Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Monitoring of Large-Area IoT Sensors Using a LoRa Wireless Mesh Network System: Design and Evaluation

Although many techniques exist to transfer data from the widely distributed sensors that make up the Internet of Things (IoT) (e.g., using 3G/4G networks or cables), these methods are associated with prohibitively high costs, making them impractical for real-life applications. Recently, several emerging wireless technologies have been proposed to provide long-range communication for IoT sensors. Among these, LoRa has been examined for long-range performance. Although LoRa shows good performance for long-range transmission in the countryside, its radio signals can be attenuated over distance, and buildings, trees, and other radio signal sources may interfere with the signals. Our observations show that in urban areas, LoRa requires dense deployment of LoRa gateways (GWs) to ensure that indoor LoRa devices can successfully transfer data back to remote GWs. Wireless mesh networking is a solution for increasing communication range and packet delivery ratio (PDR) without the need to install additional GWs. This paper presents a LoRa mesh networking system for large-area monitoring of IoT applications. We deployed 19 LoRa mesh networking devices over an $800\,\,\text {m} \times 600$ m area on our university campus and installed a GW that collected data at 1-min intervals. The proposed LoRa mesh networking system achieved an average 88.49% PDR, whereas the star-network topology used by LoRa achieved only 58.7% under the same settings. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first academic study discussing LoRa mesh networking in detail and evaluating its performance via real experiments.
PERMEABILITY VARIATION WITH CO 2 INJECTION IN COALGAS RESERVOIRS AND ITS IMPACT ON METHANE PRODUCTION

Carbon sequestration in coalgas reservoirs as a technique to combat atmospheric CO2, while simultaneously enhancing the recovery of gas, is a viable option in the immediate future. However, injected CO2 in deep coals not only displaces additional methane while getting adsorbed, but also results in swelling of the solid coal matrix associated with adsorption. This, in turn, reduces the cleat aperture, and hence, the coal permeability. A significant reduction in permeability can hinder the flow of CO2/CH4 in the reservoir making this option of CO2 sequestration economically infeasible. It is, therefore, important to study the flow characteristics of coal resulting from gas injection in order to accurately predict the amount of additional methane recovery, and determine the viability of using deep coal as CO2 repositories. As a part of a study to determine the impact of permeability reduction resulting from CO2 injection, an experimental study was carried out to measure the volumetric strain induced in coal matrix with sorption of gases. First, the matrix “shrinkage” with desorption and flow of methane was measured. This was followed by measuring the matrix “swelling” induced by injection of CO2. Using the measured matrix volumetric strain, changes in coal permeability were estimated numerically. The variation in permeability was then entered in a commercial CBM simulator and its impact on long-term gas production was evaluated. Finally, methane recovery with injection of CO2 after partial depletion, and the effect of matrix swelling was simulated. This paper describes the experimental work, results obtained to date, and the preliminary results of the simulation exercise.
Synthesis, Characterization, and In Vitro Cancer Cell Growth Inhibition Evaluation of Novel Phosphatidylcholines with Anisic and Veratric Acids

Phenolic acids and its methoxy derivatives are known to induce caspase-mediated apoptosis activity and exhibit cytotoxic effect towards various cancer cell lines. However, their low stability and poor bioavailability in the human organism extensively restrict the utility of this group of compounds as anticancer and health-promoting agents. In this report, a series of eight novel phosphatidylcholines (3a-b, 5a-b, 7a-b, 8a-b) containing anisic or veratric acids (1a-b) at sn-1 and/or sn-2 positions were synthesized. The phenoylated phospholipids were obtained in good yields 28–66%. The structures of novel compounds were determined by their spectroscopic data. All synthesized compounds were evaluated for their antiproliferative activity towards six cancer cell lines and normal cell line Balb/3T3. Lipophilization of phenolcarboxylic acids significantly increased their anticancer properties. The asymmetrically substituted phenoylated phosphatidylcholines exhibited higher antiproliferative effect than free acids. Lysophosphatidylcholine (7b) effectively inhibited the proliferation of human leukaemia (MV4-11), breast (MCF-7), and colon (LoVo) cancer cell lines at concentrations of 9.5–20.7 µm and was from 19 to 38-fold more active than corresponding free veratric acid. The conjugation of anisic/veratric acids with the phosphatidylcholine have proved the anticancer potential of these phenolcarboxylic acids and showed that this type of lipophilization is an effective method for the production of active biomolecules.
Behaviour Preservation across Code Versions in Erlang

In any alive and nontrivial program, the source code naturally evolves along the lifecycle for many reasons such as the implementation of new functionality, the optimization of a bottleneck, or the refactoring of an obscure function. Frequently, these code changes affect various different functions and modules, so it can be difficult to know whether the correct behaviour of the previous version has been preserved in the new version. In this paper, we face this problem in the context of the Erlang language, where most developers rely on a previously defined test suite to check the behaviour preservation. We propose an alternative approach to automatically obtain a test suite that specifically focusses on comparing the old and new versions of the code. Our test case generation is directed by a sophisticated combination of several already existing tools such as TypEr, CutEr, and PropEr; and it introduces novel ideas such as allowing the programmer to choose one or more expressions of interest that must preserve the behaviour, or the recording of the sequences of values to which those expressions are evaluated. All the presented work has been implemented in an open-source tool that is publicly available on GitHub.
Use of ractopamine during compensatory gain of finishing pigs on carcass and meat performance and quality

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of compensatory gain associated with the use of 10ppm ractopamine after a period of feed restriction in finishing pigs on performance, carcass and meat quality. Twenty castrated males and 20 females, at 110 days of age and 66.137±6.13kg live weight, were submitted to four treatments using a 2 x 2 factorial design (fed ad libitum or with 20% restriction between 021 days of age and fed with or without 10ppm ractopamine for 2242 days of experimentation), with 10 replicates (animals). There was no interaction between the factors for any of the evaluated parameters. Animals treated with ractopamine presented better weight gain (1.083 versus 1.259kg), feed conversion (2.910 versus 2.577), warm and cold carcass weight (86.08 versus 89.00 and 83.46 versus 87.20kg, respectively), loin depth (63.02 versus 68.40mm), loin eye area (41.43 versus 46.59mm 2 ) and muscle fiber diameter (27.48 versus 35.85μm). Animals submitted to feed restriction followed by ad libitum feed presented compensatory gain without losses to carcass and meat characteristics, but with a reduction in the ethereal extract (2.19 versus 1.64%) and lower water loss due to thawing in the meat (11.35 versus 9.42%). The effects of compensatory gain after food restriction and ractopamine are independent of the parameters evaluated.
A Study of NLDN Responses to Cloud Discharge Activity Based on Ground-Truth Data Acquired at the LOG

The NLDN detection efficiency and classification accuracy for cloud discharge activity (IC events) were evaluated using optical and electric field data acquired at the Lightning Observatory in Gainesville (LOG), Florida. The results correspond to the NLDN configuration and settings that existed in the summer of 2014. We defined the “IC event” as any sequence of electric field pulses, in either cloud (IC) or cloud-toground (CG) flash, that (1) had pulse waveshapes clearly different from those characteristic of return strokes and (2) were not associated with channels to ground in the corresponding high-speed video camera records. Our ground-truth “IC events” include 26 “isolated IC events” that can be viewed as complete IC flashes, 58 “IC events before 1 return stroke”, and 69 “IC events after 1 return stroke”. Events in the latter two categories occurred in 76 CG flashes. For the 153 “IC events”, 33% (50 of 153) were detected by the NLDN, and the NLDN classification accuracy was 86% (43 of 50). For complete IC flashes, the detection efficiency and classification accuracy were 73% and 95%, respectively, and the average number of reported pulses was 3.1. We additionally identified 24 preliminary breakdown (PB) pulse trains in CG flashes, out of which 11 (46%) were detected and 9 (82%) of the 11 were correctly classified as cloud events. For the 9 correctly classified events, average number of NLDN-reported cloud pulses per train was 1.3. We have also estimated the detection efficiency and classification accuracy for return strokes in CG flashes (all confirmed by observed channels to ground). For both first and subsequent return strokes in both positive and negative CG flashes taken together, the NLDN stroke detection efficiency and classification accuracy were 93% (340 of 366) and 91% (311 of 340), respectively. Both the detection efficiency and classification accuracy for first strokes were higher than their counterparts for subsequent strokes. Keywords— NLDN; cloud discharge; detection efficiency; classification accuracy
Preliminary Efficacy and Feasibility of “Thinking While Moving in English”: A Program with Physical Activity Integrated into Primary School English Lessons

Background: The physical, cognitive, and learning benefits of physical activity for children have already been established. However, many schools are failing to provide children with sufficient activity at school due to a crowded school curriculum. Physical activity interventions that integrate physical activity with learning is a way to enhance physical and cognitive benefits without loss of academic time. This study evaluated the preliminary efficacy and feasibility of “Thinking While Moving in English”, a primary school program that integrates physical activity into English lessons. Method: Two classes of Grade 4 students (n = 55, 10–11 years old) were randomly assigned to the intervention (n = 29) or control (n = 26) conditions. The program components consisted of 3 × 40 min physically active academic lessons per week, delivered over a 4-week period. The following measures were taken at baseline and immediate post-intervention: on-task behavior, cognition (inhibition and working memory), and learning outcomes (spelling and grammar). Results: Results revealed significant improvements in on-task behavior and spelling in the intervention group, compared to the control group. There were no observed improvements in cognitive outcomes or grammar. Conclusions: This study provides preliminary evidence for the efficacy of physically active English lessons to enhance children’s educational outcomes.
1 PHYTOTHERAPIES — PAST , PRESENT , AND FUTURE

Phytotherapy, or the use of herbal medicines to prevent or treat a disease, is a traditional medical practice based on medicinal plants. It is a branch of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) or traditional medicine, which refers to traditional medicine systems and various forms of Indigenous medicine [1]. Many different cultures have developed herbal medicine systems, for example, Western herbal medicines, Chinese herbal medicines, Ayurvedic and Unani medicines, and Australian Indigenous medicines [2]. Phytotherapy is the basis of modern pharmaceutical science, with about 25% of the drugs prescribed today, such as digoxin, aspirin, and paclitaxel being derived from plants [3]. Western herbal medicine and orthodox medicine share to a large degree a common physiologic and diagnostic system, but they are different in many important ways as well. Herbs are complex mixtures of chemicals, which may have several distinct and concurrent pharmacological activities, while pharmaceutical drugs are mostly single chemical entities. Modern herbal medicines are becoming part of integrative clinical management in medical textbooks as exemplified in Natural Standard Herbal Pharmacotherapy [4]. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is another popular traditional medical system in China and worldwide. It includes various practices including Chinese
Circ-BPTF promotes bladder cancer progression and recurrence through the miR-31-5p/RAB27A axis

Circ-BPTF (hsa_circ_0000799) is a novel circular RNA derived from BPTF exons. Although BPTF is a well-studied predecessor gene, the characteristics and functions of circ-BPTF have not yet been reported. Here, we show that expression of circ-BPTF is increased in bladder cancer (BCa) tissues and cell lines compared with noncancerous tissues and cell lines. Consistently, BCa patients with higher expression levels of circ-BPTF were found to have higher tumor grades and poorer prognosis. Functionally, knockdown of circ-BPTF inhibited tumor progression in vitro and in vivo. Mechanistically, a target microRNA of circ-BPTF was confirmed to be miR-31-5p, and miR-31-5p mimics partially reversed the effect of circ-BPTF. Furthermore, RAB27A was predicted and shown to be a target of miR-31-5p, and circ-BPTF attenuated the anti-oncogenic effect of miR-31-5p and consequently enhanced RAB27A expression. In summary, our findings reveal that circ-BPTF promotes BCa progression through the miR-31-5p/RAB27A axis, suggesting that circ-BPTF may be a potential target for BCa treatment.
Sensitivity of simulated Convectively Coupled Kelvin Waves to physics schemes and resolution with an idealized tropical channel

Zonally propagating convective activity represents a significant component of the total variability along the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ). Westward propagating convective clusters along the Equator coexist with eastward propagating cumulus activity, organized in a hierarchy of time and spatial scales. Convectively Coupled Kelvin Waves (CCKWs) are envelopes of enhanced convection that propagate eastward in a range of velocities that is typically between 12-18m/s. The coherent structure of the CCKW can remain distinguishable over weeks, and it can be often tracked all the way around the globe. The individual cells within the CCKWs propagate westward with slower speeds and a lifetime of 1-2 days. The CCKWs are the moist counterparts of the dry Kelvin Waves, which propagate twice as fast, have no meridional velocity, are non-dispersive and can be understood as gravity waves in the east-west direction with geostrophic balance between zonal wind and meridional pressure gradient (Matsuno 1966). The CCKWs were originally referred to as Super Cloud Clusters or Superclusters because of the aforementioned characteristics, which are clearly identifiable in satellite imagery (Nakazawa 1988; Takayabu and Murakami 1991; Takayabu 1994). Some of these early works focused mainly on case studies, but when reanalysis became available, composites of different variables were produced to investigate the structure and dynamics of these waves. Simultaneously, evidence of Superclusters appeared in idealized aquaplanet simulations (Hayashi and Sumi 1986; Hayashi and Nakazawa 1989) conducted for investigation of the MaddenJulian oscillation (MJO). More recently, the entire spectrum of Convectively Coupled Equatorial Waves (CCEWs) has become a vast subject of study (involving both observed and simulated cases), with special emphasis on their multiple interactions as well as the amount of variance explained by a particular wave over the total. In particular, a widely used technique consists in a filtering of the data in the frequencywavenumber space within a power spectrum, to isolate the different CCEWs (Wheeler and Kiladis 1999; Straub and Kiladis 2002; Straub and Kiladis 2003; Roundy and Frank 2004; Roundy 2008). The present work studies structure and propagation speeds of idealized CCKWs using the ARW-WRF model, with a sensitivity analysis to cumulus schemes and horizontal resolution. Next section describes the model set-up and schemes used for the experiments. The methodology for tracking the CCKWs is presented in section 3. The propagation speeds and spatial structures of the waves are shown and analyzed in sections 4.A and 4.B, respectively, followed by summary and conclusions (section 5).
Finally Johnny Can Encrypt: But Does This Make Him Feel More Secure?

End-to-end (E2E) encryption is an effective measure against privacy infringement. In 2016, it was introduced by WhatsApp for all users (of the latest app version) quasi overnight. However, it is unclear how non-expert users perceived this change, whether they trust WhatsApp as a provider of E2E encryption, and how their communication behavior changed. We conducted semi-structured interviews with twenty WhatsApp users to answer these questions. We found that about half of the participants perceived that even with E2E encryption, their messages could still be eavesdropped, for example by hackers and other criminals, governmental institutions, or WhatsApp's employees and cooperation partners. Many participants correctly identified sender and recipient as weakest points after the introduction of E2E encryption, but misconceptions were still present. For instance, users thought that messages were transmitted directly between two devices without being forwarded or stored on a server, or interpreted 'end-to-end' as a temporally end of communication. The majority of users stated to mistrust WhatsApp and its E2E encryption and presumed image-related reasons for the cost-free implementation. While most participants did not change their communication behavior, they reported to use protection strategies such as sending sensitive content via alternative channels even after the introduction of E2E encryption.
BD-NET: A Multiplication-Less DNN with Binarized Depthwise Separable Convolution

In this work, we propose a multiplication-less deep convolution neural network, called BD-NET. As far as we know, BD-NET is the first to use binarized depthwise separable convolution block as the drop-in replacement of conventional spatial-convolution in deep convolution neural network (CNN). In BD-NET, the computation-expensive convolution operations (i.e. Multiplication and Accumulation) are converted into hardware-friendly Addition/Subtraction operations. In this work, we first investigate and analyze the performance of BD-NET in terms of accuracy, parameter size and computation cost, w.r. t various network configurations. Then, the experiment results show that our proposed BD-NET with binarized depthwise separable convolution can achieve even higher inference accuracy to its baseline CNN counterpart with full-precision conventional convolution layer on the CIFAR-10 dataset. From the perspective of hardware implementation, the convolution layer of BD-NET achieves up to 97.2%, 88.9%, and 99.4% reduction in terms of computation energy, memory usage, and chip area respectively.
Direct numerical simulation of aerosol growth processes in a turbulent mixing layer

The complex interaction of turbulent mixing and aerosol growth processes in a canonical turbulent ow con guration is investigated by means of direct numerical simulation. A cold gaseous stream mixes with a hot stream of vapor in a developing mixing layer. Nanometer sized particles (droplets) nucleate as vapor becomes supersaturated and subsequently grow as more vapor condenses on their surface. Aerosol dynamics is solved with the Quadrature Method of Moments [R. McGraw, Aerosol Sci. Technol. , 27:255-265 (1997)]. Aerosol moments advection is solved with a Lagrangian particles scheme. The results show that the highest nucleation rate region is located on the lean vapor (cool) side across the mixing layer, while particles experience a high growth rate on the rich vapor (hot) side. The effects of turbulence on particle dynamics are assessed by comparing the exact mean nucleation and growth rates with the rates evaluated from mean quantities (temperature and concentration). The nucleation rate evaluated from mean quantities tends to greatly over-estimate the mean particle number density. The growth rate evaluated from mean quantities is also higher than the exact mean value, but by a relatively small margin.
Social preferences behind public-good provision : Evidence from household recycling in Vietnam

This study examines the behavioral factors that affect the private provision of an environmental public good in a developing country. Household recycling behavior in an urban area of Vietnam is examined. A conceptual framework that modifies the impure altruism model with heterogeneous preferences and further incorporates the impure public good model is proposed to study informal recycling behaviors. Based on survey data collected from 755 Hanoi households, we find that the majority of sample households recycle all the recyclable materials they consume even though such recycling is not obligatory. Half the recycling households sell their recyclables to informal junk buyers, whereas the other half provide recyclables without monetary compensation. Our finding of voluntary recycling implies that a certain proportion of households have a positive marginal willingness to pay for an increase in the environmental public good provided privately through the informal sector. The results of the regression analyses show that recycling behavior is driven by altruism, as measured by a modified version of the self-report altruism scale. Among high-income households, inequality averse households tend to recycle. These findings suggest that social preferences are important determinants of the private provision of public goods, even in developing countries.
Dietary soybean protein ameliorates high-fat diet-induced obesity by modifying the gut microbiota-dependent biotransformation of bile acids

The consumption of soybean protein has well-known favorable metabolic effects (e.g., reduced body weight, body fat, hyperglycemia, insulin resistance, hepatic steatosis, and lipogenesis). These effects of soy protein have been linked to modulation by the gut microbiota; however, the dynamic interplay among these factors remains unclear. Accordingly, we examined the metabolic phenotype, intestinal BA pool, and the gut microbiome of male C57BL/6 mice that were randomized to receive either a regular high-fat diet (HFD) or HFD that contained soybean protein isolate (SPI) in place of dairy protein. The intake of SPI significantly reduced the HFD-induced weight gain and adipose tissue mass accumulation and attenuated hepatic steatosis. Along with an enhancement in the secretion of intestinal Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), an enlarged cecal BA pool with an elevated secondary/primary BA ratio was observed in the mice that consumed SPI, while fecal BA excretion remained unaltered. SPI also elicited dramatic changes in the gut microbiome, characterized by an expansion of taxa that may be involved in the biotransformation of BAs. The observed effects were abolished in germ-free (GF) mice, indicating that they were dependent on the microbiota. These findings collectively indicate that the metabolic benefits of SPI under the HFD regime may arise from a microbiota-driven increase in BA transformation and increase in GLP-1 secretion.