Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multi-Epoch Analysis of a Satellite Constellation to Identify Value Robust Deployment across Uncertain Futures

The value of a system depends heavily on the future contexts it will encounter. For complex space systems with multi-year design and deployment phases, it is useful to design a system so that it delivers value to stakeholders over a wide range of future contexts. EpochEra Analysis, a computational scenario planning approach, decomposes the lifecycle of a system into sequential epochs that each have fixed contexts and value expectations. This paper applies Multi-Epoch Analysis (a subset of Epoch-Era Analysis) along with MultiAttribute Tradespace Exploration (MATE) to the design of a satellite constellation, with the aim of maximizing value across a range of end-user subscription and geographic distribution contexts. The system level tradespace is assembled using a bottom-up iterative approach based on expert knowledge, and accounts for performance attributes metrics such as revisit times, data latencies, observation times, and data downlink volumes. Competing designs consisting of alternative orbital, ground station location, and deployment configurations are evaluated in terms of their fuzzy Normalized Pareto Trace (fNPT) across epochs. The resulting staged deployment strategy delivers robust value based on stakeholder preference across a wide range of future contexts.
Nuclear DNA from two early Neandertals reveals 80,000 years of genetic continuity in Europe

Sequences from two ~120,000-year-old individuals reveal the deep population history of European Neandertals. Little is known about the population history of Neandertals over the hundreds of thousands of years of their existence. We retrieved nuclear genomic sequences from two Neandertals, one from Hohlenstein-Stadel Cave in Germany and the other from Scladina Cave in Belgium, who lived around 120,000 years ago. Despite the deeply divergent mitochondrial lineage present in the former individual, both Neandertals are genetically closer to later Neandertals from Europe than to a roughly contemporaneous individual from Siberia. That the Hohlenstein-Stadel and Scladina individuals lived around the time of their most recent common ancestor with later Neandertals suggests that all later Neandertals trace at least part of their ancestry back to these early European Neandertals.
Actigraphy-based Sleep Parameters and Rest-activity Circadian Rhythm in a Young Scoliotic Patient Treated with Rigid Bracing: A Case Study

The correct expression of circadian rhythmicity, together with a good sleep behavior, are key factors for the body homeostasis. Rest-activity circadian rhythms (RARs) are involved in the control of the sleep-wake cycle and altered RARs could lead to a compromised health status. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the existence of RAR and to study actigraphy-based sleep behavior in a 14-year-old male patient affected by severe idiopathic scoliosis and treated with a rigid brace 23 hours per day. RAR and sleep parameters were studied through actigraphy for seven consecutive days in July 2018. The mean cosinor analysis revealed the presence of a significant RAR (p < 0.001), specifically: the percentage of rhythm was 23.4%, the mean MESOR was 84.6 Activity Count (AC), the amplitude registered a mean value of 74.4 AC’s, and the acrophase occurred at 17:56 h. The subject reached a good sleep quantity: 507.9 ± 30.2 minutes of Time in Bed with a mean Total Sleep Time of 450.7 ± 20.1 minutes; Similarly, Sleep Efficiency was equal to 83.3 ± 7.2% and the Fragmentation Index was 27.3 ± 12.8%. We observed that both RAR and sleep behavior had normal trends in a 14-year-old patient treated with a rigid brace for a severe adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS). Improved assessment of sleep in routine clinical practice can help to identify and manage health-related problems that could potentially affect some clinical outcomes, such as pain, mood state, and recovery process.
Novel insights into endogenous RNA viral elements in Ixodes scapularis and other arbovirus vector genomes

Abstract Many emerging arboviruses are not transmitted by traditional mosquito vectors, but by lesser-studied arthropods such as ticks, midges, and sand flies. Small RNA (sRNA) silencing pathways are the main antiviral defence mechanism for arthropods, which lack adaptive immunity. Non-retroviral integrated RNA virus sequences (NIRVS) are one potential source of sRNAs which comprise these pathways. NIRVS are remnants of past germline RNA viral infections, where viral cDNA integrates into the host genome and is vertically transmitted. In Aedes mosquitoes, NIRVS are widespread and produce PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs). These are hypothesised to target incoming viral transcripts to modulate viral titre, perhaps rendering the organism a more efficient arbovirus vector. To explore the NIRVS landscape in alternative arbovirus vectors, we validated the NIRVS landscape in Aedes spp. and then identified novel NIRVS in six medically relevant arthropods and also in Drosophila melanogaster. We identified novel NIRVS in Phlebotomus papatasi, Culicoides sonorensis, Rhipicephalus microplus, Anopheles gambiae, Culex quinquefasciatus, and Ixodes scapularis. Due to their unexpected abundance, we further characterised NIRVS in the blacklegged tick I. scapularis (n = 143). Interestingly, NIRVS are not enriched in R. microplus, another hard tick, suggesting this is an Ixodes-specific adaptation. I. scapularis NIRVS are enriched in bunya- and orthomyxo-like sequences, reflecting that ticks are a dominant host for these virus groups. Unlike in mosquitoes, I. scapularis NIRVS are more commonly derived from the non-structural region (replicase) of negative-sense viruses, as opposed to structural regions (e.g. glycoprotein). Like other arthropods, I. scapularis NIRVS preferentially integrate into genomic piRNA clusters, and serve as a template for primary piRNA production in the commonly used embryonic I. scapularis ISE6 cell line. Interestingly, we identified a two-fold enrichment of non-long terminal repeat (non-LTR) retrotransposons, in genomic proximity to NIRVS, contrasting with studeis in Ae. aegypti, where LTR retrotransposons are instead associated with NIRVS formation. We characterised NIRVS phylogeny and integration patterns in the important vector, I. scapularis, revealing they are distinct from those in Aedes spp. Future studies will explore the possible antiviral mechanism conferred by NIRVS to I. scapularis,which may help the transmission of pathogenic arboviruses. Finally, this study explored NIRVS as an untapped wealth of viral diversity in arthropods.
Distribution of T cell subsets in human lymph nodes

A series of T cell-specific monoclonal antibodies was used to determine the location of T lymphocyte subpopulations in frozen sections of human lymph nodes by means of an immunoperoxidase technique. The majority of cells in the paracortical regions were reactive with anti-T1 and anti- T3 antibodies, which define all mature peripheral T cells. In contrast, the majority of cells within primary follicles were unreactive with anti-T1 and anti-T3 antibodies, but were reactive with anti-Ia and anti- IgM antibodies. In addition, a substantial number of T1+, T3+ cells were found in the germinal centers of secondary follicles on the capsular side. The vast majority of T1+, T3+ cells in the paracortex and the follicles were reactive with anti-T4 antibody, which defines inducer/helper T cells. Only a minority of cells in these areas were reactive with anti-T5 and anti-T8 antibodies, which define cytotoxic/suppressor cells. No lymphocytes were stained with anti-T6 antibody, which reacts with a majority of thymocytes but not with peripheral T cells. Scattered cells in the paracortex showed staining for Ia antigen in an irregular dendritic pattern. The findings demonstrate that the major T cell population found within human lymph node bears the mature T1+, T3+, T4+ phenotype characteristic of inducer T cells. Moreover, the location of this population indicates that they play a role in the induction of B cell differentiation in vivo.
Lymphangiogenesis in kidney and lymph node mediates renal inflammation and fibrosis

Expanded lymphatic vessels (LVs) in kidneys and renal draining lymph nodes (RDLNs) promote intrarenal inflammation and fibrosis. Lymphangiogenesis is associated with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and occurs following kidney transplant. Here, we demonstrate that expanding lymphatic vessels (LVs) in kidneys and corresponding renal draining lymph nodes (RDLNs) play critical roles in promoting intrarenal inflammation and fibrosis following renal injury. Our studies show that lymphangiogenesis in the kidney and RDLN is driven by proliferation of preexisting lymphatic endothelium expressing the essential C-C chemokine ligand 21 (CCL21). New injury-induced LVs also express CCL21, stimulating recruitment of more CCR7+ dendritic cells (DCs) and lymphocytes into both RDLNs and spleen, resulting in a systemic lymphocyte expansion. Injury-induced intrarenal inflammation and fibrosis could be attenuated by blocking the recruitment of CCR7+ cells into RDLN and spleen or inhibiting lymphangiogenesis. Elucidating the role of lymphangiogenesis in promoting intrarenal inflammation and fibrosis provides a key insight that can facilitate the development of novel therapeutic strategies to prevent progression of CKD-associated fibrosis.
Integrating vision and echolocation for navigation and perception in bats

Egyptian fruit bats integrate vision and echolocation in a task-dependent manner. How animals integrate information from various senses to navigate and generate perceptions is a fundamental question. Bats are ideal animal models to study multisensory integration due to their reliance on vision and echolocation, two modalities that allow distal sensing with high spatial resolution. Using three behavioral paradigms, we studied different aspects of multisensory integration in Egyptian fruit bats. We show that bats learn the three-dimensional shape of an object using vision only, even when using both vision and echolocation. Nevertheless, we demonstrate that they can classify objects using echolocation and even translate echoic information into a visual representation. Last, we show that in navigation, bats dynamically switch between the modalities: Vision was given more weight when deciding where to fly, while echolocation was more dominant when approaching an obstacle. We conclude that sensory integration is task dependent and that bimodal information is weighed in a more complex manner than previously suggested.
Inclusion of pyridoxine to flaxseed cake in poultry feed improves productivity of omega-3 enriched eggs

Flaxseed cake produced during flax oil production is rich in protein, and could be utilized in the production of omega-3 enriched eggs or value added eggs. But the presence of anti-nutrients in flaxseed cake adversely affects the bird and egg characteristics. Supplementation of pyridoxine may prove beneficial as noted by earlier research. In our study, we divided 30 layer birds into three groups and supplemented them with different combination feeds containing: (A) control ration, (B) fresh flax seed cake with pyridoxine and (C) fresh flax seed cake without pyridoxine. Crushed 2% flaxseed was also added to the flaxseed cake groups for deposition of sufficient omega-3 fatty acids into the eggs. Supplementation was given for a period of 4 weeks and egg as well as bird characteristics observed. Birds fed pyridoxine showed better incorporation of omega-3 fatty acids into the egg yolk. Supplementation of flaxseed cake with pyridoxine resulted in better yields of omega-3 eggs as well as improved health of layer birds
e-Breath: Breath Detection and Monitoring Using Frequency Cepstral Feature Fusion

This paper presents e-Breath, a method, and system for monitoring breath using a wearable microphone connected to the smart phone. In addition, we investigate the performance of single feature models such as Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficient and Grammatone Frequency Cepstral Coefficient for breath detection and propose a simple yet effective feature fusion model to improve the breath detection accuracies. Experiments on a dataset, which contains over 5,700 breath events and significant noises, collected from 16 persons worn the mobile devices several hours, have demonstrated that breath can be detected with the detection rate of 97% for individual evaluation, and over 92% for subject independent evaluation, which is improved from 5% to 8% compared to single feature models. e-Breath is highly potential for healthcare applications that acquire breath information for the diagnose and treatment of respiratory diseases.
Clinical, radiological, surgical, and pathological determinants of olfactory groove schwannoma

Abstract Background Olfactory groove schwannomas (OGS) are rare anterior cranial fossa base tumors with only 41 cases reported in literature. Olfactory ensheathing cell schwannoma (OECS) has similar clinico-radiological features as OGS, but a different cell of origin. In recent years, there is growing interest in OECS as more cases are being reported. Aims The objective was to study the clinico-radiological features of OGS and define the histological differentiation from OECS. Materials and Methods We retrospectively analyzed clinical, radiological, surgical and histopathological picture of all cases of OGS managed in our institute. Immuno histochemical studies were performed in these tumors for differentiating from OECS. A comprehensive review of articles published until date describing the operative treatment was done. Results All three cases had presented with seizures, two had anosmia and papilledema. Gross-total resection was achieved in all our patients. One patient expired in the postoperative period due to septicemia. Positive expression to newer immuno histochemical biomarker CD57 (Leu7), with negative staining to smooth muscle α-actin (SMA) was helpful in confirming the diagnosis of OGS and differentiating it from OECS in all our cases. Conclusions OECS, though rare has to be differentiated from OGS using immuno histochemistry. Gross-total resection of OGS with preservation of olfactory function is often possible and curative. Although these tumors are commonly treated with microsurgical skull base approaches, an endoscopic endonasal approach can be considered in some cases, with repair using mucoperiosteal pedicled flap to prevent cerebrospinal fluid leak.
Towards the development of a non-intrusive objective quality measure for DNN-enhanced speech

Recently, several works have focused on leveraging the advances of deep neural networks (DNN) to a variety of domains, including speech enhancement. While advances in instrumental quality metrics have been made, particularly for enhanced speech, there is still relatively little research assessing how useful such metrics are for DNN-enhanced speech. This work aims to fill this gap. We performed online listening tests using the outputs of three different DNN-based speech enhancement models for both denoising and dereverberation. When assessing the predictive power of several objective metrics, we found that existing non-intrusive methods fail at monitoring signal quality. To overcome this limitation, we propose a new metric based on a combination of a handful of relevant acoustic features. Results inline with those obtained with intrusive measures are then attained. In a leave-one-model-out test, the proposed non-intrusive metric is also shown to outperform two non-intrusive benchmarks for all three DNN enhancement methods, showing the proposed method is capable of generalizing to unseen models.
Integrated Gate Commutated Thyristor-Based Modular Multilevel Converters: A Promising Solution for High-Voltage dc Applications

This article proposes that a modular multilevel converter (MMC) based on the integrated-gate commutated thyristor (IGCT) is a promising solution for future highvoltage dc (HVdc) applications. The system-level scheme and technical issues of the IGCT MMC are proposed, and the commutation behaviors of the IGCT and the snubber circuit in the MMC are analyzed. On this basis, the optimal designs of the anode inductor, power supply system, valve series, and submodule structure are proposed, and a comprehensive experimental platform is built. Detailed experiments are conducted, including a double-pulse switching experiment, a back-to-back power cycling experiment, and an MMC operation experiment. Furthermore, the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed IGCT MMC solution are verified.
Electrical and Electronic Technologies in More-Electric Aircraft: A Review

This paper presents a review of the electrical and electronic technologies investigated in more-electric aircraft (MEA). In order to change the current situation of low power efficiency, serious pollution, and high operating cost in conventional aircraft, the concept of MEA is proposed. By converting some hydraulic, mechanical, and pneumatic power sources into electrical ones, the overall power efficiency is greatly increased, and more flexible power regulation is achieved. The main components in an MEA power system are electrical machines and power electronics devices. The design and control methods for electrical machines and various topologies and control strategies for power electronic converters have been widely researched. Besides, several studies are carried out regarding energy management strategies that intend to optimize the operation of MEA power distribution systems. Furthermore, it is necessary to investigate the system stability and reliability issues in an MEA, since they are directly related to the safety of passengers. In terms of machine technologies, power electronics techniques, energy management strategies, and the system stability and reliability, a review is carried out for the contributions in the literature to MEA.
Improvement Feature Vector: Autoregressive Model of Median Filter Residual

To detect median filtering forensics, a four-feature ensemble including the median filter residual autoregressive (MFR AR) model, statistical properties, gradient-edge line, and HU invariant moments of an image were used to propose an improved feature vector. The defined novel feature vector was trained on a support vector machine (SVM) classifier for median filtering detection (MFD) of forgery images. The performance of the proposed MFD scheme was measured with several types of images: median filtered (window size: {<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$3\times3$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$5\times5$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, composite (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$3\times3$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$5\times5$ </tex-math></inline-formula>)}), JPEG compressed (quality factor: 90) after median filtered, rotated (counterclockwise: 5°), and noise added (salt–pepper: 5%) which has been re-altered in various ways. Experimental results show high efficiency and performance of the MFD techniques. The area under the curve (AUC) by sensitivity (TP: true positive rate) and 1–specificity (FP: false positive rate) results of the proposed MFD scheme are 0.9 upper with the trained SVM classifier. Thus, the grade evaluation of the proposed scheme is “<italic>Excellent</italic> (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$A$ </tex-math></inline-formula>). ”
Research Skills Enhancement through a Research-Based Wit-Learning Methodology

A research-based-learning methodology was proposed for the thorough teaching of ongoing topics that would be centered around the students’ abilities to apply core technical tools when resolving self-determined research problems. Although the proposed methodology is strongly influenced by the research practice, it was validated principally by the students’ objectivity and critical-thinking competencies rather than their acquisition of the required research skills. The present work deals with the assessment of the students’ research skills as an outcome of a wit-learning methodology. Specifically, the overall improvement in the quality of their research reports was observed and tracked by the teachers, and their understanding of the research goals and processes was assessed by means of a survey given to them at the beginning and the end of the course. The questions and answers of the surveys were intentionally neither suggested nor discussed during the course so that there could be a valid measurement of the results of the proposed wit-learning methodology. Survey results showed an improvement in the overall alignment (agreement) of the students’ understanding of research with that of experienced researchers.
Frequency Domain Maximum Likelihood Identification With Gaussian Input–Output Uncertainty

This letter deals with the identification of dynamical systems corrupted by additive and independent identically distributed Gaussian noise sources when the noise-free-input is an arbitrary signal. We review two stochastic models: 1) the errors-in-variables (EIV) and 2) the random variable setting. We derive a maximum likelihood (ML) estimator for the latter and compare with a previously proposed EIV ML method. The problem is formulated in the frequency domain and it is assumed that the ratio of the noise variances is known. We discuss the similarity between the two approaches and prove that one can be seen as the regularized counterpart of the other, advocating the suggested estimator when only few data samples are available.
Impact of Quality Factors on Users’ Viewing Behaviors in Adaptive Bitrate Streaming Services

Adaptive bitrate streaming services for mobile terminals have drastically spread in recent years, and it is becoming more important for service providers to increase users’ satisfaction by understanding users’ viewing behaviors (e.g., how long users watch videos, and why users quit viewing videos) and taking measures such as appropriately designing the quality levels of the videos to be placed on their distribution servers. To investigate the impacts of quality factors on users’ viewing behaviors in adaptive bitrate streaming, we conducted an experiment in which participants could freely search and watch videos on smartphones under various network conditions. Through 800 10-minute tests, 1,449 valid views were collected, and the collected dataset was analyzed to characterize the impacts of the initial loading delay, average bitrate, and stalling events on the cumulative quit rate (CQR) of users. Furthermore, the impacts of the average bitrate and stalling events were evaluated quantitatively, using the 2-sample Anderson-Darling test, as well as the combined impact of these two quality factors. The characteristics of the impacts of the above quality factors indicate the possibility of applying survival analysis for our dataset, and suggest that the average bitrate, the number of stalling events, and the average stalling duration should be considered as the external covariates when building a model to estimate the users’ viewing time.
Investigating linguistic knowledge of a second language and its relationship to general language proficiency and individual learner differences in an EFL context

i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . iii TABLE OF CONTENTS. iv LIST OF FIGURES.xii LIST OF TABLES.xiii LIST OF ACRONYMNS.xvi CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1.1 Personal experiences of learning English and motivation for the research.1 1.2 Significance of the research.3 1.3 The purpose of the research.4 1.4 Participants and research questions . 5 1.5 Overview of the chapters.5 CHAPTER TWO CONCEPTUAL ISSUES 2.