness Mechanism Using Nonuniform Patterns on Coaxial Tubes for Continuum Microsurgical Robot

Variable stiffness enables the safe and effective operation of the minimally invasive surgical instruments. In this article, we propose a continuously variable stiffness mechanism of the scalable tubular structure. The mechanism consists of multiple coaxial nitinol tubes, and each tube has an anisotropic distribution of flexural stiffness created by nonuniform through-hole patterning. The stiffness of the mechanism is varied by relative rotation and translation among the tubes, resulting in flexural stiffness difference up to 7.2 times in the direction of load. Its flexural stiffnesses along principal axes are independently controlled by the suggested counterrotation algorithm. The stiffness change is validated through analytical modeling, FEM simulation, and the experiments. Thanks to its physically embodied intelligence, the mechanism has a simple scalable structure and the response time is immediate. We applied this mechanism to control the stiffness of the steerable needle. Varying the stiffness grants the additional degree of freedom to control the needle's trajectory, which can expand the workspace of the steerable needle.