Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Circulating Plasma Cells as a Biomarker to Predict Newly Diagnosed Multiple Myeloma Prognosis: Developing Nomogram Prognostic Models

Background: To investigate the prognostic value of circulating plasma cells (CPC) and establish novel nomograms to predict individual progression-free survival (PFS) as well as overall survival (OS) of patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma (NDMM). Methods: One hundred ninetyone NDMM patients in Wuhan Union Hospital from 2017.10 to 2020.8 were included in the study. The entire cohort was randomly divided into a training (n = 130) and a validation cohort (n = 61). Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed on the training cohort to establish nomograms for the prediction of survival outcomes, and the nomograms were validated by calibration curves. Results: When the cut-off value was 0.038%, CPC could well distinguish patients with higher tumor burden and lower response rates (P < 0.05), and could be used as an independent predictor of PFS and OS. Nomograms predicting PFS and OS were developed according to CPC, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and creatinine. The C-index and the area under receiver operating characteristic curves (AUC) of the nomograms showed excellent individually predictive effects in training cohort, validation cohort or entire cohort. Patients with total points of the nomograms ≤ 60.7 for PFS and 75.8 for OS could be defined as low-risk group and the remaining as high-risk group. The 2-year PFS and OS rates of patients in low-risk group was significantly higher than those in high-risk group (p < 0.001). Conclusions: CPC is an independent prognostic factor for NDMM patients. The proposed nomograms could provide individualized PFS and OS prediction and risk stratification.
A COVID-19 Crisis in Child Physical Fitness: Creating a Barometric Tool of Public Health Engagement for the Republic of Slovenia

The Republic of Slovenia implements the largest longitudinal database of child physical fitness in the world–SLOfit. Slovenia has some of the most physically active children globally, and it has responded rapidly to incorporate national physical activity (PA) interventions throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite aggressive campaigns to maintain PA at home, the country has seen a tremendous decrease in child physical fitness over the past several months as self-isolation measures have been mandated by national authorities. These trends prompted researchers to create a method of tracking and communicating government decisions which have a direct impact on child physical activity, fitness and overall health (i.e., the SLOfit Barometer). The research team assembled experts for consultation on creation of the SLOfit Barometer after processing preliminary data on 20,000 schoolchildren which found the greatest decline in child physical fitness since systematic testing began more than 30 years ago. Only 2 months of self-isolation erased over 10 years of hard-fought health gains acquired from national public health policies and PA interventions. This crisis in child fitness requires integrated community participation and a robust public health policy response, and with the SLOfit Barometer acting as a national bellwether system, it is envisioned that policy makers and the public will advocate for bold, progressive actions to combat this national health emergency. This surveillance tool tracks government action to combat the increasing child physical inactivity and obesity trends brought on as a direct result of COVID-19 isolation regulations.
When Does Educational Level Diversity Foster Team Creativity? Exploring the Moderating Roles of Task and Personnel Variability

This study explores how the variability of the work environment shapes the impact of educational level diversity on team creativity. By adopting an integrative framework—“status characteristics–information elaboration” model as a theoretical lens, we propose and examine the moderating roles of task and personnel variability in educational level diversity–team creativity relationship. Utilizing multiple survey data collected from 90 knowledge work teams, the empirical results indicate that educational level diversity is more conducive to team creativity when teams are confronted with more variable tasks and when teams experience less frequent personnel changes. The findings of this study provide valuable insight on the conditions under which team diversity’s information potential is more likely to realize and contribute to a more context-based understanding of the relationship between diversity and creativity.
Emerging Perspectives of RNA N6-methyladenosine (m6A) Modification on Immunity and Autoimmune Diseases

N6-methyladenosine (m6A) modification, the addition of a methylation decoration at the position of N6 of adenosine, is one of the most prevalent modifications among the over 100 known chemical modifications of RNA. Numerous studies have recently characterized that RNA m6A modification functions as a critical post-transcriptional regulator of gene expression through modulating various aspects of RNA metabolism. In this review, we will illustrate the current perspectives on the biological process of m6A methylation. Then we will further summarize the vital modulatory effects of m6A modification on immunity, viral infection, and autoinflammatory disorders. Recent studies suggest that m6A decoration plays an important role in immunity, viral infection, and autoimmune diseases, thereby providing promising biomarkers and therapeutic targets for viral infection and autoimmune disorders.
Analysis of the Tradeoff Between Health and Economic Impacts of the Covid-19 Epidemic

Various measures have been taken in different countries to mitigate the Covid-19 epidemic. But, throughout the world, many citizens don't understand well how these measures are taken and even question the decisions taken by their government. Should the measures be more (or less) restrictive? Are they taken for a too long (or too short) period of time? To provide some quantitative elements of response to these questions, we consider the well-known SEIR model for the Covid-19 epidemic propagation and propose a pragmatic model of the government decision-making operation. Although simple and obviously improvable, the proposed model allows us to study the tradeoff between health and economic aspects in a pragmatic and insightful way. Assuming a given number of phases for the epidemic (namely, 4 in this paper) and a desired tradeoff between health and economic aspects, it is then possible to determine the optimal duration of each phase and the optimal severity level (i.e., the target transmission rate) for each of them. The numerical analysis is performed for the case of France but the adopted approach can be applied to any country. One of the takeaway messages of this analysis is that being able to implement the optimal 4−phase epidemic management strategy in France would have led to 1.05 million of infected people and a GDP loss of 231 billions € instead of 6.88 millions of infected and a loss of 241 billions €. This indicates that, seen from the proposed model perspective, the effectively implemented epidemic management strategy is good economically, whereas substantial improvements might have been obtained in terms of health impact. Our analysis indicates that the lockdown/severe phase should have been more severe but shorter, and the adjustment phase occurred earlier. Due to the natural tendency of people to deviate from the official rules, updating measures every month over the whole epidemic episode seems to be more appropriate.
Screening for Cognitive Impairment After Stroke: Validation of the Chinese Version of the Quick Mild Cognitive Impairment Screen

Background: Screening for post-stroke cognitive impairment (PSCI) is necessary because stroke increases the incidence of and accelerates premorbid cognitive decline. The Quick Mild Cognitive Impairment (Qmci) screen is a short, reliable and accurate cognitive screening instrument but is not yet validated in PSCI. We compared the diagnostic accuracy of a Chinese version of the Qmci screen (Qmci-CN) compared with the widely-used Chinese versions of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA-CN) and Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE-CN). Methods: We recruited 34 patients who had recovered from a stroke in rehabilitation unit clinics in 2 university hospitals in China: 11 with post-stroke dementia (PSD), 15 with post-stroke cognitive impairment no dementia (PSCIND), and 8 with normal cognition (NC). Classification was made based on clinician assessment supported by a neuropsychological battery, independent of the screening test scores. The Qmci-CN, MoCA-CN, and MMSE-CN screens were administered randomly by a trained rater, blind to the diagnosis. Results: The mean age of the sample was 63 ± 13 years and 61.8% were male. The Qmci-CN had statistically similar diagnostic accuracy in differentiating PSD from NC, an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.94 compared to 0.99 for the MoCA-CN (p = 0.237) and 0.99 for the MMSE-CN (p = 0.293). The Qmci-CN (AUC 0.91), MoCA-CN (AUC 0.94), and MMSE-CN (AUC 0.79) also had statistically similar accuracy in separating PSD from PSCIND. The MoCA-CN more accurately distinguished between PSCIND and normal cognition than the Qmci-CN (p = 0.015). Compared to the MoCA-CN, the administration times of the Qmci-CN (329s vs. 611s, respectively, p < 0.0001) and MMSE-CN (280 vs. 611s, respectively, p < 0.0001) were significantly shorter. Conclusion: The Qmci-CN is accurate in identifying PSD and separating PSD from PSCIND in patients post-stroke following rehabilitation and is comparable to the widely-used MoCA-CN, albeit with a significantly shorter administration time. The Qmci-CN had relatively poor accuracy in identifying PSCIND from NC and hence may lack accuracy for certain subgroups. However, given the small sample size, the study is under-powered to show superiority of one instrument over another. Further study is needed to confirm these findings in a larger sample size and in other settings (countries and languages).
How Dramatic Events Can Affect Emotionality in Social Posting: The Impact of COVID-19 on Reddit

The COVID-19 outbreak impacted almost all the aspects of ordinary life. In this context, social networks quickly started playing the role of a sounding board for the content produced by people. Studying how dramatic events affect the way people interact with each other and react to poorly known situations is recognized as a relevant research task. Since automatically identifying country-based COVID-19 social posts on generalized social networks, like Twitter and Facebook, is a difficult task, in this work we concentrate on Reddit megathreads, which provide a unique opportunity to study focused reactions of people by both topic and country. We analyze specific reactions and we compare them with a “normal” period, not affected by the pandemic; in particular, we consider structural variations in social posting behavior, emotional reactions under the Plutchik model of basic emotions, and emotional reactions under unconventional emotions, such as skepticism, particularly relevant in the COVID-19 context.
Identifying Privacy Related Requirements for the Design of Self-Adaptive Privacy Protections Schemes in Social Networks

Social Networks (SNs) bring new types of privacy risks threats for users; which developers should be aware of when designing respective services. Aiming at safeguarding users’ privacy more effectively within SNs, self-adaptive privacy preserving schemes have been developed, considered the importance of users’ social and technological context and specific privacy criteria that should be satisfied. However, under the current self-adaptive privacy approaches, the examination of users’ social landscape interrelated with their privacy perceptions and practices, is not thoroughly considered, especially as far as users’ social attributes concern. This study, aimed at elaborating this examination in depth, in order as to identify the users’ social characteristics and privacy perceptions that can affect self-adaptive privacy design, as well as to indicate self-adaptive privacy related requirements that should be satisfied for users’ protection in SNs. The study was based on an interdisciplinary research instrument, adopting constructs and metrics from both sociological and privacy literature. The results of the survey lead to a pilot taxonomic analysis for self-adaptive privacy within SNs and to the proposal of specific privacy related requirements that should be considered for this domain. For further establishing of our interdisciplinary approach, a case study scenario was formulated, which underlines the importance of the identified self-adaptive privacy related requirements. In this regard, the study provides further insight for the development of the behavioral models that will enhance the optimal design of self-adaptive privacy preserving schemes in SNs, as well as designers to support the principle of PbD from a technical perspective.
High Rayleigh number thermal convection in a shallow laterally heated cavity

The flow near the end of a shallow laterally heated cavity enters a nonlinear convective régime when the Rayleigh number R, based on cavity height, is of the same order of magnitude as the aspect ratio L (length/height). In the present work the asymptotic structure of the flow that develops in the limit as is R/L→∞ considered for the case where the horizontal surfaces of the cavity are thermally insulated. A model is discussed in which the formation of a vertical boundary layer on the end wall involves an unexpectedly large contribution to the local ambient temperature field. Expulsion of fluid from the base of the layer, and its subsequent return to the core through a horizontal boundary layer, maintains the necessary lateral heat transfer in the cavity. Implications of the model for the flow throughout the cavity are also discussed. The evolution of the end-zones leads to a change in the amplitude of the main Hadley circulation when R = O(L12/7). Various properties of the solution for this new régime are determined, including the Nusselt number for the lateral heat transfer, which is found to be proportional to L3/7. A comparison is made with both numerical and experimental results.
Revisiting Peng's Q(λ) for Modern Reinforcement Learning

Off-policy multi-step reinforcement learning algorithms consist of conservative and non-conservative algorithms: the former actively cut traces, whereas the latter do not. Recently, Munos et al. (2016) proved the convergence of conservative algorithms to an optimal Q-function. In contrast, non-conservative algorithms are thought to be unsafe and have a limited or no theoretical guarantee. Nonetheless, recent studies have shown that non-conservative algorithms empirically outperform conservative ones. Motivated by the empirical results and the lack of theory, we carry out theoretical analyses of Peng's Q($\lambda$), a representative example of non-conservative algorithms. We prove that it also converges to an optimal policy provided that the behavior policy slowly tracks a greedy policy in a way similar to conservative policy iteration. Such a result has been conjectured to be true but has not been proven. We also experiment with Peng's Q($\lambda$) in complex continuous control tasks, confirming that Peng's Q($\lambda$) often outperforms conservative algorithms despite its simplicity. These results indicate that Peng's Q($\lambda$), which was thought to be unsafe, is a theoretically-sound and practically effective algorithm.
Digital Communication Tools and Knowledge Creation Processes for Enriched Intellectual Outcome - Experience of Short-Term E-Learning Courses during Pandemic

Social isolation during the pandemic contributed to the transition of educational processes to e-learning. A short-term e-marketing education program for a variety of students was introduced in May 2020 and is taught entirely online. A survey was conducted regularly in the last week of training using Google Forms, and three cohorts were surveyed in July, September, and December 2020. A high level of satisfaction indicates an interest in the content and a positive assessment of the level of comfort of an organization adapted to the needs of students; this positive result contrasted with the negative opinion of the remote learning in Russia since March 2020, and this surprising satisfaction of students has motivated the study to try to explain its reasons. This result was compared with the short-term course taught through the educational pedagogical platform of a university. The students of traditional short- and long-term university programs were asked to assess their satisfaction with different digital communication tools used for e-learning. They showed low satisfaction with the pedagogical platform and a positive reaction to the e-communication tools (messengers, social media, short surveys, video conferences, etc.). The qualitative responses helped to better understand the real problems of the cognitive process and the triple structure of intellectual production during e-learning, including interest in the intellectual outcome, the need for emotional and motivational elements of cooperation and competition between students, and smooth behavioral enrichment, which requires special efforts from students and their leading from teachers. The main conclusion concerns a practical decision to continue the implementation of the educational program in the form of an online course with the use of the mixed digital communication tools of social media, messengers, and video conferences, which most likely meets the expectations and capabilities of students.
Experiment Information System Based on an Online Virtual Laboratory

In the information age, MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), micro-classes, flipping classroom, and other blended teaching scenes have improved students learning outcomes. However, incorporating technologies into experimental courses, especially electronic and electrical experiments, has its own characteristics and difficulties. The focus of this paper is to introduce virtual technology into an electronic circuit experiment course and to explore its teaching strategy, thereby realizing the informatization of experiment teaching. First, this paper explores the design concepts and implementation details of the digital circuit virtual laboratory, which is then developed based on previous literature and a prequestionnaire to users. Second, the informatization process of the experiment learning model based on traditional custom lab benches is shown through a blended learning scheme that integrates the online virtual laboratory. Finally, the experiment information system is verified and analyzed with a control group experiment and questionnaires. The blended program turned out to be an effective teaching model to complement the deficiencies in existing physical laboratories. The research conclusions show that the virtual experiment system provides students with a rich, efficient, and expansive experimental experience, in particular, the flexibility, repeatability, and visual appeal of a virtual platform could promote the development of students’ abilities in active learning, reflective thinking, and creativity.
Combined Infrared-Convective Drying of Murta (Ugni molinae Turcz) Berries: Kinetic Modeling and Quality Assessment

Murta (Ugni molinae Turcz) berries were dried under convective and combined convective-infrared conditions at 40, 50 and 60°C and 400–800 W in order to determine the drying characteristics and to compare the dried product's quality. To model the drying kinetics, seven mathematical equations were fitted to experimental data. According to statistical tests performed, the Midilli-Kuçuk model best fitted experimental data and was closely followed by the logarithmic model. Effective moisture diffusivity also showed dependency on drying conditions and varied between 7.59 × 10−10 to 44.18 × 10−10 m2/s and 11.34 × 10−10 to 85.41 × 10−10 m2/s for air-convective drying and combined infrared-convective drying. As to quality attributes of the berries, total surface color difference (ΔE) and total phenolic content (TPC) were determined. It was found that chromaticity coefficients a* and b* changed significantly, showing ΔE to be dependent on the mode of heat supply. TPC under all drying conditions decreased and was significantly different from the initial value in fresh samples. However, at a constant drying temperature, an increase in infrared power enhanced retention of TPC in samples. In particular, working at 40°C/800 W resulted in dried samples with the highest TPC.
The measurement of the rate of recombination of hydrogen atoms at room temperature by means of e. s. r. spectroscopy

Electron spin resonance spectroscopy has been used to determine the absolute concentrations of hydrogen atoms in a gas-flow system at room temperature and at total pressures between 1 and 10 Torr. The kinetics of the decay of hydrogen atoms in the presence of undissociated molecular hydrogen have been extensively analysed on the basis of a statistical treatment of errors for a model which includes first- and second-order decay processes and axial diffusion of the atoms. Care has been taken to consider the effects of high (up to about 20%) dissociation of hydrogen, of viscous pressure drop along the reaction tube, and of other possible decay processes. The predominant rate of removal of hydrogen atoms was by the reaction K2 H+H+H2→H2+H2, and the value of k2 was 2·7±0·4x1015 cm6 mole-2 s-1. A small contribution from a first-order reaction K1 H→1/2H2 (presumably a wall reaction) was also found. The rate constant, k1, was 0·21±0·15s-1, which corresponds, in the case of a wall process, to a wall efficiency of 6·5±4·6x10-7. No evidence could be found for the presence of the third-order process K2 H+H+H→H2+H, and an upper limit for k3 could therefore be set at 5·0x1015 cm6 mole-2 s-1
Palladium and Palladium Gold Catalysts Supported on MWCNTs for Electrooxidation of Formic Acid

Novel multi‐wall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) supported Pd–Au catalyst for electrooxidation of formic acid was prepared and compared with a similarly prepared Pd/MWCNTs and with a commercial Pt–Ru/Vulcan catalyst. The catalysts were prepared by a two‐stage polyol method, followed by H2–Ar annealing and were characterised by using X‐ray diffraction, FE‐TEM and EDX. Cyclic voltammetry (CV) was used to test their catalytic activity towards formic acid electrooxidation and accessible metal surface in the catalyst layer. In the case of the precursor of Pd–Au/MWCNTs catalyst (before H2–Ar annealing), subsequent deposition of Pd and Au led to a material of the core‐shell structure, catalytically inactive. Annealing of the core shell Pd–Au/MWCNTs precursor in H2–Ar resulted in the formation of the novel Pd–Au/MWCNTs catalyst. A highly dispersed Pd–Au solid solution (average XRD particle size 4.8 nm) is formed, and the novel catalyst is more active than the Pd/MWCNTs one. Both the Pd–Au/MWCNTs and the Pd/MWCNTs catalysts turned out to be more active than a commercial, highly dispersed Pt–Ru/Vulcan catalyst.
Nitrogenio via foliar e em cobertura em feijoeiro irrigado

Almost every fertilization program has nitrogen, but its application does not always lead to increase in grain yield on bean crop, Phaseolus vulgaris L. (Leguminosae-Faboideae). This study was conducted in order to verify the urea rate (0, 30, 60, 90 and 120 g . L -1 ) applied via leaf, twice, and the covering N rate (0, 25, 50 and 75 kg . ha -1 ) on irrigated bean crop. A randomized complete block design, in a factorial scheme 5x4, with 4 replications was used. The seeding was accomplished mechanically on 06/05/1997 and 08/06/1998 with the ‘Perola’ and ‘IAC Carioca’ cultivars, respectively. In low response area to N, there was no effect of N applied neither on leaf nor soil. In area with incorporation of crop residue (high C/N), the N applied on leaf increased the grain yield. The N applied on soil provided increase on N leaf content, 100 seed weight, and grain yield