Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
DeepVIP: Deep Learning-Based Vehicle Indoor Positioning Using Smartphones

The advent of sensor-rich smart devices (e.g., smartphones) has enabled a lot of applications and services. One of these applications and services is smartphone-based vehicle indoor positioning, which is a key technology for smart car parking and driverless cars. So far, most vehicle indoor positioning solutions either use infrastructures (e.g., WiFi access points) or inertial sensors, which suffer from low positioning accuracy, limited coverage, or high cost to deploy new equipment. To tackle these challenges, in this work we propose a novel Deep Learning-based Vehicle Indoor Positioning (DeepVIP) approach using smartphone built-in sensors, including accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, and gravity sensor. Experiments are conducted in indoor parking areas. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods.
Assessment of the Sterility of New Endodontic Files Received From the Manufacturer Using Microbial Culture and Scanning Electron Microscopic Analysis: An In Vitro Study

Background As endodontic hand files are essential tools for root canal instrumentation and treatment, these instruments have been a constant source of debate regarding whether to reuse them or use them just once. The aim of this in vitro study is to evaluate the sterility of five brands’ new endodontic files received from manufacturers without sterilization before clinical use via microbial culture (bacteria and fungi) and bioburden using scanning electron microscopic (SEM) analysis. Methodology This study included 25 K-type hand files with equal numbers from five brand groups (n=5; groups 1 to 5), named Tia Dent, Prevalent, Mani, Thomas, and Dentsply, respectively. The new files were exposed to microbial culture prior to clinical use and SEM analyses. A Fisher’s exact test was performed to compare the differences in contamination among the five tested groups. Results In the SEM, all the five brand groups showed one contaminated file out of five files (20%). Fisher's exact test findings revealed statistically significant variations between the five brand groups, as nine out of 25 (36%) files of the tested groups had positive contamination in the microbial culture experiment. Bacterial contamination was present in three (60%) of the five Tia Dent group files, four (80%) in the Prevalent group files, and two (40%) in the Mani group files. Those with fungal contamination were one (33%) in the Tia Dent group and one (25%) in the Prevalent group (P=0.027). The bacterial culture showed that 100% of the new K-files tested negative in both the Thomas and Dentsply groups. Conclusions This study concluded that there was a bioburden on new endodontic K-type hand files of different brand groups before sterilization or when immediately used.
Bidirectional associations between sleep problems and behavioural difficulties and health‐related quality of life in adolescents: Evidence from the SCAMP longitudinal cohort study

Abstract Background Sleep problems show associations with negative outcomes in both physical and mental health in adolescents, but the associations may be reciprocal. We aimed to assess bidirectional associations between sleep problems and mental health symptoms including behavioural difficulties (internalising and externalising difficulties) and low health‐related quality of life (HRQoL). Methods A total of 6616 adolescents (52.4% females) across Greater London completed baseline assessments when they were aged 11–12 years, and 3803 of them (57.2% females) completed follow‐up assessments at aged 13–15 years. Weekday and weekend sleep duration were derived from self‐reported bedtime, sleep onset latency and wake time. Sleep disturbance was assessed using a standardized sleep disturbance scale. Internalising and externalising difficulties were assessed using subscales of the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire. HRQoL was assessed using the KIDSCREEN‐10 questionnaire. Cross‐lagged structural equation modelling was used with multiple imputation to examine bidirectional associations between sleep problems and mental health symptoms. Results Females had greater internalising difficulties, worse HRQoL and more sleep disturbance than males. Persistent insufficient weekday and weekend sleep, and sleep disturbance (i.e., at both baseline and follow‐up) were associated with internalising and externalising difficulties and low HRQoL at follow‐up (ORs ranged from 1.53 to 3.63). Persistent externalising difficulties and low HRQoL were also associated with insufficient weekend sleep and sleep disturbance at follow‐up (ORs ranged from 1.68 to 4.25). Using continuous variables, we found bidirectional associations between weekday sleep duration and HRQoL, weekend sleep duration and externalising score, sleep quality and internalising score, and sleep quality and HRQoL. The association magnitudes were mostly similar in the two directions. Conclusions Our study showed bidirectional associations between sleep problems and mental health symptoms during adolescence, indicating that early intervention and treatment on the first‐occurring symptom may prevent the development of subsequent problems.
Investigation of the electrocaloric effect in a PbMg2/3Nb1/3O3-PbTiO3 relaxor thin film

Rights © 2009 American Institute of Physics.This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. The following article appeared in Correia, T. M. , Young, J. S. , Whatmore, R. W. , Scott, J. F. , Mathur, N. D. and Zhang, Q. (2009) 'Investigation of the electrocaloric effect in a PbMg2/3Nb1/3O3-PbTiO3 relaxor thin film', Applied Physics Letters, 95(18), pp. 182904 and may be found at http://aip.scitation. org/doi/abs/10.1063/1.3257695
Pre-scaling up evaluation of banana technology under irrigation conditions in Abergelle District, Wag-himra Zone, Ethiopia

The study was conducted to compare the improved banana technology against the local production technique to enhance demand-driven banana technology up-scaling and diffusion. Data were collected at the field and farmers' levels. Descriptive and inferential statistics, cost-benefit analysis and matrix ranking were employed for analysis. The result revealed that the average yield (38.40 ton ha-1) of improved banana technology had a significant yield advantage (47.24%) over the local practice (p<0.05). Despite the higher cost of production, its net return was by far higher than the local practice. The benefit-cost ratio also displays that 9.49 Ethiopian Birr (ETB) profit per 1.00 ETB investment in an improved technology package. The overall farmers' perceptions were laid under strongly agree and agree categories, and 95% of them believed that the improved banana technology was appropriate for their area and hence accepted with full confidence. The respective organizations working on rural livelihood improvement are therefore advised to up-scale the improved technology for the wider community based on the irrigation potential.
A generalization of λ-symmetry reduction for systems of ODEs: σ-symmetries

We consider a deformation of the prolongation operation, defined on sets of vector fields and involving a mutual interaction in the definition of prolonged ones. This maintains the ‘invariants by differentiation’ property, and can hence be used to reduce ODEs satisfying suitable invariance conditions in a fully algorithmic way, similarly to what happens for standard prolongations and symmetries.
Effects of atmospheric turbulence on ground-satellite optical communications and countermeasures

The theoretical advantages of ground-satellite optical communication systems can only be exploited, if means can be found to circumvent the limitations due to atmospheric effects. Atmospheric turbulence dominates the analysis and design of these links. The effects of atmospheric turbulence on the performance of ground-satellite optical communication systems and possible countermeasures are investigated in this thesis. The design and analysis of any optical system operating in the atmosphere requires empirical investigations of atmospheric turbulence conditions at the system's location. Stellar observations provide a useful and convenient means for this purpose in the case of ground-satellite optical communications. The available techniques are reviewed. The experimental setup for a particular technique is described and initial results are presented. We were involved in the first ever ground-satellite optical communication experiments conducted between Japanese Engineering Test Satellite VI and a ground station in Tokyo. One issue which has not yet been satisfactorily resolved is the probability density function (PDF) of intensity fluctuations. It was theoretically shown that the PDF approaches a negative exponential in the very strong turbulence region. Experimental evidence is presented in support of this prediction. The ETS-VI experiment results also confirm that too large a beam size can have significantly deleterious effects on fading performance. Early analyses predicted drastic reductions in uplink on-axis scintillation variance with increasing beam size. As the beam size is increased, the scintillation variance gradient off the beam centre becomes large, and eventually the limitation of the first-order theory is exceeded. An explicit limit on the beam size is identified in this thesis: the beam radius must not exceed a third of the coherence scale. Analyses also predict that appropriately converging the beam results in less scintillation compared to a collimated beam. During the ETS-VI experiment we were not able confirm this prediction. Supplements to the first-order theory also suggest that converging beams behave very similarly to collimated beams. This makes the uplink beam size the single most important adjustable parameter. Possible countermeasures to the atmospheric turbulence effects are identified and reviewed separately for the downlink and the uplink. It is emphasized that uplink transmitter beam size is a crucial design parameter and its optimum value changes continuously according to changing turbulence conditions along the propagation path. A previous study concluded that the optimum beam size is of the order of the coherence scale. It is shown that the optimum size is critically dependent on beam wander and pointing accuracy, and can in fact be much smaller. A novel countermeasure is proposed in which the uplink transmitter beam size is controlled in real time in response to measured turbulence parameters to maximize mean intensity and minimize fluctuations at the satellite receiver.
Sustained Rise in Retractions in the Life Sciences Literature during the Pandemic Years 2020 and 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating to all human endeavors, and scientific research has not been spared. We queried how the retraction of publications might have been affected during the pandemic years 2020–2021. Searches performed with Retraction Watch Database (RWD) revealed that the total number of retractions (as proxied by retraction-related notices) rose steadily from 2013 into the pandemic years 2020–2021. Interestingly, while retractions in the physical and social sciences tapered during 2020–2021, those of the basic life sciences and health sciences showed robust increases in 2020, with the former maintaining a steep rise in 2021. This rise in retractions belied a tapering of total relevant publications in the same year and is confirmed with a complementary search strategy in Scopus. The retraction rate in the medical sciences, particularly those relating to infectious disease, is clearly affected by the anomalous high retraction rate of COVID-19-related papers. However, the sustained increase in the retraction rate of the basic life sciences papers, could be due, at least partly, to retraction spikes in several journals. The rise in retractions in the life and medical sciences could be attributed to heightened post-publication peer review of papers in online platforms such as PubPeer, where numerous problematic papers have been revealed.
A-119 Adverse Childhood Experiences, Cognitive Functioning, Depression, and Anxiety in Adulthood

Objective: Increasing evidence suggests that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) predict neurocognitive dysfunction, possibly through direct (e.g., brain structure/function changes) and indirect (e.g., increased psychopathology risk) pathways. However, extant studies have focused on young and older adults, with limited understanding as to how ACEs affect cognitive health in mid-adulthood. Therefore, this study compared adults with high vs. low ACE scores on measures of cognitive performance and psychopathology. Method: This cross-sectional study included 211 adult patients (46.9% female; Mage = 44.9, SD = 17.1; Meducation = 13.8, SD = 3.0) consecutively referred for outpatient neuropsychological evaluation within a large, Midwestern academic medical center. A series one-way analysis of variances (ANOVAs) were conducted to compare high vs. low ACE groups on the Test of Premorbid Functioning (TOPF), Digit Span (DS), Trail Making Test-Part B (TMT-B), Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT; Immediate and Long Delayed Recall), Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II), and Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) scores. Results: Significant group differences were detected for BDI-II and BAI scores, F(1,159) = 18.38, p.05. Non-significant cognitive measure findings cannot be attributed to group differences in premorbid functioning, as TOPF score also did not significantly differ by ACE group, p > 0.05. Conclusions: Results of this investigation suggest that greater ACEs increase risk of depression and anxiety, but not neurocognitive dysfunction, in adulthood.
Feature Engineering and Resampling Strategies for Fund Transfer Fraud With Limited Transaction Data and a Time-Inhomogeneous Modi Operandi

Detecting financial fraud to profile crimes and pinpoint system vulnerabilities is an essential issue in the financial industry. Because of interpretability requirements and the lack of mass transaction data due to privacy regulations, sophisticated handcrafted features have been adopted in much of the literature for fraud detection. In addition to established recency, frequency, monetary, and anomaly features, we propose behavior- and segmentation-type features based on statistical characteristics belonging solely to (non-)fraudulent accounts informed by financial expertise. Our proposed features are difficult for automatic feature generators to synthesize, and provide transparent cause-effect relationships and good prediction results. Features with time-inhomogeneous properties cause popular boosting classifiers such as XGBoost and LGBM to produce unstable detection results. We use the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test to detect and remove these features to improve XGBoost and LGBM detection performance and robustness. The resulting performance shown in our experiments is better than that of other classifiers, such as SVM and random forests. We examine the advantage of our technique by comparing it with several feature engineering works on fraud detection and automatic feature generation methods. On the other hand, we also find that generating training/testing sets with random sampling falsely eliminates such time inhomogeneity and results in misleading assessments of the robustness of machine learning models. These time-inhomogeneous phenomena also entail various modus operandi patterns, which influence the performance of different resampling methods for addressing data imbalance in fraud detection. Improper linear interpolation of SMOTE-related approaches leads to poor performance due to varying patterns of modi operandi. However, synthesizing fraudulent samples with simple oversampling and GANs mitigates this problem.
Comparison of Fracture Resistance of Endodontically Treated Teeth With Traditional Endodontic Access Cavity, Conservative Endodontic Access Cavity, Truss Endodontic Access Cavity, and Ninja Endodontic Access Cavity Designs: An In Vitro Study

Introduction: Endodontic access cavity preparation plays a vital role as preservation of enamel structure is of utmost importance for a tooth's strength to be maintained. As teeth become fragile after a root canal therapy, this study was designed to compare in vitro the fracture resistance of root-filled and restored teeth with traditional endodontic access cavity, conservative endodontic access cavity (CEC), ninja endodontic access cavity (NEC), and truss endodontic access cavity (TEC). Materials and methods: Control (intact teeth) and traditional endodontic access cavity as well as CEC, NEC, and TEC groups were each given a new human mandibular molar that was freshly removed. Cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) scans of the cone beam showed the values of CEC, NEC, and TEC. After that the teeth were endodontically treated and repaired. To test the specimens, universal testing equipment was used. In order to avoid tooth breakage, the maximum load was determined. Statistical analysis was used in the form of Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Levene tests, which were used to examine data for typical dispersion and consistency in change. Results: Intact teeth showed the highest resistance to fracture compared with other groups. TEC showed significantly higher resistance to fracture compared to the CEC design. Conclusions: It is possible, within the restrictions of this research, to infer that the TEC design enhanced tooth fracture strength in comparison with the CEC design.
Postoperative outcomes in robotic gastric resection compared with laparoscopic gastric resection in gastric cancer: A meta‐analysis and systemic review

Robotic gastrectomy is a commonly used procedure for early gastric cancer and it also overcomes the limitation of laparoscopic. However, the complications of robotic gastrectomy (RG) still need to be assessed. Our study was designed to compare postoperative complications of RG with laparoscopic gastrectomy (LG).
A combined wavelet and ARIMA approach to predicting financial time series

Agri-data analysis is growing rapidly with many parts of the agri-sector using analytics as part of their decision making process. In Ireland, the agri-food sector contributes significant income to the economy and agri-data analytics will become increasingly important in terms of both protecting and expanding this market. However, without a high degree of accuracy, predictions are unusable. Online data for use in analytics has been shown to have significant advantages, mainly due to frequency of updates and to the low cost of data instances. However, agri decision makers must properly interpret fluctuations in data when, for example, they use data mining to forecast prices for their products in the short and medium term. In this work, we present a data mining approach which includes wavelet analysis to provide more accurate analysis of when events which may appear to be outliers, are instead patterns representing events that may occur over the duration of the data stream and then are used for predictions by an ARIMA modelling approach. Our evaluation shows an improvement over more established uses of wavelet analysis in conjunction with ARIMA as we attempt to predict prices using agri-data.
Grapevine Badnavirus 1: Detection, Genetic Diversity, and Distribution in Croatia

Grapevine badnavirus 1 (GBV-1) was recently discovered in grapevine using high throughput sequencing. In order to carry out large-scale testing that will allow for better insights into virus distribution, conventional and real-time PCR assays were developed using sequences both from previously known, and four newly characterized isolates. Throughout the growing season and dormancy, GBV-1 can be detected by real-time PCR using available tissue, with the possibility of false-negative results early in vegetation growth. GBV-1 real-time PCR analysis of 4302 grapevine samples from the Croatian continental and coastal wine-growing regions revealed 576 (~13.4%) positive vines. In the continental wine-growing region, virus incidence was confirmed in only two collection plantations, whereas in the coastal region, infection was confirmed in 30 commercial vineyards and one collection plantation. Infection rates ranged from 1.9 to 96% at the different sites, with predominantly autochthonous grapevine cultivars infected. Conventional PCR products obtained from 50 newly discovered GBV-1 isolates, containing the 375 nucleotides long portion of the reverse transcriptase gene, showed nucleotide and amino acid identities ranging from 94.1 to 100% and from 92.8 to 100%, respectively. The reconstructed phylogenetic tree positioned the GBV-1 isolates taken from the same vineyard close to each other indicating a possible local infection event, although the tree nodes were generally not well supported.
Economic Incentives to Influence Drivers' Route Choices for Safety Enhancement

A route-based incentive program is introduced in which drivers are rewarded for taking the safest routes. The program is operated with an incentive structure by a logistics company and a variable insurance premium scheme by an insurance company. The logistics company offers incentives to its drivers to follow the safest routes and by doing so expects to pay lower insurance premiums for its vehicles. The insurance company charges a discounted premium for vehicles that follow the safest routes, while expecting to pay less for potential accident claims. The theoretical framework, including the setup of the incentive structure and the variable premium scheme, is presented in this paper. Conditions for the existence of a win–win situation are established in which drivers, the logistics company, and the insurance company all benefit from the program. Optimization of the incentive program is also formulated as a bilevel programming problem. An online before-and-after survey is conducted to assess drivers' response to incentives. Forty-five Dutch professional drivers participated in the survey. The results show that drivers tend to ignore safety-related information in making their route choices; however, the incentives have some significant effects on these choices. The incentives therefore present an effective way of influencing drivers' route choices.
Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors’ Associated Renal Toxicity: A Series of 12 Cases

We present a series of twelve patients, bearing a wide range of solid malignancies, who received either PD-L1 or a combination of PD-L1 and CTLA-4 inhibitors. Following immunotherapy administration, they exhibited the clinical signs indicative of renal toxicity, including increased serum creatinine levels, proteinuria, nephrotic syndrome and/or hematuria. All patients underwent renal biopsy. Results: All cases demonstrated some degree of interstitial inflammation and tubular injury, while in five patients, glomerular alterations consistent with a specific glomerulopathy were also observed: secondary “lupus-like” membranous glomerulopathy in two cases and membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis, IgA glomerulonephritis and secondary AA amyloidosis in each of the remaining three patients. The two patients with “lupus-like” nephritis and the one with amyloidosis experienced nephrotic syndrome, while their creatinine was within normal range. In the remaining nine cases, deterioration of renal function was the main manifestation. Conclusion: Our findings harmonize with bibliographical data that identify tubulointerstitial nephritis as the most frequent histological lesion related to ICIs administration. The preferential involvement of tubulointerstitial tissue could be associated with the reported higher expression levels of PD-L1 on tubular epithelial cells, compared to glomeruli. On the other hand, glomerular involvement is probably a consequence of a systemic immune system reconstruction, induced by immune-checkpoints inhibition.