Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Correlation Analysis of Probing Signals as a Special Case of the Digital Signal Processing Methods in an Ultrasonic Liquid Flow Measurement Applications

The paper discusses the analysis and comparison of the various widely known digital processing methods of ultrasonic probing signals in liquid flow measurement applications. A particular attention is paid to correlation methods with the possibility of the correlation function interpolation to provide a small measurement error in determining the flow velocity and the liquid flow rate. In the general representation, the described problem is reduced to achieving the required accuracy of the propagation times measuring of ultrasound waves through the liquid flow in the pipeline. In addition, some issues of digital signal filtering are discussed. The results of the performed mathematical modeling on the measurement error estimation of the temporal signals parameters are obtained for clamp-on flow-meters in close to real operating conditions and with the available limitations on the possible signal sampling rate.
A novel approach to obstacle avoidance for an I-AUV

This paper presents a general obstacle avoidance framework for I-AUV using the Task-Priority kinematic control algorithm. The proposed framework is divided into two modes: (1) Navigation and Inspection and (2) Intervention. For each mode, the algorithm takes into account several key points at the I-AUV and several obstacles. For navigation we fully wrap the I-AUV with a small number of safety spheres, while, for intervention the number of safety spheres used increases, having smaller diameters to allow for more precise motion of the I-AUV near the intervention areas. The framework was implemented and simulated with a 8-DOF I-AUV (GIRONA500) in an Inspection, Maintenance, and Repair (IMR) scenario like those commonly encountered in oil and gas industry. The subsea infrastructure used in the scenario was represented by an Octomap, with each occupied cell being considered an obstacle. The I-AUV performed a mission, inspecting the infrastructure in Inspection Mode and later on, turning a valve in Intervention Mode, without colliding with the environment and ensuring a safe distance to obstacles at all times.
Childhood abuse and vasomotor symptoms among midlife women.

OBJECTIVE Childhood maltreatment is related to adverse health outcomes. However, the relation of childhood maltreatment to the menopause transition-a universal transition for women often accompanied by troubling symptoms such as vasomotor symptoms-is relatively underexplored. This study tested whether childhood abuse and neglect are associated with menopausal vasomotor symptoms, utilizing both physiologic and prospective self-report measures of vasomotor symptoms. METHODS In all, 295 nonsmoking perimenopausal and postmenopausal women aged 40 to 60 years with and without vasomotor symptoms completed psychosocial measures, including the Child Trauma Questionnaire, ambulatory physiologic (sternal skin conductance) and self-report measurement of vasomotor symptoms during wake and sleep, and actigraphy measurement of sleep. Relationships between childhood abuse/neglect and vasomotor symptoms during wake and sleep were tested in linear regression models controlling for demographics, body mass index, and menopause stage. RESULTS 44% of the sample reported abuse or neglect during childhood. Among women reporting vasomotor symptoms, childhood sexual or physical abuse was associated with more frequent physiologically-recorded vasomotor symptoms during sleep (sexual abuse: b [SE] = 1.45 [0.52], P = 0.006; physical abuse: b [SE] = 0.97 [0.47], P = 0.03) in multivariable models. Among these women, women with a physical or sexual abuse history had approximately 1.5 to 2-fold the number of sleep vasomotor symptoms than women without this history. CONCLUSIONS Childhood abuse is associated with more frequent physiologically-detected vasomotor symptoms during sleep.
Summation Detector for False Data-Injection Attack in Cyber-Physical Systems

In this paper, from the perspectives of defenders, we consider the detection problems of false data-injection attacks in cyber-physical systems (CPSs) with white noise. The false data-injection attacks usually modify the sensor data to make CPSs unstable and keep stealth for the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\chi ^{2}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> detector. To guarantee system security, a novel detector, that is, the summation (SUM) detector, is proposed to detect the false data-injection attacks. Different from the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\chi ^{2}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> detector, the SUM detector not only utilizes the current compromise information but also collects all historical information to reveal the threat. Its evaluation value also satisfies <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\chi ^{2}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> distribution when no attacks compromise the systems, and the false alarm rate can be restricted to less than any given value by choosing the proper threshold value. Furthermore, an improved false data-injection attack with a time-variable increment coefficient is introduced based on the existing approaches. The effects of the SUM detector are also verified for the traditional and the improved false data-injection attacks, respectively. Finally, some simulation results are given to demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the SUM detector.
Y Effect of fermentation conditions on alcohol production by yeasts during processing of mango wine

The present investigation was focused on the selection of desirable yeast for the production of high-quality wine from mango. In this study six wine yeasts were procured from different sources and evaluated for ethanol tolerance and effect of pH, temperature and sugar concentration on their fermentation efficiency. Among six wine yeasts tested for their sugar (25%) and ethanol (16%) tolerance, a strain of Saccharomyces bayanus was found to be better than the other 5 strains of S. cerevisiae. The strain S. bayanus produced more ethanol (10%) than the other strains under various conditions of pH and temperature in mango wine, the optima being 4.0 and 25oC, respectively. The physiochemical characteristics of wines produced by these strains, was unequivalently found that S. bayanus is better in terms of desirable production of volatile acidity, higher alcohols, pH, and esters. Hence, the strain of S. bayanus has been selected as suitable yeast strain for further studies for production of mango wine.
Gender differences in dental caries among adolescents in Stockholm County Council

Aim. To investigate gender differences in caries experience and caries increment among Swedish adolescents. Materials and methods. This retrospective, longitudinal register-based cohort study included all adolescents (n=17808) at 13 years of age, residing Stockholm County Council in 2000, and followed them up to 19 years of age. Finally, 15538 (7728F, 7810M) individuals were examined at both 13 and 19 years of age. Caries data (decayed, filled teeth/surfaces, DFT/DFSa), were collected from dental database at Public Health Care Administration in Stockholm. Data concerning parental socio-demographic determinants were collected from National Registers at Statistics Sweden. Results. The mean DFT among 13and 19-year-olds were 1.37 F/1.25 M and 3.34 F/3.41 M, respectively, and was significant higher for females at 13 years of age. After adjustments for socio-demographic confounders, logistic regression analysis revealed gender differences concerning caries experience at 19 years (DFT≥4) and caries increment (DFT≥4). Furthermore, the excess risk among males enhanced in relation to the severity of caries experience, as well as caries increment. Conclusions. At 13 years of age, females exhibited the highest caries experience. During the teenage period males developed significant more caries lesions compared to females. At 19 years of age, males exhibited significant higher caries experience compared to females.
Residual Water Suppression Using the Squared Eigenfunctions of the Schrödinger Operator

Water suppression, in proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) using post-processing techniques, is very challenging due to the large amplitude of the water line, which shadows the metabolic peaks with small amplitudes and complicates their quantification. In addition, the peak-shaped structure of these spectra and the relatively small number of data points representing them makes the suppression process more cumbersome. In this paper, a post-processing water suppression technique based on the Schrödinger operator is proposed. The method is based on the decomposition of the input MRS spectrum, using the squared eigenfunctions of a semi-classical Schrödinger operator. The proposed approach proceeds in three steps: first, the water peak is estimated using an optimal choice of the value of $h$ to reconstruct the MRS spectrum with a minimum number of eigenfunctions. Second, these estimated eigenfunctions are further refined to ensure that they only represent the water line with no contribution from the metabolite peaks. Finally, the estimated water peak is subtracted from the input MRS spectrum. The proposed method is tested on simulated in vitro and real in vivo MRS data and compared with the Hankel–Lanczos singular value decomposition with partial reorthogonalization (HLSVD-PRO) method. The results obtained show that the semi-classical signal analysis (SCSA) performs comparably to the HLSVD-PRO in accurately suppressing the water peak.
Reliability, validity and responsiveness of the fear-avoidance beliefs questionnaire: methodological aspects of the Norwegian version.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate reliability, validity and responsiveness of the Fear-Avoidance Beliefs Questionnaire (FABQ) for use in Norwegian patients with low back pain. DESIGN A prospective cohort study with 2 groups. PATIENTS The questionnaire was tested in 123 patients with acute low back pain and 50 patients with chronic low back pain. METHODS A translation and cross-cultural adaptation was performed. Test-retest reliability was assessed in 28 patients with chronic low back pain. Responsiveness was assessed in acute low back pain. RESULTS Two factors for the FABQ were confirmed; fear-avoidance beliefs about work (FABQ-Work) and physical activity (FABQ-PA), accounting for 60% and 54% of the total variance in acute and chronic low back pain, respectively. For FABQ-Work and FABQ-PA internal consistency was 0.90 and 0.79, intra-class correlation coefficients 0.82 and 0.66, minimal detectable changes 12 and 9 points, and coefficients of variation were 16% and 23%. The FABQ correlated weakly to moderately with pain, disability, distress, and clinical variables. Standardized response means were low for FABQ-Work (0.32) and moderate (0.56) for FABQ-PA. Both FABQ subscales showed initially floor and/or ceiling effects. CONCLUSION The Norwegian FABQ version had acceptable factor structure, internal consistency, test-retest reliability and construct validity. The responsiveness of the FABQ-Work was low, and for the FABQ-PA moderate, in the acute sample.
Comparison of bacterial community structure and potential functions in hypoxic and non-hypoxic zones of the Changjiang Estuary

Bacterioplankton play a key role in the global cycling of elements. To characterize the effects of hypoxia on bacterioplankton, bacterial community structure and function were investigated in the Changjiang Estuary. Water samples were collected from three layers (surface, middle, and bottom) at ten sampling sites in the Changjiang Estuary hypoxic and non-hypoxic zones. The community structure was analyzed using high-throughput sequencing of 16S rDNA genes, and the predictive metagenomic approach was used to investigate the functions of the bacterial community. Co-occurrence networks are constructed to investigate the relationship between different bacterioplankton. The results showed that community composition in hypoxic and non-hypoxic zones were markedly different. The diversity and richness of bacterial communities in the bottom layer (hypoxic zone) were remarkably higher than that of the surface layer (non-hypoxic). In the non-hypoxic zone, it was found that Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Flavobacteriia were the dominant groups while Alphaproteobacteria, SAR406 and Deltaproteobacteria were the dominant groups in the hypoxic zone. From the RDA analysis, it was shown that dissolved oxygen (DO) explained most of the bacterial community variation in the redundancy analysis targeting only hypoxia zones, whereas nutrients and salinity explained most of the variation across all samples in the Changjiang Estuary. To understand the genes involved in nitrogen metabolism, an analysis of the oxidation state of nitrogen was performed. The results showed that the bacterial community in the surface layer (non-hypoxic) had more genes involved in dissimilatory nitrate reduction, assimilatory nitrate reduction, denitrification, and anammox, while that in the middle and bottom layers (hypoxic zone) had more abundant genes associated with nitrogen fixation and nitrification. Co-occurrence networks revealed that microbial assemblages in the middle and bottom layers shared more niche spaces than in the surface layer (non-hypoxic zone). The environmental heterogeneity in the hypoxic and non-hypoxic zones might be important environmental factors that determine the bacterial composition in these two zones.
Enhanced time delay integration imaging using embedded CCD in CMOS technology

This paper presents a new imager platform developed at imec enabling the monolithic integration of 130 nm CMOS image sensors (CMOS/CIS) with charge coupled devices (CCD). The process module was successfully developed and the potential of this embedded CCD in CMOS (eCCD) was demonstrated with the fabrication of a time delay integration (TDI) imager.
The role of LRRK2 on PKA-NFκB pathway in microglia cells: implications for Parkinson’s disease

Leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2), a gene linked to autosomal-dominantly inherited and sporadic Parkinson’s disease (PD) as a risk factor, encodes a large and complex protein with a dual enzymatic activity. LRRK2 contains several domains involved in protein-protein interactions, however, the presence of both a kinase and GTPase domain points to intracellular signaling functions (Marín, 2006). While LRRK2 has been linked to several molecular pathways important for neuronal activity (Martin et al., 2014), the observation that its expression is high in microglia has attracted the attention of different groups to understand whether LRRK2 dysfunctions in these cells may impact neuronal activity as secondary event. In this regard, since 2012 numerous studies have demonstrated that LRRK2 controls microglia activation and plays important roles in these cells (Russo et al., 2014). Microglia are highly specialized macrophages responsible for mediating innate immune defense in the brain and scavenging debris or misfolded/aggregated proteins. They are considered main actors upon an inflammatory stimulus, and although a well-regulated inflammatory response is crucial for tissue repair and brain homeostasis, an excessive and prolonged neuroinflammation can lead to overproduction of toxic molecules, which results in deleterious cellular damage, as observed in different neurodegenerative diseases including PD (Tansey and Goldberg, 2010).
A comparative study of the effects of concentrated growth factors in two different forms on osteogenesis in vitro

Extending the release cycle of growth factors to match the cycle of bone remodeling is difficult. When using concentrated growth factors (CGFs), the release of growth factors is excessively rapid. In the present study, CGF samples were prepared by centrifugation. CGF samples were then lyophilized and grinded into a powder, which was termed freeze-dried CGF. The freeze-dried CGF samples were mixed with chitosan-alginate composite hydrogels, and the mixture was lyophilized. The result was a chitosan-alginate composite CGF membrane, which was called sustained-release CGF. This study investigated whether freeze-dried CGF in a chitosan-alginate composite gel can release CGF steadily to achieve effective osteogenesis. The proliferation and osteogenic expression of MC3T3-E1 cells induced by the supernatants from incubation with freeze-dried CGF and sustained-release CGF were evaluated. The concentrations of the growth factors, transforming growth factor β1 (TGF-β1), insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), platelet-derived growth factor-AB (PDGF-AB) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), in these two experimental groups at different times were determined by ELISA kits. The freeze-dried CGF showed better osteogenic performance than the sustained-release CGF in the early stages. At later stages, the sustained-release CGF had significant advantages over freeze-dried CGF in terms of promoting osteogenic mineralization. By characterizing the biologic properties of the CGF in the two different forms in vitro, we obtained a better understanding of their clinical effects.
What do we know about the health and health care of people with intellectual disabilities from minority ethnic groups in the United Kingdom? A systematic review.

BACKGROUND People with from minority ethnic communities face inequalities in health and health care. This systematic review considers the question of what we know about the health and health care of children and adults with intellectual disabilities from ethnic minority communities in the UK. METHOD Studies published from 1990 to 2018 were identified via electronic literature databases, email requests and cross-citations. Studies were reviewed narratively in relation to identified themes. RESULTS Twenty-three studies were identified, most commonly focusing on South Asian communities. Very little information was identified on physical health or physical health care, with the identified evidence tending to focus on mental health care, access to specialist intellectual disability services, and inpatient services. CONCLUSION Little is known about the health status of people with intellectual disabilities from minority ethnic groups in the UK. It is clear that they may experience barriers to accessing specialist intellectual disability services and other forms of health care.
Direction Code Based Features for Recognition of Online Handwritten Characters of Bangla

In the present article, we describe a novel direction code based feature extraction approach for recognition of online Bangla handwritten basic characters. We have implemented the proposed approach on a database of 7043 online handwritten Bangla (a major script of the Indian subcontinent) character samples, which has been developed by us. This is a 50-class recognition problem and we achieved 93.90% and 83.61% recognition accuracies respectively on its training and test sets.
Receipt of Breast Milk by Gestational Age — United States, 2017

Breast milk is the optimal source of infant nutrition. For the nearly one in 10 infants born prematurely in the United States annually (1), breast milk is especially beneficial, helping prevent sepsis and necrotizing enterocolitis and promoting neurologic development (2). National estimates of newborn feeding practices by gestational age have not been available previously. CDC analyzed 2017 birth certificate data from 48 states and the District of Columbia (3,194,873; 82.7% of all births) to describe receipt of breast milk among extremely preterm (20-27 weeks), early preterm (28-33 weeks), late preterm (34-36 weeks), and term (≥37 weeks) infants with further stratification by maternal and infant characteristics. The prevalence of infants receiving any breast milk was 83.9% overall and varied by gestational age, with 71.3% of extremely preterm infants, 76.0% of early preterm infants, 77.3% of late preterm infants, and 84.6% of term infants receiving any breast milk. Disparities in receipt of breast milk by several sociodemographic factors, including maternal race/ethnicity, were noted across gestational age groups. These estimates suggest that many infants, particularly infants at high risk for medical complications, might not be receiving breast milk. Efforts are needed to increase the implementation of existing evidence-based policies and practices that support breast milk feeding, particularly for medically fragile infants (2,3).
Phenotypic heterogeneity and evolution of melanoma cells associated with targeted therapy resistance

Phenotypic plasticity is associated with non-genetic drug tolerance in several cancers. Such plasticity can arise from chromatin remodeling, transcriptomic reprogramming, and/or protein signaling rewiring, and is characterized as a cell state transition in response to molecular or physical perturbations. This, in turn, can confound interpretations of drug responses and resistance development. Using BRAF-mutant melanoma cell lines as the prototype, we report on a joint theoretical and experimental investigation of the cell-state transition dynamics associated with BRAF inhibitor drug tolerance. Thermodynamically motivated surprisal analysis of transcriptome data was used to treat the cell population as an entropy maximizing system under the influence of time-dependent constraints. This permits the extraction of an epigenetic potential landscape for drug-induced phenotypic evolution. Single-cell flow cytometry data of the same system were modeled with a modified Fokker-Planck-type kinetic model. The two approaches yield a consistent picture that accounts for the phenotypic heterogeneity observed over the course of drug tolerance development. The results reveal that, in certain plastic cancers, the population heterogeneity and evolution of cell phenotypes may be understood by accounting for the competing interactions of the epigenetic potential landscape and state-dependent cell proliferation. Accounting for such competition permits accurate, experimentally verifiable predictions that can potentially guide the design of effective treatment strategies.
On the Industrial Application of Combinatorial Testing for Autonomous Driving Functions

The growing importance of automated and autonomous driving systems becomes more and more visible in the industrial domain as well as in research. Validation and verification of autonomous driving functions is one of the grand challenges in autonomous vehicle development. Virtual validation using simulation has been widely discussed and proposed as a method to solve the challenge. Furthermore, scenario-based approaches have been considered as proper methods combined with virtual validation in order to identify critical scenarios. In this paper, we discuss a method for testing automated and autonomous driving functions using ontologies and combinatorial testing that is able to automate test case generation. Moreover, we report on the application of the method at the industrial level. There we depict the comprehensive application process from the construction of the ontology to test suite execution in detail. This case study shows that the proposed approach can be used for testing and validation of autonomous driving functions in practice.