Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
To Be or Not to Be Solitary: Phytophthora infestans' Dilemma for Optimizing its Reproductive Fitness in Multiple Infections

The success of parasitic life lies in an optimal exploitation of the host to satisfy key functions directly involved in reproductive fitness. Resource availability generally decreases over time with host mortality, but also during multiple infections, where different strains of parasite share host resources. During multiple infections, the number of parasite strains and their genetic relatedness are known to influence their reproductive rates. Using infections of the potato plant Solanum tuberosum with the parasite Phytophthora infestans, we set up an experimental design to separate dose effects (double- vs. single-site infections) from genetic relatedness (different vs. identical genotypes) on the reproductive fitness of competing parasite genotypes. We showed the existence of two basic response patterns - increase or decrease in reproductive fitness in multiple infections- depending on the parasite genotype. In all cases, the intensity of the response of any genotype depended on the genotype of the competing strain. This diversity of responses to multiple infections is probably maintained by the fluctuating frequencies of multiple infections in nature, arising from variations in disease pressure over the course of an epidemic and between successive epidemics. It allows a rapid response of parasitic populations to changing environments, which are particularly intense in agricultural systems.
Public Trust in Physicians—Health Care Commodification as a Possible Deteriorating Factor: Cross-sectional Analysis of 23 Countries

Trust in physicians has declined, and surveys of public opinion show a poor level of public trust in physicians. Commodification of health care has been speculated as a plausible driving force. We used cross-national data of 23 countries from the International Social Survey Programme 2011 to quantify health care commodification and study its role in the trust that patients generally place in physicians. A modified health care index was used to quantify health care commodification. There were 34 968 respondents. A question about the level of general trust in physicians and a 4-item “general trust in physicians” scale were used as our major and minor outcomes. The results were that compared with those in the reference countries, the respondents in the health care–commodified countries were approximately half as likely to trust physicians (odds ratio: 0.47, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.31-0.72) and scored 1.13 (95% CI: 1.89-0.37) less on the general trust scale. However, trust in physicians in the health care–decommodified countries did not differ from that in the reference countries. In conclusion, health care commodification may play a meaningful role in the deterioration of public trust in physicians.
Effect of essential oil and chlorhexidine mouthwashes on gingival fibroblast survival and migration.

BACKGROUND Chemical plaque control is the most commonly recommended means of oral hygiene after periodontal surgery. Commercially available mouthwashes contain a variety of active ingredients that have bactericidal properties but may potentially be toxic to the host cells. The goal of this in vitro study is to investigate the effect of commercially available mouthwashes on the survival and migratory capacity of human fibroblasts. METHODS Human gingival and periodontal ligament (PDL) fibroblasts were treated with commercially available mouthwashes that contained either chlorhexidine (CHX) or essential oils (EO) as the active ingredient. Each mouthwash was tested over a range of concentrations for its ability to affect fibroblast survival and migration, as well as long-term effects on cell viability. RESULTS Undiluted mouthwashes induced near-complete cell death 24 hours after only a 60-second treatment. Dilutions of 15% to 20% for both CHX and EO mouthwashes resulted in 50% cell death. When diluted to 10% to 15%, EO did not reduce cell migration, whereas similar dilutions of CHX resulted in reduced cell migration. Concentrations of 10% of both EO and CHX mouthwashes retained most of their antibacterial capacity. Treatment with EO did not result in gingival fibroblast death, whereas 5% CHX resulted in near-complete gingival fibroblast death 7 days after exposure. CONCLUSIONS The results of this in vitro study indicate that diluted EO displayed no detectable detrimental effects on human gingival and PDL fibroblasts, whereas diluted CHX reduced both cell migration and long-term survival. Both solutions retained their antimicrobial activity in lower concentrations.
Ceramic foams porous microstructure characterization by X-ray microtomography

Knowledge of the porous structure of amorphous materials is of fundamental importance in calculating geometrical parameters such as total porosity, pore size distribution and physical parameters relating to fluid flow inside void space. The present work deals with the measurement of the microstructural parameters of porous ceramic filters. Microtomographic measurements of samples were taken using an X-ray tube. Bremsstrahlung radiation was filtered in transmission mode with a Sn filter at 58.5 and 28.3 keV and the images analyzed in two ways. The first method consisted in analyzing transepts of the images in order to calculate total porosity based on the average particle size and media linear attenuation coefficients. The second method involved a study of the images using an image analysis software, called Imago, which allows one to calculate total porosity and pore size distribution. The total measured porosity of the filter C90 was 73.8%, 71.1%, 74.4% and 71.5% by, respectively, the Arquimedes method, simple gamma ray transmission, transept analysis and analysis of the microtomographic images at 28.3 keV.
How Do You Manage Change in Organizations? Training, Development, Innovation, and Their Relationships

The article aims to be a reflective paper on the interconnected concepts of training, development and innovation and the potential they have in dealing with change in organizations. We call change both the process through which something becomes different and the result of that process. Change management is the expression used to define the complex of activities, functions, and tools (such as training courses) through which an organization deals with the introduction of something new that is relevant for both its survival and growth. Training and development are labels used to define those educational activities implemented in organizations to empower the competences of workers, employees and managers in the lifelong learning perspective of improving their performance. Consequently, we define competences as those personal characteristics that allow people to be effective in the changing contexts of both workplace and everyday life. They are also necessary in organizational innovation, which is the process of transforming ideas or inventions into goods or services that generate value and for which customers will pay. Training, development, and innovation are three different but interconnected functions by which organizations manage change. What is the state of the art of the literature dealing with these topics? Here, is a critical review on the matter.
Megafaunal Benthic Ecology of the Submarine Canyons of

Submarine canyons have been studied to a very limited extent in spite of their important biological roles as hotspots of secondary production and organic matter conduits between the shelf and the deep sea. The heterogeneity and rugged terrain of submarine canyons makes them difficult to sample using traditional means such as trawling, however there has be a great deal of success in using ROVs to study these important yet poorly understood environments. A number of ROV dives were executed within the submarine canyons of Southern California during research expeditions in 2005 and 2010. Although these dives were planned and executed with geological research in mind, the video data obtained during these dives can be utilised for ecological research. Video transects from a range of depths in five submarine canyons have been analysed to produce presence/absence data for each site and a comparison of benthic communities in differing depths, locales, and canyons has been performed. No difference was found between canyons based on canyon activity however there was a significant trend for community composition to vary between water depths. This depth-related trend is in agreement with the findings of previous studies and is most probably tied to the depth ranges of the various organisms studied, which is dictated by their tolerances of depth depth-correlated variables such as temperature, salinity and oxygen concentration.
Acetone evaporation monitoring using a caterpillar-like microstructured fiber

A new microstructured optical fiber is demonstrated to detect acetone evaporation by observing the time response of the reflected signal at 1550nm. The sensor consists on a caterpillar-like fiber, with a transversal microfluidic channel created with a Focused Ion Beam technique, spliced to a single-mode fiber. Different stages were visible between the dipping and the evaporation of acetone and of a mixture of water and acetone. It was also possible to detect the presence of water vapor.
A Distributed Privacy-Utility Tradeoff Method Using Distributed Lossy Source Coding with Side Information

In the age of big data, distributed data providers need to ensure the privacy, while data analysts need to mine the value of data. Therefore, how to find the privacy-utility tradeoff has become a research hotspot. Besides, the adversary may have the background knowledge of the data source. Therefore, it is significant to solve the privacy-utility tradeoff problem in the distributed environment with side information. This paper proposes a distributed privacy-utility tradeoff method using distributed lossy source coding with side information, and quantitatively gives the privacy-utility tradeoff region and Rate-Distortion-Leakage region. Four results are shown in the simulation analysis. The first result is that both the source rate and the privacy leakage decrease with the increase of source distortion. The second result is that the finer relevance between the public data and private data of source, the finer perturbation of source needed to get the same privacy protection. The third result is that the greater the variance of the data source, the slighter distortion is chosen to ensure more data utility. The fourth result is that under the same privacy restriction, the slighter the variance of the side information, the less distortion of data source is chosen to ensure more data utility. Finally, the provided method is compared with current ones from five aspects to show the advantage of our method.
Non-stationary correction of optical aberrations

Taking a sharp photo at several megapixel resolution traditionally relies on high grade lenses. In this paper, we present an approach to alleviate image degradations caused by imperfect optics. We rely on a calibration step to encode the optical aberrations in a space-variant point spread function and obtain a corrected image by non-stationary deconvolution. By including the Bayer array in our image formation model, we can perform demosaicing as part of the deconvolution.
Medical history, lifestyle, family history, and occupational risk factors for lymphoplasmacytic lymphoma/Waldenström's macroglobulinemia: the InterLymph Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma Subtypes Project.

BACKGROUND Lymphoplasmacytic lymphoma/Waldenström's macroglobulinemia (LPL/WM), a rare non-Hodgkin lymphoma subtype, shows strong familial aggregation and a positive association with chronic immune stimulation, but evidence regarding other risk factors is very limited. METHODS The International Lymphoma Epidemiology Consortium (InterLymph) pooled data from 11 predominantly population-based case-control studies from North America, Europe, and Australia to examine medical history, lifestyle, family history, and occupational risk factors for LPL/WM. Age-, sex-, race/ethnicity-, and study-adjusted odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were estimated using logistic regression for a total of 374 LPL/WM cases and 23 096 controls. RESULTS In multivariate analysis including all putative risk factors, LPL/WM risk was associated with history of Sjögren's syndrome (OR = 14.0, 95% CI = 3.60 to 54.6), systemic lupus erythematosus (OR = 8.23, 95% CI = 2.69 to 25.2), hay fever (OR = 0.73, 95% CI = 0.54 to 0.99), positive hepatitis C serology (OR = 2.51, 95% CI = 1.03 to 6.17), hematologic malignancy in a first-degree relative (OR = 1.64, 95% CI = 1.02 to 2.64), adult weight (OR = 0.61, 95% CI = 0.44 to 0.85 for highest vs. lowest quartile), duration of cigarette smoking (OR = 1.46, 95% CI = 1.04 to 2.05 for ≥ 40 years vs. nonsmokers), and occupation as a medical doctor (OR = 5.54, 95% CI = 2.19 to 14.0). There was no association with other medical conditions, lifestyle factors, or occupations. CONCLUSIONS This pooled analysis confirmed associations with immune conditions and family history of hematologic malignancy, and identified new associations with hay fever, weight, smoking, and occupation, and no association with other lifestyle factors. These findings offer clues to LPL/WM biology and prevention.
Poly(phenylene oxide) modified cyanate resin for self‐healing

Self-healing cyanate ester resins (CE) were developed by adding low molecular weight poly(phenylene oxide) (PPO) resin, yielding a high performance CE/PPO system via a low-temperature process. The addition of PPO improved the flexural strength and fracture toughness of the CE matrix without sacrificing thermal properties. CE/PPO formulations with 5, 10, and 15 wt. % PPO showed 43%, 65%, and 105% increase in fracture toughness due to a combination of crack deflection, crack pinning, and matrix cavitation around second-phase particles. When PPO was introduced into the CE, dielectric properties were either unchanged or declined. During thermal treatment to heal damaged CE, liquid PPO flowed into cracks, and during subsequent cooling, solidified to bond the crack surfaces. The self-healing efficiency for CE with 15 wt. % PPO after heating to 220°C for 1 h exhibited a recovery of 73% in toughness and 81% in microtensile strength. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Approximate Range Queries for Clustering

We study the approximate range searching for three variants of the clustering problem with a set $P$ of $n$ points in $d$-dimensional Euclidean space and axis-parallel rectangular range queries: the $k$-median, $k$-means, and $k$-center range-clustering query problems. We present data structures and query algorithms that compute $(1+\varepsilon)$-approximations to the optimal clusterings of $P\cap Q$ efficiently for a query consisting of an orthogonal range $Q$, an integer $k$, and a value $\varepsilon>0$.
Trajectory prediction of spinning ball for ping-pong player robot

An analytic flying model that can well represent the physical behavior is derived, where the ball's self-rotational velocity changes along with the flying velocity. Based on the least square method, a rebound model that represents the relation between the velocities before and after rebound is established. The initial trajectory is fitted to three second order polynomials of the flying time with the measured positions of the ball. The initial velocities of the ball in the analytic flying model, including the flying velocity and the self-rotational velocity, are computed from the polynomials. The ball's landing position and velocity is predicted with the model. The velocities after rebound are determined with the rebound model. By taking the velocities after rebound as new initial ones, the flying trajectory after rebound is described with the model again. In other words, the ball's trajectory is predicted. Experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Neighbor Cooperation Based In-Network Caching for Content-Centric Networking

Content-Centric Networking (CCN) is a new Internet architecture with routing and caching centered on contents. Through its receiver-driven and connectionless communication model, CCN natively supports the seamless mobility of nodes and scalable content acquisition. In-network caching is one of the core technologies in CCN, and the research of efficient caching scheme becomes increasingly attractive. To address the problem of unbalanced cache load distribution in some existing caching strategies, this paper presents a neighbor cooperation based in-network caching scheme. In this scheme, the node with the highest betweenness centrality in the content delivery path is selected as the central caching node and the area of its ego network is selected as the caching area. When the caching node has no sufficient resource, part of its cached contents will be picked out and transferred to the appropriate neighbor by comprehensively considering the factors, such as available node cache, cache replacement rate and link stability between nodes. Simulation results show that our scheme can effectively enhance the utilization of cache resources and improve cache hit rate and average access cost.
Impedance Properties Of 0.7(BiFeO3)-0.3 (PbTiO3) Composite

The polycrystalline sample of 0.7(BiFeO3)-0.3(PbTiO3) [0.7(BFO)-0.3(PT)] was prepared by a high temperature solid state reaction technique. Studies of structural analysis confirm the formation of the compound with rhombohedral structure at room temperature. The electrical properties (impedance, modulus and conductivity) of the material were analyzed using a complex impedance spectroscopy technique in a wide temperature (225-300 o C) and frequency (10 2 -10 6 Hz) range. The studied material exhibits a significant contribution of grain (bulk) effect and non-Debye of relaxation process. The bulk resistance decreases with rise in temperature which exhibits negative temperature coefficient of resistance (NTCR) behavior. Electrical modulus study confirms the presence of bulk effect in the material. This compound also exhibits the temperature dependence of relaxation phenomena. The ac and dc conductivity of the materials were found to be increase with increase in temperature. The activation energy of the compound is found to be less than 1eV and suggests the conduction process is of mixed type (ionic-polaronic and singly-ionized oxygen ion vacancies). Copyright © 2013 VBRI Press.
FreeSense: Indoor Human Identification with Wi-Fi Signals

Abstract-Human identification plays an important role in human-computer interaction. There have been numerous methods proposed for human identification (e.g., face recognition, gait recognition, fingerprint identification, etc.). While these methods could be very useful under different conditions, they also suffer from certain shortcomings (e.g., user privacy, sensing coverage range). In this paper, we propose a novel approach for human identification, which leverages Wi-Fi signals to enable non-intrusive human identification in domestic environments. It is based on the observation that each person has specific influence patterns to the surrounding Wi-Fi signal while moving indoors, regarding their body shape characteristics and motion patterns. The influence can be captured by the Channel State Information (CSI) time series of Wi-Fi. Specifically, a combination of Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) techniques is used for CSI waveform- based human identification. We implemented the system in a 6m*5m smart home environment and recruited 9 users for data collection and evaluation. Experimental results indicate that the identification accuracy is about 88.9% to 94.5% when the candidate user set changes from 6 to 2, showing that the proposed human identification method is effective in domestic environments.
Uncalibrated peg-hole alignment using visual servoing

This paper presents a novel method of peg-hole alignment using visual servoing under the circumstance of uncalibrated camera and uncalibrated tool. Two points and two lines are extracted as image features from the tool projection. By adopting depth-independent interaction matrix, all the unknown parameters appear linearly so that they can be estimated online. An adaptive kinematic-based controller is designed and asymptotic convergence is proved. Simulation results are presented to verify the performance.
The Effect of Influenza Vaccination on Birth Outcomes in a Cohort of Pregnant Women in Lao PDR, 2014-2015.

BACKGROUND Some studies suggest that maternal influenza vaccination can improve birth outcomes. However, there are limited data from tropical settings, particularly Southeast Asia. We conducted an observational study in Laos to assess the effect of influenza vaccination in pregnant women on birth outcomes. METHODS We consented and enrolled a cohort of pregnant woman who delivered babies at 3 hospitals during April 2014-February 2015. We collected demographic and clinical information on mother and child. Influenza vaccination status was ascertained by vaccine card. Primary outcomes were the proportion of live births born small for gestational age (SGA) or preterm and mean birth weight. Multivariate models controlled for differences between vaccinated and unvaccinated women and influenza virus circulation. RESULTS We enrolled 5103 women (2172 [43%] were vaccinated). Among the 4854 who had a live birth, vaccinated women were statistically significantly less likely than unvaccinated women to have an infant born preterm during the period of high influenza virus circulation (risk ratio [RR] = 0.56, 95% confidence interval [CI], .45-.70), and the effect remained after adjusting for covariates (adjusted RR, 0.69; 95% CI, .55-.87). There was no effect of vaccine on mean birth weight. Vaccinated mothers had a statistically significant elevated risk of having an infant born SGA (adjusted RR, 1.25; 95% CI, 1.11–1.41). CONCLUSIONS In this observational study, we found indirect evidence of influenza vaccine safety during pregnancy, and women who received vaccine had a reduced risk of delivering a preterm infant during times of high influenza virus circulation. Vaccination may prevent 1 in 5 preterm births that occur during periods of high influenza circulation.
Towards an Open Simulation Environment for the Pepper Robot

Softbank»s Pepper robot recently gained massive traction in diverse domains. On the one hand, the robot interacts with potential customers in shopping malls, stores, at trade fairs and various social events serving as a concierge or "Pepper-as-Promoter", grabbing attention and fostering customer engagement. On the other hand, the RoboCup federation opened up a completely new league in 2017: the Social Standard Platform League (SSPL). In this new league, the Pepper was chosen as the standard social platform that teams will rely on in competitions in the years to come. Lastly, Pepper is an attractive platform for academic institutions since it is, in contrast to other platforms, relatively low priced and does not require a high degree of maintenance or prior knowledge with respect to, e.g., mechanical engineering. However, designing, developing and implementing social skills for a humanoid robot is not a trivial task that is additionally subject to constant change in the robots code base and configuration parameters for instance. Thus, one of the major drawbacks of the Pepper platform is the lack of a proper simulation environment in order to test new algorithms, high-level task execution strategies, regression testing or simply to provide an additional robot "instance»» to compensate peaks in utilization. In this contribution we present our work towards such a simulation environment. We focus on two major topics a) seamless integration with the robot»s ecosystem, e.g., NAOqi and ROS b) basic human-robot-interaction capabilities that can foster behavior modeling and functional regression testing.