Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lactic Acid Conversion to Acrylic Acid Over Fluoride-Substituted Hydroxyapatites

One of the most interesting intermediates for the chemical industry is acrylic acid, which can be derived from lactic acid by catalytic dehydration in the gas phase. The realization of this reaction is complex due to a strong thermal activation leading to the formation of undesired by-products (acetaldehyde, propanoic acid…) as well as polymerization. We studied this reaction over hydroxyapatites modified by substitution of the hydroxyl groups by fluoride. This notably enabled increasing the selectivity to acrylic acid while reducing the formation of the undesired acetaldehyde. Introduction of fluoride induced a modification of the phosphate (PO43-) groups. In the presence of water, fluoride prevented the formation of hydrogenophosphate species (HPO42-), which are well-known acid sites responsible for the formation of acetaldehyde by decarboxylation/decarbonylation. Further, we evidenced an important impact of fluoride substitution on crystallinity, specific surface area and on the surface Ca/P ratio. This latter is known to be a key parameter to control the acidity and the basicity of the hydroxyapatites. Using FT-IR spectroscopy with propyne as a probe molecule, we could show that lactic acid was concertedly adsorbed on basic and acid sites, which might be at the origin of the observed superior performances.
Repurposed Analog of GLP-1 Ameliorates Hyperglycemia in Type 1 Diabetic Mice Through Pancreatic Cell Reprogramming

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease caused by the destruction of the insulin-producing β-cells. An ideal immunotherapy should combine the blockade of the autoimmune response with the recovery of functional target cell mass. With the aim to develop new therapies for type 1 diabetes that could contribute to β-cell mass restoration, a drug repositioning analysis based on systems biology was performed to identify the β-cell regenerative potential of commercially available compounds. Drug repositioning is a strategy used for identifying new uses for approved drugs that are outside the scope of the medical indication. A list of 28 non-synonymous repurposed drug candidates was obtained, and 16 were selected as diabetes mellitus type 1 treatment candidates regarding pancreatic β-cell regeneration. Drugs with poor safety profile were further filtered out. Lastly, we selected liraglutide for its predictive efficacy values for neogenesis, transdifferentiation of α-cells, and/or replication of pre-existing β-cells. Liraglutide is an analog of glucagon-like peptide-1, a drug used in patients with type 2 diabetes. Liraglutide was tested in immunodeficient NOD-Scid IL2rg−/− (NSG) mice with type 1 diabetes. Liraglutide significantly improved the blood glucose levels in diabetic NSG mice. During the treatment, a significant increase in β-cell mass was observed due to a boost in β-cell number. Both parameters were reduced after withdrawal. Interestingly, islet bihormonal glucagon+insulin+ cells and insulin+ ductal cells arose during treatment. In vitro experiments showed an increase of insulin and glucagon gene expression in islets cultured with liraglutide in normoglycemia conditions. These results point to β-cell replacement, including transdifferentiation and neogenesis, as aiding factors and support the role of liraglutide in β-cell mass restoration in type 1 diabetes. Understanding the mechanism of action of this drug could have potential clinical relevance in this autoimmune disease.
The Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences on Mobile Phone Addiction in Chinese College Students: A Serial Multiple Mediator Model

Mobile phone addiction is a universal phenomenon that has attracted a lot of attention in recent years. Previous researches revealed a significant relation between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and addiction. This study further investigated the association between ACEs and mobile phone addiction, and the mediating effects of attachment styles and interpersonal relationships. The cross-sectional design and multiple questionnaires, namely, the Revised Adverse Childhood Experience Questionnaire, the Mobile Phone Addiction Index, the Revised Adult Attachment Scale (AAS), and the Interpersonal Relationship Comprehensive Diagnostic Scale (IRCDS) were used in the sample of 345 university students. Correlation analysis revealed that adverse childhood experience, attachment anxiety, attachment avoidance, interpersonal relationship, and mobile phone addiction were significantly positively correlated with each other. Results of regression analysis showed that attachment style and interpersonal relationship played multiple mediation roles in the association between adverse childhood experience and mobile phone addiction. That is, (1) adverse childhood experience was positively related to mobile phone addiction, (2) both attachment anxiety and interpersonal relationship played partial and parallel mediating roles between adverse childhood experience and mobile phone addiction, and (3) attachment anxiety/avoidance and interpersonal relationship mediated the relationship between adverse childhood experience and mobile phone addiction sequentially. These results indicated that mobile phone addiction among college students who had adverse childhood experience can be relieved by way of the remission of attachment anxiety, reduction of attachment avoidance, and improvement of interpersonal relationship.
Thanatin Impairs Lipopolysaccharide Transport Complex Assembly by Targeting LptC–LptA Interaction and Decreasing LptA Stability

The outer membrane (OM) of Gram-negative bacteria is a highly selective permeability barrier due to its asymmetric structure with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in the outer leaflet. In Escherichia coli, LPS is transported to the cell surface by the LPS transport (Lpt) system composed of seven essential proteins forming a transenvelope bridge. Transport is powered by the ABC transporter LptB2FGC, which extracts LPS from the inner membrane (IM) and transfers it, through LptC protein, to the periplasmic protein LptA. Then, LptA delivers LPS to the OM LptDE translocon for final assembly at the cell surface. The Lpt protein machinery operates as a single device, since depletion of any component leads to the accumulation of a modified LPS decorated with repeating units of colanic acid at the IM outer leaflet. Moreover, correct machine assembly is essential for LPS transit and disruption of the Lpt complex results in LptA degradation. Due to its vital role in cell physiology, the Lpt system represents a good target for antimicrobial drugs. Thanatin is a naturally occurring antimicrobial peptide reported to cause defects in membrane assembly and demonstrated in vitro to bind to the N-terminal β-strand of LptA. Since this region is involved in both LptA dimerization and interaction with LptC, we wanted to elucidate the mechanism of inhibition of thanatin and discriminate whether its antibacterial effect is exerted by the disruption of the interaction of LptA with itself or with LptC. For this purpose, we here implemented the Bacterial Adenylate Cyclase Two-Hybrid (BACTH) system to probe in vivo the Lpt interactome in the periplasm. With this system, we found that thanatin targets both LptC–LptA and LptA–LptA interactions, with a greater inhibitory effect on the former. We confirmed in vitro the disruption of LptC–LptA interaction using two different biophysical techniques. Finally, we observed that in cells treated with thanatin, LptA undergoes degradation and LPS decorated with colanic acid accumulates. These data further support inhibition or disruption of Lpt complex assembly as the main killing mechanism of thanatin against Gram-negative bacteria.
Nitrogen Balance in Female Japanese National Handball Players During Training Camp

Protein requirements for athletes are affected by various factors, including distribution and quality (i. e., amino acid composition) of protein ingestion throughout the day. However, little is known about the protein requirements of elite female athletes engaging in team sports. This study aimed to determine the nitrogen balance and distribution of protein and amino acid intake in elite female handball athletes during training camp. In observational study design, 11 female Japanese national handball players (age 26.9 ± 4.9 years) participated in a 5-days experiment. Nitrogen balance was calculated from the daily protein intake assessed by dietary records and urinary nitrogen excretion. Amino acid intake amounts were organized based on six eating occasions. The average and population-safe protein intake for zero nitrogen balance were estimated as 1.57 and 1.93 g/kg/day, respectively. The protein intake at breakfast, lunch, and dinner and the leucine intake in the three main meals and the morning snack were higher than is recommended by current guidelines for maximizing muscle protein synthesis. The population-safe protein intake in elite female handball athletes was within the range of the current recommendations for athletes (1.2–2.0 g/kg/day). Our results show that it may be possible to improve the distribution and quality of protein ingestion after exercise and before sleep.
Use of Reticulated Hyaluronic Acid Alone or Associated With Ozone Gas in the Treatment of Osteoarthritis Due to Hip Dysplasia in Dogs

This study aimed to evaluate reticulated hyaluronic acid alone or associated with ozone gas in the treatment of osteoarthritis due to hip dysplasia in dogs. Fourteen client-owned dogs were randomly assigned into two groups: Group 1—single intra-articular injection of hyaluronic acid; Group 2—single intra-articular infiltration injection of hyaluronic acid associated with ozone gas. Each hip joint received an average of 0.75 mL of reticulated hyaluronic acid ultrasound-guided. Ozone gas at a dose of 45 μg/mL was incorporated into hyaluronic acid by insufflation. Dogs were evaluated for body condition scoring, orthopedic examination and radiographic scores of the hip joints, goniometric measurements of the hip joints, visual gait score, and kinetic analysis. The evaluations were conducted immediately before treatments (M0), and at days 30 (M1), 60 (M2), and 90 (M3) after treatments. There were no significant differences in body mass and body condition scoring (5-point scale) in each group in all evaluation moments. The scores of orthopedic examination of the hip joints showed statistical differences in each group between moments (M0 > M3), but differences were not observed between groups. No statistical differences were found for radiographic scores in each group between moments, but differences were observed between groups immediately prior to treatments (G1 > G2) and 90 (G1 > G2) after treatments. Goniometric measurements of hip flexion and extension showed no significant differences in each group between moments or between groups. No statistical differences between groups were found concerning the lameness score. There were significant differences for lameness score among moments in Group 1, being M0 > M2 and M0 > M3, and Group 2 in which M0 > M1, M0 > M2, and M0 > M3. The mean percentage of change of PVF and VI between M3 and M0 in Group 1 was almost null and in Group 2 was positive, being 31.1 ± 29.4 and 10.6 ± 25.4, respectively. In conclusion, the intra-articular viscosupplementation alone or associated with ozone gas allowed improvement of lameness scores and orthopedic examination score. In Group 2 the association of ozone gas had better results on kinetic analysis.
Designing Heterodimeric Two-stranded α-Helical Coiled-coils

The E/K coil, a heterodimeric coiled-coil, has been designed as a universal peptide capture and delivery system for use in applications such as biosensors and as an expression and affinity purification tag. In this design, heterodimer formation is specified through the placement of charged residues at the e and g positions of the heptad repeat such that the E coil contains all glutamic acid residues at these positions, and the K coil contains all lysine residues at these positions. The affinity and stability of the E/K coil have been modified to allow a greater range of conditions for association and dissociation. Increasing the hydrophobicity of the coiled-coil core, by substituting isoleucine for valine, gave increases in stability of 2.81 and 3.73 kcal/mol (0.47 kcal/mol/substitution). Increasing the α-helical propensity of residues outside the core, by substituting alanine for serine, yielded increases in stability of 2.68 and 3.28 kcal/mol (0.41 and 0.45 kcal/mol/substitution). These sequence changes yielded a series of heterodimeric coiled-coils whose stabilities varied from 6.8 to 11.2 kcal/mol, greatly expanding their scope for use in protein engineering and biomedical applications.
A study on the effects of head mounted displays movement and image movement on Virtual Reality sickness

Virtual Reality sickness will make users discomfort. We tested 26 volunteers wearing Oculus Rift. Three different experiments were conducted: (1,2) the effect of VR head-mounted display device (HMD) movement (un)synchronizes with inclination of the image on VR sickness; (3) the effect of image movement direction on VR sickness. The Simulator Sickness Questionnaire was filled by the participants. The results showed that the VR sickness symptoms are relieved when VR HMD doesn’t synchronize with inclination of the image. In addition, the different image movement direction will affect the vertigo feeling. The results will be of help for VR content creation.
LRMCMDA: Predicting miRNA-Disease Association by Integrating Low-Rank Matrix Completion With miRNA and Disease Similarity Information

Identifying disease-related microRNAs (miRNAs) is crucial to understanding the etiology and pathogenesis of many diseases. However, existing computational methods are facing a few dilemmas such as lacking “negative samples” (i.e. confirmed unrelated miRNA-disease pairs). In this study, we proposed LRMCMDA, a low-rank matrix completion-based method to predict miRNA-disease associations. LRMCMDA firstly constructs a bipartite miRNA-disease graph from known associations and defines its R-projected miRNA graph, in which two miRNAs are connected if they are adjacent to the same disease in the bipartite graph. Similarly, we can define its D-projected disease graph. It then infers negative samples by assuming that connecting an unrelated miRNA-disease pair in the bipartite graph will change its R-projected miRNA graph and D-projected disease graph. Providing with both known miRNA-disease associations and negative samples, LRMCMDA infers associations between all miRNAs and diseases using a low-rank matrix completion model, in which miRNA similarity and disease similarity are incorporated into regularization terms. The assumption is that similar miRNAs will associate with similar diseases and vice versa. We compared LRMCMDA with a few state-of-the-art algorithms on several established miRNA-disease databases. LRMCMDA achieves an AUC of 0.8882 on the 5-fold cross-validation, significantly outperforming canonical methods when predicting miRNA-disease associations, and associating miRNAs with isolated diseases. The experimental results demonstrate that LRMCMDA effectively infers novel miRNA-disease associations. In addition, the case studies on cancers have further proven that LRMCMDA is useful in identifying potential cancer-associated miRNAs for experimental validation.
Secrecy Outage Probability and Fairness of Packet Transmission Time in a NOMA System

In this paper, we analyze the secrecy outage probability (SOP) and the fairness of average packet transmission time for a non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system which consists of a base station (BS) and two legal NOMA users in the presence of an eavesdropper (Eve). In order to extract the superimposed signal, the Eve is considered in two modes, i.e., successive interference cancellation (SIC) mode and parallel interference cancellation (PIC) mode. Accordingly, we analyze the secrecy performance of the considered system by deriving a new exact expression for SOP. Furthermore, the optimal power allocation between two legal users is determined such that the average transmission time from BS to two legitimate users are approximately equal to achieve the fairness of average packet transmission time. Monte Carlo simulations are provided to verify our analytical results.
KISSMig – a simple model for R to account for limited migration in analyses of species distributions

Detecting the legacy of time-lagged migration in species ranges is an urgent matter for understanding range dynamics. KISSMig is a simple migration model which generates maps of accessibility from areas of origin and allows the generation and testing of hypotheses about the influence of specific spread patterns on species distributions. KISSMig has important applications: 1) uncovering the influence of limited migration relative to other drivers, 2) detecting areas of origin and their importance as sources of migration, and 3) accounting for limited migration in modeling species distributions. Here we introduce KISSMig and use the oak species Quercus cerris to illustrate these applications.
AR Room: Real-Time Framework of Camera Location and Interaction for Augmented Reality Services

Recently, as there has been increasing interest in augmented reality, relevant technologies are being developed in many fields. With the advance of camera-based technologies for augmented reality, new services are emerging. In this paper, we propose a new framework of augmented reality service application that multiple users can experience various contents respectively in the single space. To implement the proposed framework, we consider the structure which can share the view and data; such as device location, interaction and so on. This structure performs the following functions. In order to detect camera locations, we use the rear-facing camera of the device to estimate the position and pose. Estimated location information of all clients is sent to the server. The server synchronizes the location and interaction information of client based on point cloud map and broadcasts it to all clients. Using this information, users experience multiple contents interacting with other users in a single space while looking at the screen of the device. To demonstrate our framework, we build the AR service called “Winter Village” and show the performance of our framework.
VR Bridges: Simulating Smooth Uneven Surfaces in VR

Virtual reality (VR) is limited in many ways and often is incomparable to real-world experience. Walkable smooth uneven surfaces are inherent to reality but extremely lacking in VR. At the same time, VR offers a lot of possibilities for manipulations. In this paper, we focus on human height and slant perception of the uneven surfaces with multi-sensory stimulation in VR. By employing viewport manipulations, haptic, and vibrotactile stimuli, we explore the possibility to simulate uneven surfaces different from the physical props used.Our results suggest that the use of a rounded prop helps to create a more convincing illusion of an uneven surface that is significantly higher than the physical one. The multi-sensory stimulation brings both height and slant estimations closer to the values suggested by the visual cues if there is no conflict with the haptic sensations. The use of a flat prop is less realistic and leads to massive height and slant underestimations as opposed to those suggested by visual cues. However, if the curved prop cannot be used, a flat surface might still be used to simulate small dents and bumps.
Adaptive Cross-Coupled Control of Cable-Driven Parallel Robots With Model Uncertainties

Cable-driven parallel robots (CDPRs) are robots with novel structures, wherein flexible cables, instead of rigid links, are employed to pull mobile platforms. This structural change enables CDPRs to not only offer potential advantages, but also introduces control challenges with regard to frictional uncertainties, dynamic modeling errors, and multi-cable motion coordination. To address these concerns, a novel adaptive cross-coupled control (ACCC) scheme, capable of achieving high-accuracy trajectory tracking control, has been proposed in this study. In the proposed ACCC scheme, a new synchronization error variable has been defined to adjust the coordination motion of adjacent cables; additionally, an adaptive dynamic control strategy has been designed to compensate for the inertia and friction of winches linked to cables. Lastly, an adaptive robust control has been used to restrain un-modeled dynamics and external disturbances. The proposed ACCC scheme was compared against the synchronization control (SC) scheme and the well-known adaptive control (AC) scheme of Slotine-Li by applying them to an actual non-redundant CDPR during trajectory tracking experiments. Corresponding results demonstrated that compared to the SC and the AC scheme, the proposed ACCC scheme serves to improve both tracking and synchronization accuracies of cables, thereby ultimately enhancing the control performance of mobile platforms. Robustness of the ACCC scheme against external disturbance has also been verified.
Analysis and Comparison of FPGA-Based Histogram of Oriented Gradients Implementations

One of the commonly-used feature extraction algorithms in computer vision is the histogram of oriented gradients. Extracting the features from an image using this algorithm requires a large amount of computations. One way to boost the speed is to implement this algorithm on field programmable gate arrays, to benefit from flexible designs such as parallel computing. In this paper, we first, provide a summary of the steps of the histogram of oriented gradients algorithm. We then survey the implementation techniques of the histogram of oriented gradients on field-programmable gate arrays in the past decade. We group the different techniques into four main categories and analyze various enhancement methods in each category. The first group is the optimization of the algorithm computation which involves the steps of input selection, magnitude calculation, orientation and bin assignment, and normalization. The second category is data manipulation techniques which include numerical representation, data flow modification, and memory optimization. The third group contains modified features based on the histogram of oriented gradients and their hardware implementation, and the fourth one is the implementations in hardware-software co-design of the algorithm. We compare the different implementations using a speed metric called pixels per clock cycle, and resource utilization. Finally, we provide design summary tables for efficient implementation with respect to the speed metric, accuracy, and resource utilization.
Influence of Mechanical Stress in a Packaged Frequency-Modulated MEMS Accelerometer

Frequency modulated accelerometers composed of two double-ended tuning fork (DETF) resonators on a differential configuration were characterized for their sensitivity to force applied to their package. Commonly, differential architectures are employed to cancel common-mode errors, such as the mechanical stress or temperature dependency. The device dependence to mechanical stress was experimentally measured for forces up to 15 N and a reduction of about 5.6 times was obtained on the differential measurement. Additionally, the silicon dies were glued to chip-carriers using two different glues with distinct properties, and their sensitivity to stress was compared. The effectiveness of a viscoelastic glue over an epoxy-based glue for stress decoupling was tested. Long-term measurements under constant force were experimentally performed and for a time period of approximately 100 min, the stress relaxation and creeping of the viscoelastic glue enabled the recovery to the initial output of the sensor.