Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Physiological risk of falls, physical and aerobic capacity in community-dwelling elderly

Introduction: Falls are multifactorial and are related to the aging process, reduced functional capacity, comorbidities, sensory deficits, muscle weakness, postural instability and decreased protective response. Objective: To verify the correlation between physiological risk of falls and physical and aerobic capacity of the community-dwelling elderly. Method: Participated elderly individuals from the community, aged ≥65 years, without distinction of sex, race, and/or social class. We excluded cognitive impairments, locomotion incapacity, neurological diseases or sequelae, and/or severe pain that prevented the performance of the tests. We evaluated risk of falls (Physiological Profile Assessment PPA), physical capacity (Short Physical Performance Battery SPPB) and aerobic capacity (Shuttle Walk Test ISWT). Results: Participated 59 elderly (71.8±5.0 ys). The mean performance in PPA was 0.4±0.4; SPPB was 10.4±1.7 and ISWT was 281±111.7 meters. PPA presented a moderate and statistically significant correlation (P<0.001) for SPPB (r= -0.53) and ISWT (r= -0.46). Conclusion: There is a moderate correlation between the physiological risk *LPL: PhD, email: lygiapl@ufmg.br JSS: MS, email: jedersonsoares@yahoo.com. br DAGP: PhD, email: danielleufmg@gmail.com MGA: PhD, email: marcellagassis@gmail.com LSMP: PhD, email: leanismp.bh@terra.com. br
Effect of TIMBD on Neurotoxicity Associated with HIV-1 Gp120 and Tat

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)-associated neurocognitive disorder (HAND) is one of the undermining disorders that affects majority of HIV infected patients. Patients with HAND suffer from both cognitive and motor dysfunction which is characterized by memory loss and changes in personality. HIV-1 gp120 and Tat are essential proteins that are involved in neurotoxicity. HIV-1 gp120 and Tat play a role in HAND associated oxidative stress and neuroinflammation produced in astrocytes, which is considered a major contributor for damage in CNS. HIV-1 Tat is able to affect behavior by modifying the neurotransmission genes. Natural compounds have been studied extensively as therapeutic intervention agents in neurodegenerative diseases. However, poor bioavailability and limited potency of natural compounds limited their successful use in humans. In an effort to develop a new chemical that can overcome the pitfalls associated with natural compounds, our laboratory has synthesized an analog of resveratrol 4-(E)-{(p-tolylimino)-methylbenzene-1,2-diol} (TIMBD). TIMBD is suggested to have powerful neuroprotective effects based on our preliminary findings. The following study was based on the hypothesis that our newly synthesized compound TIMBD is able to decrease oxidative stress and neuroinflammation associated with gp120 in astrocytes and protects astrocytes from cell death. Furthermore, it is hypothesized that TIMBD improves the behavioral deficits associated with HIV-1 Tat using Tat-tg mice and the mechanism is through modulation of neurotransmitter genes.
Evaluation of radial artery endothelial functions in transradial coronary angiography according to different radial access sites

Objective Radial endothelial dysfunction may occur after transradial coronary angiography (CAG). This study aimed to make a comparative evaluation of the radial endothelial functions before and after catheterization between three different radial access sites: left radial (LR) artery, left distal radial (LDR) artery, and right radial (RR) artery. Methods Seventy patients scheduled for elective transradial CAG and intervention from September 6, 2017 to March 6, 2018 were consecutively enrolled. Radial artery endothelial functions of the catheterization arm were measured by flow-mediated vasodilation (FMD) upon admission, at 24 hours, and 2 months following the procedure. Results LR access was used in 17 patients, whereas the LDR and the RR access were used in 27 and 26 patients, respectively. Basal radial diameters and FMD median values measured on the intervention arm were found to be similar between groups (LR 3.04±0.29 mm, 13.33%; LDR 2.79±0.31 mm; 13.64%; RR 2.74±0.29 mm; 12.52%, p=0.952). The radial vasodilation percentage change expressed as median decreased in all groups 24 hours after the procedure; however, the one with the LDR access was found to be significantly higher than with the LR (9.7% vs. 6.25% p=0.013) and the RR access (9.7% vs. 3.39 p<0.001). A partial recovery of endothelial functions was seen at 2 months after the procedure, approximating to basal values (11.11%; 12%; 10.62%, p=0.079, respectively). Conclusion Radial artery functions deteriorate early after transradial catheterization. The LDR access seems safer than the other conventional radial access sites in terms of preservation of radial endothelial functions.
Resveratrol Enhances Apoptotic and Oxidant Effects of Paclitaxel through TRPM2 Channel Activation in DBTRG Glioblastoma Cells

Numerous studies have reported a strong association between increased production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and the pathobiology of several diseases, and cancer in particular. Therefore, manipulation of cellular oxidative stress levels represents an important therapeutic target. Recently, resveratrol (RESV), a naturally occurring phytochemical, has been shown to sensitize several cell lines to the anticancer effects of other chemotherapeutic agents, including paclitaxel (PAX). However, the molecular mechanisms of action of RESV through oxidative sensitive TRPM2 channel activation remain unclear. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of combination therapy of RESV and PAX on activation of TRPM2 in DBTRG glioblastoma cells. DBTRG cells were divided into four treatment groups: control, RESV (50 μM), PAX (50 μM), and PAX + RESV for 24 hours. Our data shows that markers for apoptosis, mitochondrial membrane depolarization and mitochondrial function, intracellular steady-state ROS levels, caspase 3 activity, TRPM2 current density, and Ca2+ florescence intensity were significantly increased in DBTRG cells following treatment with PAX and RESV, respectively, although cell viability was also decreased by these treatments. These biochemical markers were further increased to favor the anticancer effects of PAX in DBTRG cells in combination with RESV. The PAX and RESV-mediated increase in current density and Ca2+ florescence intensity was decreased with a TRPM2 blocker. This suggests that for this combination therapy to have a substantial effect on apoptosis and cell viability, the TRPM2 channel must be stimulated.
Analysis of Allergenic Proteins by Mass Spectrometry

The general aim of the activities conducted in the framework of my PhD were to learn modern techniques for analyzing proteins by mass spectrometry (MS) and then to apply these techniques and approaches to the analysis of allergenic proteins contained in foods. My research activities were conducted at the Laboratory of Protein Chemistry of CRIBI, University of Padua, where previously I have conducted the research for my Thesis for the Doctor degree in Pharmaceutical Biotechnologies. During the fist year of my PhD I have concluded the Thesis project on the amyloid aggregation of -lactalbumin, a model protein utilized for investigating molecular aspects of protein amyloidogenesis. The results of this research were quite interesting and indeed they have been published in an international journal. During the first two years I acquired a solid knowledge on several aspects of the MS methodology and I was able to learn the theory and practice of several modern techniques and approaches in this ambit. The specific aim was to analyze allergenic proteins contained in complex matrices as foods and to this aim several proteins were extracted and purified from several food samples. The research has been focused mostly on the allergenic proteins from milk and eggs, known to cause widespread allergies. The proteins of interest were analyzed by using several chromatographic and electrophoretic techniques and also by means of HPLC connected to a tandem MS electrospray instrument. I was able to show that MS techniques can be used to identify allergenic proteins even when contained in very complex mixtures. Therefore, these MS techniques perhaps can be used as an alternative to the immunochemical methods nowadays in use for detecting allergens. I have also analyzed the chemical modifications that allergenic proteins suffer during several industrial treatments of foods, including heat treatment. During the third year of my PhD I spent a six months period at the Biochemistry Laboratory of the Imperial College in London, being involved in a project aimed to study in a large scale the proteins of the mosquito Anopheles gambiae. The MS analyses were focused on the proteins responsible of the mating behaviour of A. gambiae, hoping to identify a target for controlling the behaviour of this vector of the malaria disease. Summing up, besides the publication dealing with amyloid aggregates of beta- lactalbumin, this PhD Thesis is composed by a major part dealing with MS analysis of allergenic proteins and by a minor one dealing with MS analysis of proteins from A. gambiae.
A Novel High-Gain DC-DC Converter Applied in Fuel Cell Vehicles

The DC-DC converter for fuel cell vehicles should be characterized by high-gain, low voltage stress, small size and high-efficiency. However, conventional two-level, three-level and cascaded boost converters cannot meet the requirements. A new non-isolated DC-DC converter with switched-capacitor and switched-inductor is proposed in this paper, which can obtain high-gain, wide input voltage range, low voltage stresses across components and common ground structure. In this paper, the operating principle, component parameters design, and comparisons with other high-gain converters are analyzed. Moreover, the state-space averaging method and small-signal modeling method are adopted to obtain the dynamic model of converter. Finally, simulation and experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed topology. The input voltage of the experimental prototype ranges from 25 V to 80 V. The rated output voltage is 200 V and rated power is 100W. The maximum efficiency is 93.1% under rated state. The proposed converter is suitable for fuel cell vehicles.
Enhancement of photovoltaic performance using a novel photocathode based on poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)/Ag–CuO nanocomposite in dye-sensitized solar cells

A novel counter electrode (CE) based on a silver and copper oxide nanocomposite is developed and characterized by XRD and FE-SEM. A polymeric system containing poly(3,4ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) is employed as the conductive polymer to prepare a transparent CE for a dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) device. Electrochemical analysis is used to study the catalytic activity of the reduction of triiodide ions in different DSSC-based CEs. To study the effect of photoelectrode modification on charge-transfer resistance, alternating current impedance spectroscopy is carried out. Power conversion efficiency and short-circuit current density (JSC) increase from 8.01% to 9.06% and 16.18 to 17.79 mA/cm2, respectively, due to the significantly improved electrical conductivity and electrocatalytic activity of the novel PEDOT/Ag–CuO nanocomposite-based CE.
Remote Sensing Image Scene Classification Based on an Enhanced Attention Module

Classifying different satellite remote sensing scenes is a very important subtask in the field of remote sensing image interpretation. With the recent development of convolutional neural networks (CNNs), remote sensing scene classification methods have continued to improve. However, the use of recognition methods based on CNNs is challenging because the background of remote sensing image scenes is complex and many small objects often appear in these scenes. In this letter, to improve the feature extraction and generalization abilities of deep neural networks so that they can learn more discriminative features, an enhanced attention module (EAM) was designed. Our proposed method achieved very competitive performance—94.29% accuracy on NWPU-RESISC45 and state-of-the-art performance on different remote sensing scene recognition data sets. The experimental results show that the proposed method can learn more discriminative features than state-of-the-art methods, and it can effectively improve the accuracy of scene classification for remote sensing images. Our code is available at https://github.com/williamzhao95/Pay-More-Attention.
Crystallographic studies of Rhizomucor miehei aspartic proteinase and its pepstatin A complex

The crystal structures of Rhizomucor miehei as partic proteinase (RMP) and its pepstatin A complex have been determined at 2.15 A and 2.7 A, respectively. The structure of the native enzyme was refined to a crystallographic R-factor of 21.5% (R-free = 28.1 Oh). RMP contains two domains that consist predominantly of psheets. A large substrate binding cleft is clearly visible between the two domains, and the two catalytic residues Asp38 and Asp237 are located in the middle of the cleft with a water molecule bridging the carboxyl groups of Asp38 and Asp237. It is proposed that the optimal pH of each aspartic proteinase is determined by the electrostatic potential at the active site, which, in turn, is determined by the positions and orientations of all the residues near the active site. RMP is the most glycosylated and most thermally stable among the aspartic proteinases. It is proposed that the highly flexible carbohydrates act as heat reservoirs to stabilize the conformation of RMP and thereby provide the enzyme with high thermal stability. Three-dimensional structural and sequence alignments of RMP with other aspartic proteinases suggest that RMP and Mucor pusillus aspartic proteinase (MPP) diverged from the main stream of aspartic proteinases at an early stage of evolution. The structure of the RMP-pepstatin A complex was refined to a crystallographic R-value of 19.3% (R-free = 28.0%). In the final model, a pepstatin A molecule fits into the large substrate-binding cleft between the two domains of RMP in an extended conformation up to the alanine residue at the P2' position. The statine residue at the "P3'-P4'" position forms an inverse y-turn (P3'-PI '), with its leucyl side chain binding into the S1' subsite. The inhibitor interacts with the residues of the substrate binding pocket by either hydrogen bonds or hydrophobic interactions, or both.
Investigation of Propolis and Boron Containing Disinfectants and Comparison with WHO-Recommended Formulation against COVID-19

Objective: The need for disinfectants has increased worldwide due to the developing pandemic COVID-19 If access to water is limited, the use of alcohol-based disinfectant formulations recommended by the WHO In this study, disinfectant gel formulations containing propolis and boric acid with lower alcohol levels than the WHO-recommended formulation were developed Materials and Methods: Four different gels formulations containing propolis and boric acid were developed A gelling agent was added to the developed formulations to make it remain longer on the skin than liquid solution formulations Texture profile analyses, spreadability, and bioadhesion tests of the formulations were evaluated After the characterization studies, bactericidal and fungicidal activity assays were performed with final and the WHO-recommended formulations Results: The results showed that increasing of gelling agent increased the viscosity, bioadhesion and textural values The final formulation containing propolis and boric acid had acceptable gel properties Propolis and boric acid containing disinfectant gel formulation included lower alcohol level than the WHO-recommended formulation showed a similar bactericidal and fungicidal activity with WHO-recommended formulation Conclusions: Propolis and boric acid-containing disinfectant gel formulations were successfully produced Final formulation with a lower alcohol level might be an alternative for the WHO-recommended formulation with similar effectiveness
Robust Dictionary Learning and Sparse Coding With Riemannian Geometry Preserving Method in Symmetric Matrices Inner Product Space

Existing Dictionary Learning and Sparse Coding (DLSC) algorithms for Symmetric Positive Definite (SPD) matrices usually adopt Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space as workspace to perform necessary linear operations. But those methods heavily rely on ideal kernel maps and they are lack of robustness when facing different SPD data, especially in the case of high-sparsity coding. Different from existing methods, we explore a new workspace called Symmetric Matrices Inner Product Space (SMIPS) for modeling robust DLSC of SPD matrices. SMIPS, which can be treated as the minimal linear expansion space of SPD manifold, is a linear space equipped with a pre-defined inner product so it supports linear operations. Modelling DLSC in SMIPS is more intuitive, and SPD data can preserve matrix form in SMIPS. Then, in this paper, a Riemannian Geometry Preserving (RGP) method based on graph-regularized is proposed to include the Riemannian geometric information of original SPD data, so that improves the discriminability of sparse codes, and a sparse coding algorithm is developed to acquire sparse codes of SPD matrices in SMIPS efficiently, which extend the feature-sign search to such matrix space. For dictionary learning, an overall learning strategy utilizing the closed form solution of RGP codes is proposed to speed up the iterative dictionary learning process. Experiments on several computer vision tasks show that our algorithm is more robust even with high-sparsity coding across different datasets and outperforms other comparative algorithms in terms of recognition accuracy and learning efficiency, which also demonstrates the validity of SMIPS as a workspace.
Comparative Study of Image Quality in Time-Correlated Single-Photon Counting Computed Tomography

Computed tomography (CT) is widely used in medical imaging to reconstruct a 3-D image of a patient. To limit the radiation dose applied to patients, researches focus on reducing the statistical noise or increasing the contrast in the image. Recently, time-correlated single-photon counting (TCSPC) CT—also known as time-of-flight (TOF) CT—has been proposed to reduce scatter contribution to images and its negative effects on image quality. This technique uses the TOF information of X-ray photons to sort out scattered and ballistic photons without energy measurement. This article compares simulated images quality obtained from different CT scanner implementations (fan-beam, cone-beam with and without anti-scatter grids, and TCSPC). The contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR), the scattered-to-primary ratio (SPR), the inaccuracy of the computed attenuation value, and the cup artifact magnitude are used as comparison metrics to study the overall sensitivity of the different scanner implementations to scatter contribution. Using timing jitters of 200, 100, and 50 ps, the simulations demonstrate that the TCSPC implementation improves the CNR, accuracy, and cup artifact levels of the reconstructed images, when compared to a cone-beam CT, by reducing its scatter contribution. A 10-ps timing jitter on the measured time of flight leads to an image quality similar to fan-beam CT.
Secure Network-on-Chip Against Black Hole and Tampering Attacks

The Network-on-Chip (NoC) has become the communication heart of MultiprocessorsSystem-on-Chip (MPSoC). Therefore, it has been subject to a plethora of security threats to degrade the system performance or steal sensitive information. Due to the globalization of the modern semiconductor industry, many different parties take part in the hardware design of the system. As a result, the NoC could be infected with a malicious circuit, known as a Hardware Trojan (HT), to leave a back door for security breach purposes. HTs are smartly designed to be too small to be uncovered by offline circuit-level testing, so the system requires an online monitoring to detect and prevent the HT in runtime. This dissertation focuses on HTs inside the router of a NoC designed by a third party. It explores two HT-based threat models for the MPSoC, where the NoC experiences packetloss and packet-tampering once the HT in the infected router is activated and is in the attacking state. Extensive experiments for each proposed architecture were conducted using a cycle-accurate simulator to demonstrate its effectiveness on the performance of the NoCbased system. The first threat model is the Black Hole Router (BHR) attack, where it silently discards the packets that are passing through without further announcement. The effect of the BHR is presented and analyzed to show the potency of the attack on a NoC-based system. A countermeasure protocol is proposed to detect the BHR at runtime and counteract the deliberate packet-dropping attack with a 26.9% area overhead, an average 21.31% performance overhead and a 22% energy consumption overhead. The protocol is extended to provide vii an efficient and power-gated scheme to enhance the NoC throughput and reduce the energy consumption by using end-to-end (e2e) approach. The power-gated e2e technique locates the BHR and avoids it with a 1% performance overhead and a 2% energy consumption overhead. The second threat model is a packet-integrity attack, where the HT tampers with the packet to apply a denial-of-service attack, steal sensitive information, gain unauthorized access, or misroute the packet to an unintended node. An authentic and secure NoC platform is proposed to detect and countermeasure the packet-tampering attack to maintain data-integrity and authenticity while keeping its secrecy with a 24.21% area overhead. The proposed NoC architecture is not only able to detect the attack, but also locates the infected router and isolates it from the network.
Diet of Crossodactylus timbuhy (Anura: Hylodidae) in the Reserva Biológica Augusto Ruschi, state of Espírito Santo, Brazil

Abstract: Anurans are predator and prey, playing an important role in ecosystem functioning. The diet composition is closely related to feeding strategy, and the information about prey items is useful to understand intra and interspecific interactions in trophic webs. Here we determined diet composition, feeding strategy, and relation between prey ingestion and body measures of Crossodactylus timbuhy, a recently described anuran species. We found 466 prey items from 20 prey categories in the stomach of 66 specimens (15 males and 51 females) of C. timbuhy. The diet consists mostly of Formicidae and Coleoptera, the items with the highest number, frequency of occurrence and prey importance. The diet composition was relatively similar to other species of Crossodactylus. Prey volume was positively related to frog size and weight, suggesting frogs may feed upon any prey they can swallow. Diet showed some variation between sexes. Despite females were larger and heavier than males, females had higher consumption of smaller prey, and ingested a larger number of prey categories. We suggest C. timbuhy has an invertebrate-opportunistic feeding habit. It is likely C. timbuhy uses a combination of ‘sit-and-wait’ and ‘active search’ strategies due to high consumption of both highly mobile and sedentary prey.