Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Physician Preferences and Shared-Decision Making for the Traditional Chinese Medicine Treatment of Lung Cancer: A Discrete-Choice Experiment Study in China

Background With progress being made in the treatment of cancer, various clinical and treatment options are being pursued. In China, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is used widely in the treatment of cancer. Objective To estimate TCM treatment preferences and SDM mode of physicians in China. Methods This study was conducted among physicians (n=185) from nine tertiary hospitals in China by discrete-choice experiment (DCE) survey and Shared Decision-Making Questionnaire-physician version (SDM-Q-Doc) survey. The DCE was developed with the inclusion of the most relevant attributes at appropriate levels for the TCM treatment of lung cancer. The empirical data analyses of physicians were performed using mixed logit models. Additionally, subgroup analysis was conducted. Results In total, 185 respondents completed the questionnaire. All attributes were statistically significant except out-of-pocket costs. Physicians showed the strongest preferences for increasing disease control rate, relieving nausea and vomiting, and reducing the risk of side effects. Most of the physicians (78.38%) self-reported a high willingness to use SDM during the decision-making process. The physicians with a higher SDM-Q-Doc score had more preference for improving all three attributes than those with a lower score. Little variation was found in preferences among the physicians with other sociodemographic characteristics. Conclusion In China, physicians considered disease control rate as the most essential attribute in the TCM treatment of lung cancer. The physicians in China mainly preferred SDM, and the preference was different according to SDM mode when involving the TCM therapy for patients with lung cancer. The study findings could inform future TCM therapy for lung cancer and promote SDM.
Conditions that work: Reconnecting fiscal decentralization to responsiveness in Uganda and Thai Municipal Governments

Globalization puts extra pressure on local governments to be more responsive and accountable. The belief from theory is that with high levels of fiscal autonomy, the elected public officials would be more responsive to allocate resources to the local priority areas determined by citizen interests and preferences. On the face of it, responsiveness reads like the normative outcome of fiscal autonomy in the developing and emerging economies. However, an empirical comparative analysis of responsiveness for Uganda and Thai municipal governments provides reasons for both optimism and pessimism. The findings challenge the traditional theory for responsiveness being an outcome of a coherent fiscal decentralization system that follows specific and predetermined rational logic of consequentiality. The paper concluded that responsiveness facilitated fiscal autonomy not the other way round in municipal governments. The paper therefore recommended country and circumstance specific conditions under which responsiveness would more likely happen in municipal settings. The perceived conditions for responsiveness to happen is included but not limited to spending according to the source; more involving system of selecting representatives to assemblies; renewed national government commitment to empower municipal institutions and the citizens; and more incorporation of civil society to play a more participative role in municipal governance.
Near-Wall Thermal Processes in an Inclined Impinging Jet: Analysis of Heat Transport and Entropy Generation Mechanisms

In this work, near-wall thermal transport processes and entropy generation mechanisms in a turbulent jet impinging on a 45 ∘ -inclined heated surface are investigated using a direct numerical simulation (DNS). The objectives are to analyze the subtle mechanisms of heat transport in the vicinity of an inclined impinged wall, to determine the causes of irreversibilities that are responsible for the reduction of performance of impingement cooling applications and to provide a comprehensive dataset for model development and validation. Results for near-wall thermal characteristics including heat fluxes are analyzed. An entropy production map is provided from the second law analysis. The following main outcomes can be drawn from this study: (1) the location of peak heat transfer occurs not directly at the stagnation point; instead, it is slightly shifted towards the compression side of the jet, while at this region, the heat is transported counter to the temperature gradient; (2) turbulent thermal and fluid flow transport processes around the stagnation point are considerably different from those found in other near-wall-dominated flows and are strongly non-equilibrium in nature; (3) heat fluxes appear highly anisotropic especially in the vicinity of the impinged wall; (4) in particular, the heated wall acts as a strong source of irreversibility for both entropy production related to viscous dissipation and to heat conduction. All these findings imply that a careful design of the impinged plate is particularly important in order to use energy in such a thermal arrangement effectively. Finally, this study confirms that the estimation of the turbulent part of the entropy production based on turbulence dissipation rates in non-reacting, non-isothermal fluid flows represents a reliable approximate approach within the second law analysis, likewise in the context of computationally less expensive simulation techniques like RANS and/or LES.
The Role of Astrocytes in Synapse Loss in Alzheimer's Disease: A Systematic Review

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia, affecting 35 million people worldwide. One pathological feature of progressing AD is the loss of synapses. This is the strongest correlate of cognitive decline. Astrocytes, as an essential part of the tripartite synapse, play a role in synapse formation, maintenance, and elimination. During AD, astrocytes get a reactive phenotype with an altered gene expression profile and changed function compared to healthy astrocytes. This process likely affects their interaction with synapses. This systematic review aims to provide an overview of the scientific literature including information on how astrocytes affect synapse formation and elimination in the brain of AD patients and in animal models of the disease. We review molecular and cellular changes in AD astrocytes and conclude that these predominantly result in lower synapse numbers, indicative of decreased synapse support or even synaptotoxicity, or increased elimination, resulting in synapse loss, and consequential cognitive decline, as associated with AD. Preventing AD induced changes in astrocytes might therefore be a potential therapeutic target for dementia. Systematic Review Registration: https://www.crd. york.ac. uk/prospero/display_record. php? RecordID=148278, identifier [CRD148278]. Graphical Abstract AD astrocytes decrease the number of synapses via a variety of pathways. We distinguished a direct and indirect effect of astrocytes on synapse number. Direct: phagocytic capacity is impaired, affected by astrocyte expression of MERTK, MEGF10, C3, and ApoE4. Indirect: impaired glutamate transport & signaling, impaired Ca2+ signaling, and decreased TSP1 expression all can lead to a synaptotoxic environment, which indirectly reduces synapse number. Impaired glutamate transport is caused by a decrease in GLT1 and GLAST expression and leads to an increase in glutamate in the synaptic cleft, resulting in impaired NMDAR activity and excitotoxicity. Besides affecting phagocytosis, ApoE4 also increases inflammation, and Tau and Aβ aggregation, thereby further promoting synapse loss. The astrocyte (green) interacts with a synapse on a neurite (blue). The decrease in synapse number is visualized by more transparent synapses.
Concurrent manual-order-picking warehouse design: a simulation-based design of experiments approach

The design of manual-order-picking warehouses is a combination of interdependent decisions with enormous possible varieties in design components. The strong interrelationship between these components, in addition to the dynamic and interconnected stochastic nature of the problem; necessitate the utilisation of a simultaneous simulation-based approach. This study proposes a concurrent simulation-based design of experiments approach for the design of manual-order-picking warehouses. The proposed approach can investigate all possible warehousing design combinations with their stochastic nature and interactions; hence, widening the search for performance improvement. The examined design components include warehouse throughput, size, layout, operational policies and manpower/carts. Furthermore, the presented approach captures the probabilistic nature of all the key warehouse functions of receiving, unloading, put away, storage, preparation and picking and shipping; and evaluates the performance of the studied designs using the cycle time for a stock keeping unit in the warehouse. Statistical analysis of the simulation results showed several interesting findings; horizontal layout was preferable over all other types of layouts and small size warehouses perform better than other large sizes. The study has also recommended using high throughput for traditional layout-small size warehouses.
Acute Coronary Syndromes and SARS-CoV-2 Infection: Results From an Observational Multicenter Registry During the Second Pandemic Spread in Lombardy

Background COVID-19 had an adverse impact on the management and outcome of acute coronary syndromes (ACS), but most available data refer to March-April 2020. Aim This study aims to investigate the clinical characteristics, time of treatment, and clinical outcome of patients at hospitals serving as macro-hubs during the second pandemic wave of SARS-CoV-2 (November 2020-January 2021). Methods and Results Nine out of thirteen “macro-hubs” agreed to participate in the registry with a total of 941 patients included. The median age was 67 years (IQR 58-77) and ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) was the clinical presentation in 54% of cases. Almost all patients (97%) underwent coronary angiography, with more than 60% of patients transported to a macro-hub by the Emergency Medical Service (EMS). In the whole population of STEMI patients, the median time from symptom onset to First Medical Contact (FMC) was 64 min (IQR 30-180). The median time from FMC to CathLab was 69 min (IQR 39-105). A total of 59 patients (6.3%) presented a concomitant confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, and pneumonia was present in 42.4% of these cases. No significant differences were found between STEMI patients with and without SARS-CoV-2 infection in treatment time intervals. Patients with concomitant SARS-CoV-2 infection had a significantly higher in-hospital mortality compared to those without (16.9% vs. 3.6%, P < 0.0001). However, post-discharge mortality was similar to 6-month mortality (4.2% vs. 4.1%, P = 0.98). In the multivariate analysis, SARS-CoV-2 infection did not show an independent association with in-hospital mortality, whereas pneumonia had higher mortality (OR 5.65, P = 0.05). Conclusion During the second wave of SARS-CoV-2 infection, almost all patients with ACS received coronary angiography for STEMI with an acceptable time delay. Patients with concomitant infection presented a lower in-hospital survival with no difference in post-discharge mortality; infection by itself was not an independent predictor of mortality but pneumonia was.
Protective Effects of Emodin on Oxidized Fish Oil-Induced Metabolic Disorder and Oxidative Stress through Notch-Nrf2 Crosstalk in the Liver of Teleost Megalobrama amblycephala

Dietary oxidized lipids are key perpetrator to accumulate excessive reactive oxygen species (ROS) that induce oxidative stress for animals. Immoderate oxidative stress dysregulates cell fate, perturbs cellular homeostasis, thereby interrupts metabolism and normal growth. Therefore, a 12-week feeding trial with fish oil (FO, control group), oxidized fish oil (OF), and emodin-supplemented (OF+E) diets was conducted to evaluate the therapeutic mechanism of emodin on metabolic and oxidative resistance in Megalobrama amblycephala liver. Morphologically, emodin remits oxidized fish oil-induced cellular constituents damage, evidenced by lipid droplets enlargement and accumulation, mitochondria rupture, and nucleus aggregation, which were functionally related to oxidative stress, metabolism, and cell fate determination. Consecutively, glucose, lipid, and amino acid metabolism were retained under emodin stimulation. Specifically, fatty acid metabolic genes optimized fatty acid utilization and metabolism, featured as total saturated fatty acids (SFA), monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA), and polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) alternation. Physiologically, inflammation, autophagy, apoptosis, as well as antioxidant capacity were alleviated by emodin. Interactively, fatty acid metabolism was correlated with antioxidant capacity; while the crosstalk and dynamic equilibrium between apoptosis and autophagy determine the cell fate under oxidative stress amelioration. Synergistically, Nrf2 and Notch signaling were active to antioxidant defense. In particular, oxidative stress blocked the crosstalk between Notch and Nrf2 signaling, while emodin rescued Notch-Nrf2 interaction to ameliorate oxidative stress. In conclusion, these results suggest that elevated ROS levels by oxidative stress activates Notch and Nrf2 signaling but intercepts Notch-Nrf2 crosstalk to stimulate cell fate and antioxidant program; dietary emodin alleviates oxidative stress and returns overall ROS levels to a moderate state to maintain homeostatic balance. The crosstalk between Notch and Nrf2 signaling might be the potential therapeutic target for emodin to ameliorate oxidative stress and metabolic disorder in M. amblycephala liver.
InAlN/GaN high electron mobility transistors on Si for RF applications

Conventional AlGaN/GaN High Electron Mobility Transistors (HEMTs) have been proven to be a strong competitor in both high voltage and high frequency applications resulting from the intrinsic material properties of GaN such as large bandgap, high electron mobility, high electron saturation velocity and high thermal conductivity. In the past decades, GaN HEMTs have emerged as one of the hottest research topics and intensively studied. The performance of conventional AlGaN/GaN HEMTs have been improved significantly and continuously in the past decades, such as high output power, high operation frequency and low noise figure. Recently, a novel heterostructure with a thin layer of InAlN on top of GaN have been demonstrated to further improve the high frequency performance of GaN HEMTs. Benefiting from the unique properties of InAlN/GaN hetrostructure such as very thin top barrier thickness, high electron density and lattice match, the high frequency performance of GaN HEMTs have been pushed to the next level. On the other hand, there are still some critical challenges limiting the applications of GaN HEMTs. On key issue is that most of the high frequency results, especially those above 200 GHz, were reported from devices grown on SiC substrates. SiC has the advantages of small lattice mismatch to GaN eplilayers, very high resistivity and thermal conductivity. Thus, GaN HEMTs grown on SiC can achieve higher RF performance than those grown on Si. However, GaN HEMT on SiC is not cost-effective and is only available in smaller sizes (≥ 6 inch) which make it less attractive to be adopted commercially. To reduce the cost of GaN HEMTs, Si substrates have attracted increasing interest in recent years, not only in power electronics applications but also in RF applications. Significant efforts have been made on improving the epitaxial quality of GaN on Si substrates as well as the device fabrication technology. As a result, the performance of RF GaN HEMTs on Si has improved significantly. However, the high frequency performance of GaN HEMTs on Si still lags behind their counterparts on SiC. The best reported AlGaN/GaN HEMT on Si only exhibited a fT of 176 GHz with for a gate length of 80 nm. Another drawback is the poor linearity performance of deeply scaled GaN HEMTs. Linearity is an important parameter for GaN HEMTs to be applied as amplifiers in modern communication system. GaN HEMT is expected to maintain high operation frequency at high gate bias to support its application for large signal RF operation. However, poor linearity characteristics have been observed in the conventional GaN HEMTs. It is manifested by a non-flat transconductance (gm) and fT, fmax versus gate bias (or drain current). After reaching its maximum point, gm or fT, fmax decrease drastically with the increasing gate bias. Linearity of GaN transistors ultimately limits the power density and efficiency of these devices in many applications, as the operating point of the device typically needs to be backed-off to meet the linearity…
Rumen fermentation characteristics of rams fed supplemental boric acid and humic acid diets

The aim of the study is to investigate the effects of humic acid and boric acid on rumen fermentation parameters in rams. For this purpose, 3 rams were used in this experiment. Rams in each treatment; a control with no supplements (C), 180 ppm boric acid (B) and 5 ml/kg humic acid (H) with 65:35 forage to concentrate ratio. Each experimental period lasted 14 days, with 12 first days of diet adaptation. Totally the experimental period lasted 56 days. In both time periods (0 and 3h after feeding), there were no significant difference (P>0.05) on rumen pH, ammonia, protozoa count, estimated methane production and volatile fatty acid composition. However, butyric acid concentration tended to be higher in experimental groups (P=0.08). As a result of this study, these feed additives did not modify the rumen milieu and showed no negative effect in rams.
On thermomechanical behaviors of the functional graded shape memory alloy composite for jet engine chevron

This study presents a theoretical work for a novel adaptive jet engine chevron concept based upon embedding the functionally graded shape memory alloy actuators in a composite laminate, termed a functionally graded shape memory alloy actuator composite. The constitutive models of the functionally graded shape memory alloy actuator composites including the monolayer shape memory alloy composites and multilayer shape memory alloy composites with different volume fractions of the shape memory alloy were first given. An example using such models was discussed on a published finite element work on a shape memory alloy hybrid composite jet engine chevron concept to prove the validity of the theoretical work. The thermomechanical behaviors of the functionally graded shape memory alloy actuator composite with different volume fractions of the shape memory alloy subjected to the thermal loading were then discussed using the obtained constitutive model. The tip deflections of the jet engine chevron with different embedding patterns of the shape memory alloy were finally obtained.
“At least I tried, God damnit” and “Even a drop in the ocean is still more than nothing”: In their own words, what motivates people to work in P/CVE?

ABSTRACT The P/CVE sector is a growing and increasingly professionalised field in many countries affected by “homegrown” extremism. While opinions of individuals working and researching in the P/CVE sector have informed many studies, little is known about these professionals as people. This is problematic, because P/CVE employees are not black boxes; they have personal motivations, opinions, and experiences, which potentially influence their work and therefore the development and implementation of prevention and counter-extremism efforts. The present study offers a preliminary glimpse into P/CVE professionals as individuals by reporting the analysis of 27 experts interviews with academics and practitioners working in P/CVE, who describe their personal motivation for working in this particular field. These motivational factors range from childhood experiences to personal interest in the topic, anger, the wish for a positive personal impact, the desire to use research to improve social ills, and personalised responsibility to protect democracy
Can the Arts Cure Pandemic Hearts? - Cultural Activity During the COVID-19 Pandemic and its Consequences for Psychological Well-Being

Cultural activities might serve as a buffer to the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health. Frequencies of participants’ cultural activities in terms of participation in digital cultural offerings or self-initiated cultural activities during the pandemic are examined, and whether prior cultural engagement and valuing of culture have an impact on this participation. It is explored whether both forms of cultural activities are directly connected with psychological well-being, namely, optimism concerning COVID-19, and whether this relationship is mediated by autonomy, relatedness and aesthetic experience. Regression and mediation analysis were calculated (N = 398). Both cultural activities were related to increased aesthetic experience and perceived autonomy, but only participation in digital cultural offerings was connected to increased perceived relatedness. Relatedness, in turn, was connected to increased optimism. The results reflect the protective function of cultural activities on psychological well-being, demonstrating the importance of cultural life in times of adversity.
INTANGIBLE ASSETS IN THE CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OF SERBIAN AND SLOVENIAN LISTED COMPANIES: A PRELIMINARY OVERVIEW OF THE REPORTING PRACTICES

The aim of the research is to achieve a conclusion what is the level of the reporting practice on intangible assets in two countries - in the Republic of Serbia and in the Republic of Slovenia trough a comparative descriptive statistics. Consolidated financial statements of listed companies in these two countries were used from the Belgrade Stock Exchange (Serbia) and the Ljubljana Stock Exchange (Slovenia). The reason for the use of consolidated financial statements lies in the fact that they can contain unconsolidated intangible assets already recognized in the separate financial statements of the companies included in the group, as well as internally generated intangible assets that meet the conditions for recognition in a business combination (including Goodwill). The general assessment is that the survey results indicate a very low level of reporting practice of intangible assets in Serbia and relatively satisfactory level of reporting practice in Slovenia. Individual results are given in the fourth part of the paper.
Optimization of Work Zone Segments on Urban Roads Using Cellular Automata Model in Mixed Traffic

Increased delays and reduced speeds in work zones leads to congestion. This can be improved by optimizing the work zone length. The focus of this study is to model work zones using cellular automata model and to find the effects of work zones on traffic flow. The methodology adopted in the study involved creating work-zone on the road by blocking some of the cells and then determining traffic characteristics such as delay and queue lengths for model validation. For this the lateral movement rules of the existing Cellular Automata model were modified in order to replicate the traffic movement near work zones. This model is calibrated and validated using data from work zone observed near a metro rail station in Delhi. From the analysis it was evident that the queue length increased with increase in the length of work zone. Several relationships were tried between delay and work zone length. Among them the rational form was found suitable.