Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Magnetic nanoparticle heating efficiency reveals magneto-structural differences when characterized with wide ranging and high amplitude alternating magnetic fields

Magnetic nanoparticles can create heat that can be exploited to treat cancer when they are exposed to alternating magnetic fields (AMF). At a fixed frequency, the particle heating efficiency or specific power loss (SPL) depends upon the magnitude of the AMF. We characterized the amplitude-dependent SPL of three commercial dextran-iron oxide nanoparticle suspensions through saturation to 94 kA/m with a calorimeter comprising a solenoid coil that generates a uniform field to 100 kA/m at ∼150 kHz. We also describe a novel method to empirically determine the appropriate range of the heating curve from which the SPL is then calculated. These results agree with SPL values calculated from the phenomenological Box-Lucas equation. We note that the amplitude-dependent SPL among the samples was markedly different, indicating significant magneto-structural variation not anticipated by current models.Magnetic nanoparticles can create heat that can be exploited to treat cancer when they are exposed to alternating magnetic fields (AMF). At a fixed frequency, the particle heating efficiency or specific power loss (SPL) depends upon the magnitude of the AMF. We characterized the amplitude-dependent SPL of three commercial dextran-iron oxide nanoparticle suspensions through saturation to 94 kA/m with a calorimeter comprising a solenoid coil that generates a uniform field to 100 kA/m at ∼150 kHz. We also describe a novel method to empirically determine the appropriate range of the heating curve from which the SPL is then calculated. These results agree with SPL values calculated from the phenomenological Box-Lucas equation. We note that the amplitude-dependent SPL among the samples was markedly different, indicating significant magneto-structural variation not anticipated by current models.
Nitrogen Fertilization and Solvents as Factors Modifying the Antioxidant and Anticancer Potential of Arnica montana L. Flower Head Extracts

Arnica montana L. is one of Europe’s endemic endangered medicinal plants, with diverse biological activities commonly used in medicine, pharmacy, and cosmetics. Its flower heads are a rich source of raw material, with antibacterial, antifungal, antiseptic, anti-inflammatory, antiradical, antioxidant, and antitumor properties. The objective of the present study was (i) to characterize the chemical composition of flower heads of A. montana plants cultivated under nitrogen fertilization, (ii) to identify the impact of the nitrogen fertilization and extraction method (water, ethanol) on the antioxidant activity of extracts, and (iii) to determine the role of different nitrogen doses applied during plant cultivation and different extraction methods in the anticancer activity of the extracts through analysis of apoptosis and autophagy induction in HT29, HeLa, and SW620 cell lines. The present study shows that nitrogen is a crucial determinant of the chemical composition of arnica flower heads and the antioxidant and anticancer activity of the analyzed extracts. Nitrogen fertilization can modify the composition of pharmacologically active substances (sesquiterpene lactones, flavonoids, essential oil) in Arnicae flos. The content of sesquiterpene lactones, flavonoids, and essential oil increased with the increase in the nitrogen doses to 60 kg N ha−1 by 0.66%, 1.45%, and 0.27%, respectively. A further increase in the nitrogen dose resulted in a decrease in the content of the analyzed secondary metabolites. Varied levels of nitrogen application can be regarded as a relevant way to modify the chemical composition of arnica flower heads and to increase the anticancer activity, which was confirmed by the increase in the level of apoptosis with the increase in fertilization to a level of 60 kg N ha−1. The fertilization of arnica plants with low doses of nitrogen (30 and 60 kg N ha−1) significantly increased the LOX inhibition ability of the ethanol extracts. The present study is the first report on the anticancer activity of A. montana water extracts, with emphasis on the role of water as a solvent. In further studies of factors modifying the quality of Arnicae flos, attention should be paid to the simultaneous use of nitrogen and other microelements to achieve synergistic results and to the possibility of a more frequent use of water as a solvent in studies on the biological activity of A. montana extracts.
Average Curves of Emissivity of the Highest Pulses in Long and Short Gamma-Ray Bursts

The average curves of emissivity (ACES) of the highest pulses in long and short groups of gamma-ray bursts(GRBs) observed by BATSE on board CGRO have been studied by an alignment method and a wavelet package de-noising technique. A developed pulse-finding has been applied to identify the highest pulses from the profiles of GRBs. A sample including 116 long GRBs and 95 short GRBs was selected. The results show that the ACES of the pulses in the short group are shorter and narrower than that in the,long group. The ACES of pulses in two groups have a significant difference, which was measured by the K-S test. Compared to the ACES, the normalized ACES of the pulses in the two groups seem to be similar. We present a brief discussion of our results. Based on our results and the discussion, we conclude that two groups of bursts may be generated from different sizes of emission regions. These sources likely have an intrinsic difference. However, the emission mechanisms are the same. These results support the most accepted taxonomy of GRBs, and present an interpretation of why two groups of bursts have a notable difference in the burst's duration, but other observed properties have no distinguishable difference.
On the effect of estimating the error density in nonparametric deconvolution

It is quite common in the statistical literature on nonparametric deconvolution to assume that the error density is perfectly known. Since this seems to be unrealistic in many practical applications, we study the effect of estimating the unknown error density. We derive minimax rates of convergence and propose a modification of the usual kernel-based estimation scheme, which takes the uncertainty about the error density into account. A simulation study quantifies the possible gains by this new method in finite sample situations.
Multi-resolution iterative inversion of real inhomogeneous targets

This paper presents a review of the reconstruction results obtained from the inversion of experimental data provided by the Institute Fresnel (Marseille, France) and concerned with inhomogeneous dielectric targets and hybrid configurations, where dielectric and metallic cylinders are present in the scenario under test. The iterative multi-scaling approach (IMSA) is applied for addressing the inversion of scattering data in order to effectively exploit the available information through a multi-step reconstruction procedure, which adaptively allocates a set of unknown coefficients, related to the dielectric distribution in the investigation area, on the basis of the information collected during the iterative process. The obtained results confirm the effectiveness of such an iterative multi-resolution strategy in dealing with complex scatterers already demonstrated in synthetic experiments.
Simultaneously non-dense orbits under different expanding maps

Given a point and an expanding map on the unit interval, we consider the set of points for which the forward orbit under this map is bounded away from the given point. It is well-known that in many cases such sets have full Hausdorff dimension. We prove that such sets have a large intersection property, i.e. countable intersections of such sets also have full Hausdorff dimension. This result applies to a class of maps including multiplication by integers modulo 1 and x ↦ 1/x modulo 1. We prove that the same properties hold for multiplication modulo 1 by a dense set of non-integer numbers between 1 and 2.
Moral Foundations Predict COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy: Evidence from a National Survey of Black Americans

ABSTRACT In this study we examine the role of moral values in predicting COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among Black Americans. Guided by moral foundations theory, we assess the associations between six moral foundations (care, fairness, loyalty, authority, purity, liberty) and attitudes and intentions toward COVID-19 vaccination. Results of a national survey of Black Americans (N = 1,497) indicate that the care and loyalty moral foundations consistently predicted less vaccine hesitancy with overall more favorable attitudes and intentions toward COVID-19 vaccination, whereas the purity and liberty moral foundations were consistently associated with greater vaccine hesitancy. Relationships between the foundations and vaccine hesitancy were mediated by perceived vaccine effectiveness and safety. Implications of the findings for COVID-19 vaccine communication are discussed.
A theory for the radiation pattern of a narrow‐strip acoustic transducer

An important criterion in the design of transducer array elements for acoustic imaging is the angular response, or the far‐field radiation pattern, of a single element. In this letter, we show that the widely accepted formula for the angular response function is inadequate and must be multiplied by cosϑ. Good agreement with experiment is then obtained.
An Automatic Premature Ventricular Contraction Recognition System Based on Imbalanced Dataset and Pre-Trained Residual Network Using Transfer Learning on ECG Signal

The development of automatic monitoring and diagnosis systems for cardiac patients over the internet has been facilitated by recent advancements in wearable sensor devices from electrocardiographs (ECGs), which need the use of patient-specific approaches. Premature ventricular contraction (PVC) is a common chronic cardiovascular disease that can cause conditions that are potentially fatal. Therefore, for the diagnosis of likely heart failure, precise PVC detection from ECGs is crucial. In the clinical settings, cardiologists typically employ long-term ECGs as a tool to identify PVCs, where a cardiologist must put in a lot of time and effort to appropriately assess the long-term ECGs which is time consuming and cumbersome. By addressing these issues, we have investigated a deep learning method with a pre-trained deep residual network, ResNet-18, to identify PVCs automatically using transfer learning mechanism. Herein, features are extracted by the inner layers of the network automatically compared to hand-crafted feature extraction methods. Transfer learning mechanism handles the difficulties of required large volume of training data for a deep model. The pre-trained model is evaluated on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-Beth Israel Hospital (MIT-BIH) Arrhythmia and Institute of Cardiological Technics (INCART) datasets. First, we used the Pan–Tompkins algorithm to segment 44,103 normal and 6423 PVC beats, as well as 106,239 normal and 9987 PVC beats from the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia and IN-CART datasets, respectively. The pre-trained model employed the segmented beats as input after being converted into 2D (two-dimensional) images. The method is optimized with the using of weighted random samples, on-the-fly augmentation, Adam optimizer, and call back feature. The results from the proposed method demonstrate the satisfactory findings without the using of any complex pre-processing and feature extraction technique as well as design complexity of model. Using LOSOCV (leave one subject out cross-validation), the received accuracies on MIT-BIH and INCART are 99.93% and 99.77%, respectively, suppressing the state-of-the-art methods for PVC recognition on unseen data. This demonstrates the efficacy and generalizability of the proposed method on the imbalanced datasets. Due to the absence of device-specific (patient-specific) information at the evaluating stage on the target datasets in this study, the method might be used as a general approach to handle the situations in which ECG signals are obtained from different patients utilizing a variety of smart sensor devices.
Phase Equilibria, Diffusion and Structure in the Epoxypolycaprolactone System

Currently, there is no quantitative approach for the phase structure of cured thermoplastic systems modified with thermoplastic predicting. To solve this problem, we carried out the first stage of the study on a model polycaprolactone–epoxy oligomer (PCL–DGEBA) system. Using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), refractometry and optical interferometry, a phase diagram for PCL–DGEBA mixtures was constructed, and the Flory–Huggins interaction parameters of PCL–DGEBA mixtures were calculated. The structure of PCL–DGEBA mixtures with different PCL content was analyzed by optical microscopy. The change in the structure formation mechanism with increasing PCL concentration was shown. The diffusion coefficients are calculated by the Motano–Boltzmann method. The values of the apparent activation energy of the viscous flow PCL and of self-diffusion of DGEBA are determined. The obtained data will be used for the in situ curing kinetics and phase equilibria in the diffusion zone investigations in order to develop a quantitative method for predicting the phase structure of cured systems.
Observations and shock models of the jet and Herbig-Haro objects HH 46/47

The paper presents new monochromatic images, long-slit echelle spectra, and theoretical position-velocity diagrams of the Herbig-Haro objects HH 46 and HH 47. The outer bow shock HH 47D extends almost all the way back to the infrared source driving the outflow in a narrow-band forbidden II image of the region, but is not easily visible in H-alpha and forbidden S II. The discovery of a counterjet in forbidden S II reported by Reipurth is confirmed. 38 refs.
A Novel Starch from Talisia floresii Standl Seeds: Characterization of Its Physicochemical, Structural and Thermal Properties

Colok seed (Talisia floresii Standl) represents 80% of the total fruit weight and is obtained from trees that grow mainly in Yucatan Peninsula. The aim of this work was the physicochemical characterization from colok starch seeds as an alternative to conventional sources and to identify its characteristics for potential applications in different industrial sectors. Starch yield was 42.1% with low levels of lipids, ashes and fibers. The amylose content was 33.6 ± 1.15%. The gelatinization temperature was 85 ± 0.25 °C. Color analysis resulted in a starch with an intermediate luminosity, reflecting a dark color. Finally, in morphology, starch granule exhibited an average size of 18.7 μm, spherical, uniform and without fractures. Overall results demonstrated that isolated colok starch can be used in food products that require high processing temperatures, such as sauces, cookies, noodles, bread and food packages.
Aerodynamic force by Lamb vector integrals in compressible flow

A new exact expression of the aerodynamic force acting on a body in steady high Reynolds number (laminar and turbulent) compressible flow is proposed. The aerodynamic force is obtained by integration of the Lamb vector field given by the cross product of vorticity times velocity. The result is obtained extending a theory developed for the incompressible case. A decomposition in lift and drag contribution is obtained in the two-dimensional case. The theory links the force generation to local flow properties, in particular to the Lamb vector field and to the kinetic energy. The theoretical results are confirmed analyzing numerical solutions obtained by a standard Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes solver. Results are discussed for the case of a two-dimensional airfoil in subsonic, transonic, and supersonic free stream conditions.
Targeted Epigenetic Interventions in Cancer with an Emphasis on Pediatric Malignancies

Over the past two decades, novel hallmarks of cancer have been described, including the altered epigenetic landscape of malignant diseases. In addition to the methylation and hyd-roxymethylation of DNA, numerous novel forms of histone modifications and nucleosome remodeling have been discovered, giving rise to a wide variety of targeted therapeutic interventions. DNA hypomethylating drugs, histone deacetylase inhibitors and agents targeting histone methylation machinery are of distinguished clinical significance. The major focus of this review is placed on targeted epigenetic interventions in the most common pediatric malignancies, including acute leukemias, brain and kidney tumors, neuroblastoma and soft tissue sarcomas. Upcoming novel challenges include specificity and potential undesirable side effects. Different epigenetic patterns of pediatric and adult cancers should be noted. Biological significance of epigenetic alterations highly depends on the tissue microenvironment and widespread interactions. An individualized treatment approach requires detailed genetic, epigenetic and metabolomic evaluation of cancer. Advances in molecular technologies and clinical translation may contribute to the development of novel pediatric anticancer treatment strategies, aiming for improved survival and better patient quality of life.
The Effect of Gastric Acid on the Surface Properties of Different Universal Composites: A SEM Study

The aim of this study is to compare surface roughness and microhardness changes of three monochromatic (Omnichroma, Vittra Unique, and Charisma Diamond One) and three universal shade (Neo Spectra ST, G-ænial A'CHORD, and Nova Compo C) resin composites after exposure to simulated gastric acid. A total of 144 disc-shaped specimens (24 discs of each composite resin) were prepared using plexiglass molds (R = 5 mm × h = 2 mm) for evaluation from each material. Specimens of each material were divided into two main groups for the evaluation of the microhardness and surface roughness and also two subgroups for 7- and 14-day exposures to simulated gastric acid. Initial microhardness and surface roughness measurements of all samples were measured before immersion (T1) followed by exposing the samples to simulated gastric acid for 7 days (T2) and 14 days (T3), and then, the microhardness and roughness measurements were repeated. Randomly selected specimens of each material for each of the time intervals (T1, T2, and T3) were evaluated with scanning electron microscopy (SEM). One-way ANOVA revealed that the surface roughness and hardness values of all tested composite resin restorative materials show no statistically significant difference for the initial (T1) value (p > 0.05). Regarding the 7th day (T2) and 14th day (T3) surface roughness and microhardness value of all composites, there are statistically significant differences between the groups (p < 0.05), while there was no statistically significant difference between the surface hardness reduction percentage between the time intervals (p > 0.05). As a result of this in vitro study, increase in surface roughness and decrease in microhardness of the tested universal composite materials when exposed to simulated gastric acid were statistically significant.
Anisotropy in breakdown field of 4H–SiC

The breakdown fields along the 〈1120〉 and 〈0338〉 directions in 4H–SiC have been measured. For the measurements, epitaxial p+n diodes with mesa structures were fabricated on the (1120) and (0338) faces, and they showed good rectification properties and avalanche breakdown. The breakdown fields along these directions calculated from the breakdown voltage were found to be about three quarters of that along the 〈0001〉 direction in 4H–SiC. The cause of the anisotropy in breakdown field is discussed.
Spudcan Deep Penetration in Multi-Layered Soils Incorporating Sand Relative Density

Installing a spudcan jack-up rig in sediments with an interbedded sand-over-clay soil profile is still challenging in the offshore industry due to possible punch-through failure. The current methods for predicting the punch-through of spudcan usually ignore sand relative density, which is one of the most important parameters for sand soil. For multi-layered soils with interbedded sand commonly met in the field, this paper aims to determine the effects of sand relative density on predicting the punch-through failure of spudcan. Modified Mohr-Coulomb (MMC) and extended Tresca models characterized by incorporating a variation of mobilized strength parameters were used to describe the mechanical behaviors of sand and clay. Besides four groups of centrifuge tests, one field case in the South China Sea was also numerically simulated to validate the large deformation finite element (LDFE) analyses conducted in this paper. The results showed that neglect of sand relative density may lead to underestimation of the potential for punch-through failure of spudcan.
Sexualized Substance Use among Female Sex Workers in Iran: Findings from a Nationwide Survey

Abstract Background: Female sex workers (FSWs) are at higher risk of HIV due to high-risk sexual and drug use related behaviors. This study characterized sexualized substance use among FSWs in Iran. Methods: In 2015, 1,337 FSWs were recruited from centers for vulnerable women and through outreach efforts in 13 major cities in Iran. Data were collected via face-to-face interviews from consenting FSWs on a range of socio-demographic and behavioral characteristics. The primary outcome of interest was sexualized substance use, defined as reporting alcohol or drug use before or during sex in the past month. Bivariable and multivariable modified Poisson regression models were used to assess the correlates of sexualized substance use. Adjusted prevalence ratio (aPR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) were reported. Results: The prevalence of sexualized substance use was 31.3% (95% CI: 28.7, 34.0). Inconsistent condom use during sex with clients in the past month (aPR = 1.31; 95% CI: 1.01, 1.71), regular (i.e., at least weekly in the past month) alcohol use (aPR = 2.87; 95% CI: 2.17, 3.80), regular opioid use (aPR = 2.09; 95% CI: 1.45, 3.02), regular stimulant use (aPR = 2.68; 95% CI: 2.12, 3.39), and self-reported HIV negative status (aPR= 1.88; 95% CI: 1.14, 3.10) were significantly and positively associated with sexualized substance use. Conclusions: Sexualized substance use was associated with riskier sexual behavior and self-reported HIV sero-negativity. Harm reduction messaging to FSWs needs to go beyond focusing on sexual health promotion and further highlight the risks associated with sexualized substance use.
Do tenure and age of board chair matter for R&D investment?

Purpose This study aims to examine whether the age and tenure of the chair of the board of directors are related to research and development (R&D) investment in China. Design/methodology/approach This study uses A-share manufacturing firms that traded on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchange between 2009 and 2018. This study uses OLS regressions, controls for self-selection bias, and uses an instrumental variable to alleviate the concern of endogeneity. Findings This study finds that chair tenure has a negative relationship with R&D investment. This study does not find a significant relationship between chair age and R&D investment. Originality/value This study contributes to corporate governance and strategic management literature by highlighting chair tenure as a new factor affecting R&D investments. It also adds a significant contribution to the limited literature on the chair’s role in strategic decisions. Moreover, companies that are eager to strengthen corporate governance and maintain sustained innovation may reconsider the chair tenure. Given that many proposals for board governance reform explicitly stress the importance of limiting board tenure, this study contributes to policymakers by providing evidence in support of these proposals.