Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Brucelosis: prevalencia y factores de riesgo asociados en bovinos, bubalinos, caprinos y ovinos de Formosa, Argentina

La brucelosis es una enfermedad infectocontagiosa que afecta a especies domésticas y salvajes, caracterizada por la producción de trastornos reproductivos y pérdidas en la producción. Es además una zoonosis de importancia mundial. Existen factores de riesgo asociados a la presencia de brucelosis en los animales domésticos, que favorecen el ingreso y la permanencia de la enfermedad en una población. En el presente trabajo se realizó un análisis de la prevalencia serológica de la brucelosis en rodeos bovinos, bubalinos, caprinos y ovinos, así como la correlación entre la presencia de animales serorreactores y determinados factores de riesgo. El trabajo se realizó durante 3 años en establecimientos pecuarios de la Provincia de Formosa. Se compararon encuestas epidemiológicas con la información proveniente de muestreos para análisis serológicos. Se investigó un total de 1686 animales, de los cuales 657 fueron bovinos, 265 bubalinos, 569 caprinos y 195 ovinos. Se analizaron 40 establecimientos pecuarios de los departamentos Formosa, Pilagá, Pirané, Pilcomayo y Patiño. La prevalencia de rodeos positivos fue de 12,5; 50; 40,9 y 0% y de animales positivos de 1,37; 10,94; 7,9 y 0% en bovinos, bubalinos, caprinos y ovinos respectivamente. El análisis de odds ratio arrojó significación estadística para los factores: (a) presencia de síntomas, (b) aislamiento de hembras próximas al parto, (c) cobertura vacunal y (d) tamaño del rodeo. El estadístico chi cuadrado mostró diferencias significativas en la presentación de brucelosis comparando bovinos con bubalinos y caprinos, pero no hubo diferencias cuando se compararon bubalinos y caprinos entre sí. Se concluye que la brucelosis está presente en los rodeos de animales domésticos de la Provincia de Formosa, que existen factores de riesgo asociados al mantenimiento de la enfermedad en las poblaciones y que la aplicación regular de medidas de manejo sanitario reduce la frecuencia de la enfermedad
CMOS Single-Photon Avalanche Diode Pixel Design for a Gun Muzzle Flash Detection Camera

We present the architecture and design of a CMOS single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) pixel that was selected to be the basis for a gun muzzle flash detection camera. The SPAD sensor and auxiliary circuitry are fabricated in a standard <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$0.18-\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> CMOS image sensor technology. The pixel integrates a <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$25-\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> pitch SPAD, a variable-load quenching circuit implemented with a 1.8-V pMOS, and digital processing electronics providing an 8-bit output bus. The SPAD is low noise (around 100-Hz dark count rate at 1.8-V excess voltage) and has a real peak photon detection efficiency (not averaged on pixel pitch) of 9.2% at 450 nm (1.8-V excess voltage). The pixel delivers intensity information through photon counting, up to 256 counts per frame with down to <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$5-\mu \text{s}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> integration time for the full dynamic range. The pixel memories enable parallel processing and global-shutter readout, preventing motion artifacts and partial exposure effects. The pixel can acquire very fast optical events at a high frame-rate (up to 200 kilo frames/s) and at a single-photon level. The pixel has an 8-bit parallel output bus.
Evaluation of CS-MCT in DC Solid-State Circuit Breaker Applications

DC solid-state circuit breakers (SSCB) have attracted much attention in recent years owing to the rise of a new dc application field such as dc microgrids based on distributed generation systems. However, due to the inherent large on-state resistance of power semiconductor devices, the proliferation of SSCB is impeded by a large energy loss and finite fault current interruption capability. Compared with commonly used power devices, metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS)-controlled thyristor (MCT) features an ultralow on-state resistance high surge current capability, which could be a potential candidate for SSCB applications. In this paper, an evaluation of cathode-short MCT (CS-MCT) in a 400 V dc SSCB is presented by using both physical-based mixed-mode simulation and experimental measurements. Corresponding results show the SSCB based on CS-MCT attains a 30% reduction in energy loss compared with that using insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) and the fault current interruption capability of SSCB can be enhanced by suppressing the mistriggering of CS-MCT. The excellent device performances coupled with inherent reliability of solid-state power switch make CS-MCT a good candidate for future dc SSCB applications.
Input Current Ripple and Grid Current Harmonics Restraint Approach for Single-Phase Inverter Under Battery Input Condition in Residential Photovoltaic/Battery Systems

When an existing photovoltaic (PV) system is upgraded to a residential PV/battery system, the single-phase PV inverter under both input conditions of battery and PV should be properly controlled to restrain the input current ripple and grid-current harmonics. To do this, equivalent circuits of PV array and Li-ion battery pack are first constructed and respectively analyzed. The analysis results show that the input current under the battery pack may contain serious ripple component due to the low internal impedance of the battery pack, which cannot suppress the ripple current caused by the inherent power coupling problem of the grid-connected single-phase inverter. Then, based on the small signal model of the boost dc–dc convertor, a novel active control method is proposed for mitigating the input current ripple, which adopts double-channel current feedbacks including an additional ripple current feedback channel and the normal one. To provide the feedback signal, a third-order general integrator is introduced to extract the current ripple. Besides, a proportional-resonant controller is used to restrain the grid-current harmonics. Finally, the control parameters are obtained using MATLAB toolbox, and the proposed control strategies are validated by the experimental results on a 5 kW prototype.
Wireless Powered Information Transfer Based on Zero-Forcing for Multiuser MIMO Systems

A zero-forcing (ZF)-based transmission method is proposed for a wireless powered communication network (WPCN) with multiuser multi-input multi-output (MU-MIMO) channels. We formulate the max–min user rate optimization problem based on ZF-based uplink transmission, under the transmit power constraints determined by the downlink power transfer, and derive a Newton-like iterative algorithm to find the optimal solution of the proposed problem. Using the proposed ZF-based method, we design a downlink energy beamformer, and optimize the uplink power allocation vector, precoder, and combiner in terms of the max–min user rate for a MU-MIMO WPCN system. Numerical simulations show that the proposed method provides at least 3 dB signal-to-noise ratio gain compared to the conventional transmission schemes for WPCN. Moreover, through complexity analysis and simulations, it is shown that the proposed method can reduce at least 92% of the computation load in terms of runtime with moderate achievable rate loss, compared to the optimal method obtained by the interior-point method.
Clinical Results and Utility of Herpesviruses Multiplex Polymerase Chain Reaction: Assessment of Aqueous Humor Samples From Patients With Corneal Endotheliitis and High Intraocular Pressure

Purpose: The main purpose of this study was to evaluate herpesvirus infection in patients with corneal endotheliitis and high intraocular pressure (IOP) using multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in aqueous humor samples. Materials and Methods: This was a retrospective, observational study of immunocompetent patients living in South Korea. Eligible subjects had typical corneal endotheliitis with an IOP≥21 mm Hg or required antiglaucoma medication. Multiplex PCR was performed using aqueous humor samples obtained at first visit to detect the DNA of 6 herpesviruses. Results: Forty-two eyes from 42 patients with >6 months’ follow-up were analyzed. Of these, 16 were herpesvirus-positive: 3 herpes simplex virus 1, 3 varicella-zoster virus, 9 cytomegalovirus, and 1 Epstein-Barr virus. Eyes with coin-shaped or fine keratic precipitates (kps), high IOP, and a low baseline endothelial cell count were more likely to show a positive result on multiplex PCR. Univariate analysis showed that male sex (P=0.014), a previous history of uveitic glaucoma (P=0.048), and the presence of fine kps (P=0.031) were significantly associated with a positive PCR result. On multivariate analysis, male sex (P=0.010) and a previous history of uveitic glaucoma (P=0.031) showed a significant positive association. Conclusions: Cytomegalovirus was the most commonly detected herpesvirus in patients with corneal endotheliitis and high IOP. A positive PCR result was seen more frequently in male individuals and patients with fine kps or a history of uveitic glaucoma.
Prognostic value of minichromosome maintenance mRNA expression in early-stage pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma patients after pancreaticoduodenectomy

Background The aim of the current study was to investigate the potential prognostic value of minichromosome maintenance (MCM) genes in patients with early-stage pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) after pancreaticoduodenectomy by using the RNA-sequencing dataset from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). Methods An RNA-sequencing dataset of 112 early-stage PDAC patients who received a pancreaticoduodenectomy was obtained from TCGA. Survival analysis was used to identify potential prognostic values of MCM genes in PDAC overall survival (OS). Results Through mining public databases, we observed that MCM genes (MCM2, MCM3, MCM4, MCM5, MCM6, and MCM7) were upregulated in pancreatic cancer tumor tissue and have a strong positive coexpression with each other. Multivariate survival analysis indicated that a high expression of MCM4 significantly increased the risk of death in patients with PDAC, and time-dependent receiver operating characteristic analysis showed an area under the curve of 0.655, 0.587, and 0.509 for a 1-, 2-, and 3-year PDAC OS prediction, respectively. Comprehensive survival analysis of MCM4 using stratified and joint effects survival analysis suggests that MCM4 may be an independent prognostic indicator for PDAC OS. Gene set enrichment analysis indicated that MCM4 may participate in multiple biologic processes and pathways, including DNA replication, cell cycle, tumor protein p53, and Notch signaling pathways, thereby affecting prognosis of PDAC patients. Conclusions Our study indicates that MCM2–7 were upregulated in pancreatic cancer tumor tissues, and mRNA expression of MCM4 may serve as an independent prognostic indicator for PDAC OS prediction after pancreaticoduodenectomy.
Dual Reconstruction Nets for Image Super-Resolution with Gradient Sensitive Loss

Deep neural networks have exhibited promising performance in image super-resolution (SR) due to the power in learning the non-linear mapping from low-resolution (LR) images to high-resolution (HR) images. However, most deep learning methods employ feed-forward architectures, and thus the dependencies between LR and HR images are not fully exploited, leading to limited learning performance. Moreover, most deep learning based SR methods apply the pixel-wise reconstruction error as the loss, which, however, may fail to capture high-frequency information and produce perceptually unsatisfying results, whilst the recent perceptual loss relies on some pre-trained deep model and they may not generalize well. In this paper, we introduce a mask to separate the image into low- and high-frequency parts based on image gradient magnitude, and then devise a gradient sensitive loss to well capture the structures in the image without sacrificing the recovery of low-frequency content. Moreover, by investigating the duality in SR, we develop a dual reconstruction network (DRN) to improve the SR performance. We provide theoretical analysis on the generalization performance of our method and demonstrate its effectiveness and superiority with thorough experiments.
Complementary Skyrmion Racetrack Memory Enables Voltage-Controlled Local Data Update Functionality

Magnetic skyrmion (Sk), instead of magnetic domain wall (DW), holds great promise as alternative information carriers in the future ultradense and low-power racetrack memory (RM). More importantly, by exploiting its unique properties, such as particle-like behavior and topological stability, Sk enables new functionalities that may be inaccessible to DW in RM applications. In this paper, we propose a complementary Sk-RM structure that enables voltage-controlled local data update functionality. Similar to our previous design in addressing the data representation issue, data information is represented in a robust way that both “0” and “1” are represented in the form of Sks and are moved synchronously by the spin Hall effect. Furthermore, this complementary Sk-RM structure can be developed for enabling local data update functionality, because Sks can be shifted between the two nanotracks by regulating the voltage-controlled gates. In this case, data bits “0” and “1” can be converted to each other freely within the nanotrack without being moved out of the nanotrack. This functionality brings great benefits in data access and management. Functionality and performance of the proposed design are studied with micromagnetic simulations.
Transglutaminase 2 Promotes Autophagy by LC3 Induction through p53 Depletion in Cancer Cell

Transglutaminase 2 (TGase 2) plays a key role in p53 regulation, depleting p53 tumor suppressor through autophagy in renal cell carcinoma. We found that microtubule-associated protein 1A/1B-light chain 3 (LC3), a hallmark of autophagy, were tightly associated with the level of TGase 2 in cancer cells. TGase 2 overexpression increased LC3 levels, and TGase 2 knockdown decreased LC3 levels in cancer cells. Transcript abundance of LC3 was inversely correlated with level of wild type p53. TGase 2 knockdown using siRNA, or TGase 2 inhibition using GK921 significantly reduced autophagy through reduction of LC3 transcription, which was followed by restoration of p53 levels in cancer cells. TGase 2 overexpression promoted the autophagy process by LC3 induction, which was correlated with p53 depletion in cancer cells. Rapamycin-resistant cancer cells also showed higher expression of LC3 compared to the rapamycin-sensitive cancer cells, which was tightly correlated with TGase 2 levels. TGase 2 knockdown or TGase 2 inhibition sensitized rapamycin-resistant cancer cells to drug treatment. In summary, TGase 2 induces drug resistance by potentiating autophagy through LC3 induction via p53 regulation in cancer.
Scientific production on workplace bullying and nursing: a bibliometric study.

OBJECTIVE To verify bibliometric indicators of the scientific production available in online journals that approach workplace bullying and nursing. METHOD A bibliometric study making use of Bradford's law, Zipf's law, and textual statistics was carried out with publications in Portuguese, English, and Spanish, made available in national and international databases, from 2000 to 2016. RESULTS The sample was made up of 111 publications. The main authors had connections with 91 institutions distributed in 24 countries. The United States, Brazil, and Australia were the countries with the most publications. The populations of the studies were made up of nursing professionals and students, and the hospital environment was the most studied setting. The journals with a higher number of publications have international scientific influence. The terms that presented greater semantic power and high frequency in the abstracts were: bullying; assédio moral; and acoso laboral. CONCLUSION Indicators showed that workplace bullying occurs in the nursing work environments of several countries, and the number of publications on this theme has tended to increase. Diversifying methods and study settings is important to contribute to the advancement of knowledge and fight against this violence.
A Novel Bitcoin Mining Scheme Based on the Multi-Leader Multi-Follower Stackelberg Game Model

Since the introduction of Bitcoin in 2009, it has gained a significant popularity around the world. Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer electronic payment system where payment transactions are stored in a data structure named the block-chain. Based on a fully decentralized network, the blockchain is maintained by a community of participants. In Bitcoin system, mining is the fundamental concept. In this paper, we design a new Bitcoin mining scheme based on the multi-leader multi-follower Stackelberg game model. To effectively implement the peer-to-peer relationship of Bitcoin system agents, we assume that mining pool operators are leaders and mining participating users are followers in our Stackelberg game. By using the dynamics of feedback-based repeated process, leaders, and followers can be interacting with one another and make their decisions in a way to reach an efficient system solution. Without the influence of any central authorities and organizations, the proposed method is practically applied to a distributed Bitcoin system. Through system level simulations, we show that our game approach outperforms the existing Bitcoin schemes in providing a better fair-efficient system performance.
Structural Insights into Streptococcal Competence Regulation by the Cell-to-Cell Communication System ComRS

In Gram-positive bacteria, cell-to-cell communication mainly relies on extracellular signaling peptides, which elicit a response either indirectly, by triggering a two-component phosphorelay, or directly, by binding to cytoplasmic effectors. The latter comprise the RNPP family (Rgg and original regulators Rap, NprR, PrgX and PlcR), whose members regulate important bacterial processes such as sporulation, conjugation, and virulence. RNPP proteins are increasingly considered as interesting targets for the development of new antibacterial agents. These proteins are characterized by a TPR-type peptide-binding domain, and except for Rap proteins, also contain an N-terminal HTH-type DNA-binding domain and display a transcriptional activity. Here, we elucidate the structure-function relationship of the transcription factor ComR, a new member of the RNPP family, which positively controls competence for natural DNA transformation in streptococci. ComR is directly activated by the binding of its associated pheromone XIP, the mature form of the comX/sigX-inducing-peptide ComS. The crystal structure analysis of ComR from Streptococcus thermophilus combined with a mutational analysis and in vivo assays allows us to propose an original molecular mechanism of the ComR regulation mode. XIP-binding induces release of the sequestered HTH domain and ComR dimerization to allow DNA binding. Importantly, we bring evidence that this activation mechanism is conserved and specific to ComR orthologues, demonstrating that ComR is not an Rgg protein as initially proposed, but instead constitutes a new member of the RNPP family. In addition, identification of XIP and ComR residues important for competence activation constitutes a crucial step towards the design of antagonistic strategies to control gene exchanges among streptococci.
Technology-Integrated Collaborative Learning: Convenient Alternative in Developing the Problem Solving Capability and Positive Attitude towards Mathematics

This research is aimed to describe a technology-integrated collaborative learning, exploring the student perception associated with the implemented learning method as well as observing the effectiveness of this method compared to the individual method. This research was conducted in Islamic Institute of Ma’arif NU Metro – Indonesia in 2017/2018 academic year. Through the application of cluster random sampling technique, about 28 students were determined as the research sample. The research sample was the fifth semester students of mathematics education who are currently learning the geometric transformation subject. The experimental class which becomes the focus of researcher is consist of 28 students who were derived from the cluster random sampling technique. This research design is a mixed research. Observation sheet, interview, and test of problem solving capability were used as the data collecting instrument. The results of this research indicates that the collaborative process is performing well. The learning process was conducted in the class, not in the computer laboratory. The limited number of laptop did not impact the learning process. The observation results indicate that the level of student enthusiasm in following the learning process is adequately high. The positive comments from students show that the technology-integrated collaborative method has supported them to comprehend the mathematics concepts as well as growing the high intention of learning. Negative comments that occur are associated with the complexity of studied material and the difficulty in using the application for a small number of students. The test results of problem solving capability has shown that the method of technology-integrated collaborative learning provides better results compared to the individual learning.
Making better sense of quantum mechanics

We still lack any consensus about what one is actually talking about as one uses quantum mechanics. There is a gap between the abstract terms in which the theory is couched and the phenomena the theory enables each of us to account for so well. Because it has no practical consequences for how we each use quantum mechanics to deal with physical problems, this cognitive dissonance has managed to coexist with the quantum theory from the very beginning. The absence of conceptual clarity for almost a century suggests that the problem might lie in some implicit misconceptions about the nature of scientific explanation that are deeply held by virtually all physicists, but are rarely explicitly acknowledged. I describe here such unvoiced but widely shared assumptions. Rejecting them clarifies and unifies a range of obscure remarks about quantum mechanics made almost from the beginning by some of the giants of physics, many of whom are held to be in deep disagreement. This new view of physics requires physicists to think about science in an unfamiliar way. My primary purpose is to explain the new perspective and urge that it be taken seriously. My secondary aims are to explain why this perspective differs significantly from what Bohr, Heisenberg, and Pauli had been saying from the very beginning, and why it is not solipsism, as some have maintained. To emphasize that this is a general view of science, and not just of quantum mechanics, I apply it to a long-standing puzzle in classical physics: the apparent inability of physics to give any meaning to ‘Now’—the present moment.