Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Leveraging Campus Landscapes for Public Health: A Pilot Study to Understand the Psychological Effects of Urban Sheep Grazing on College Campuses

Since the 1980s, college students in the U.S. have self-reported a decline in their physical and emotional health. With these conditions compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic and its physical distancing restrictions, higher education institutions have an increased responsibility to establish strategic interventions and health-promoting programs for their students. Research collaborations between public health professionals and environmental designers have highlighted the benefits of environmental factors, such as wildlife, street trees, and public parks, on mental health. This pilot project aims to build upon the transdisciplinary dialogue between ecology, design, and public health by examining the social benefits of grazing lawnscape management, which is the practice of using herbivorous livestock to manage turfgrass areas. Through the design of an accessible central campus grazing space for a flock of 25 sheep and use of online questionnaires, a smartphone-based single-item survey, and open-ended feedback given via social media, the UC Davis Sheepmower Project addresses three primary questions: (1) Are there differences in self-reported stress levels and well-being between people who did not watch grazing sheep (no sheepmower group) compared with those who did watch grazing sheep (sheepmower group)? (2) Does holding sheep grazing events create opportunities for education about well-being and engagement with the campus community? (3) Can this type of urban grazing installation ultimately contribute to the overall identity of a college campus? Web-based questionnaire results indicate there is no significant difference in self-reported stress levels between the two groups; however, the moment-in-time smartphone-based single item question suggests that the presence of sheep provides temporary, noticeable relief and enhanced mood for those who observe the animals. Reflections posted on social media suggested that participants found the sheep grazing events fostered feelings of community and placemaking within the campus identity. However, the questionnaire sample indicated the grazing events did not have a significant effect on participants’ sense of place or overall campus identity. This transdisciplinary effort breaks down traditionally siloed approaches to human and environmental health and is an example of a whole-systems approach to developing innovative solutions and encouraging applied collective action.
The Tip of the Red Giant Branch as a Distance Indicator for Resolved Galaxies

We show that the I magnitude of the tip of the first-ascent red giant branch (TRGB) of low-mass stars is a distance indicator for resolved galaxies with metal-poor ([Fe/H]<−0.7 dex) old populations, having a precision comparable to primary distance indicators such as Cepheids and RR Lyraes. A comparison of the distances to resolved galaxies based on the TRGB with those derived from Cepheids and RR Lyraes shows that they agree within ±0.1 mag. Advantages of the TRGB method are discussed
Interactions of warming and altered nutrient load timing on the phenology of oxygen dynamics in Chesapeake Bay

The effects of nutrient loading on estuaries are well studied, given the multitude of negative water quality and ecosystem effects that have been attributed to excess nitrogen and phosphorus. A current gap in this knowledge involves the sensitivity of seasonal cycles of estuarine biogeochemical processes to direct (warming) and indirect influences (nutrient load timing) of climate change. We used a coupled hydrologic–biogeochemical model to investigate changes in the phenology of hypoxia and related biogeochemical processes in Chesapeake Bay under three different hydrologic regimes. Shifts to earlier nutrient load timing during idealized simulations reduced the overall annual hypoxic volume, resulting from discernable, but relatively small reductions in phytoplankton biomass and both sediment and water‐column respiration. Simulated increases in water temperature caused an increase in spring/early summer hypoxic volume associated with elevated respiration rates, but an associated exhaustion of organic matter in the early summer caused a decrease in late summer/fall hypoxic volume due to lowered respiration. Warming effects on hypoxia were larger than nutrient timing effects in scenarios where warming was restricted to spring and when it was applied to all months of the year. These idealized simulations begin the process of understanding the potential impacts of future climatic changes in the seasonal timing of key biogeochemical processes associated with eutrophication.
Mathematical modelling of acute virus influenza A infections

This article models the immune system and the virus dynamics of acute influenza infection mathematically. We use the model to study the virus dynamics of some well-known and severe and mild types of viruses. Linkages to well-known models in the literature are illustrated. Simulations are compared with experimental results in vivo by comparing with results from infected ferrets where infection closely resembles those in humans. Good agreement is achieved between the model calculations and the experimental values for influenza A viruses. For the Spanish flu virus H1N1 peak virus load is high and virtually all cells are infected in the nostril. In general, the H1N1 viruses show much more prolonged infections than the H3N2 in the nostril. We suggest that the reason is that unspecific immunity attacks H3N2-budded viruses but not H1N1 viruses.
The superrotation of solar supergranules

Context. Supergranules have long been believed to rotate faster than plasma and than magnetic structures. However, it has recently been shown that this could be due to a bias appearing when using Dopplergrams, which are strongly affected by projection effets. Aims. Our purpose is to perform new measurements of supergranule angular velocities using a technique that would not be significantly influenced by projection effets. Methods. We are therefore tracking horizontal divergence maps smoothed on the supergranular scale, either globally or on the scale of cells. Tracking the magnetic field using the same technique allows them to be used as a reference. Doppler tracking is performed for a direct comparison. Results. We confirm that the tracking of Doppler features is not reliable when computing the dynamics on the supergranular scale. However, we find that divergence features are still rotating faster than the magnetic field, when using two independent time series. Conclusions. We conclude that the long-standing puzzle of supergranular superrotation persists, and that interpreting it in terms of anchorage depth inside the convective zone may not be sufficient to explain it.
Surface Engineering of HEK293 Cell-Derived Extracellular Vesicles for Improved Pharmacokinetic Profile and Targeted Delivery of IL-12 for the Treatment of Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Background Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are considered a promising drug delivery platform. Naïve EVs face numerous issues that limit their applications, such as fast clearance, hepatic accumulations, and a lack of target-specific tropism. We aimed to explore a series of surface engineering approaches to: 1) reduce the non-specific adhesion of EVs, and 2) improve their enrichment in the target tissue. As a proof-of-concept, we investigated the therapeutic potentials of a multi-modal EVs system carrying a tumor-specific nanobody and the immuno-stimulant interleukin-12 (IL12) using in vivo models of hepatocellular carcinoma. Methods The major cell adhesion molecule on the HEK293-derived EVs, integrin β1 (ITGB1), was knocked out (KO) by CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene editing, followed by deglycosylation to generate ITGB1−Deg EVs for the subsequent pharmacokinetic and biodistribution analyses. ITGB1−Deg EVs were further loaded with glypican-3 (GPC3)-specific nanobody (HN3) and mouse single-chain IL12 (mscIL12) to generate ITGB1−mscIL12+HN3+Deg EVs, for evaluation of tumor tropism and therapeutic potential in a mice model of hepatocellular carcinoma. Results Removal of ITGB1 led to the broad suppression of integrins on the EVs surface, resulting in a decrease in cellular uptake. Deglycosylation of ITGB1− EVs gave rise to inhibition of the EVs uptake by activated RAW264.7 cells. ITGB1 removal did not significantly alter the pharmacokinetic behaviors of HEK293-EVs, whereas the ITGB1−Deg EVs exhibited enhanced systemic exposure with reduced hepatic accumulation. Loading of HN3 conferred the ITGB1−Deg EVs with tumor-specific tropism for both subcutaneous and metastasized tumors in mice. The ITGB1−mscIL12+HN3+Deg EVs activated mouse splenocytes with high potency. Systemic administration of the EVs with the equivalent dose of 1. 5µg/kg of exosomal IL12 achieved satisfactory tumor growth inhibition and good tolerability. Conclusion The combinatorial approach of EVs surface engineering conferred HEK293-EVs with reduced non-specific clearance and enhanced tumor targeting efficacy, which constituted an efficient delivery platform for critical cancer therapeutics like IL12.
Inorganic glasses, glass-forming liquids and amorphizing solids

We take familiar inorganic oxide glasses and non-oxide glasses and the liquids from which they derive to review the current understanding of their atomic structure, ranging from the local environments of individual atoms to the long-range order which can cover many interatomic distances. The structural characteristics of important glasses and melts, like silicates, borates, alumino-silicates, halides and chalcogenides, are drawn from the results of recent spectroscopy and scattering experiments. The techniques include Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and X-ray Absorption Fine Structure (XAFS), Neutron Scattering (NS) and Small- and Wide-angle X-ray Scattering measurements (SAXS/WAXS), and are often combined with computer simulation experiments in order to obtain detailed images of structure and diffusion in the glassy as well as in the molten state. We then review the current understanding of relaxation in glasses, liquids and polyamorphic states. This includes phenomenological models and theories of relaxation in different dynamical regimes, spectroscopic studies of atomic-scale mechanisms of viscous flow in inorganic glass-formers and the signatures of relaxational behaviour embedded in the low-frequency vibrational dynamics of glasses including the Boson peak and the Two-Level Systems (TLS) that control conformational transformation. We conclude this review by extending concepts of the dynamics of the glass transition from the supercooled liquid in order to understand the solid-state amorphization of crystals under temperature and pressure and to determine the thermodynamic limits of the crystalline and glassy state.
Structural and Physicochemical Properties of Starch from Rejected Chestnut: Hydrothermal and High-Pressure Processing Dependence

The quality standards for the export of chestnuts generate large quantities of rejected fruits, which require novel processing technologies for their safe industrial utilization. This study aimed to investigate the impact of high-pressure processing (HPP) and hydrothermal treatments (HT) on the physicochemical properties of rejected chestnut starch. Chestnuts were treated by HPP at 400, 500, and 600 MPa for 5 min and HT at 50 °C for 45 min. In general, all HPP treatments did not induce starch gelatinization, and their granules preserved the integrity and Maltese-cross. Moreover, starch granules’ size and resistant starch content increased with the intensity of pressure. Native and HT chestnut starches were the most susceptible to digestion. HPP treatments did not affect the C-type crystalline pattern of native starch, but the crystalline region was gradually modified to become amorphous. HPP-600 MPa treated starch showed modified pasting properties and exhibited the highest values of peak viscosity. This study demonstrates for the first time that after HPP-600 MPa treatment, a novel chestnut starch gel structure is obtained. Moreover, HPP treatments could increase the slow-digesting starch, which benefits the development of healthier products. HPP can be considered an interesting technology to obtain added-value starch from rejected chestnut fruits.
Relevance of Costovertebral Exarticulation of the First Rib in Neurogenic Thoracic Outlet Syndrome: A Retrospective Clinical Study

Purpose: The failure rate for operative decompression in neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome (NTOS) is high compared to more distal nerve compression syndromes, such as cubital or carpal tunnel syndrome. Herein, we aimed to determine if a more radical approach, namely costovertebral exarticulation of the first rib, may improve the postoperative results in patients with NTOS. Methods: From October 2002 to December 2020, 105 operative decompressions in 95 patients were evaluated; in 10 cases, decompressions were performed bilaterally. We presented the clinical outcomes of 59 exarticulations compared to those of 46 conventional resections. Evaluation was performed at a minimum of one year post-operation using the DASH questionnaire. Results: The exarticulation group presented with significantly better clinical outcomes (two-sample t-test assuming unequal variances, p < 0.001). Conclusions: This study showed that significantly better results were obtained when exarticulation of the first rib was performed in patients with NTOS. This finding supports the hypothesis that, in certain cases, the proximal portion of the first rib plays a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of NTOS.
You Can Build It, but Will They Come?

Abstract Studies show that more students fail or withdraw from college mathematics courses than any other. To address this concern, the Mathematics Department at the University of North Dakota opened its Mathematics Learning Center (MLC) in the fall of 2000. In this study, the effectiveness of the MLC and the free tutoring offered for students in freshman level mathematics courses was examined. The quantitative portion of the study examined the difference between course grades in experimental and control sections of four distinct freshman level mathematics courses. Students in the experimental sections were required to attend the Mathematics Learning Center (MLC) for one hour weekly while students in the control sections were simply informed of the availability of tutoring in the MLC. The qualitative portion of the research utilized methodologies of a phenomenological study through in-depth interviews with 13 participants. Three conclusions are offered: 1) Lower level or lower ability students are less likely to attend the MLC and seek help from tutors; 2) Once students got over their fears of engaging with tutors, they found them friendly and helpful, and believed they had greater success because of the tutoring; and 3) A positive correlation existed between time spent in the MLC and course grade for experimental section students.
Sliding mode observer–controller design for uncertain Markovian jump systems with time delays

This paper proposes a sliding mode observer–controller design method for uncertain Markovian jump systems with time delays and uncertain switching probabilities. Both the structures of a sliding mode observer and a sliding mode controller are given. By the mode‐dependent Lyapunov functional approach, a sufficient condition for the stochastic stability of the closed‐loop system is given, which can be converted into a convex optimization problem. The reachability of the sliding surfaces in both the estimation error space and the state estimate space can be ensured by the presented control scheme. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed design method is demonstrated by a simulation example. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Applying Action Observation During a Brain-Computer Interface on Upper Limb Recovery in Chronic Stroke Patients

The study aimed to compare the effects of combined action observation and motor imagery (AOMI) and motor imagery (MI)-based brain-computer interface (BCI) training on upper limb recovery, cortical excitation, and cognitive task performance in chronic stroke patients. 17 chronic stroke patients were recruited and randomly assigned to AOMI-based BCI (n = 9) and MI-based BCI groups (n = 8). The AOMI-based BCI group received AOMI-based BCI training via functional electrical stimulation (FES) feedback, whereas the MI-based BCI group obtained MI-based BCI training via FES feedback. Both groups participated in training for 12 sessions (3 days/week, consecutive four weeks). To evaluate upper limb function recovery, the Fugl–Meyer Assessment for upper extremity (FMA-UE) was employed. Event-related desynchronization (ERD) and online classification accuracy were utilized to measure cortical excitation of the affected sensorimotor hand region and cognitive task performance, respectively. Both AOMI and MI-based BCI training improved upper limb function in chronic stroke patients. However, the AOMI-based BCI group showed significantly greater motor gain than the MI-based BCI group. In addition, the AOMI-based BCI group demonstrated significantly greater cortical excitation of the affected sensorimotor hand region and cognitive task performance. The correlation analysis revealed that higher cognitive task performance during AOMI-based BCI training may promote greater cortical excitation of the affected sensorimotor hand region, which contributes to greater upper limb function improvement compared to MI-based BCI training.
Impact of COVID-19 on the Microbiome and Inflammatory Status of Type 2 Diabetes Patients

The severe acute respiratory syndrome–related coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has advanced our understanding of the host–microbiome–virus interplay. Several studies in various geographical regions report that SARS-CoV-2 infection disrupts the intestinal microbiota, allowing pathogenic bacteria such as Enterobacteriaceae to thrive, and triggering more severe disease outcomes. Here, we profile the microbiota of 30 individuals, 15 healthy controls and 15 type 2 diabetes (T2D) patients, before and after coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Despite similar viral loads in both patients and controls, SARS-CoV-2 infection led to exacerbated microbiome changes in T2D patients, characterized by higher levels of Enterobacteriaceae, loss of butyrate producers and an enrichment in fungi such as Candida spp. and Aspergillus spp. Several members of the microbiota were associated with more severe clinical and inflammatory (IL-8 and IL-17) parameters. Future studies to delineate the connection between cytokine release and microbiota disturbances will enhance our understanding of whether these microbial shifts directly impact the cytokine storm in COVID-19 patients or whether they are consecutive to the critical disease.
A Hardware-Friendly High-Precision CNN Pruning Method and Its FPGA Implementation

To address the problems of large storage requirements, computational pressure, untimely data supply of off-chip memory, and low computational efficiency during hardware deployment due to the large number of convolutional neural network (CNN) parameters, we developed an innovative hardware-friendly CNN pruning method called KRP, which prunes the convolutional kernel on a row scale. A new retraining method based on LR tracking was used to obtain a CNN model with both a high pruning rate and accuracy. Furthermore, we designed a high-performance convolutional computation module on the FPGA platform to help deploy KRP pruning models. The results of comparative experiments on CNNs such as VGG and ResNet showed that KRP has higher accuracy than most pruning methods. At the same time, the KRP method, together with the GSNQ quantization method developed in our previous study, forms a high-precision hardware-friendly network compression framework that can achieve “lossless” CNN compression with a 27× reduction in network model storage. The results of the comparative experiments on the FPGA showed that the KRP pruning method not only requires much less storage space, but also helps to reduce the on-chip hardware resource consumption by more than half and effectively improves the parallelism of the model in FPGAs with a strong hardware-friendly feature. This study provides more ideas for the application of CNNs in the field of edge computing.
Blow-Up for Discretization of a Localized Semilinear Heat Equation

Blow-Up for Discretization of a Localized Semilinear Heat Equation This paper concerns the study of the numerical approximation for the following initial-boundary value problem: where f: [0, ∞) → [0, ∞) is a C1 convex, nondecreasing function, and γ is a positive parameter. Under some assumptions, we prove that the solution of a discrete form of the above problem blows up in a finite time and estimate its numerical blow-up time. We also show that the numerical blow-up time in certain cases converges to the real one when the mesh size tends to zero. Finally, we give some numerical experiments to illustrate our analysis.
FACTORS AFFECTING USER SATISFACTION ON e-FILING SYSTEM IN INDONESIA

One of the electronic tax systems used in Indonesia is e-Filing which results in an increase in the number of users. However, the high intensity of using the system does not guarantee that the system is successful and fully supports user needs. This study was conducted to determine the determinants of e-Filing user satisfaction by adopting several models of measuring system success formulated by Delone and Mclean. This research contributes to measuring and providing improvements to the entire tax information system in Indonesia. The study was conducted using a survey method (questionnaire) and purposive sampling on 562 lecturers of the State Polytechnic of Malang. Using the multiple linear regression statistical method and in accordance with the hypothesis in the study, the results showed that partially System Quality, Information Quality and Service Quality had a positive effect. and significant to User Satisfaction. In addition, simultaneously System Quality, Information Quality and Service Quality have a positive and significant effect on User Satisfaction.