Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MIT Open Access Articles Nonequilibrium Energy Transfer at Nanoscale: A Unified Theory from Weak to Strong Coupling

Unraveling the microscopic mechanism of quantum energy transfer across two-level systems provides crucial insights to the optimal design and potential applications of low-dimensional nanodevices. Here, we study the non-equilibrium spin-boson model as a minimal prototype and develop a fluctuation-decoupled quantum master equation approach that is valid ranging from the weak to the strong system-bath coupling regime. The exact expression of energy flux is analytically established, which dissects the energy transfer as multiple boson processes with even and odd parity. Our analysis provides a unified interpretation of several observations, including coherence-enhanced heat flux and negative differential thermal conductance. The results will have broad implications for the fine control of energy transfer in nano-structural devices.
Asymptomatic Autonomic Dysregulation after Recovery from Mild COVID-19 Infection Revealed by Analysis of Heart Rate Variability Responses to Task Load

(1) Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection is often followed by various complications, which can cause disturbances in daily life after recovery from the infectious state, although etiological mechanisms are not fully elucidated. Previous studies have indicated that autonomic dysregulation is an underlying factor, and it is of interest to clarify whether autonomic dysregulation is also present in the asymptomatic subjects after COVID-19 infection (post-COVID-19) for early detection of post-COVID-19 complications. (2) Methods: In the present study, autonomic activity was assessed using heart rate variability (HRV) analysis in the workers who recovered from mild COVID-19 infection (n = 39). They took a leave of absence for an average of 11.9 days and returned to the original work without complications. HRV was measured after an average of 9.3 days from return. High-frequency (HF) and low-frequency (LF) HRV parameters and heart rate (HR) were recorded during a three-behavioral-state paradigm of approximately 5 min length composed of initial rest, task load, and post-task rest periods and were compared with the data of the workers without the history of COVID-19 infection (normal, n = 38). (3) Results: The HRV and HR scores at the initial rest in the post-COVID-19 subjects showed no difference from those in the control. It is found that the post-COVID-19 subjects exhibited an attenuation of LF/HF increment during the task load and an excessive increase of HF together with a decrease of LF, LF/HF and HR during the post-task rest period in comparison with the initial rest scores. (4) Conclusions: These abnormalities are evaluated as asymptomatic autonomic dysregulation in response to task load, are frequently present after COVID-19 infection, and could be related to the generation of complications.
Perspectives in Practice Patients ’ Perspectives on Wait Times and the Referral-Consultation Process While Attending a Tertiary Diabetes and Endocrinology Centre: Is Econsultation an Acceptable Option?

The goal of this study was to establish patients ’ perspectives on the acceptability of wait times, the impact of wait times on their health and the possibility of using electronic consultations (eConsultations) to avoid visits to specialists. A 2-stage patient survey (self-administered and with a follow-up telephone call) and a chart audit was conducted on a sequential sample of patients attending their initial consultations in a tertiary diabetes and endocrinology centre. Patients ’ perspectives on actual and ideal wait times, the impact of waiting for access, the effectiveness of the referral-consultation process and attitudes toward eConsultations as an alternative to traditional referral-consultations were collected. The study involved 101 patients (22% for diabetes, 78% for endocrinologic conditions), whose comments were collated and categorized. Of the 101 patients who completed the survey, 61 also completed telephone interviews. The average wait time was 19 weeks; the median 10 weeks. More than 30% of patients waited longer than 6 months and 6% waited longer than 1 year. Overall, 90% of patients thought that the maximum wait time should be less than 3 months. While waiting, 58% of patients worried about
Comparison of Disease Phenotype and Course among Elderly- and Early-Onset Inflammatory Bowel Diseases in the Middle East

Background: It is unknown if the clinical manifestations and phenotype of disease are comparable between early- and elderly-onset inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). We aimed to seek differences in disease phenotype, course, complications, and treatment between early- and elderly-onset IBD patients. Methods: This retrospective cohort study on registered IBD patients in the Iranian Registry of Crohn’s and Colitis (IRCC) compared demographics, disease phenotype, disease activity, IBD-related surgery and medications between early- and elderly-onset IBD. A generalized linear regression model was used to investigate the relative risk of age at diagnosis adjusted for gender and disease duration for the outcomes. Results: From 10048 IBD patients, 749 with early-onset (7.5%), and 472 (4.7%) elderly-onset IBD were enrolled: 855 (63.1%) ulcerative colitis (UC) and 366 (26.9%) Crohn’s disease (CD). Left-sided colitis was more frequent among elderly-onset UC patients (P<0.001). Ileum and ileocolonic locations were the most common types in elderly-onset and early-onset CD patients, respectively. In comparison with elderly-onset UC, early-onset cases more often used prednisolone (22.1% vs. 11.4%, P=0.001), immunomodulators (44.9% vs 25.2%, P<0.001) and anti-tumor necrosis factors (TNF) (20.1% vs 11.9%, P=0.002). Elderly-onset UC patients had 0.7 times lower risk of aggressive phenotype (95%CI:0.6‒0.9, P=0.005). Early-onset CD was associated with higher use of prednisolone (27.7% vs 8.1%, P<0.001), immunomodulators (58.7% vs 41.8%, P=0.005) and anti-TNF (49.6% vs 35.4%, P=0.006). Conclusion: Early-onset IBD was associated with a more aggressive phenotype and higher prednisolone, immunomodulators, and anti-TNF use.
The Transferability of Terrestrial Water Balance Components under Uncertainty and Nonstationarity: A Case Study of the Coastal Plain Watershed in the Southeastern USA

The challenges posed by nonstationarity in predicting catchment water balance components motivated this study to test the stationary versus nonstationarity hypothesis and detect changes in the watershed response to land use land cover (LULC) alterations, and climate variability and change. The focus is on a two‐step procedure that includes model calibration of Soil and Water Assessment Tool using a sequential Bayesian uncertainty algorithm (i.e. sequential uncertainty fitting), followed by nonstationary assessment of water balance component using extreme value analysis over an Atlantic coastal plain watershed in the southeastern USA. Analysis suggests that the uncertainty of Soil and Water Assessment Tool model is statistically aligned with LULC alterations that increased the sensitivity of Manning's roughness coefficient, transmission loss and the resistance of the soil matrix to water flow. Changes in LULC along with variability in the magnitude, timing and frequency of precipitation diminished surface runoff and groundwater contribution to the river system whereas it increased evapotranspiration with a substantial decline in water storage capacity. Nonstationary assessment of water balance using extreme value analysis model further revealed a functional form of stationary behaviour (no trends) prior to LULC alteration while large amplification was detected during post‐changes. The results and findings presented in this paper confirm our hypothesis about a combined effect of climate and LULC changes on hydrological functions and that variation of these fingerprints elucidates the presence of nonstationarity in the watershed system. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Development, concurrent validity and internal consistency of a simulator tool for assessing continued car driving after a brain injury/disease

Introduction Beyond relevant cognitive tests, a simulated driving activity could be useful to observe performance and behaviour in a standardized ‘driving-like’ situation and provide information on attention, reaction time and information processing speed when evaluating the ability to continue driving after a brain injury or disease. The aim was to develop and evaluate concurrent validity and internal consistency of a computerized simulated driving task tool. Methods Results from a new tool (CyberSiM, including three subtests and four result variables) were compared with results from the Trail Making Test, Useful Field of View test and Nordic Stroke Driver Screening Assessment. There were 126 healthy adults included in the study. Results The correlation analysis showed significant correlations (p<0.001) for CyberSiM reaction time and all cognitive tests except for Useful Field of View 1. The CyberSiM showed good internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha=0.85. Conclusion The analysis of concurrent validity showed conformity to most cognitive tests. CyberSiM might be a useful complement to cognitive testing with the opportunity to observe some behaviours ‘in a driving-like activity’. Further studies on clinical groups are needed to confirm its usefulness.
Commensal Fecal Microbiota Profiles Associated with Initial Stages of Intestinal Mucosa Damage: A Pilot Study

Simple Summary The high incidence and mortality of colorectal cancer (CRC) have influenced society to promote research in this field. Dysbiosis of the intestinal microbiota occurring in CRC has been extensively studied. However, microbial shifts occurring at the initial stages of mucosal alterations are less known. In this work, the fecal microbiota of volunteers diagnosed with intestinal polyps were compared with the microbial compositions of nonpathological control volunteers, thereby focusing on the nature of the hyperplastic polyps or conventional adenomas, as well as on the degree of dysplasia (low grade vs. high grade) in the last ones as indicators of colorectal cancer risk development. The findings provide insights into the microbiota changes occurring at the early stages of intestinal mucosal lesions. This work could set a starting point for further studies focusing on the influence of diet and lifestyle factors on the initial alterations of the intestinal mucosa and for the proposal of strategies for their prevention. Abstract Progressive intestinal mucosal damage occurs over years prior to colorectal cancer (CRC) development. The endoscopic screening of polyps and histopathological examination are used clinically to determine the risk and progression of mucosal lesions. We analyzed fecal microbiota compositions using 16S rRNA gene-based metataxonomic analyses and the levels of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) using gas chromatography in volunteers undergoing colonoscopy and histopathological analyses to determine the microbiota shifts occurring at the early stages of intestinal mucosa alterations. The results were compared between diagnosis groups (nonpathological controls and polyps), between samples from individuals with hyperplastic polyps or conventional adenomas, and between grades of dysplasia in conventional adenomas. Some microbial taxa from the Bacillota and Euryarchaeota phyla were the most affected when comparing the diagnosis and histopathological groups. Deeper microbiota alterations were found in the conventional adenomas than in the hyperplastic polyps. The Ruminococcus torques group was enriched in both the hyperplastic polyps and conventional adenomas, whereas the family Eggerthellaceae was enriched only in the hyperplastic polyps. The abundance of Prevotellaceae, Oscillospiraceae, Methanobacteriaceae, Streptococcaceae, Christensenellaceae, Erysipelotrichaceae, and Clostridiaceae shifted in conventional adenomas depending on the grade of dysplasia, without affecting the major SCFAs. Our results suggest a reorganization of microbial consortia involved in gut fermentative processes.
Forms of rare earth elements in soils: distribution

The distribution of rare earth element (REE) forms in soils is given in the present paper on the basis of sequential fractionation and determination of 34 representative surface soils collected from all parts of China. Results obtained show that the extraction rate of water soluble and exchangeable REE had the odd-even phenomenon and that of organically bound REE from La to Lu tended to reduce gradually with the increase of atomic number. The stability of Sc and the activity and enrichment of Tm in soils are proposed. Furthermore, the paper makes a preliminary discussion on the differences in the concentration distribution of various forms of individual REE in some soils.
Age-Dependent Changes in Effective Dose in Pediatric Brain CT: Comparisons of Estimation Methods

The effective dose (ED) in computed tomography (CT) may be calculated by multiplying the dose–length product (DLP) by a conversion factor. As children grow, automatic exposure control increases the DLP, while the conversion factor decreases; these two changes affect the ED in opposite ways. The aim of this study was to investigate the methods of ED estimation according to age in pediatric brain CT. We retrospectively analyzed 980 brain CT scans performed for various clinical indications in children. The conversion factor at each age, in integer years, was determined based on the values at 0, 1, 5, and 10 years provided by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), using a curve (curve method) or lines (linear method). In the simple method, the ED was estimated using the ICRP conversion factor for the closest age. We also analyzed the ED estimated by a radiation dose management system. Although the median DLP at each age increased with age, the median ED estimated by the curve method was highest at 0 years, decreased with age, and then plateaued at 9 years. The linear method yielded mildly different results, especially at 2 and 3 years. The ED estimated by the simple method or the radiation dose management system showed inconsistent, up-and-down changes with age. In conclusion, the ED in pediatric brain CT decreases with age despite increased DLP. Determination of the conversion factor at each age using a curve is expected to contribute to estimating the ED in pediatric CT according to age.
CMI: Client-Targeted Membership Inference in Federated Learning

—Membership inference is a popular benchmark attack to evaluate the privacy risk of a machine learning model or a learning scheme. However, in federated learning, membership inference is still under-explored due to several issues. For instance, some assumptions in prior works may not be practical in federated learning. Most existing membership inference methods stand on those impractical assumptions or lack generalization ability, which may misestimate the privacy risk. To address these issues, we propose CMI, an attack framework armed by a targeted poisoning method, to conduct a critical evaluation of client-targeted membership inference in federated learning. Under CMI, we consider a strong adversary, refine the prior impractical assumptions, and apply simple but generalizable attack methods. The evaluation results on multiple datasets demonstrate the efficacy of CMI under identically independently distributed (i.i.d.) and non-i.i. d. settings. In terms of the defenses, although differetially private stochatic gradient descent (DP-SGD) is effective under the i.i. d. setting, it does not provide satisfactory protection under label-biased non-i.i. d. settings. Thus, we propose RR-Label, a modified random response algorithm, to defend against membership inference. Compared to DP-SGD and Random Response Top-k (RRTop-k), RR-Label enables a better trade-off between model utility and defensive performance under label-biased non-i.i. d. settings.
Exploring Gender Differences in EEG-Based Emotion Recognition with Haptic Vibration

The study of gender differences in emotions has attracted interest in psychology and neuroscience for decades. However, gender differences in the emotions evoked by haptic stimuli still need to be investigated further. In this paper, we applied visual-auditory-haptic fusion stimuli to evoke four target emotions (joy, sadness, fear, and neutral), and the electroen-cephalogram (EEG) signals were recorded synchronously. The differential entropy (DE) feature was extracted, and the support vector machine (SVM) was employed for emotion classification. Experimental results indicated that females generally behaved with lower brain activation changes than males in most frequency bands and brain regions. Meanwhile, haptic stimuli improved emotion classification accuracy, especially for females. In addition, females showed greater individual differences than males, and haptic stimuli reduced the differences in the same gender, particularly in males. This research promises to facilitate the application of emotion recognition in haptic interactions.
The Effect of Survey Mode on Data Quality: Disentangling Nonresponse and Measurement Error Bias

Abstract More and more surveys are conducted online. While web surveys are generally cheaper and tend to have lower measurement error in comparison to other survey modes, especially for sensitive questions, potential advantages might be offset by larger nonresponse bias. This article compares the data quality in a web survey administration to another common mode of survey administration, the telephone. The unique feature of this study is the availability of administrative records for all sampled individuals in combination with a random assignment of survey mode. This specific design allows us to investigate and compare potential bias in survey statistics due to 1) nonresponse error, 2) measurement error, and 3) combined bias of these two error sources and hence, an overall assessment of data quality for two common modes of survey administration, telephone and web. Our results show that overall mean estimates on the web are more biased compared to the telephone mode. Nonresponse and measurement bias tend to reinforce each other in both modes, with nonresponse bias being somewhat more pronounced in the web mode. While measurement error bias tends to be smaller in the web survey implementation, interestingly, our results also show that the web does not consistently outperform the telephone mode for sensitive questions.
High-Resolution Sequence Stratigraphy of Paleogene, Nontropical Mixed Carbonate/Siliciclastic Shelf Sediments, North Carolina Coastal Plain, U. S. A.

Well-cuttings provide an abundant, yet underused source of subsurface information in shallow carbonateand mixed carbonate-siliciclastic Cenozoic basins, which generally have been understudied, because of sparsity of outcrop and core data. In this study, plastic-impregnated thin sections of well-cuttings from the early Cenozoic nontropical, mixed carbonate-siliciclastic succession of the North Carolina coastal plain were used to document the facies developed, and then in conjunction with biostratigraphic data, wireline logs, and seismic profiles, were used to provide a regional lithofacies-based depositional sequence stratigraphy. Although downhole mixing, which inhibits stratigraphic resolution, and the time required to process the cuttings are problems, the cuttings can be used to provide a readily-accessible, low cost means of generating lithology-based sequence stratigraphic frameworks for shallow (less than 1 km) sedimentary basins in the subsurface.
Isolation and identification of allelochemicals and their activities and functions

Allelopathy is the interaction between donor plants and receiver plants through allelochemicals. According to a great number of publications, allelopathy may be involved in several ecological aspects such as the formation of monospecific stands and sparse understory vegetation for certain plant species. Allelopathy also contributes to the naturalization of invasive plant species in introduced ranges. Autotoxicity is a particular type of allelopathy involving certain compounds. Many medicinal plants have been reported to show relatively high allelopathic activity. We selected plant species that show high allelopathic activity and isolated allelochemicals through the bioassay-guided purification process. More than 100 allelochemicals, including novel compounds have been identified in some medicinal and invasive plants, plants forming monospecific stands, plants with sparse understory vegetation, and plants showing autotoxicity. The allelopathic activity of benzoxazinones and related compounds was also determined.
Insights into Pharmacological Activities of Nicotine and 6-Hydroxy-L-nicotine, a Bacterial Nicotine Derivative: A Systematic Review

The purported cognitive benefits associated with nicotine and its metabolites in the brain are a matter of debate. In this review, the impact of the pharmacologically active metabolite of a nicotine derivative produced by bacteria named 6-hydroxy-L-nicotine (6HLN) on memory, oxidative stress, and the activity of the cholinergic system in the brain was examined. A search in the PubMed, Science Direct, Web of Science, and Google Scholar databases, limiting entries to those published between 1992 and 2023, was conducted. The search focused specifically on articles about nicotine metabolites, memory, oxidative stress, and cholinergic system activity, as well as enzymes or pathways related to nicotine degradation in bacteria. The preliminary search resulted in 696 articles, and following the application of exclusion criteria, 212 articles were deemed eligible for inclusion. This review focuses on experimental studies supporting nicotine catabolism in bacteria, and the chemical and pharmacological activities of nicotine and its metabolite 6HLN.
A Response-Feedback-Based Strong PUF with Improved Strict Avalanche Criterion and Reliability

Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are significant in building lightweight Internet of Things (IoT) authentication protocols. However, PUFs are susceptible to attacks such as Machine-Learning(ML) modeling and statistical attacks. Researchers have conducted extensive research on the security of PUFs; however, existing PUFs do not always possess good statistical characteristics and few of them can achieve a balance between security and reliability. This article proposes a strong response-feedback PUF based on the Linear Feedback Shift Register (LFSR) and the Arbiter PUF (APUF). This structure not only resists existing ML modeling attacks but also exhibits good Strict Avalanche Criterion (SAC) and Generalized Strict Avalanche Criterion (GSAC). Additionally, we introduce a Two-Level Reliability Improvement (TLRI) method that achieves 95% reliability with less than 35% of the voting times and single-response generation cycles compared to the traditional pure majority voting method.
Adaptive Tracing and Fault Injection based Fault Diagnosis for Open Source Server Software

The high overhead of tracing, the amount of up-front effort required to select trace points, and the lack of effective data analysis model are the significant barriers to the adoption of intra-component tracing for fault diagnosis today. This paper introduces a novel method for fault diagnosis by combining function level adaptive tracing, fault injection, and graph convolutional network. In order to implement this method, we introduce techniques for (i) selecting function level trace points, (ii) constructing approximate function call trees for programs when using adaptive tracing, and (iii) constructing graph convolutional network with fault injection campaign. We evaluate our method on four widely used open source server software: Redis, Nginx, Httpd, and SQlite. The experimental results show that our method outperforms log-based method, full tracing method, and Gaussian influence method in terms of accuracy, efficiency, and performance impact on the diagnosis target.