Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Establishment of Requirements and Methodology for the Development and Implementation of GreyMatters, a Memory Clinic Information System.

INTRODUCTION The aim of the paper is to establish the requirements and methodology for the development process of GreyMatters, a memory clinic system, outlining the conceptual, practical, technical and ethical challenges, and the experiences of capturing clinical and research oriented data along with the implementation of the system. METHODS The methodology for development of the information system involved phases of requirements gathering, modeling and prototype creation, and 'bench testing' the prototype with experts. The standard Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) recommended approach for the specifications of software requirements was adopted. An electronic health record (EHR) standard, EN13606 was used, and clinical modelling was done through archetypes and the project complied with data protection and privacy legislation. RESULTS The requirements for GreyMatters were established. Though the initial development was complex, the requirements, methodology and standards adopted made the construction, deployment, adoption and population of a memory clinic and research database feasible. The electronic patient data including the assessment scales provides a rich source of objective data for audits and research and to establish study feasibility and identify potential participants for the clinical trials. CONCLUSION The establishment of requirements and methodology, addressing issues of data security and confidentiality, future data compatibility and interoperability and medico-legal aspects such as access controls and audit trails, led to a robust and useful system. The evaluation supports that the system is an acceptable tool for clinical, administrative, and research use and forms a useful part of the wider information architecture.
The spatial distribution of African savannah herbivores: species associations and habitat occupancy in a landscape context

Herbivores play an important role in determining the structure and function of tropical savannahs. Here, we (i) outline a framework for how interactions among large mammalian herbivores, carnivores and environmental variation influence herbivore habitat occupancy in tropical savannahs. We then (ii) use a Bayesian hierarchical model to analyse camera trap data to quantify spatial patterns of habitat occupancy for lions and eight common ungulates of varying body size across an approximately 1100 km2 landscape in the Serengeti ecosystem. Our results reveal strong positive associations among herbivores at the scale of the entire landscape. Lions were positively associated with migratory ungulates but negatively associated with residents. Herbivore habitat occupancy differed with body size and migratory strategy: large-bodied migrants, at less risk of predation and able to tolerate lower quality food, were associated with high NDVI, while smaller residents, constrained to higher quality forage, avoided these areas. Small herbivores were strongly associated with fires, likely due to the subsequent high-quality regrowth, while larger herbivores avoided burned areas. Body mass was strongly related to herbivore habitat use, with larger species more strongly associated with riverine and woodlands than smaller species. Large-bodied migrants displayed diffuse habitat occupancy, whereas smaller species demonstrated fine-scale occupancy reflecting use of smaller patches of high-quality habitat. Our results demonstrate the emergence of strong positive spatial associations among a diverse group of savannah herbivores, while highlighting species-specific habitat selection strongly determined by herbivore body size. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Tropical grassy biomes: linking ecology, human use and conservation’.
Evaluation of alternative LBIST flows: A case study

The cost of manufacturing test has been growing dramatically over the years. The traditional pseudo-random pattern based Logic Built-in Self Test (LBIST) can potentially reduce the test cost by minimizing the need for the automatic test equipment. However, LBIST test coverage can be unaccept-ably low for some designs. Various methods for complementing pseudo-random patterns to increase test coverage exist, but the combined effect of these methods has not been studied. In this paper, we evaluate the effectiveness of alternative LBIST flows by a case study on a real industrial design. Our results can guide the selection of the best LBIST flow for a given set of design constraints such as test coverage, area overhead, and test time.
Correlation between Novel Potential Indoor Risk Factors and Frequency of Doctor's Visit for Respiratory Problem in Taiwan's Tropical Environment

Background: With a global rising trend in prevalence of allergic diseases, more attention has been paid to investigation of environmental risk factors. Many risk factors have so far been identified. However, novel risk factors specific to Taiwanese environment and lifestyle were still relatively unknown. Objective: To investigate the potential effects of a number of little-known indoor risk factors on the frequency of doctor's visit for respiratory problems in context of Taiwanese environment and lifestyle. Methods: A cross-sectional, population-based study was performed on a 861 participants around Kaohsiung area, Taiwan. Survey investigation was employed to assess the household environment and the frequency of doctor's visit for respiratory problems. Results: Participants who performed "daily cleaning" was shown to have a significantly (p=0.007) higher mean number of doctor's visits in comparison to those who did not. Similar observation was made for participants who periodically took out beddings (p=0.042). Age had a significant positive correlation (linear regression β 0.089) with frequency of respiratory problems. Conclusion: The habit of daily cleaning was implicated as a potential indoor risk factor due to the unique nature of Taiwanese cleaning habit and close contact with cleaning supplies, which could serve as chemical irritants. Bedding takeout was predicted to be an indicator of chronic allergies rather than an actual risk factor. However, both were controversial in their role as potential indoor risk factor, and required further examination.
Dietary interventions for fetal growth restriction – therapeutic potential of dietary nitrate supplementation in pregnancy

Fetal growth restriction (FGR) affects around 5% of pregnancies and is associated with significant short‐ and long‐term adverse outcomes. A number of factors can increase the risk of FGR, one of which is poor maternal diet. In terms of pathology, both clinically and in many experimental models of FGR, impaired uteroplacental vascular function is implicated, leading to a reduction in the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to the developing fetus. Whilst mechanisms underpinning impaired uteroplacental vascular function are not fully understood, interventions aimed at enhancing nitric oxide (NO) bioavailability remain a key area of interest in obstetric research. In addition to endogenous NO production from the amino acid l‐arginine, via nitric oxide synthase (NOS) enzymes, research in recent years has established that significant NO can be derived from dietary nitrate, via the ‘alternative NO pathway’. Dietary nitrate, abundant in green leafy vegetables and beetroot, can increase NO bioactivity, conferring beneficial effects on cardiovascular function and blood flow. Given the beneficial effects of dietary nitrate supplementation to date in non‐pregnant humans and animals, current investigations aim to assess the therapeutic potential of this approach in pregnancy to enhance NO bioactivity, improve uteroplacental vascular function and increase fetal growth.
Dosing of Ceftriaxone and Metronidazole for Children With Severe Acute Malnutrition

Infants and young children with severe acute malnutrition (SAM) are treated with empiric broad‐spectrum antimicrobials. Parenteral ceftriaxone is currently a second‐line agent for invasive infection. Oral metronidazole principally targets small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Children with SAM may have altered drug absorption, distribution, metabolism, and elimination. Population pharmacokinetics of ceftriaxone and metronidazole were studied, with the aim of recommending optimal dosing. Eighty‐one patients with SAM (aged 2–45 months) provided 234 postdose pharmacokinetic samples for total ceftriaxone, metronidazole, and hydroxymetronidazole. Ceftriaxone protein binding was also measured in 190 of these samples. A three‐compartment model adequately described free ceftriaxone, with a Michaelis–Menten model for concentration and albumin‐dependent protein binding. A one‐compartment model was used for both metronidazole and hydroxymetronidazole, with only 1% of hydroxymetronidazole predicted to be formed during first‐pass. Simulations showed 80 mg/kg once daily of ceftriaxone and 12.5 mg/kg twice daily of metronidazole were sufficient to reach therapeutic targets.
Embedding of Deterministic Test Data for In-Field Testing

This paper presents a new feedback shift register-based method for embedding deterministic test patterns on-chip suitable for complementing conventional BIST techniques for in-field testing. Our experimental results on 8 real designs show that the presented approach outperforms the bit-flipping approach by 24.7% on average. We also show that it is possible to exploit the uneven distribution of don't care bits in test patterns in order to reduce the area required for storing deterministic test patterns more than 3 times with less than 2% fault coverage drop.
Assessment of Variation in Thermal Sensations Determined Based on Effective Temperature

Air temperature is one of major factors in a subjective assessment of human thermal comfort and discomfort. The work draws on a series of measurements of the average daily air temperatures, relative air humidity and wind speed for 2000–2016 recorded at the Siedlce Meteorological Station. The station is part of the state observation and measurement network of the hydrological and meteorological service of The Institute of Meteorology and Water Management – National Research Institute (IMGW-PIB). The effective temperature was calculated according to the formula recommended by Missenard and the thermal sensation was determined based on a scale suggested by Baranowska. The number of days with individual thermal sensations in individual months of the long-term period was calculated, and months were put into groups of similar sensations by means of principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis. In the last years (2015, 2014, 2012 and 2011) in the months representing the cold season of the year, there were more days which were very cold and cold, whereas the number of days with the thermal comfort was much lower. The long-term period was split into three groups, based on the thermal comfort in the warm season of the year. The years which formed one group included 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2016 when there were no very cold days, the least cold days and the most very hot days.
Pure dense collagen threads from extrusion to fibrillogenesis stability

In tendons, collagens reach a concentration of 60%–85% of the dry weight of the tissue, collagen I being one of the major structuring agents. Collagen is found under its fibrillated state and organized in a highly anisotropic and hierarchical manner. In a first step to synthetize a mime of a tendon, we built a set up to extrude highly viscous acidic pure molecular collagen solutions (60 mg ml−1) into meters of regular threads of 300 μm to 600 μm in diameter. Eight different extruding and fibrillogenesis buffers were tested for their ability to generate stable anisotropic threads, with collagen fibrils characterized by the 67 nm-D period and optimally aligned parallel to the thread axis. Thanks to a follow up over 15 days, we pinned down one condition for which both diameter and anisotropy of the threads were stable throughout extrusion, fibrillogenesis and storage. The threads presented characteristic collagen fibrils and mechanical tests indicated a Young modulus around 1.7 MPa and an ultimate tensile strength of 0.3 MPa. Since neither chemical cross-linkers nor dehydrating processes were used, our synthesis process raises no biocompatibility or structure preservation concerns for tissue engineering applications, opening routes for further developments.
DNA Polymerase θ Increases Mutational Rates in Mitochondrial DNA

Replication and maintenance of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is essential for cellular function, yet few DNA polymerases are known to function in mitochondria. Here, we conclusively demonstrate that DNA polymerase θ (Polθ) localizes to mitochondria and explore whether this protein is overexpressed in patient-derived cells and tumors. Polθ appears to play an important role in facilitating mtDNA replication under conditions of oxidative stress, and this error-prone polymerase was found to introduce mutations into mtDNA. In patient-derived cells bearing a pathogenic mtDNA mutation, Polθ expression levels were increased, indicating that the oxidative conditions in these cells promote higher expression levels for Polθ. Heightened Polθ expression levels were also associated with elevated mtDNA mutation rates in a selected panel of human tumor tissues, suggesting that this protein can influence mutational frequencies in tumors. The results reported indicate that the mitochondrial function of Polθ may have relevance to human disease.
A novel multi-objective particle swarm optimization with K-means based global best selection strategy

In this paper, a multi-objective particle swarm optimization algorithm with a new global best (gbest) selection strategy is proposed for dealing with multi-objective problems. In multi-objective particle swarm optimization, gbest plays an important role in convergence and diversity of solutions. A K-means algorithm and proportional distribution based approach is used to select gbest from the archive for each particle of the population. A symmetric mutation operator is incorporated to enhance the exploratory capabilities. The proposed approach is validated using seven popular benchmark functions. The simulation results indicate that the proposed algorithm is highly competitive in terms of convergence and diversity in comparison with several state-of-the-art algorithms.
An Adaptive Token Passing Algorithm Applicable to MS/TP Network

In the MS/TP network, token is passed according to the address of master station. A novel token passing algorithm was proposed based on the characteristics of MS/TP network frame distribution and the requirements of real-time performance. The algorithm adopts distributed control method, which can adjust the token passing order dynamically according to the frame distribution of every master station in the MS/TP network, change the number of frames a master station can send when holding token adaptively and the network bandwidth every master station occupied to reduce the token passing times on the logical ring. OPNET simulation results show that the algorithm has reduced the average service delay, decreased the frame lost, enhanced the network real-time performance and increased the network throughput. It is better than the order token passing algorithm, and has some inspiration for researching other token ring networks.
MALM: Mobility-Aware Location Management Scheme in Femto/Macrocell Networks

Recently, femtocells are widely deployed to offload the traffic from the macrocell. Since conventional location management schemes of femto/macrocell networks do not consider mobility pattern of the mobile node (MN), unnecessary location updates can occur. Specifically, when an MN moves along the contour of the femtocell coverage, the MN frequently executes location update procedures, which causes significant location update cost. To address this problem, we propose a mobility-aware location management (MALM) scheme, where the MN conducts location update only at specific femtocells in which it is expected that the MN stays for a long time. To optimize MALM, a Markov decision process (MDP) problem is formulated and the optimal policy is determined. Evaluation results demonstrate that MALM with the optimal policy can reduce the number of location updates while providing sufficient offloading gain.
High rate of translocation-based gene birth on the Drosophila Y chromosome

Significance Using a powerful method that uses inexpensive short reads to detect Y-linked transfers, we show that gene traffic onto the Drosophila Y chromosome is 10 times more frequent than previously thought and includes the first Y-linked retrocopies discovered in these taxa. All 25 identified Y-linked gene transfers were relatively young (<1 million years old), although most appear to be pseudogenes because only three of these transfers show signs of purifying selection. Our method provides compelling evidence that the Drosophila Y chromosome is a highly challenging and dynamic genetic environment that is capable of rapidly diverging between species and promises to reveal fundamental insights into Y chromosome evolution across many taxa. The Y chromosome is a unique genetic environment defined by a lack of recombination and male-limited inheritance. The Drosophila Y chromosome has been gradually acquiring genes from the rest of the genome, with only seven Y-linked genes being gained over the past 63 million years (0.12 gene gains per million years). Using a next-generation sequencing (NGS)-powered genomic scan, we show that gene transfers to the Y chromosome are much more common than previously suspected: at least 25 have arisen across three Drosophila species over the past 5.4 million years (1.67 per million years for each lineage). The gene transfer rate is significantly lower in Drosophila melanogaster than in the Drosophila simulans clade, primarily due to Y-linked retrotranspositions being significantly more common in the latter. Despite all Y-linked gene transfers being evolutionarily recent (<1 million years old), only three showed evidence for purifying selection (ω ≤ 0.14). Thus, although the resulting Y-linked functional gene acquisition rate (0.25 new genes per million years) is double the longer-term estimate, the fate of most new Y-linked genes is defined by rapid degeneration and pseudogenization. Our results show that Y-linked gene traffic, and the molecular mechanisms governing these transfers, can diverge rapidly between species, revealing the Drosophila Y chromosome to be more dynamic than previously appreciated. Our analytical method provides a powerful means to identify Y-linked gene transfers and will help illuminate the evolutionary dynamics of the Y chromosome in Drosophila and other species.
Recycling ceramic waste powder: effects its grain-size distribution on fresh and hardened properties of cement pastes/mortars formulated from SCC mixes

This article presents the results of a preliminary study assessing the feasibility of using waste ceramic powder as a partial replacement of cement and/or sand in cement pastes and mortars. Two different ceramic powders, featuring different grain-size distributions, have been employed, one from crushed bathroom fixtures and dental prosthesis waste and a second one from foundry industry residuals. With reference to cement pastes and mortars formulated from SCC mixes employed in precast industry, cement replacement volume percentages equal to 10 and 30% have been considered for each powder. The possibility of hybrid cement and sand replacement with either powder has also been addressed. Effects of the replacement on the workability, shrinkage, compressive and flexural strengths have been considered, up to 3 months curing. The results confirmed the possibility of using this kind of waste in concrete, thus reducing the demand for raw cement and the burden on disposal landfills.
The Occurrence and Covariation of Binge Eating and Compensatory Behaviors Across Early to Mid-Adolescence

The purpose of this study was to examine the occurrence and covariation of four eating disorder behaviors across the elementary, middle, and high school years. In a sample of 1,906 youth measured over 5 years at nine time points, from the past year of elementary school through the second year of high school, binge eating, purging (self-induced vomiting), compensatory exercise, and fasting behavior were assessed by self-report. Over the 5-year period, rates of binge eating and purging increased but rates of compensatory exercise and fasting decreased. Girls and boys did not differ in their rates of engagement in any of the behaviors. Within time, the behaviors covaried modestly. Health-care professionals are advised to assess each behavior individually, rather than base interventions on the presence or absence of a diagnosable eating disorder. Gender should not be a basis for assessing for the presence of any of these behaviors.
Micropatterned 2D Hybrid Perovskite Thin Films with Enhanced Photoluminescence Lifetimes

The application of luminescent materials in display screens and devices requires micropatterned structures. In this work, we have successfully printed microstructures of a two-dimensional (2D), orange-colored organic/inorganic hybrid perovskite ((C6H5CH2NH3)2PbI4) using two different soft lithography techniques. Notably, both techniques yield microstructures with very high aspect ratios in the range of 1.5–1.8. X-ray diffraction reveals a strong preferential orientation of the crystallites along the c-axis in both patterned structures, when compared to nonpatterned, drop-casted thin films. Furthermore, (time-resolved) photoluminescence (PL) measurements reveal that the optical properties of (C6H5CH2NH3)2PbI4 are conserved upon patterning. We find that the larger grain sizes of the patterned films with respect to the nonpatterned film give rise to an enhanced PL lifetime. Thus, our results demonstrate easy and cost-effective ways to manufacture patterns of 2D organic/inorganic hybrid perovskites, while even improving their optical properties. This demonstrates the potential use of color-tunable 2D hybrids in optoelectronic devices.