Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Straight knots.

Jablan and Radovi\'c originally defined two invariants called the Meander number and OGC number of knots for certain classes of knots. We generalize these definitions to all knots and name the straight number and contained straight number of a knot, respectively, and prove they are well defined. We answer two questions and prove a generalization of a conjecture of Jablan and Radovi\'c. We also give some relations to crossing number and petal number. Then we compute the straight numbers for all the knots in the standard knot table and present some interesting questions and the complete table of knots with 10 or fewer crossing and their straight number and contained straight number.
Dealing with Hidden Threats: The Antimicrobial Effect of the Embalming Process

Individuals naturally carry bacteria and other microbes as part of their natural flora, with some being opportunistic pathogens. Approximately 30% of the population is known to carry Staphylococcus aureus in their nasal cavity, an organism that causes infections ranging from soft tissue abscesses to toxic shock syndrome. This problem is compounded by the presence of antibiotic-resistant strains such as Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Commensal bacteria present on cadavers pose a risk to those who handle the body. As a Medical School Anatomy laboratory that performs hands-on cadaveric dissection, we wanted to know whether the embalming process is sufficient to kill all commensal bacteria that pose a risk to staff and students. Even if these strains do not cause disease in these individuals, secondary transmission could occur to friends and family, who may be at higher risk of acquiring an infection. Embalming is assumed to eliminate all microbial contamination on the body. However, there are limited studies to confirm this. This study characterises the incidence of antibiotic sensitive and resistant bacteria in cadavers donated for medical teaching and research. We have screened for Methicillin-Resistant Organisms (MRO) and Extended-Spectrum Beta-Lactamase (ESBL) producing bacteria. In this study group of cadavers, approximately 46% (16/35) carry an MRO, while 51% (18/35) carry an ESBL positive organism prior to embalming. By determining the organisms’ presence pre- and post-embalming, we can evaluate the embalming procedure’s effectiveness. Our results show embalming eliminates detectable microbes in about 51% (18/35) of the cadavers. MRO dropped by 75% (16 to 4 positive cadavers), while ESBL organisms went down by almost 95% (from 18 to 1 positive cadaver). There was a further decrease in the number of positive cadavers after storage at 4 °C to 6% (2/32). Thus, although the embalming process does not immediately sterilise all the cadavers, prolonged storage at 4 °C can further reduce the number of viable bacteria.
Design and Fabrication of a Thermopile-Based Thin Film Heat Flux Sensor, Using a Lead—Substrate Integration Method

An accurate and continuous measurement of heat flux is needed in many long-term operation facilities in order to monitor and improve the life of its machinery. A thin film heat flux sensor is usually fabricated via sputtering, according to different spatial arrangements of thermocouple junctions. A novel thin film heat flux sensor was designed, fabricated, and calibrated, but the connection between the thin film and the leads could not be fixed quickly and steadily. For this purpose, in this paper a method to seamlessly integrate the leads and the thin film has been proposed to improve the sensor output signal. The sensor is capable of simultaneously measuring surface heat flux and temperature magnitude, to address the current situation of the single design of heat flux sensors. The novel thin film heat flux sensor is structured as follows: Thirty pairs of NiCr-NiSi thermocouple junctions are deposited in an annular pattern on a well-designed ceramic substrate. Over the annular thermopile, a 2000 nm-thick thermal insulator layer is deposited to create a temperature gradient across the layers. In addition, in this study a new calibration method was used to evaluate the static and dynamic properties of this novel thin film heat flux sensor. The analysis and experimental results show that the heat flux calculated from the sensor output was in good agreement with the value obtained from the pre-calibrated standard sensor. The sensitivity and response time of the novel sensor were measured at 0.06 mV/(kW/m2) and 475 ms, respectively. The heat flux measurements made with the sensor presented good repeatability. The heat-transfer coefficient of the Al2O3 thin film was 4.477 w/(m∙k) for the novel thin film heat flux sensor described in this paper.
On the uniqueness of polynomial embeddings of the real 1-sphere in the plane

This paper considers real forms of closed algebraic $\mathbb{C}^*$-embeddings in $\mathbb{C}^2$. The classification of such embeddings was recently completed by Cassou-Nogues, Koras, Palka and Russell. Based on their classification, this paper shows that, up to an algebraic change of coordinates, there is only one polynomial embedding of the real 1-sphere $\mathbb{S}^1$ in the affine plane $\mathbb{R}^2$.
Non-Existence of Standard Wave Operators for Fractional Laplacian and Slowly Decaying Potentials

We consider quantum systems described by the fractional powers of the negative Laplacian and the interaction potentials. When a slowly decaying potential function is given, we prove the nonexistence of the wave operators, under the assumption that the Dollard-type modified wave operators exist and that they are asymptotically complete. This nonexistence indicates the borderline between short-range and long-range behavior.
Arrow calculus for welded and classical links

We develop a diagrammatic calculus for welded and classical knotted objects. We define Arrow presentations, which are essentially equivalent to Gauss diagrams but carry no sign on arrows, and more generally w-tree presentations , which can be seen as 'higher order Gauss diagrams'. We provide a complete set of moves for Arrow and w-tree presentations. This Arrow calculus is used to characterize finite type invariants of welded knots and long knots. Using S. Satoh's Tube map, which realizes welded objects into knotted surfaces in 4-space, we recover several topological results due to K. Habiro, A. Shima, and to T. Watanabe. We also classify welded string links up to homotopy, thus recovering a result of the first author with B. Audoux, P. Bellingeri and E. Wagner.
Effect of health literacy and shared decision-making on choice of weight-loss plan among overweight or obese participants receiving a prototype artificial intelligence robot intervention facilitating weight-loss management decisions

Implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) in medical decision-making is still in early development. We developed an AI robot intervention prototype with a health literacy-friendly interface that uses interactive voice response (IVR) surveying to assist in decision-making for weight loss. The weight-specific health literacy instrument (WSHLI) and Shared Decision-Making Questionnaire (SDMQ) were used to measure factors influencing weight-loss decisions. Factors associated with participants choosing to lose weight were analyzed using logistic regression, and factors influencing the selection of specific weight-loss plans were examined with one-way analysis of variance. Our study recruited 144 overweight or obese adults (69.4% women, 58.3% with body mass index (BMI) ≥ 24). After interacting with the AI robot, 78% of the study population made the decision to lose weight. SDMQ score was a significant factor positively influencing the decision for weight-loss (odds ratio [OR]: 2.16, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.09–4.29, p = 0.027). Individuals who selected self-monitored lifestyle modification (mean ± SD: 11.52 ± 1.95) had significantly higher health literacy than those who selected dietician-assisted plan (9.92 ± 2.30) and physician-guided treatment (9.60 ± 1.52) (both p = 0.001). The study results demonstrated that our prototype AI robot can effectively encourage individuals to make decisions regarding weight management and that both WSHLI and SDMQ scores affect the choice of weight-loss plans.
Topological edge modes by smart patterning

The research in topological materials and meta-materials reached maturity and is now gradually entering the phase of practical applications and devices. However, scaling down the experimental demonstrations definitely presents a challenge. In this work, we study coupled identical resonators whose collective dynamics is fully determined by the pattern in which the resonators are arranged. We call a pattern topological if boundary resonant modes fully fill all existing spectral gaps whenever the pattern is halved. This is a characteristic of the pattern and is entirely independent of the structure of the resonators and the details of the couplings. Existence of such patterns is proven using $K$-theory and exemplified using a novel experimental platform based on magnetically coupled spinners. Topological meta-materials built on these principles can be easily engineered at any scale, providing a practical platform for applications and devices.
Severe congenital diarrhea secondary to tufting enteropathy. Case report

Introduction: Tufting enteropathy is a rare cause of congenital diarrhea in neonates. It is characterized by the abnormal distribution of epithelial adhesion molecules, which causes enterocytes to shed into the lumen, forming the characteristic tufts. Case presentation: A 15-day-old female neonate was taken by her parents to the emergency department of a tertiary care hospital due to diarrheal stools she had been experiencing since birth. The patient presented with dehydration, abnormal weight loss, metabolic acidosis, and acute kidney failure. She received treatment with alizapride, loperamide, zinc sulfate, and probiotics, but after 75 days of treatment she was still symptomatic. An upper tract endoscopy and colonoscopy were performed, finding flattening of the villi and lymphoid cells in the lamina propria. However, the symptoms persisted, and she died at the age of ten months. A post-mortem exome sequencing reported tufting enteropathy. Conclusions. When congenital diarrhea is present, tufting enteropathy should be considered. An early molecular study would allow to evaluate the possibility of performing an intestinal transplant or modifying the treatment to meet the patient’s palliative care needs.
Existence theory for non-separable mean field games in Sobolev spaces

The mean field games system is a coupled pair of nonlinear partial differential equations arising in differential game theory, as a limit as the number of agents tends to infinity. We prove existence and uniqueness of classical solutions for time-dependent mean field games with Sobolev data. Many works in the literature assume additive separability of the Hamiltonian, as well as further structure such as convexity and monotonicity of the resulting components. Problems arising in practice, however, may not have this separable structure; we therefore consider the non-separable problem. For our existence and uniqueness results, we introduce new smallness constraints which simultaneously consider the size of the time horizon, the size of the data, and the strength of the coupling in the system.
Hydrodynamic limit for a facilitated exclusion process

Collective dynamics can be observed among many animal species, and have given rise in the last decades to an active and interdisciplinary eld of study. Such behaviors are often modeled by active matter, in which each individual is self-driven and tends to update its velocity depending on the one of its neighbors. In a classical model introduced by Vicsek & al., as well as in numerous related active matter models, a phase transition between chaotic behavior at high temperature and global order at low temperature can be observed. Even though ample evidence of these phase transitions has been obtained for collective dynamics, from a mathematical standpoint, such active systems are not fully understood yet. Signicant progress has been achieved in the recent years under an assumption of mean-eld interactions, however to this day, few rigorous results have been obtained for models involving purely local interactions. In this paper, we describe a lattice active particle system, in which particles interact locally to align their velocities. We obtain rigorously, using the formalism developed for hydrodynamic limits of lattice gases, the scaling limit of this out-of-equilibrium system, for which numerous technical and theoretical diculties arise.
Ample groupoids: equivalence, homology, and Matui's HK conjecture

We investigate the homology of ample Hausdorff groupoids. We establish that a number of notions of equivalence of groupoids appearing in the literature coincide for ample Hausdorff groupoids, and deduce that they all preserve groupoid homology. We compute the homology of a Deaconu{Renault groupoid associated to k pairwisecommuting local homeomorphisms of a zero-dimensional space, and show that Matui's HK conjecture holds for such a groupoid when k is one or two. We specialise to k-graph groupoids, and show that their homology can be computed in terms of the adjacency matrices, using a chain complex developed by Evans. We show that Matui's HK conjecture holds for the groupoids of single vertex k-graphs which satisfy a mild joint-coprimality condition. We also prove that there is a natural homomorphism from the categorical homology of a k-graph to the homology of its groupoid.
KRAS in NSCLC: State of the Art and Future Perspectives

Simple Summary Rat sarcoma virus (RAS) GTP-ase proteins represent a key element in cellular proliferation, growth, and differentiation. Three different isoforms of RAS proteins have been identified to date (KRAS, NRAS, HRAS) and mutations in KRAS are frequently found in human cancers, among which the Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC). In this review we assess molecular, prognostic, and clinico-pathological characteristics of KRAS mutations in NSCLC patients. Next, we present current therapeutic strategies for KRAS mutant NSCLC patients and mechanisms of acquired resistance identified to date. We then focus on the role of immune-checkpoint inhibitors in KRAS mutant NSCLC patients. Finally, we will overview ongoing trials and future needs for this subpopulation cohort. Abstract In NSCLC, KRAS mutations occur in up to 30% of all cases, most frequently at codon 12 and 13. KRAS mutations have been linked to adenocarcinoma histology, positive smoking history, and Caucasian ethnicity, although differences have been described across KRAS mutational variants subtypes. KRAS mutations often concur with other molecular alterations, notably TP53, STK11, and KEAP1, which could play an important role in treatment efficacy and patient outcomes. For many years, KRAS mutations have been considered undruggable mainly due to a high toxicity profile and low specificity of compounds. Sotorasib and adagrasib are novel KRAS inhibitors that recently gained FDA approval for pre-treated KRAS mutant NSCLC patients, and other molecules such as GDC-6036 are currently being investigated with promising results. Despite their approval, the efficacy of these drugs is lower than expected and progression among responders has been reported. Mechanisms of acquired resistance to anti-KRAS molecules typically involves either on target secondary mutations (e.g., G12, G13, Q61H, R68S, H95, Y96C, V8L) or off-target alterations. Ongoing trials are currently evaluating strategies for implementing efficacy and overcoming acquired resistance to these compounds. Finally, the efficacy of immune-checkpoint inhibitors still needs to be completely assessed and responses to anti-PD-1/PD-L1 agents may strongly depend on concomitant mutations.
Generalized singular value thresholding operator to affine matrix rank minimization problem

It is well known that the affine matrix rank minimization problem is NP-hard and all known algorithms for exactly solving it are doubly exponential in theory and in practice due to the combinational nature of the rank function. In this paper, a generalized singular value thresholding operator is generated to solve the affine matrix rank minimization problem. Numerical experiments show that our algorithm performs effectively in finding a low-rank matrix compared with some state-of-art methods.
Topological horseshoes for surface homeomorphisms

In this work we develop a new criterion for the existence of topological horseshoes for surface homeomorphisms in the isotopy class of the identity. Based on our previous work on forcing theory, this new criterion is purely topological and can be expressed in terms of equivariant Brouwer foliations and transverse trajectories. We then apply this new tool in the study of the dynamics of homeomorphisms of surfaces with zero genus and null topological entropy and we obtain several applications. For homeomorphisms of the open annulus $\mathbb{A}$ with zero topological entropy, we show that rotation numbers exists for all points with nonempty omega limits, and that if $\mathbb{A}$ is a generalized region of instability then it admits a single rotation vector. We also offer a new proof of a recent result of Passegi, Potrie and Sambarino, showing that zero entropy dissipative homeomorphisms of the annulus having as an atractor a circloid have a single rotation number. Our work also studies homeomorphisms of the sphere without horseshoes. For these maps we present a structure theorem in terms of fixed point free invariant sub-annuli, as well as a very restricted description of all possible dynamical behavior in the transitive subsets. This description ensures, for instance, that transitive sets can contain at most $2$ distinct periodic orbits and that, in many cases, the restriction of the homeomorphism to the transitive set must be an extension of an odometer. In particular, we show that any nontrivial and stable transitive subset of a dissipative diffeomorphism of the plane is always infinitely renormalizable in the sense of Bonatti-Gambaudo-Lion-Tresser.
Rate of convergence for periodic homogenization of convex Hamilton–Jacobi equations in one dimension

Let u ε and u be viscosity solutions of the oscillatory Hamilton–Jacobi equation and its corresponding effective equation. Given bounded, Lipschitz initial data, we present a simple proof to obtain the optimal rate of convergence O ( ε ) of u ε → u as ε → 0 + for a large class of convex Hamiltonians H ( x , y , p ) in one dimension. This class includes the Hamiltonians from classical mechanics with separable potential. The proof makes use of optimal control theory and a quantitative version of the ergodic theorem for periodic functions in dimension n = 1.
KURD QABURSTAN ON THE ERBIL PLAIN: FIELD RESEARCH 2016–2017

A 2016 study season and 2017 excavation season at the 95-hectare walled site of Kurd Qaburstan on the Erbil plain have generated a variety of new results. Geophysical survey on the lower town revealed details of the Middle Bronze occupation in the southeast part of the site, including the city wall, a large open area, streets, houses, and a monumental temple comparable to examples from Tell al Rimah, Aššur, and Larsa. Excavations confirmed the Middle Bronze date of the temple and explored further Middle Bronze contexts elsewhere on the lower town. On the High Mound North Slope, Middle Bronze occupation included a fortification wall and large-scale architecture inside it. On the High Mound East, Late Bronze architecture of apparent elite character was documented. Archaeobotanical analyses complementing the excavations reveal the existence of naan-style bread in both Middle and Late Bronze contexts. Given radiocarbon and ceramic results, the Middle Bronze occupation at Kurd Qaburstan is datable to c. 1800 B.C., while the Late Bronze phases on the High Mound East belong to an early LB horizon in the 16–15th centuries B.C., perhaps predating the imposition of Mittani political authority in the region.
Self-similar k-Graph C*-Algebras

In this paper, we introduce a notion of a self-similar action of a group $G$ on a $k$-graph $\Lambda $ and associate it a universal C$^\ast $-algebra ${{\mathcal{O}}}_{G,\Lambda }$. We prove that ${{\mathcal{O}}}_{G,\Lambda }$ can be realized as the Cuntz–Pimsner algebra of a product system. If $G$ is amenable and the action is pseudo free, then ${{\mathcal{O}}}_{G,\Lambda }$ is shown to be isomorphic to a “path-like” groupoid C$^\ast $-algebra. This facilitates studying the properties of ${{\mathcal{O}}}_{G,\Lambda }$. We show that ${{\mathcal{O}}}_{G,\Lambda }$ is always nuclear and satisfies the universal coefficient theorem; we characterize the simplicity of ${{\mathcal{O}}}_{G,\Lambda }$ in terms of the underlying action, and we prove that, whenever ${{\mathcal{O}}}_{G,\Lambda }$ is simple, there is a dichotomy: it is either stably finite or purely infinite, depending on whether $\Lambda $ has nonzero graph traces or not. Our main results generalize the recent work of Exel and Pardo on self-similar graphs.
Chromium Induces Toxicity at Different Phenotypic, Physiological, Biochemical, and Ultrastructural Levels in Sweet Potato (Ipomoea batatas L.) Plants

Crop productivity is enormously exposed to different environmental stresses, among which chromium (Cr) stress raises considerable concerns and causes a serious threat to plant growth. This study explored the toxic effect of Cr on sweet potato plants. Plants were hydroponically grown, and treatments of 0, 25, 50, 100, and 200 µM Cr were applied for seven days. This study exhibited that a low level of Cr treatment (25 µM) enhanced the growth, biomass, photosynthesis, osmolytes, antioxidants, and enzyme activities. However, significant deleterious effects in growth, biomass, photosynthetic attributes, antioxidants, and enzymes were observed at higher levels of Cr treatment. The remarkable reduction in plant growth traits was associated with the over-accumulation of H2O2 and MDA contents (410% and 577%, respectively) under the highest rate of Cr (200 µM). Under 200 µM Cr, the uptake in the roots were 27.4 mg kg−1 DW, while in shoots were 11 mg kg−1 DW with the highest translocation rate from root to shoot was 0.40. The results showed that the higher accumulation of Cr negatively correlated with the phenotypic and physiological parameters. It may be proposed that Cr toxicity causes oxidative damage as sustained by augmented lipid peroxidation, reactive oxygen species, and reduced photosynthetic rate, chlorophyll, and stomatal traits. The chloroplastic ultrastructure was damaged, and more apparent damage and size reduction were observed at higher Cr levels. Furthermore, aggregated Cr concentration positively correlates with the increase of osmolytes and superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity in the leaves of sweet potato. Moreover, improved osmolytes and SOD do not help protect sweet potato against high Cr stress. Overall, these findings will improve the understanding of the defense mechanisms of sweet potato to Cr stress.