Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Aerodynamic Optimization of Helicopter Rotor Blades using Variable Fidelity Methods

The motivation of this work is to reduce the overall required computational resources of the aerodynamic optimization process of helicopter rotor blades. Therefore an approach already applied to fixed wing aircraft is now ported to the helicopter rotor blade optimization. It is a surrogate based optimization process including variable-fidelity methods. After setting up the framework to accomplish this task, a theoretical and practical investigation of various aerodynamic models ranging from the blade element theory to computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for helicopter rotors is performed. This is done with the 7A model rotor in two flight conditions, namely hover and forward flight.From this examination a potential subset of methods is selected and further analyzed in applied variable-fidelity optimizations. These optimizations are benchmarked with a state of the art single-fidelity process. Potential resource reductions of up to 85 % in computing costs are observed and at the same time unfeasible model combinations are identified. The benefit is demonstrated for two underlying rotor configurations, the 7A model rotor and the reference rotor of the European CleanSky Green Rotorcraft (GRC) research project. While the 7A rotor is parameterized with four design variables, the GRC rotor optimization is performed at a more industrial relevant level with ten design variables and two structural constraints. The final selection of model combinations is the blade element theory enhanced with a prescribed wake model and a multi-bladed chimera setup solving the RANS equations in forward flight, while for hover the solution of the inviscid Euler equations supply the trend for the solution of the RANS equations on a periodic mesh. The employment of the variable-fidelity approach to multi-objective scenarios proves to be highly beneficial and the need to perform multi-objective optimizations for rotor blade design is highlighted. The performed optimizations in this work provide a selection of potential future blade designs.
A genetic algorithm for deploying roadside units in VANETs

In this work we propose a genetic algorithm, Delta-GA, for solving the allocation of Roadside Units (RSUs) in a Vehicular Network. Our goal is to find the minimum set of RSUs in order to meet a Deployment Δ<sup>ρ1</sup><sub>ρ2</sub>. The Deployment Δ<sup>ρ1</sup><sub>ρ2</sub> is a metric for specifying minimal communication guarantees from the infrastructure supporting the Vehicular Network. We compare Delta-GA to two baseline algorithms, Delta-g and Delta-r, to solve the Deployment Δ<sup>ρ1</sup><sub>ρ2</sub>. Our results demonstrate that Delta-GA requires less Roadside Units in order to achieve the same deployment efficiency.
Reproductive performance, calf growth, and milk production of first-calf heifers sired by seven breeds and raised on different levels of nutrition.

We evaluated heifers crossbred from seven breeds of sires (Hereford, Angus, Belgian Blue, Piedmontese, Brahman, Boran, and Tuli) and three breeds of dams (Angus, Hereford, and MARC III [four-breed composite]). Heifers were mated to Red Poll sires to calve at 2 yr of age. Heifers were placed in two treatments from weaning to breeding and raised on a high nutrition level (15.8 Mcal ME/d) or on 80% of the high nutrition level (12.6 Mcal ME/d). Breeds differed in the age of the heifers at parturition (P = .03). Birth weights of calves differed by maternal grandsire (P < .001) but not by heifer treatment (P = .91) or maternal grandam (P = .19). Heifers differed in their postpartum interval to estrus by sire breed (P = .001). Calf age at weaning (P = .02), calf ADG (P < .001), and 205-d weight (P < .001) differed between breeds of maternal grandsires. Milk production from 50 to 200 d of lactation was greatest for heifers of Belgian Blue (1,070 +/- 30 kg) and Brahman (1,029 +/- 38 kg) sires. Milk production did not differ with treatment group (P = .84). This study suggests that over a diverse group of breeds, accelerated rates of gain during the postweaning period within the ranges of this study do not result in increased production efficiency of the cows.
Phenomenology as a method to investigate the experience lived: a perspective from Husserl and Merleau Ponty's thought.

AIM By taking nursing as a human relationships activity, in spite of its strong technical--scientific features, this article reflects on the phenomenological method as one of the ways to develop an investigation and acquire knowledge of the topic. RATIONALE Based on Husserl's phenomenology, which is opposed to the way of doing science based on the laws that regulate the physics and mathematics, the article introduces Merleau Ponty's existential phenomenology as the theoretical foundation for the method it proposes. My existential conceptions--people as historic beings inserted in a world over which they act but which, in its turn, determines them; the human perception as reference for our way of being in the world; the space-time structure of perception--these are the key concepts that have led to the elaboration of an approach to phenomenological research. PROPOSAL OF A METHODOLOGY Steps are proposed for such an approach, namely phenomenological description, reduction and analysis. These lead to the building up of ideographic and nomothetic analyses, thus unveiling and describing general truths about the phenomenon studied. Finally, the possibilities for applying the methodology to nursing research are discussed, illustrated by my research into student nurses' perspectives on working on an isolation ward.
Combined pars plana vitrectomy and scleral buckling for pseudophakic and aphakic retinal detachments in which a break is not seen preoperatively.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE This study presents a group of patients with a pseudophakic or aphakic retinal detachment (RD) and an unseen retinal break who were treated with a pars plana vitrectomy (PPV), fluid-air exchange, internal drainage, and endolaser in addition to a scleral buckle (SB) procedure. PATIENTS AND METHODS The charts of 10 consecutive patients with a pseudophakic or aphakic RD and an unseen retinal break who were treated with a PPV, fluid-air exchange, internal drainage, endolaser, and an SB were reviewed for preoperative and postoperative visual acuity, postoperative status of the retina, and surgical complications. RESULTS All of the patients with a postoperative follow-up of at least 6 months continue to maintain an attached retina after one operation. Visual acuity has improved by at least 2 lines on the Snellen chart in 7 patients, remained the same in 2 patients, and decreased in 1 patient. CONCLUSIONS This pilot study shows good anatomic results when performing a PPV, fluid-air exchange, internal drainage, and endolaser together with an SB for pseudophakic or aphakic patients with an RD and an unseen break.
Rossi's Principles of Transfusion Medicine, 3rd Edition [Book Review]

Publishers details for: Rossi's Principles of Transfusion Medicine, 3rd Edition, edited by Toby L Simon, Walter H Dzik, Edward L Snyder, Christopher P Stowell and Ronald G Strauss Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins, 1032 pages, hardcover, 274 tables and 218 figures, ISBN: 0781730244, A$372.00.
Loss of TRPC1‐mediated Ca2+ influx contributes to impaired degranulation in Fyn‐deficient mouse bone marrow‐derived mast cells

MC degranulation requires the influx of calcium from the extracellular environment. Orai1/STIM1 is essential to MC SOCE, as shown in rat peritoneal MCs, the rat MC lines (RBL‐2H3), or in Orai1 null embryo liver‐derived, cultured MCs. However, minimal information exists about the role of other calcium channels expressed on these cells. Here, we demonstrate that the nonselective TRPC1 participates in FcɛRI‐mediated calcium entry in mouse BMMCs. We found that Fyn null MCs, which have an impaired degranulation response, expressed reduced levels of TRPC1, had normal depletion of intracellular calcium stores but an impaired calcium influx, and failed to depolymerize cortical F‐actin (a key step for granule‐plasma membrane fusion). Partial RNAi silencing of TRPC1 expression in WT MCs (to the level of Fyn null MCs) mimicked the Fyn null defect in calcium influx, cortical F‐actin depolymerization, and MC degranulation. Ectopic expression of Fyn or TRPC1 in Fyn null MCs restored calcium responses and cortical F‐actin depolymerization and increased MC degranulation. Together with our findings that expression of Orai1 is not altered in Fyn null MCs, our findings suggest that TRPC1 participates in calcium influx and other key events required for MC degranulation. This demonstrates that in addition to a role described previously for Orai1 in promoting MC degranulation, nonselective cation channels participate in promoting the exocytotic response.
Association of glypican-4 with body fat distribution, insulin resistance, and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.

CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVE Glypican-4 was identified as a novel adipokine capable of enhancing insulin signaling and modulating adipocyte differentiation. We investigated associations between glypican-4 and body composition, insulin resistance, arterial stiffness, and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in nondiabetic Asian subjects. DESIGN AND PARTICIPANTS We analyzed baseline cross-sectional data from the Korean Sarcopenic Obesity Study, an ongoing prospective cohort study. NAFLD was diagnosed by unenhanced computed tomography using the liver attenuation index. We also examined the effects of a 3-month combined aerobic and resistance exercise program on glypican-4 levels and cardiometabolic risk factors. RESULTS Circulating glypican-4 levels were higher in men than in women (1.83 [1.19, 2.78] ng/mL vs 1.17 [0.66, 2.00] ng/mL, P < .001) and had a significant positive relationship with the waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) (r = 0.20, P = .014) and the ratio of visceral to sc fat area (r = 0.30, P < .001). Furthermore, glypican-4 levels in women were correlated with cardiometabolic risk factors, including insulin resistance and arterial stiffness, and were independently associated with NAFLD by multiple logistic regression analysis (P = .017, R² = 0.33). The 3-month combined exercise training program significantly improved several cardiometabolic parameters and reduced retinol binding protein-4 levels. Changes in glypican-4 levels after the exercise program were significantly different between subjects with an increased WHR compared with those with a decreased WHR (P = .034). CONCLUSION A gender-based difference in circulating glypican-4 levels was apparent as these were increased in women with NAFLD and related to body fat distribution, insulin resistance, and arterial stiffness.
Evaluating Empathy in Colombian Ex-Combatants: Examination of the Internal Structure of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) in Spanish

The Republic of Colombia has a long-standing history of internal armed conflict, further complicated by the ideological assumptions underlying their war. In recent years, its government designed the Program for Reincorporation to Civilian Life (Programa para la Reincorporación a la Vida Civil, PRVC), aiming demobilization of thousands of insurgents who were involved in guerilla and paramilitary forces. One PRVC goal involves the psychological characterization of its reincorporated members, aiming the informed design of effective and efficacious interventions to improve their adjustment. We are interested in the examination of empathy in this population. Empathy refers to the ability to predict, understand, and experience other’s feelings. Empathy appears to have an effect on level of aggressive behavior. The Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1980, 1983) is a well-established 28-item self-report tool for the assessment of empathy, including 4 scales: Perspective Taking, Fantasy, Empathic Concern, and Personal Distress. Versions in Spanish were validated in Spain and Chile, but no norms for Colombians exist. We examined the factorial structure of the IRI in a sample of 548 (83.4% males) members of the PRVC. Ten items with low factor loadings were eliminated following a series of confirmatory factor analyses (CFA). The final 4-factor model (Model 2) reached an acceptable fit (e.g., CFI = .898). A second-order CFA demonstrated that empathic concern correlated too high with a common “empathy” latent factor. With these results at hand, our 18-item IRI version in Spanish achieved a factorial structure comparable to that previously validated for Spanish speakers from other countries.
Microalbuminuria in Obese Subjects

The kidney may suffer functional and structural alterations as a result of overweight. Massive obesity may lead to proteinuria and in some cases to nephrotic syndrome with focal glomerulosclerosis (Kasiske and Crosson 1986). Microalbuminuria is an early feature of some glomerulopathies (i. e. diabetic) and a predictor of cardiovascular disease (Mogensen 1984). We have studied the excretion of urinary albumin in subjects with obesity. Table 1 Main characteristic of obese subjects without diabetes and hypertension, according to albumin excretion rate (A. E. R.).
Precursors and Correlates of Women's Violence: Child Abuse Traumatization, Victimization of Women, Avoidance Coping, and Psychological Symptoms

Path modeling assessed (a) the influence of child abuse traumatization on women's use of violence and their experiences of being victimized, (b) the association of these three variables to depressive and posttraumatic stress symptoms, and (c) the indirect pathways from women using violence and their being victimized to psychological symptoms through avoidance coping. Among 108 primarily African American women recruited from the community who used violence with a male partner, women's use of violence, but not their experiences of being victimized, was predicted by child abuse traumatization. Women's use of violence did not directly or indirectly predict symptomatology. In contrast, child abuse traumatization and women's experiences of being victimized were predictive of both depressive and posttraumatic stress symptoms, and being victimized also was related indirectly to depressive symptoms through avoidance coping.
APOC3, CETP, fibrinogen, and MTHFR are genetic determinants of carotid intima‐media thickness in healthy men (the Stanislas Cohort)

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between carotid intima‐media thickness (CIMT) inter‐individual variability and 16 polymorphisms of 11 genes associated with cardiovascular risk factors (genes among lipid and homocysteine metabolisms, blood viscosity, platelet aggregation, leukocyte adhesion and renin‐angiotensin system). CIMT was measured by high resolution B‐mode ultrasonography in an healthy population of 77 men and 84 women, aged 35–54 years and selected from a French Cohort: the Stanislas Cohort. The polymorphisms studied were genotyped by a multilocus approach. Statistical analyses were carried out by ANOVA, after adjustment of CIMT for age, body mass index, and smoking, and by multiple regression analyses. No association was found with APOB Thr71Ile, APOC3 −482C/T, −455T/C, GpIIIa P1A, AT1R 1166A/C, AGT Met235Thr, CBS Ile278Thr, SELE 98G/T, and SELE Ser128Arg, polymorphisms neither in men nor in women. Although, in women we did not find any association for APOC3 3206T/G, 3175C/G, 1100C/T, CETP Ile405Val, MTHFR 677C/T and fibrinogen –455G/A polymorphisms; in men these polymorphisms were associated with CIMT variability (p≤0.01; p≤0.05). The most interesting finding was that altogether these genes in men were able to explain a considerable part, 20.6%, of CIMT variability. Therefore, our study gives a new opportunity to understand CIMT variability.
A Unified Framework for Secure Search Over Encrypted Cloud Data

This paper presents a unified framework that supports different types of privacy-preserving search queries over encrypted cloud data. In the framework, users can perform any of the multi-keyword search, range search and k-nearest neighbor search operations in a privacypreserving manner. All three types of queries are transformed into predicate-based search leveraging bucketization, locality sensitive hashing and homomorphic encryption techniques. The proposed framework is implemented using Hadoop MapReduce, and its efficiency and accuracy are evaluated using publicly available real data sets. The implementation results show that the proposed framework can effectively be used in moderate sized data sets and it is scalable for much larger data sets provided that the number of computers in the Hadoop cluster is increased. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed framework is the first privacy-preserving solution, in which three different types of search queries are effectively applied over encrypted data.
Coordinated Crowd Simulation With Topological Scene Analysis

This paper proposes a new algorithm to produce globally coordinated crowds in an environment with multiple paths and obstacles. Simple greedy crowd control methods easily lead to congestion at bottlenecks within scenes, as the characters do not cooperate with one another. In computer animation, this problem degrades crowd quality especially when ordered behaviour is needed, such as soldiers marching towards a castle. Similarly, in applications such as real‐time strategy games, this often causes player frustration, as the crowd will not move as efficiently as it should. Also, planning of building would usually require visualization of ordered evacuation to maximize the flow. Planning such globally coordinated crowd movement is usually labour intensive. Here, we propose a simple solution that is easy to use and efficient in computation. First, we compute the harmonic field of the environment, taking into account the starting points, goals and obstacles. Based on the field, we represent the topology of the environment using a Reeb Graph, and calculate the maximum capacity for each path in the graph. With the harmonic field and the Reeb Graph, path planning of crowd can be performed using a lightweight algorithm, such that any blocking of one another's paths is minimized. Comparing to previous methods, our system can synthesize globally coordinated crowd with smooth and efficient movement. It also enables control of the crowd with high‐level parameters such as the degree of cooperation and congestion. Finally, the method is scalable to thousands of characters with minimal impact to computation time. It is best applied in interactive crowd synthesis systems such as animation designs and real‐time strategy games.
Structural Insights into the Cytotoxic Mechanism of Vibrio parahaemolyticus PirAvp and PirBvp Toxins

In aquaculture, shrimp farming is a popular field. The benefits of shrimp farming include a relatively short grow-out time, high sale price, and good cost recovery. However, outbreaks of serious diseases inflict serious losses, and acute hepatopancreatic necrosis disease (AHPND) is an emerging challenge to this industry. In South American white shrimp (Penaeus vannamei) and grass shrimp (Penaeus monodon), this disease has a 70–100% mortality. The pathogenic agent of AHPND is a specific strain of Vibrio parahaemolyticus which contains PirAvp and PirBvp toxins encoded in the pVA1 plasmid. PirAvp and PirBvp have been shown to cause the typical histological symptoms of AHPND in infected shrimps, and in this review, we will focus on our structural understanding of these toxins. By analyzing their structures, a possible cytotoxic mechanism, as well as strategies for anti-AHPND drug design, is proposed.
Evaluation of Fibrotic Changes in OSMF:A Retrospective Study Using Special Stains and Polarizing Microscopy

Background: Oral submucous fibrosis (OSMF), a potentially malignant oral disorder has the highest rate of malignant transformation of about 7-13%. The connective tissue changes that occur in this disease are characteristic and are stained with special stains. Objective: The study was done to compare common and special stains under light microscopy and polarizing microscopy to evaluate the levels of fibrosis in oral submucous fibrosis and assess the type of collagen present in the stromal area. Materials and Methods: Fifty tissue blocks were selected from the archives and were prepared and stained with H&E, Masson's trichrome, Van Gieson and Picrosirius red and studied under light microscope and polarizing microscope respectively. Results: H and E stained slides were useful in diagnosing the lesion but was not able to highlight the level of fibrosis. Masson's trichrome and Van Gieson stained slides showed the depth of the lesion which extended even to the deeper muscle layer. The type of collagen present was definitively seen by the birefringence in polarizing microscopic study. Interobserver variation was less and all the values regarding the effectiveness of the special stains in detecting the level of fibrosis were statistically significant. Conclusion: Special stains can be used routinely in laboratories to demonstrate connective tissue lesions especially in cases of OSMF. Depth of the lesion and the area of involvement help in treatment planning to be delivered. Large scale studies with more categories and inclusion criteria are required along with the special stains to assess the other alterations in OSMF.
Dual-Band and Dual-Circularly Polarized Single-Layer Microstrip Array Based on Multiresonant Modes

A planar dual-band array with orthogonal circular polarizations (CPs) in the two frequency bands is proposed in this communication. The array is implemented on a single-layer substrate and easy to be extended to the design of a larger array. A new antenna element for such an array is exploited by symmetrically loading stubs on the edges of a square patch. In this communication, two pairs of orthogonal modes of the patch, namely, TM10/TM01 and TM30/TM03, are excited simultaneously and used to realize different senses of CP radiation in the two bands. An equivalent transmission-line model of this patch is then developed to describe its working principle and design procedure. To validate its effectiveness, a $2 \times 2$ -element array prototype operating at 2.53 and 3.59 GHz is designed and fabricated. Both the left- and right-hand CPs are obtained simultaneously in the dual bands, and the measured results are found to be in good agreement with the simulated ones. The measured radiation gains in the lower and higher bands are 10.8 and 12.5 dBic, respectively.