Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Role of the Dynamic Lung Extracellular Matrix Environment on Fibroblast Morphology and Inflammation

The extracellular matrix (ECM) supports lung tissue architecture and physiology by providing mechanical stability and elastic recoil. Over the last several decades, it has become increasingly clear that the stiffness of the ECM governs many cellular processes, including cell-phenotype and functions during development, healing, and disease. Of all the lung ECM proteins, collagen-I is the most abundant and provides tensile strength. In many fibrotic lung diseases, the expression of collagen is increased which affects the stiffness of the surrounding environment. The goal of this study was to assess the effect on fibroblast morphology, cell death, and inflammation when exposed to 2D and 3D low (0.4 mg/mL) versus high (2.0 mg/mL) collagen-I-matrix environments that model the mechanics of the breathing lung. This study demonstrates that human fetal lung fibroblasts (HFL1), grown in a 3D collagen type-I environment compared to a 2D one, do not form cells with a myofibroblast morphology, express less F-actin stress fibers, exhibit less cell death, and significantly produce less pro-inflammatory IL-6 and IL-8 cytokines. Exposure to mechanical strain to mimic breathing (0.2 Hz) led to the loss of HFL1 fibroblast dendritic extensions as well as F-actin stress fibers within the cell cytoskeleton, but did not influence cytokine production or cell death. This dynamic assay gives researchers the ability to consider the assessment of the mechanodynamic nature of the lung ECM environment in disease-relevant models and the potential of mechano-pharmacology to identify therapeutic targets for treatment.
Keeping checkpointing viable for exascale systems

Next-generation exascale systems, those capable of performing a quintillion (1018) operations per second, are expected to be delivered in the next 8–10 years. These systems, which will be 1,000 times faster than current systems, will be of unprecedented scale. As these systems continue to grow in size, faults will become increasingly common, even over the course of small calculations. Therefore, issues such as fault tolerance and reliability will limit application scalability. Current techniques to ensure progress across faults like checkpoint/restart, the dominant fault tolerance mechanism for the last 25 years, are increasingly problematic at the scales of future systems due to their excessive overheads. In this work, we evaluate a number of techniques to decrease the overhead of checkpoint/restart and keep this method viable for future exascale systems. More specifically, this work evaluates state-machine replication to dramatically increase the checkpoint interval (the time between successive checkpoints) and hash-based, probabilistic incremental checkpointing using graphics processing units to decrease the checkpoint commit time (the time to save one checkpoint). Using a combination of empirical analysis, modeling, and simulation, we study the costs and benefits of these approaches on a wide range of parameters. These results, which cover of number of high-performance computing capability workloads, different failure distributions, hardware mean time to failures, and I/O bandwidths, show the potential benefits of these techniques for meeting the reliability demands of future exascale platforms.
Health Risks of Sarcopenic Obesity in Overweight Children and Adolescents: Data from the CHILT III Programme (Cologne)

Sarcopenic obesity is increasingly found in youth, but its health consequences remain unclear. Therefore, we studied the prevalence of sarcopenia and its association with cardiometabolic risk factors as well as muscular and cardiorespiratory fitness using data from the German Children’s Health InterventionaL Trial (CHILT III) programme. In addition to anthropometric data and blood pressure, muscle and fat mass were determined with bioelectrical impedance analysis. Sarcopenia was classified via muscle-to-fat ratio. A fasting blood sample was taken, muscular fitness was determined using the standing long jump, and cardiorespiratory fitness was determined using bicycle ergometry. Of the 119 obese participants included in the analysis (47.1% female, mean age 12.2 years), 83 (69.7%) had sarcopenia. Affected individuals had higher gamma-glutamyl transferase, higher glutamate pyruvate transaminase, higher high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, higher diastolic blood pressure, and lower muscular and cardiorespiratory fitness (each p < 0.05) compared to participants who were ‘only’ obese. No differences were found in other parameters. In our study, sarcopenic obesity was associated with various disorders in children and adolescents. However, the clinical value must be tested with larger samples and reference populations to develop a unique definition and appropriate methods in terms of identification but also related preventive or therapeutic approaches.
Impact of Early Intravenous Haemostatic Drugs on Brain Haemorrhage Patients and Their Image Segmentation Based on RGB-D Images

Cerebral haemorrhage is a serious subtype of stroke, with most patients experiencing short-term haematoma enlargement leading to worsening neurological symptoms and death. The main hemostatic agents currently used for cerebral haemorrhage are antifibrinolytics and recombinant coagulation factor VIIa. However, there is no clinical evidence that patients with cerebral haemorrhage can benefit from hemostatic treatment. We provide an overview of the mechanisms of haematoma expansion in cerebral haemorrhage and the progress of research on commonly used hemostatic drugs. To improve the semantic segmentation accuracy of cerebral haemorrhage, a segmentation method based on RGB-D images is proposed. Firstly, the parallax map was obtained based on a semiglobal stereo matching algorithm and fused with RGB images to form a four-channel RGB-D image to build a sample library. Secondly, the networks were trained with 2 different learning rate adjustment strategies for 2 different structures of convolutional neural networks. Finally, the trained networks were tested and compared for analysis. The 146 head CT images from the Chinese intracranial haemorrhage image database were divided into a training set and a test set using the random number table method. The validation set was divided into four methods: manual segmentation, algorithmic segmentation, the exact Tada formula, and the traditional Tada formula to measure the haematoma volume. The manual segmentation was used as the “gold standard,” and the other three algorithms were tested for consistency. The results showed that the algorithmic segmentation had the lowest percentage error of 15.54 (8.41, 23.18) % compared to the Tada formula method.
Gibberellic and Indole Acetic Acids Producing Features of Bacteria from the Genus Lactobacillus and their Effect on Plant Development

Gibberellic acid (GA), also known as gibberellin A3, GA, and GA3, and indole acetic acid (IAA) are phytohormones that enhance plant growth and are key properties of soil microorganisms, rhizosphere bacteria, micromycetes, and lactic acid bacteria. In this research work, lactic acidsynthesizing bacteria were isolated from a variety of plants and their effects on the growth of wheat coleoptiles were studied. High growth activity of Lactobacillus bacteria and the formation of GA and IAA were detected by hyphenated HPLC-MS, and its antifungal activity was studied against some phytopathogenic micromycetes. It should be noted that despite the widespread use of lactic acid bacteria, their effect on plant development, their phytohormone forming features have poorly been studied and now, it becomes a new direction in science.
Traded and combined cooperative control of a smart wheelchair

Abstract This article deals with a human–machine cooperative system for the control of a smart wheelchair for people with motor disabilities. The choice of a traded control mode is first argued. The paper then pursues two objectives. The first is to describe the design of the cooperative system by focusing on the dialogue and the interaction between the pilot and the robot. The second objective is to introduce a new cooperative mode. In this one, three features are proposed: two semi-autonomous features, a wall following and a doorway crossing, during which the user can intervene punctually to rectify a trajectory or a path, and an assisted mode where, conversely, the machine intervenes in a manual control to avoid obstacles. This mode of intervention of an entity, human or machine, supervising a movement controlled by the other is referred as “combined control. ” Examples of scenarios exploiting the cooperative capabilities of the system are presented and discussed.
Multi-Scale U-Shape MLP for Hyperspectral Image Classification

Hyperspectral images (HSIs) have significant applications in various domains, since they register numerous semantic and spatial information in the spectral band with spatial variability of spectral signatures. Two critical challenges in identifying pixels of the HSI are, respectively, representing the correlated information among the local and global, as well as the abundant parameters of the model. To tackle this challenge, we propose a multi-scale U-shape multi-layer perceptron (MUMLP) a model consisting of the designed multi-scale channel (MSC) block and the U-shape multi-layer perceptron (UMLP) structure. MSC transforms the channel dimension and mixes spectral band feature to embed the deep-level representation adequately. UMLP is designed by the encoder–decoder structure with multi-layer perceptron layers, which is capable of compressing the large-scale parameters. Extensive experiments are conducted to demonstrate that our model can outperform state-of-the-art methods across the board on three wide-adopted public datasets, namely Pavia University (PaviaU), Houston 2013, and Houston 2018.
Proactive Anti-Eavesdropping With Trap Deployment in Wireless Networks

Due to the open nature of the wireless medium, wireless communications are especially vulnerable to eavesdropping attacks. This article designs a new wireless communication system to deal with eavesdropping attacks. The proposed system can enable a legitimate receiver to get desired messages and meanwhile an eavesdropper to hear “fake” but meaningful messages by combining confidentiality and deception, thereby confusing the eavesdropper and achieving additional concealment that further protects exchanged messages. Towards this goal, we propose techniques that can conceal exchanged messages by utilizing wireless channel characteristics between the transmitter and the receiver, as well as techniques that can attract an eavesdropper to gradually approach a trap region, where the eavesdropper can get fake messages. We also provide both theoretical and empirical analysis of the established secure channel between the transmitter and the receiver. We develop a prototype system using Universal Software Defined Radio Peripherals (USRPs). Experimental results show that an eavesdropper at a trap location can receive fake information with a bit error rate (BER) close to 0, and the transmitter with multiple antennas can successfully deploy a trap area.
Electrophysiology and Auditory Training

Electrophysiology is an objective evaluation method that allows investigating the responses of the central auditory nervous system arising from the capture of neuronal responses through surface electrodes. In addition to the possibility of investigating and diagnosing different pathologies, electrophysiology proves to be an effective and effective instrument in monitoring auditory intervention programs. Auditory rehabilitation programs is based on the premise of neuroplasticity that derives from a capacity for neuronal change due to intense sound stimulation, specific and directed to the patient’s needs. Throughout this chapter, current studies that correlate electrophysiology with auditory training programs in different clinical populations will be presented, such as: hearing in typically developed individuals, hearing and school difficulties, hearing and CAPD, hearing and otitis media, hearing and hearing loss, and hearing and voice. Electrophysiological tests are important objective measures in predicting the gains to be expected from auditory training programs.
SNP Markers and its Impact on Crop Improvement

With the advent of new technologies, methods and trends, the global progression in agricultural world is quite fast paced. However, it seems that Indian agriculture is yet to catch up to the new age technologies considering the practice of cultivation using the conventional methods can be still seen extensive. SNPs marker aided selection can prove to be an advantage for Indian agronomy. The cost effectiveness, fast and accurate mining for suitable allele specific marker and rapid detection makes this sequence-based marker the best option for a vast and versatile land like India, where its diverse topographic, geographic and climatic zones require equally distinct characteristics in crop genome to endure the environmental stress. The present review article summarizes the development of SNP markers and its applications in crop improvement.
Seaweeds of South Andaman: diversity, distribution, biochemical characterization and fatty acid profiling of some selected species

ABSTRACT The huge rise in seaweed-derived bioactive compounds demands immediate attention of under-explored seaweed species. The oceanic bio-resources in the tidal stretch of the Andaman Islands are relatively unknown. The present study explores seven intertidal regions of South Andaman Island to understand the species richness and existing seaweed biomass. Biochemical and fatty acid components were assessed for 15 seaweed species, commonly available in the study sites. A total of 67 species of seaweeds were collected during a one-year survey, most of which belonged to Chlorophyta, Rhodophyta and a few in Phaeophyta. The species richness was higher in sandy and coarse substrata, while highest species density was found on rocky shores. The P value for species richness at 5.05E-15 also validated the variation in seaweed distribution and diversity in the selected locations. The nutritional composition varied significantly among the species and was mostly characterized by higher levels of carbohydrate especially in Gracilaria spp. Carbohydrate content ranging from 3.52–48.22% accounted for most of the nutrient component. The overall protein ranged between 2.41–18.67%, whereas the total lipid varied from 2.16–11.90% and about 10% of total lipid content was available in most species. The significant outcome of this study was the detection of 6.34% EPA in Boergesenia forbesii and 2.40% of gamma linolenic acid in Acetabularia acetabulum which could be of significant importance in the food, bioenergy, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries.
MnBi2Se4-Based Magnetic Modulated Heterostructures

Thin films of magnetic topological insulators (TIs) are expected to exhibit a quantized anomalous Hall effect when the magnetizations on the top and bottom surfaces are parallel and a quantized topological magnetoelectric effect when the magnetizations have opposite orientations. Progress in the observation of these quantum effects was achieved earlier in the films with modulated magnetic doping. On the other hand, the molecular-beam-epitaxy technique allowing the growth of stoichiometric magnetic van der Waals blocks in combination with blocks of topological insulator was developed. This approach should allow the construction of modulated heterostructures with the desired architecture. In the present paper, based on the first-principles calculations, we study the electronic structure of symmetric thin film heterostructures composed of magnetic MnBi2Se4 blocks (septuple layers, SLs) and blocks of Bi2Se3 TI (quintuple layers, QLs) in dependence on the depth of the magnetic SLs relative to the film surface and the TI spacer between them. Among considered heterostructures we have revealed those characterized by nontrivial band topology.
Covalently Immobilized Regenerable Immunoaffinity Layer with Orientation-Controlled Antibodies Based on Z-Domain Autodisplay

A regenerable immunoaffinity layer comprising covalently immobilized orientation-controlled antibodies was developed for use in a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) biosensor. For antibody orientation control, antibody-binding Z-domain-autodisplaying Escherichia coli (E. coli) cells and their outer membrane (OM) were utilized, and a disuccinimidyl crosslinker was employed for covalent antibody binding. To fabricate the regenerable immunoaffinity layer, capture antibodies were bound to autodisplayed Z-domains, and then treated with the crosslinker for chemical fixation to the Z-domains. Various crosslinkers, namely disuccinimidyl glutarate (DSG), disuccinimidyl suberate (DSS) and poly (ethylene glycol)-ylated bis (sulfosuccinimidyl)suberate (BS(PEG)5), were evaluated, and DSS at a concentration of 500 μM was confirmed to be optimal. The E. coli-cell-based regenerable HRP immunoassay was evaluated employing three sequential HRP treatment and regeneration steps. Then, the Oms of E. coli cells were isolated and layered on a microplate and regenerable OM-based HRP immunoassaying was evaluated. Five HRP immunoassays with four regeneration steps were found to be feasible. This regenerable, covalently immobilized, orientation-controlled OM-based immunoaffinity layer was applied to an SPR biosensor, which was capable of quantifying C-reactive protein (CRP). Five regeneration cycles were repeated using the demonstrated immunoaffinity layer with a signal difference of <10%.
MTMR14 Alleviates Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease as a Regulator in Inflammation and Emphysema

Extensive inflammation and apoptosis in structural cells of the lung are responsible for the progression and pathogenesis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Myotubularin-related protein 14 (MTMR14) has been shown to participate in various biological processes, including apoptosis, inflammation, and autophagy. Nonetheless, the role of MTMR14 in COPD remains elusive. In the present study, we explored the expression of MTMR14 in human lung tissues and investigated the effects of overexpressed MTMR14 on in vitro and in vivo COPD models. Moreover, one of the possible mechanisms of MTMR14 alleviating COPD was explored based on mitochondrial function and mitophagy homeostasis. The results showed that MTMR14 expression was reduced in COPD patients' lungs in comparison to control subjects. MTMR14 overexpression inhibited cigarette smoke extract-induced inflammation and apoptosis and improved mitochondrial function and mitophagy in vitro. Further verification was carried out in COPD model mice. MTMR14 overexpression inhibited lung inflammation and reduced levels of IL-6 and KC in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid, as well as prevented emphysema and a decline in lung function. Furthermore, MTMR14 overexpression improved mitochondrial function and mitophagy to a certain extent. Collectively, our data support the hypothesis that MTMR14 participates in the pathogenesis of COPD. Improving mitochondrial function and mitophagy homeostasis may be one of the mechanisms by which MTMR14 alleviates COPD and may potentially be a novel therapeutic target for COPD.
Design and management of software development projects under rework uncertainty: a study using system dynamics

ABSTRACT Despite proper planning and scheduling, project execution is challenging, and one critical factor is uncertainty duringthe project implementation process. This study presents a system dynamics (SD) model as a decision-support system for model-based decision-making that considers the uncertainty of rework generation by predicting dynamic and complex project behaviour. The SD model was developedalong with a rework cycle that principally contributes to rework generation. The uncertainty ofrework generation and project performance werevisualized and integrated into decision-making components.Six different scenarios involving hiring and overtime usage were explored to ensure project performance whendesigning a feasible project plan.The novelty of this study lies inthe decision-making process for obtaining the best planning alternatives under uncertainty and project conditions. Actions should be implemented thatpredict and analyse improvised project planningprocesses and control model-based decision-making under uncertainty.
Harmine reinforces the effects of regorafenib on suppressing cell proliferation and inducing apoptosis in liver cancer cells

The overall outcomes for patients with advanced liver cancer are far from satisfactory, and the development of more effective therapeutic strategies for liver cancer is required. Sulforhodamine blue and colony formation assays were performed to detect the proliferation of liver certain cancer cells, including HepG2 and Hep3B. Western blotting was also preformed to detect the expression of indicated proteins, including cleaved-caspase-3, cleaved-poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase, dual-specificity tyrosine phosphorylation kinase 1A (DYRK1A), PARP-1/2, GAPDH, myeloid cell leukemia-1, phosphorylated-AKT (Ser473), caspase-3, α-tubulin and AKT. PI staining was used to detect cell death. In the present study, DYRK1A knockdown significantly enhanced the anti-liver cancer effect of regorafenib in vitro. Furthermore, DYRK1A inhibitor harmine together with regorafenib provided synergistic anti-liver cancer activity by suppressing cell proliferation. In addition, harmine significantly enhanced regorafenib-induced cell death in liver cancer cells. It has been reported that AKT signaling is activated in regorafenib-resistant cancer cells and plays a crucial role in the regulation of cellular sensitivity to regorafenib. In the present study, AKT was activated in regorafenib-treated cells, and harmine could suppress the activation of AKT and reinforce the anti-cancer effects of regorafenib via regulating AKT in liver cancer cells. These data indicated that harmine enhanced the anti-cancer effects of regorafenib on suppressing cell proliferation and inducing apoptosis in liver cancer cells via regulating the activation of AKT, and harmine plus regorafenib may be a potential therapeutic regimen for treating patients with liver cancer.
Hypoglycemic Effect of Lycopersicon esculentum (Tomato) on Alloxan-Induced Diabetic Rats

Diabetes mellitus has been a key degenerative disease affecting the world’s population. Lycopersicon esculentum (Tomato), a fruit consumed by many and known to have certain phytochemicals was used to determine its hypoglycemic effect on alloxan induced diabetic rats. The tomato was dried, pulverized and dissolved in distilled water and administered orally to albino rats in various concentrations according to their body weight. 30 albino rats were divided into 6 groups of 5 rats each. Groups I and II served as normal and diabetic control respectively, while groups III to VI were induced with diabetes and treated with different concentrations of the prepared tomato. After 14 days of treatment with various concentrations of tomato, there was a marked decrease in blood sugar levels at all the study concentrations. The result of the lipid profile a significant increase (p<0.05) in total cholesterol (150.67±7.02 mg/dL), triglyceride (159.33±5.03 mg/dL), LDL-Cholesterol (77.53±1.83 mg/dL) and a decrease in HCL-Cholesterol (51.67±1.00 mg/dL) levels in untreated diabetic rats when compared to the normal control. Upon treatment with 200 mg/kg of tomato, there was a significant decrease (p< 0.05) in the levels of Triglyceride, total cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol and an increase in the HDL-cholesterol. These results suggest that tomato may have the ability to reduce blood sugar level and the risk of cardiovascular disease.