Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Susceptibility to Predation Varies with Body Mass, Foraging Niche, and Anti-Predator Responses among Bird Species

Predation is a major source of mortality for many avian species. Species that face more predators, and those with less effective anti-predator responses, are presumably more likely to die from predation over time. Predation rate, as a measure of susceptibility to predation, is difficult to measure in the field. Radio-tracking studies, however, allow researchers to determine the time and cause of death of marked individuals, making it possible to estimate predation rate. I used estimates of predation rates from a large number of published radio-tracking studies in birds to assess in a phylogenetic framework the effect of several potential determinants. I obtained 393 estimates of predation rates from 129 species. Predation rates were lower in areas with fewer predators, such as islands and aquatic habitats, and for species with fewer potential predators, such as larger species. The predation rate was also lower for prey species with effective anti-predator responses, such as those that forage in flocks. Radio-tracking studies provide a unique opportunity to estimate overall predation rate in the field. Broadening the range of species and the range of habitats involved in such studies will help to further elucidate the factors that affect susceptibility to predation.
Inverse calculation of diffraction and its application to the real-time holographic interferometry

In this paper the physical process of real-time holographic interferometry is simulated by the computer calculations based on scalar diffraction theorem and the deformation field of the specimen is calculated by the inverse calculation of the diffraction from the interference fringes. The application the study of micro-crack nucleation process leads to interesting result in good agreement with experiments.
Is chronic pain as an autoimmune disease?

ABSTRACT Autoimmune diseases frequently occur in females, and a parallel sexually dimorphic suffering is observed in individuals who suffer chronic pain. Though perception and environment influence the chronicity of pain, this review illustrates examples of specific, evolutionarily preserved, physiological parameters that may be responsible and differentially contribute to chronic pain and affect treatment outcomes in females and males. In females, the immune system may be continuously “primed,” potentially due to the presence of two X chromosomes, each bearing a number of genes involved in immune responsiveness. In the event of nerve injury, declining parity rates could be having repercussions via increased rates of chronic pain or less effectiveness to therapies, which may be associated with a heightened immune cell infiltration into damage-associated sites. Additionally, the female hormone estradiol is both neuroprotective and neurodegenerative, with reproductive cycle– and age-dependent outcomes. There is therefore a need to study neuro-immune-endocrine crosstalk in the context of chronic pain. Autoantibodies have been associated to neural antigens with sensory pathway hyperexcitability in patients, and self-antigens need to be identified by damaged nerves remain to be discovered. Specific T cells release pronociceptive cytokines that directly influence neural firing, and T lymphocytes reactivated by specific antigens may elicit neuroprotective effects by secreting factors that support nerve repair. Modulating immune cells could therefore be a mechanism by which nerve recovery is promoted, with sex-specific outcomes. Investigating neuroimmune homeostasis may inform the selection of specific treatment regimens for females or males and hence may improve chronic pain management by recalibrating the influence of the immune system on the nervous system.
Thymus Species from Romanian Spontaneous Flora as Promising Source of Phenolic Secondary Metabolites with Health-Related Benefits

Wild thyme aerial parts (Serpylli herba) are recognized as a valuable herbal product with antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and antibacterial effects. Although pharmacopoeial regulations allow its collection exclusively from Thymus serpyllum, substitution with other species is frequent in current practice. This study analyzed the phenolic composition, antioxidant, and enzyme-inhibitory and antimicrobial activity of the hydroethanolic extracts obtained from five Romanian wild thyme species (Thymus alpestris, T. glabrescens, T. panonicus, T. pulcherimus and T. pulegioides). The analysis of individual phenolic constituents was performed through LC-ESI-DAD/MS2, while for the in vitro evaluation of antioxidant potential, TEAC, FRAP, DPPH, TBARS and OxHLIA assays were employed. The anti-enzymatic potential was tested in vitro against tyrosinase, α-glucosidase and acetylcholinesterase. High rosmarinic acid contents were quantified in all species (20.06 ± 0.32–80.49 ± 0.001 mg/g dry extract); phenolic acids derivatives (including salvianolic acids) were confirmed as the principal metabolites of T. alpestris and T. glabrescens, while eriodictyol-O-di-hexoside was found exclusively in T. alpestris. All species showed strong antioxidant potential and moderate anti-enzymatic effect against α-glucosidase and acetylcholinesterase, showing no anti-tyrosinase activity. This is the first detailed report on the chemical and biological profile of T. alpestris collected from Romanian spontaneous flora.
Exhaustion-like dysfunction of T and NKT cells in an X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency patient with maternal engraftment by single-cell analysis

Maternal engraftment is frequently present in X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency (X-SCID) patients caused by pathogenic mutations in IL2GR. However, the functional status of the engrafted cells remains unclear because of the difficulty in separately evaluating the function of the maternal and autologous cells. The present study reported an X-SCID patient with a de novo c.677C>T (p.R226H) variant in exon 5 of IL2RG, exhibiting recurrent and persistent infections from 3-months-old. After the male patient suffering recurrent pneumonia and acute hematogenous disseminated tuberculosis when 13-months-old, single-cell RNA sequencing was applied to characterize the transcriptome landscape of his bone marrow mononuclear cells (BMMNCs). A novel bioinformatic analysis strategy was designed to discriminate maternal and autologous cells at single-cell resolution. The maternal engrafted cells consisted primarily of T, NKT and NK cells and the patient presented with the coexistence of autologous cells of these cell types. When compared respectively with normal counterparts, both maternal and autologous T and NKT cells increased the transcription of some important cytokines (GZMB, PRF1 and NKG7) against infections, but decreased the expression of a number of key transcription factors (FOS, JUN, TCF7 and LEF1) related to lymphocyte activation, proliferation and differentiation. Notably, the expression of multiple inhibitory factors (LAG3, CTLA4 and HAVCR2) were substantially enhanced in the T and NKT cells of both origins. In conclusion, both maternal and autologous T and NKT cells exhibited exhaustion-like dysfunction in this X-SCID patient suffering recurrent and persistent infections.
Strategy to Enhance Geological CO2 Storage Capacity in Saline Aquifer

Geological CO2 storage is an emerging topic in energy and environmental community, which is, as a commonly accepted sense, considered as the most promising and powerful approach to mitigate the global carbon emissions during the transition to net‐zero. Of the geological media which initially considered cover the saline aquifers, oil and gas reservoirs, coal beds, and potentially basalts, up to now only the first two choices have been proven to be the most capable storage sites and successfully implemented at pilot/commercial scales. Here, two tandem papers propose novel strategies for the first time, by synthesizing and utilizing new high‐dryness CO2 foam, to enhance geological CO2 storage capacity in saline aquifer and oil and gas reservoirs. In this paper, a new high‐dryness CO2 foam is synthesized and injected into the saline aquifers to explore the storage capacity enhancement, with the unique foam‐induced advantages of sweep area expansion and storage efficiency improvement. Such a new idea is specifically evaluated and validated through a series of static analytical and dynamic performance experiments. With the optimum surfactant concentration of 0.5 wt%, the foaming volume and quality are determined to be 521 mL and 80.81%, respectively, which also shows excellent salt tolerance with 45,000 ppm Na+, 25,000 ppm Ca2+, and 25,000 ppm Mg2+. Moreover, the water consumption for CO2 storage decreases from 464.31 g/mol at 25% foam quality to 67.38 g/mol at 85% foam quality by using the new CO2 foam. Overall, the newly synthesized CO2 foam could effectively enhance geological CO2 storage capacity and concurrently diminish water consumption, therefore realizing the win‐win environment and economic benefits.
CRAFT: Criticality-Aware Fault-Tolerance Enhancement Techniques for Emerging Memories-Based Deep Neural Networks

Deep neural networks (DNNs) have emerged as the most effective programming paradigm for computer vision and natural language processing applications. With the rapid development of DNNs, efficient hardware architectures for deploying DNN-based applications on edge devices have been extensively studied. Emerging nonvolatile memories (NVMs), with their better scalability, nonvolatility, and good read performance, are found to be promising candidates for deploying DNNs. However, despite the promise, emerging NVMs often suffer from reliability issues, such as stuck-at faults, which decrease the chip yield/memory lifetime and severely impact the accuracy of DNNs. A stuck-at cell can be read but not reprogrammed, thus, stuck-at faults in NVMs may or may not result in errors depending on the data to be stored. By reducing the number of errors caused by stuck-at faults, the reliability of a DNN-based system can be enhanced. This article proposes CRAFT, i.e., criticality-aware fault-tolerance enhancement techniques to enhance the reliability of NVM-based DNNs in the presence of stuck-at faults. A data block remapping technique is used to reduce the impact of stuck-at faults on DNNs accuracy. Additionally, by performing bit-level criticality analysis on various DNNs, the critical-bit positions in network parameters that can significantly impact the accuracy are identified. Based on this analysis, we propose an encoding method which effectively swaps the critical bit positions with that of noncritical bits when more errors (due to stuck-at faults) are present in the critical bits. Experiments of CRAFT architecture with various DNN models indicate that the robustness of a DNN against stuck-at faults can be enhanced by up to $10^{5}$ times on the CIFAR-10 dataset and up to 29 times on ImageNet dataset with only a minimal amount of storage overhead, i.e., 1.17%. Being orthogonal, CRAFT can be integrated with existing fault-tolerance schemes to further enhance the robustness of DNNs against stuck-at faults in NVMs.
Impact of Pomegranate on Probiotic Growth, Viability, Transcriptome and Metabolism

Despite rising interest in understanding intestinal bacterial survival in situ, relatively little attention has been devoted to deciphering the interaction between bacteria and functional food ingredients. Here, we examined the interplay between diverse beneficial Lactobacillaceae species and a pomegranate (POM) extract and determined the impact of this functional ingredient on bacterial growth, cell survival, transcription and target metabolite genesis. Three commercially available probiotic strains (Lactobacillus acidophilus NCFM, Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus GG and Lactiplantibacillus plantarum Lp-115) were used in growth assays and flow cytometry analysis, indicating differential responses to the presence of POM extract across the three strains. The inclusion of POM extract in the growth medium had the greatest impact on L. acidophilus cell counts. LIVE/DEAD staining determined significantly fewer dead cells when L. acidophilus was grown with POM extract compared to the control with no POM (1.23% versus 7.23%). Whole-transcriptome analysis following exposure to POM extract showed markedly different global transcriptome responses, with 15.88% of the L. acidophilus transcriptome, 19.32% of the L. rhamnosus transcriptome and only 2.37% of the L. plantarum transcriptome differentially expressed. We also noted strain-dependent metabolite concentrations in the medium with POM extract compared to the control medium for punicalagin, ellagic acid and gallic acid. Overall, the results show that POM extract triggers species-specific responses by probiotic strains and substantiates the rising interest in using POM as a prebiotic compound.
Performance Analysis on Eigenmode Beamforming for Reduced Capability Device in Massive MIMO Systems

Recently, a new type of device that enables reduced capability (RedCap) has been identified and standardized in the fifth generation (5G) New Radio (NR). Because RedCap user equipment (UE) is designed to have low device cost and complexity compared with high-end devices, single-layer transmission is mainly considered for RedCap UE. For single-layer transmission, traditional eigenmode beamforming, which transmits a data stream through the maximum eigenmode direction, is applicable for base stations (BSs), and a simple matched filter can be used on the UE side. Under this operation scenario, the performance of eigenmode beamforming is analyzed in this study, and the effect of the number of UE antennas on the achievable rate is investigated. The asymptotic achievable rate for eigenmode beamforming with practical channel training for both the uplink and downlink is derived as a closed-form expression for any number of UE antennas <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. For the analysis, the statistics of the maximum eigenvalue are derived using the Tracy-Widom distribution. The results of the analysis show that the maximum eigenvalue is a concave function in terms of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, and there is an optimal number of UE antennas <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n_{\mathrm {opt}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> that maximizes the achievable rate. Simulations verify the analytical results and show that <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n_{\mathrm {opt}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> maximizing the achievable rate decreases as the numbers of BS antennas and co-scheduled UEs increase.
Combined effects of Ascophyllum nodosum seaweed extract and biological control agents on Meloidogyne javanica in soybean

Abstract This study aimed to investigate the efficacy of Ascophyllum nodosum extract, in combination or not with biocontrol agents, in the management of Meloidogyne javanica in soybean, assess treatment effects on soil biological activity, and determine the total phenolic content of the extract. The experiment was conducted according to a 5 × 2 factorial design, with three biocontrol agents (Bacillus methylotrophicus, Pochonia chlamydosporia, and Trichoderma harzianum), a chemical nematicide (abamectin, positive control), and an untreated (negative) control, each in the presence and absence of A. nodosum extract. Treatments included six replications. Nematode inoculation (2000 eggs + juveniles of M. javanica per plant) was performed at the time of sowing. Sixty days later, plants were evaluated for height, shoot weights, numbers of M. javanica eggs and J2 extracted from roots, and soil biological activity. Biological and chemical nematicide treatments were effective in reducing M. javanica multiplication. There was a synergic effect of A. nodosum extract on M. javanica multiplication for the treatments with A. nodosum + T. harzianum, A. nodosum + abamectin (Trial 1) and A. nodosum + P. chlamydosporia (Trial 2). B. methylotrophicus and T. harzianum treatments enhanced plant development and soil microbial biomass carbon. Higher values of soil basal respiration and metabolic quotient (qCO2) were observed in the A. nodosum + abamectin treatment. A. nodosum extracts at 75 g L−1 had a total phenolic content of 13 255 and 11 608 mg GAE 100−1 g in Trials 1 and 2, respectively.
Skin Wound Healing and Anti-Wrinkle-Promoting In Vitro Biological Activities of Caragana sinica Flower Absolute and Its Chemical Composition

Caragana sinica (CS; family Legume) was used as a medicinal material to treat neuralgia and arthritis in folk remedies and has been shown to have antioxidant, neuroprotective, and anti-apoptotic effects. However, CS is unknown for its biological activities related to skin. The present study explored the effects of CS flower absolute (CSFAb) on skin repair responses, viz., wound healing and anti-wrinkle-related responses using keratinocytes. CSFAb was extracted using hexane, and its composition was analyzed by GC/MS. The effects of CSFAb on human keratinocytes (HaCaT cells) were evaluated using Boyden chamber, sprouting, water-soluble tetrazolium salt, 5-bromo-2′-deoxyuridine incorporation, ELISA, zymography, and immunoblotting assays. GC/MS detected 46 components in CSFAb. In addition, in HaCaT cells, CSFAb increased the proliferation, migration, and sprout outgrowth and the phosphorylation of ERK1/2, JNK, p38 MAPK, and AKT, and also increased collagen type I and IV synthesis, reduced TNF-α-increased MMP-2 and MMP-9 activities, and upregulated hyaluronic acid (HA) and HA synthase-2 levels. These effects of CSFAb on wound healing and anti-wrinkle-related responses in keratinocytes suggest its potential use for skin repair and care preparations.
RANCER: Non-Axis Aligned Anisotropic Certification with Randomized Smoothing

As modern networks have been proven to be unprotected from adversarial attacks and are applied in safety-critical applications, defense against them is very crucial. Many works were dedicated to this topic, but randomized smoothing has been recently proven to be an effective approach for the certified defense of deep neural networks and getting robust classifiers. Some prior results were obtained utilizing the techniques of adding extra parameters to extend the limits of the certification regions. In this way, sample-wise optimization was proposed to maximize the certification radius per input. The idea was further extended with the generalized anisotropic counterparts of ℓ1 and ℓ2 certificates which allow achieving larger certified region volume avoiding worst-case certification near potentially larger safe regions. However, anisotropic certification is limited by the aligned axis lacking the freedom to extend in any direction. To mitigate this constraint, in this work, we (i) revisit the anisotropic certification, provide an analysis of its non-axis aligned counterpart and propose its rotation-free extension, (ii) conduct experiments on the CIFAR-10 dataset to report the improved performance.
Decision Framework for Predictive Maintenance Method Selection

Many asset owners and maintainers have the ambition to better predict the future state of their equipment to make timely and better-informed maintenance decisions. Although many methods to support high-level maintenance policy selection are available, practitioners still often follow a costly trial-and-error process in selecting the most suitable predictive maintenance method. To address the lack of decision support in this process, this paper proposes a framework to support asset owners in selecting the optimal predictive maintenance method for their situation. The selection framework is developed using a design science process. After exploring common difficulties, a set of solutions is proposed for these identified problems, including a classification of the various maintenance methods, a guideline for defining the ambition level for the maintenance process, and a classification of the available data types. These elements are then integrated into a framework that assists practitioners in selecting the optimal maintenance approach. Finally, the proposed framework is successfully tested and demonstrated using four industrial case studies. It can be concluded that the proposed classifications of ambition levels, data types and types of predictive maintenance methods clarify and accelerate the complex selection process considerably.
The Relationship between Short Video Flow, Addiction, Serendipity, and Achievement Motivation among Chinese Vocational School Students: The Post-Epidemic Era Context

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, people have been spending more time in the online world because of restrictions on face-to-face communication due to epidemic prevention controls. This has also brought the issue of Internet addiction, including the overuse and negative effects of short videos, to the forefront of attention. Past research has found that Internet addiction has a negative impact on well-being. However, there is a special concept of positive emotion called “serendipity” (小确幸). Serendipity provides a small, fleeting but positive experience, yet it is often associated with negative perceptions from an outside perspective. However, the relationship between short video addiction and serendipity is not yet known. Based on this, a theoretical model was developed in the context of the I-PACE model. To understand the relationship between short video addiction and serendipity among college students, in this study, we conducted snowball sampling and distributed online questionnaires using the Wenjuanxing platform. The target population of the questionnaire distribution was vocational college students in China, of whom 985 valid study participants responded, yielding a valid return rate of 82.1%. Of the respondents, 410 (41.6%) were male and 575 (58.4%) were female. The results were as follows: a. short video flow had a positive relationship with serendipity, a negative relationship with achievement motivation, and a positive effect on short video addiction; b. short video addiction had a positive effect on serendipity and a negative effect on achievement motivation; and c. serendipity had a negative impact on achievement motivation. This shows that short video addiction, like other Internet addictions, can have a negative impact on students’ learning.
Weighted Underspecification of Aspectual Properties: Against Brennan & Pylkkänen (2008)

Semanticists sometimes talk about “aspectual mismatches,” that is, mismatches between the assumed aspectual properties of predicates and modifiers that do not result in unacceptability. For example, consider jump, as used in ( 1 ) ; it accepts punctual modifiers as in (1a), in which case it expresses an instantaneous event, but yet it also accepts non-punctual, durative modifiers, as in (1b), in which case it denotes a repeated series of jumping, which as a whole is a nonpunctual event :