Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Non‐parametric estimation for semi‐Markov kernels with application to reliability analysis

The authors consider an irreducible Markov renewal process (MRP) with a finite number of states. Their aim is to derive estimators of a censored MRP with a finite number of states either in a fixed time T or in the Nth jump. The estimators given here are seen to be of the Kaplan-Meier type. The asymptotic properties these estimators are given. The reliability of a semi-Markov system model is examined numerically by the estimators, and a comparison is made with estimators obtained by Lagakos et al.
Application of the Reuterin System as Food Preservative or Health-Promoting Agent: A Critical Review

The reuterin system is a complex multi-component antimicrobial system produced by Limosilactobacillus reuteri by metabolizing glycerol. The system mainly includes 3-hydroxypropionaldehyde (3-HPA, reuterin), 3-HPA dimer, 3-HPA hydrate, acrolein and 3-hydroxypropionic acid, and has great potential to be applied in the food and medical industries due to its functional versatility. It has been reported that the reuterin system possesses regulation of intestinal flora and anti-infection, anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer activities. Typically, the reuterin system exerts strong broad-spectrum antimicrobial properties. However, the antimicrobial mechanism of the reuterin system remains unclear, and its toxicity is still controversial. This paper presents an updated review on the biosynthesis, composition, biological production, antimicrobial mechanisms, stability, toxicity and potential applications of the reuterin system. Challenges and opportunities of the use of the reuterin system as a food preservative or health-promoting agent are also discussed. The present work will allow researchers to accelerate their studies toward solving critical challenges obstructing industrial applications of the reuterin system.
Newly Developed Targeted Therapies Against the Androgen Receptor in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer: A Review

Among different types of breast cancers (BC), triple-negative BC (TNBC) amounts to 15% to 20% of breast malignancies. Three principal characteristics of TNBC cells are (i) extreme aggressiveness, (ii) absence of hormones, and (iii) growth factor receptors. Due to the lack or poor expression of the estrogen receptor, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2, and progesterone receptor, TNBC is resistant to hormones and endocrine therapies. Consequently, chemotherapy is currently used as the primary approach against TNBC. Expression of androgen receptor (AR) in carcinoma cells has been observed in a subset of patients with TNBC; therefore, inhibiting androgen signaling pathways holds promise for TNBC targeting. The new AR inhibitors have opened up new therapy possibilities for BC patients carrying AR-positive TNBC cells. Our group provides a comprehensive review of the structure and function of the AR and clinical evidence for targeting the cell’s nuclear receptor in TNBC. We updated AR agonists, inhibitors, and antagonists. We also presented a new era of genetic manipulating CRISPR/Cas9 and nanotechnology as state-of-the-art approaches against AR to promote the efficiency of targeted therapy in TNBC. Significance Statement The lack of effective treatment for triple-negative breast cancer is a health challenge. The main disadvantages of existing treatments are their side effects, due to their nonspecific targeting. Molecular targeting of cellular receptors, such as androgen receptors, increased expression in malignant tissues, significantly improving the survival rate of breast cancer patients.
A Review on Prevalence of Inflammatory Bowel Disease in India

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) including ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease (CD) was believed to be a Western disease, but are now increasingly being reported from India and other Asian countries where IBD was almost unheard of 30 years ago. Now India is projected to have one of the highest IBD burden across the world. There is rising incidence and prevalence of IBD in India topping the Southeast Asian countries. The clinical presentation of IBD in India is similar to other South East Asian countries. IBD is considered as a result of the complex interaction between the environment, diet, certain medications, genetic variables and a severe autoimmune response against normal bacteria in the gut. However exact cause is still unknown. Also there exists a gender distribution in IBD. In India IBD is more prevalent in males compared to females. This review summarizes the prevalence of IBD in India and some possible risk factors contributing to it. Keywords: Inflammatory bowel disease, prevalence, India
Logarithmic Decay of Hyperbolic Equations with Arbitrary Small Boundary Damping

This paper addresses an analysis on the longtime behavior of the hyperbolic equations with a partially boundary damping, under sharp regularity assumptions on the coefficients appeared in the equation. Based on a global Carleman estimate, we establish an estimate on the underlying resolvent operator of the equation, via which we show the logarithmic decay rate for solutions of the hyperbolic equations without any geometric assumption on the subboundary in which the damping is effective.
Awareness of Palestinian Women About Breast Cancer Risk Factors: A National Cross-Sectional Study

PURPOSE This study aimed to assess awareness of Palestinian women about breast cancer (BC) age-related and lifetime risks and its risk factors and to identify factors associated with good awareness. MATERIALS AND METHODS Adult women were recruited from government hospitals, primary health care centers, and public spaces in 11 governorates in Palestine. Recognition of 14 BC risk factors was assessed using a translated-into-Arabic version of the validated BC awareness measure. The level of BC risk factor awareness was determined on the basis of the number of risk factors recognized: poor (0-4), fair (5-9), and good (10-14). RESULTS Of 6,269 potential participants approached, 5,434 agreed and completed the questionnaire (response rate = 86.7%). A total of 5,257 questionnaires were included: 2,706 from the West Bank and Jerusalem and 2,551 from the Gaza Strip. Only 173 participants (3.3%) recognized the age-related risk of BC. More than one quarter (n = 1,465; 27.9%) recognized the lifetime risk of BC. The most recognized modifiable risk factor was not breastfeeding (n = 4,937; 93.9%), whereas the least recognized was having children later on in life or not at all (n = 1,755; 33.4%). The most recognized nonmodifiable risk factor was radiation exposure (n = 4,579; 87.1%), whereas the least recognized was starting the periods at an early age (n = 1,030; 19.6%). In total, 2,024 participants (38.4%) demonstrated good BC risk factor awareness. Participants from the Gaza Strip had a higher likelihood than participants from the West Bank and Jerusalem to have good awareness (42.0% v 35.2%). Age ≥ 40 years, postsecondary education, and visiting hospitals and primary health care centers were all associated with an increase in the likelihood of having good BC risk factor awareness. CONCLUSION The awareness of BC risk factors was suboptimal. These findings highlight the need for implementing health education programs combined with consistent use of ad hoc opportunities to raise awareness by health care providers.
Uniformity Correction of CMOS Image Sensor Modules for Machine Vision Cameras

Flat-field correction (FFC) is commonly used in image signal processing (ISP) to improve the uniformity of image sensor pixels. Image sensor nonuniformity and lens system characteristics have been known to be temperature-dependent. Some machine vision applications, such as visual odometry and single-pixel airborne object tracking, are extremely sensitive to pixel-to-pixel sensitivity variations. Numerous cameras, especially in the fields of infrared imaging and staring cameras, use multiple calibration images to correct for nonuniformities. This paper characterizes the temperature and analog gain dependence of the dark signal nonuniformity (DSNU) and photoresponse nonuniformity (PRNU) of two contemporary global shutter CMOS image sensors for machine vision applications. An optimized hardware architecture is proposed to compensate for nonuniformities, with optional parametric lens shading correction (LSC). Three different performance configurations are outlined for different application areas, costs, and power requirements. For most commercial applications, the correction of LSC suffices. For both DSNU and PRNU, compensation with one or multiple calibration images, captured at different gain and temperature settings are considered. For more demanding applications, the effectiveness, external memory bandwidth, power consumption, implementation, and calibration complexity, as well as the camera manufacturability of different nonuniformity correction approaches were compared.
Efficient Resource Allocation for Wireless-Powered MIMO-NOMA Communications

Wireless-powered communication (WPC) is a promising technology for varied smart network applications in the industrial, commercial, and security sectors. It employs a large number of connected low-powered user equipments (UEs) in which the harvested energy from electromagnetic radiations is used for signal transmission. However, efficient resource allocation schemes are still required to optimize the performance of WPC networks over limited power and spectrum environments. In this paper, a new approach of wireless-powered multiple-input multiple-output non-orthogonal multiple access (WP-MIMO-NOMA) is designed by employing harvest-then-transmit protocol with joint time-split and power control (TS-PC) techniques to optimize the network performance and lifetime with affordable complexity. We derive the sum rate, UEs’ rates, and rate region expressions based on power-domain NOMA and successive interference cancellation (SIC) decoding. An optimal joint TS-PC (OJTS-PC) scheme is proposed to maximize the network sum rate with enhanced user-fairness under constrained harvested energy level, uplink transmit power, and minimum UE’s rate. Besides, a near-optimal greedy TS-PC (GTS-PC) algorithm is designed to reduce computational efforts significantly. For comparison, we derive the rate expressions for the reference WP-MIMO-OMA system based on orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) and time-division multiple access (TDMA). Numerical results validate the effectiveness of proposed resource allocation schemes in terms of realized sum rate, UE’s rate, and user-fairness without scarifying the limited power of far UEs. This will prolong the lifetime of WPC networks operating over constrained power and bandwidth resources.
Immune Profile of Blood, Tissue and Peritoneal Fluid: A Comparative Study in High Grade Serous Epithelial Ovarian Cancer Patients at Interval Debulking Surgery

High-grade serous epithelial ovarian carcinoma (HGSOC) is an immunogenic tumor with a unique tumor microenvironment (TME) that extends to the peritoneal cavity. The immunosuppressive nature of TME imposes the major challenge to develop effective treatment options for HGSOC. Interaction of immune cells in TME is an important factor. Hence, a better understanding of immune profile of TME may be required for exploring alternative treatment options. Immune profiling of peritoneal fluid (PF), tumor specimens, and blood were carried out using flowcytometry, ELISA, and Procartaplex immunoassay. The frequency of CD56BrightNK cells and expression of functional receptors were reduced in PF. Increased activating NKp46+CD56DimNK cells may indicate differential antitumor response in PF. Functional receptors on NK, NKT-like and T cells were reduced more drastically in tumor specimens. Soluble ligands MIC-B and PVR were reduced, whereas B7-H6 was increased in PF. Dissemination of tumor cells contributes to soluble ligands in PF. A differential cytokine profile was found in serum and PF as IL-2, IL-8, IL-15, IL-27, IFN-γ, and GM-CSF were elevated specifically in PF. In conclusion, the differential immune profile and correlation of soluble parameters and NK cell receptors with chemo response score may add knowledge to understand anti-tumor immune response to develop effective treatment modality.
Priority Order Determination Method for Extracting Services Stepwise from Monolithic System

Along with changes in the business environment, enterprise information systems are required to have flexibility to change, high reliability, timely introduction of new technologies, scale up, and the like. For this reason, unlike the conventional monolithic system, microservices architecture combining a plurality of services attracts attention. However, it is difficult to apply this architecture to a new business that is not well understood and to cut out an appropriate service. For this reason, so-called "Monolithic first", in which a monolithic system is first constructed and the microservices are gradually made, has attracted attention. However, it is not clear how to decide which service constituting the monolithic system should be cut out in order and set as microservices. Therefore, in this research, a method for clarifying the desirable order for converting the function constituting the monolithic system into the microservices is proposed. The proposed method gives scores from both the necessity of making microservices and the degree of difficulty of making microservices for each function. Using this score, the functions of the monolithic system are displayed so that the functions are aligned in descending order of priority to be converted to microservices. As a result of applying the proposed method to the fictitious e-commerce system, feasibility was confirmed.
The Morning Glory of the Gulf of Carpentaria: An Atmospheric Undular Bore

Abstract This paper presents the results of a field expedition mounted in late September/early October 1979 to investigate the structure and origin of the “morning glory” of the Gulf of Carpentaria in northern Australia. The morning glory is a line wind squall, accompanied by a pressure jump, and often by a long roll-cloud or series of such clouds. It frequently occurs in the early morning, especially in October, in the Gulf area. A light aircraft, fitted with a temperature and humidity probe, was flown in two glories to determine their thermodynamic structure, and wind fields wore obtained principally by tracking pilot balloons using the double theodolite method. Data also were obtained from a network of surface stations, recording wind velocity and pressure, installed at locations across Cape York Peninsula, which is believed to be the area of genesis. The morning glory is identified as an internal undular bore propagating on the nocturnal and/or maritime inversion. Its origin appears to lie frequently .
Ganymede's Auroral Footprint Latitude: Comparison With Magnetodisc Model

Variations of Ganymede's auroral footprint locations are presented based on observations by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2007 and 2016. The poleward and equatorward shifts of Ganymede's footprint could be influenced by the mass outflow rate from Io and the solar wind compression, as the internal and external factors respectively. We compare our results with Ganymede's footprint mapping based on the magnetodisc model. The mapped footprint in Jupiter's ionosphere shifts equatorward with increased hot plasma parameter, Kh, which is associated with hot plasma pressure. We analyzed the effect of cold plasma number density (Nc), related to the mass outflow rate and connected to the material produced by Io. The results show that the magnetic footprint is shifted equatorward by 0.37° when the mass outflow rate is increased from 800–2,000 kg s−1. Iogenic plasma has a strong influence on the stretching of the magnetic field lines in Jupiter's middle magnetosphere, causing the equatorward shift of Ganymede's footprint. For external factors, Ganymede's footprint shifted poleward by 0.62° under the influence of solar wind compression while the mass outflow is kept constant at 1,000 kg s−1. We present similar locations of Ganymede's footprint based on the field lines mapped as a result of the compensation between an increase of Kh and the solar wind compression. Overall, the location of Ganymede's auroral footprint corresponds with the mass loading rate from Io and the solar wind dynamic pressure.
On the chemical equilibrium concept: Constrained word associations and conception

The use of the method of constrained word associations to gain knowledge on the conception of the chemical equilibrium concept is reported. The analysis provides information on: (a) A general indication of change in the cognitive structure of students associated with chemical comprehension. (b) The comparison of clusters of concepts at pre- and postinstruction indicating the associated concepts. (c) A graphical representation of the links among concepts which resulted from instruction. The results obtained by this technique were similar to those obtained by the method of free sorting of a set of concepts. As the latter was found to correlate with problem-solving ability, it is argued that the method of constrained word associations is a reliable tool for mapping certain aspects of cognitive structure concerned with understanding.
Pediatric Population with Down Syndrome: Obesity and the Risk of Cardiovascular Disease and Their Assessment Using Omics Techniques—Review

People with Down syndrome (PWDS) are more at risk for developing obesity, oxidative stress disorders, metabolic disorders, and lipid and carbohydrate profile disorders than the general population. The presence of an additional copy of genes on chromosome 21 (i.e., the superoxide dismutase 1 gene (SOD1) and gene coding for the cystathionine β-synthase (CBS) enzyme) raises the risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD). As a result of disorders in metabolic processes and biochemical pathways, theoretically protective factors (low homocysteine level, high SOD1 level) do not fulfil their original functions. Overexpression of the CBS gene leads to the accumulation of homocysteine—a CVD risk factor. An excessive amount of protective SOD1, in the case of a lack of compensatory increase in the activity of catalase and peroxidase, leads to intensifying free radical processes. The occurrence of metabolic disorders and the amplified effect of oxidative stress carries higher risk of exposure of people with DS to CVD. At present, classic predispositions are known, but it is necessary to identify early risk factors in order to be able to employ CVD and obesity prophylaxis. Detailed determination of the metabolic and lipid profile may provide insight into the molecular mechanisms underlying CVD.
Effect of omega‐3 polyunsaturated fatty acid supplementation on oxidative stress parameters and sex hormone levels of modern genotype sows

Abstract Background Sows are exposed to severe stress and hormonal challenges during their whole productive life. As polyunsaturated fatty acids play an important role in immune and reproductive functions, with a better understanding of their role in breeding sows’ nutrition, improved performance and more sustainable pig production can be achieved. Objectives In this study, we investigated the effects of omega‐6 and omega‐3 fatty acid supplementation on the antioxidant status and hormone levels of sows. Methods A total of 48 Danish Large white × Danish Landrace sows were supplemented either with sunflower oil (SO) as a control group or with fish oil (FO) as experimental group at the same dose of 10 g/kg feed. Blood samples were collected on day 14 of lactation, 5 days after weaning (insemination), and 30 days after insemination. To estimate antioxidant and reproductive effects, the amounts of reduced glutathione (GSH), thiobarbituric acid reactive substance, the activity of glutathione peroxidase (GPx), serum 17β oestradiol (E2), progesterone (P4), and 6‐keto prostaglandin F1α (6‐keto PGF1α) levels were investigated. Results FO‐based supplementation increased GPx activity on day 14 of lactation. Five days after weaning, the concentration of GSH in FO‐fed sows was significantly higher than that in SO‐fed sows. The E2 content of blood was significantly lower in the experimental group than in the control group for two of the three examined periods (day 14 of lactation and 30 days after insemination), whereas P4 levels were significantly higher in the experimental group 5 days after weaning. We found that 6‐keto PGF1α levels were systematically lower in the experimental group throughout the trial. Conclusions This study provides evidence of the major impact of omega‐6 and ‐3 fatty acids on the tested hormone levels, which serve as precursors for the production of E2 and P4 but have an opposite effect on PGF2α production.
Machine learning classifiers for detection of glaucoma

Glaucoma is a disease that affects the optic nerve. This disease, over a period of time, can lead to loss of vision. Which is known as ‘silent thief of sight’. There are several methods in which the disease can be treated, if detected at an early stage It is not possible for any technology, including artificial intelligence, to replace a doctor. However, it is possible to develop a model based on several classical image processing algorithms, combined with artificial intelligence that can detect onset of glaucoma based on certain parameters of the retinal fundus. This model would play an important role in early detection of the disease and assist the doctor. The traditional methods to detect glaucoma, as efficient as they may be, are usually expensive, a machine learning approach to diagnose from fundus images and accurately classify its severity can be considered to be efficient. Here we propose support vector machine (SVM) method to segregate, train the models using a high-end graphics processor unit (GPU) and augment the hull convex approach to boost the accuracy of the image processing mechanisms along with distinguishing the different stages of glaucoma. A web application for the screening process has also been adopted.
A Novel Peptide with Antifungal Activity from Red Swamp Crayfish Procambarus clarkii

The defense system of freshwater crayfish Procambarus clarkii as a diversified source of bioactive molecules with antimicrobial properties was studied. Antimicrobial activity of two polypeptide-enriched extracts obtained from hemocytes and hemolymph of P. clarkii were assessed against Gram positive (Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococcus faecalis) and Gram negative (Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli) bacteria and toward the yeast Candida albicans. The two peptide fractions showed interesting MIC values (ranging from 11 to 700 μg/mL) against all tested pathogens. Polypeptide-enriched extracts were further investigated using a high-resolution mass spectrometry and database search and 14 novel peptides were identified. Some peptides and their derivatives were chemically synthesized and tested in vitro against the bacterial and yeast pathogens. The analysis identified a synthetic derivative peptide, which showed an interesting antifungal (MIC and MFC equal to 31.2 μg/mL and 62.5 μg/mL, respectively) and antibiofilm (BIC50 equal to 23.2 μg/mL) activities against Candida albicans and a low toxicity in human cells.