Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Endothelial Progenitor Cells as Biomarkers of Cardiovascular Pathologies: A Narrative Review

Endothelial progenitor cells (EPC) may influence the integrity and stability of the vascular endothelium. The association of an altered total EPC number and function with cardiovascular diseases (CVD) and risk factors (CVF) was discussed; however, their role and applicability as biomarkers for clinical purposes have not yet been defined. Endothelial dysfunction is one of the key mechanisms in CVD. The assessment of endothelial dysfunction in vivo remains a major challenge, especially for a clinical evaluation of the need for therapeutic interventions or for primary prevention of CVD. One of the main challenges is the heterogeneity of this particular cell population. Endothelial cells (EC) can become senescent, and the majority of circulating endothelial cells (CEC) show evidence of apoptosis or necrosis. There are a few viable CECs that have properties similar to those of an endothelial progenitor cell. To use EPC levels as a biomarker for vascular function and cumulative cardiovascular risk, a correct definition of their phenotype, as well as an update on the clinical application and practicability of current isolation methods, are an urgent priority.
Emerging space tourism business: Uncovering customer avoidance responses and behaviours

Space travel involves complicated processes, and the potential tourists may avoid these trips at any stage due to various risks and costs. The avoidance intention has serious implications for both the tourists and the services. Applying a push-pull-mooring (PPM) framework, we modelled space tourist’s avoidance intention. We developed a model that investigates the direct effect of the push, pull, and mooring factors on avoidance intention. We evaluated the moderation role of the mooring factor with the associations of the push and pull factors with the avoidance intention. We also assessed the necessity of the push, pull, and mooring factors with avoiding space tourism. Using configurational modelling, we explored algorithms that explain the conditions where tourists avoid space tourism. Space tourism avoidance intention is increased by the push factor and decreased by the push and mooring factors. The mooring factor moderates the impact of the pull factor on the avoidance intention.
School Counselors’ Perceptions Regarding Importance of and Ability to Implement Transition Services for Students With Disabilities

The purpose of this study was to investigate school counselors’ perception of and ability to implement the 20 predictors of post-school success for students with disabilities. Results indicated statistical differences between grade levels in their perceived ability to implement transition services. We offer specific recommendations for how school counselors can provide support in alignment with the 20 special education predictors of improved postschool success for students with disabilities.
The Effects of a Yearlong Recess Intervention on Body Fat Shifts in Elementary-Aged Children

Introduction: Obesity has continued to rise in recent years due to a lack of physical activity. The school environment contributes to this problem as opportunities for physical activity are eliminated for more classroom time. Recess, defined as unstructured, outdoor play, can increase MVPA and improve current obesity trends. This study aimed to examine body fat category shift differences in children who received 40-60 minutes and those who received 30 minutes. A secondary purpose was to examine differences by district, sex, grade, and race across both groups since they received more than the national average for recess. Methods: Students in 2nd-5th grade (7-11 years old) (N=393) were selected from schools serving as an intervention (N=190) or control school (N=203) in a larger longitudinal intervention titled Let’s Inspire Innovation N’ Kids (LiiNK). Bio-electrical impedance analysis was used to categorize students as either underfat, healthy, overfat, or obese. These categories were then used to determine if students shifted a category between pre and post-measurements. Results: At least 30 minutes of recess was significantly associated with a body fat shift in 2nd graders and females. Additionally, the percentage of obese students did not change over the school year. There was no association between the group, sex, or race. Conclusion: Due to this study occurring during COVID-19, it is hard to make definitive conclusions on the effects of increased recess time on obesity. However, some positive trends are pointing towards recess as a successful method of preventing a rise in childhood obesity.
Modified general policy iteration based adaptive dynamic programming for unknown discrete‐time linear systems

In this article, the general policy iteration (GPI) method for the optimal control of discrete‐time linear systems is studied. First, the existing result on the GPI method is recalled and some new properties are proposed. Based on these new properties, a model‐based modified GPI algorithm is proposed with its convergence proof. Moreover, the data‐driven implementation for the proposed method is introduced without using the information of the system matrices. Compared with the existing results, the condition to initiate the GPI based algorithm is further relaxed by the proposed algorithm. The simulation example verifies the effectiveness of the proposed modified GPI based algorithm.
Perfectionism and L2 Achievement: The Mediating Roles of Motivation and Self-Regulated Learning Among Iranian High School Students

The current study investigated how perfectionism can be related to L2 learners’ achievement with motivation and two aspects of self-regulated learning as possible mediators. This study also evaluated the factor structure of the Big Three Perfectionism Scale (BTPS) in an Iranian sample. The participants were 495 Iranian high school students who completed six BTPS sub-scales and measures of self-determined motivation and self-regulated learning. Psychometric analyses indicated that rigid perfectionism and self-critical perfectionism as two higher order factors have construct validity. Structural equation modeling indicated that rigid perfectionism positively predicted L2 achievement, while self-critical perfectionism negatively predicted L2 achievement. Mediational models indicated that neither autonomous-mastery/performance motivation nor controlled motivation mediated the path from perfectionism to L2 achievement. However, both aspects of self-regulated learning, namely, deep learning and persistence could mediate the relationship between perfectionism and L2 achievement. Specifically, higher levels of rigid perfectionism were positively related to deep learning and persistence that, in turn, were related to higher L2 achievement. In contrast, self-critical perfectionism was negatively related to deep learning and persistence, that, in turn, were related to lower L2 achievement. The results are discussed in terms of the practical implications for L2 teachers and parents.
A Global Perspective of Vibrio Species and Associated Diseases: Three-Decade Meta-Synthesis of Research Advancement

Outbreaks of Vibrio infections have a long history of global public health concern and threat to the aquaculture industry. This 3-decade (1990-2019) meta-synthesis of global research progress in Vibrio species and associated disease outbreaks was undertaken to generate the knowledge needed to design effective interventions with policy implications. Using PRISMA protocol, we obtained data on the online version of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), Web of Science (WOS), and Scopus from January 1990 to September 2021 by title search of the keywords “Vibrio species OR Vibrio spp. OR vibriosis. ” On the 3-decade survey, the result has shown that a total of 776 publications document types were published on the subject, with an average of 24.25 ± 13.6 published documents per year with an annual growth rate of 4.71%. The year 2020 recorded the highest output of 52 published documents accounting for 6.70% of the total. The most prolific author, Blanch A. , published 12 articles on the subject and has received citations of 1003 with an h-index of 10. While the most global cited paper author is the journal of J. Bacteriol (Bassler et al), receiving total citation (TC) (550) and per Year (22). The top active corresponding authors country is the United States of America with (92) articles, freq. 12.40%; TC of 3103. The observations in this study, such as the collaborations network map, and index, which have outlined a big difference between countries based on economic status, have underscored the need for a sustained research mentorship program that can define future policies.
Patent Design Around Method Based on AFD for Umbrella-type Patent Strategy

： Seeking patent portfolio protection is the basic patent strategy of enterprise development. A kind of parachute patent portfolio strategy combined by complementary patent is the series patent scheme with different technical effect, which is formed by mining the same product or technology scheme’s existing or potential problems, therefore, the comprehensive protection of same productions and system is realized by a broader patent rights range. Based on the theory of ideal solution and conflictive solution of algorithm for inventive-problem solving(ARIZ), Antucupatory failure determination(AFD) has developed into a failure prediction analysis tool, which can dig all aspects of existing technical system problems, forecast problems that are never found, and have certain conjunction with the construction of parachute patent portfolio. Therefore, based on AFD, a kind of parachute patent combinational design which steps include parachute patent portfolio analysis is puts forward, AFD, TRIZ and patent evaluation. Firstly, calibrate the patent rights scope of existing technology through the patent analysis, set constraints of innovative design and provide problem clues; Secondly, conduct failure analysis and failure prediction by AFD, determine possible failure points of the system and dig several problems; Thirdly, generate creative solutions of problems through applying TRIZ. Finally, use patent essence condition assessment screening program to apply for the patent. In this article, the program is applied to do the innovative case analysis of a window cleaner robot, and the innovative design solutions with independent intellectual property rights are formed.
Photographic Assessment of Cephalometric Measurements in Different Malocclusions in Raichur Population-An in Vivo Study

The present study is to assess the coherence of facial photographs as a viable means for analysis of the soft tissues in orthodontic patients. Aim: To assess the repeatability and creditability of measurements obtained from lateral cephalograms and facial photographs. Methods and Material: The study was done on standardized lateral cephalograms and facial photographs obtained from a total of 120 patients. An observational collation of linear and angular measurements was formulated between lateral cephalometric radiographs and homologous measurements procured from facial photographs. With patient in ortho position and adhesive dots set on the anatomical landmarks, right profile photographs were captured in NHP. With protractor connecting the tip of the nose and the soft tissue pogonion, a plumb line recorded the NHP angle. Likewise, digital lateral skull radiographs were taken with a PLANMECA and it was analyzed if the same position achieved during photographic record had also been acquired on the radiographic record. Both digital photographic and radiographic records were uploaded into nemoceph 10.4. 2 software program for windows and were scrutinized by a single examiner. A total of 19 parameters were analyzed. Results: All angular and linear parameter showed statistically insignificant differences. The parameters which showed the mean difference between cephalometric measurements and photogrammetric measurements which is greater than one degree in angular parameters and one mm in linear parameters. Conclusion: The phogrammetric analysis can be used as a screening or adjunctive aid in clinical diagnosis.
Online System Identification and Optimal Control for Mission-Critical IoT Systems Over MIMO Fading Channels

With the rapid development of mobile computing, mission-critical Internet of Things (IoT) systems have become popular. Typical mission-critical IoT systems may contain complicated unknown and unstable elements and it is of particular importance to identify and stabilize them as unstable systems may experience catastrophic consequences. We consider the identification and optimal control for a mission-critical IoT system over multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) fading channels. First, we focus on the optimal control of the mission-critical IoT system, assuming that the system dynamics are known, and propose a novel stochastic-approximation-based algorithm to learn the optimal control solution for the IoT controller in an online manner. Second, we extend the optimal control framework to deal with the unknown mission-critical IoT system and propose a novel normalized-stochastic-gradient-descent-based algorithm to simultaneously identify and control the system in an online manner. Using the Lyapunov stability analysis, we theoretically show the asymptotic optimality of the proposed learning algorithms. Numerical results are analyzed for our proposed scheme and for several state-of-the-art learning schemes in terms of the computational complexity, convergence, and stability performance. Specifically, the proposed scheme can be implemented more than 50% faster than the state-of-the-art learning schemes. Moreover, the system identification performance of the proposed scheme can achieve a normalized system identification mean square error (MSE) of around 0.01 in 100 iterations. This is a substantial improvement compared to the baseline algorithms, where the normalized system identification MSE diverges.
Timely Implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act Process Aids Project Success

Implementation of the US National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process can have a dramatic effect on a project's schedule and budget. Often, the NEPA process is not triggered early enough. Failure to properly plan for the NEPA process and to implement the requirements of the policy early in the project or program lifecycle results in schedule and cost impacts negatively affecting the baseline. There is currently no required timeframe for completing NEPA documentation. Since the inception of NEPA, the timeline for implementing has increased from just over two years to something in excess of five years. An organization implementing NEPA must have a collaborative effort where necessary in order to maintain an efficient process. In addition, communicating and involving the interested public about a proposed action is a major component of the NEPA process. As it is, the public maintains a high degree of suspicion regarding agencies' willingness to apply the NEPA process in the spirit that its founders intended. Study has shown that the early involvement of interested parties will increase a project's chances of staying on track in terms of schedule and budget. Programmatic efforts, such as cost and performance metric tracking of the NEPA process, can be especially beneficial to US federal agencies or large organizations with multiple, concurrent large-scale projects. It remains the goal of NEPA to promote excellent decision-making when evaluating projects that have the potential to significantly affect the environment. In order for NEPA to work as it was designed and provide the most benefit to a project or program, it is imperative to start the NEPA process early.
Discovery of Natural Lead Compound from Dendrobium sp. against SARS-CoV-2 Infection

Since the pandemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) in December 2019, the infection cases have quickly increased by more than 511 million people. The long epidemic outbreak over 28 months has affected health and economies worldwide. An alternative medicine appears to be one choice to alleviate symptoms and reduce mortality during drug shortages. Dendrobium extract is one of the traditional medicines used for COVID-19 infection. Several compounds in Dendrobium sp. had been reported to exert pharmacological activities to treat common COVID-19-related symptoms. Herein, in silico screening of 83 compounds from Dendrobium sp. by using the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein receptor-binding domain (RBD) as a drug target was performed in searching for a new lead compound against SARS-CoV-2 infection. Four hit compounds showing good binding affinity were evaluated for antiviral infection activity. The new lead compound DB36, 5-methoxy-7-hydroxy-9,10-dihydro-1,4-phenanthrenequinone, was identified with the IC50 value of 6.87 ± 3.07 µM. The binding mode revealed that DB36 bound with the spike protein at the host receptor, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) binding motif, resulted in antiviral activity. This study substantiated the use of Dendrobium extract for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection and has identified new potential chemical scaffolds for further drug development of SARS-CoV-2 entry inhibitors.
Incorporating Prosodic Events in Text-to-Speech Synthesis

While producing accurate prosody can signiﬁcantly improve the naturalness and comprehensibility of synthesized speech, many Text-to-Speech (TTS) systems still do not explicitly model prosody. In this paper, we present an approach for incorporating prosodic events, speciﬁcally phrase breaks and pitch accents, into TTS output using a two-step pipeline. In the ﬁrst step, we use a large number of linguistic features to create a model for predicting the locations of prosodic events from text. In the second step, we incorporate these events into the front end of a DNN-based TTS pipeline. We crowd-source labels for pairs of utterances created with and without the new pipeline. Our results show that listeners strongly prefer a voice created using this pipeline to the baseline voice, indicating that this approach of explicitly modeling prosodic events is a fruitful area of research.
Rink hockey “Ok-XS”. Motor behavior effects of scaling games in U8 players

In rink hockey, it is not usual to find proposals of mini-hockey in early competition. This study aimed to analyse the effect of the manipulation of court dimensions and the number of participants on the motor behavior of players. Twenty-four rink hockey players (three girls and 21 boys; age: 7.1 ± 0.4 years) U8 category participated in this study. Three types of 3-min games were played twice, with 3-min breaks, following a random order: i) Four versus four (plus goalkeeper) on an official pitch (40 × 20 m); ii) Four versus four (plus goalkeeper) on a rink measuring 20 × 13 m, and iii) Two versus two (plus goalkeeper) on a court measuring 20 × 10 m. All games were video-recorded and a systematic observation instrument was used to register the actions using the Lince PLUS observation tool (v.1.2.0-2020). The individual technical-tactical behavioral variables of the court players were analysed, considering: (a) actions without the ball; (b) actions with the ball; and (c) final phase of ball possession. Statistical analysis was performed based on the Generalized Mixed Poisson Model. The results revealed that total actions were increased in both scaling situations compared to situation 1 in which young rink hockey players officially compete (S1 vs. S3; p <.001; Odds Ratio (OR) = 2,12) (S1 vs. S2; p <.001; Odds Ratio (OR) = 1,48). The results revealed that in small-sided games more affordances emerge concerning the official rules. The data obtained suggest that competition at this age on an official court (40 × 20 m) is not recommended for development of the variety of the set of individual technical-tactical behaviors.
The use of salivary specimen for COVID-19 detection using RT-PCR assay: a systematic review

As coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases arose globally, active case finding by performing throat swab test proposed high risk for the healthcare workers. Saliva had recently been reported to show positive detection means for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and proposed advantages of self-collection, less requirement of transport media, and reduced nosocomial transmission risk. However, support evidence regarding its diagnostic value was still lacking and varied widely in specimen collection method. This systematic review aimed to assess the diagnostic value of salivary specimens (SS) for COVID-19 detection using reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay compared with throat swab specimens (TSS), while putting into consideration confounders such as patients’ initial condition, specimen collection method, and transport media used. Six databases were used for identifying relevant studies. Final search yielded 19 eligible studies which was reviewed based on the major outcome: diagnostic agreement, sensitivity & specificity, and viral load comparison. The use of SS as an alternative to TSS showed to be promising although specimen collection method needed to be standardized. SS was comparable to TSS in detecting COVID-19 using RT-PCR assay, especially in symptomatic or confirmed cases. More Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were still needed to clearly demonstrate the ability of SS to capture asymptomatic cases in the setting of mass surveillance, where patients would self-collect the specimen at ease.
Energetic efficiency of a production system in swine deep bed

O objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar os fluxos de energia de um sistema comercial de producao de suinos em cama sobreposta da fase de terminacao, localizado em Juiz de Fora – MG. Para tanto, realizou-se estudo de eficiencia energetica, por meio do acompanhamento de um lote de animais, durante o periodo de 94 dias. Quantificou-se o coeficiente energetico de cada componente envolvido no processo de producao e determinaram-se as matrizes de consumo energetico nas formas de racao, energia eletrica, leitoes, material usado como cama, mao de obra, equipamentos, instalacoes, producao de suinos vivos, e producao de adubo orgânico (cama sobreposta de suino). Da energia direta de entrada, 80,57% correspondem a racao, 11,90% a serragem e 6,76% aos leitoes. Da energia de saida, 53,45% referem-se aos suinos para abate e 46,55% ao adubo orgânico (cama sobreposta de suino). Pelos resultados obtidos, pode-se concluir que o sistema de producao em questao se enquadrou nas caracteristicas de um agroecossistema industrial, altamente especializado, importando grande parte da energia consumida no processo de producao e apresentando eficiencia energetica de 41%.
Analyzing Social Studies National Curriculum and Textbooks for the Concept of Global Citizenship: A Content Analysis

This research study was an attempt to analyze National Social Studies curriculum and textbooks for Grades IV-V in the context of Global Citizenship to determine if dimensions of global citizenship have been integrated in the curriculum after reviewing the 7th objective of National Education Policy of Pakistan (2009), which shows emphasis on developing individuals who are critical thinkers, intellectual, independent, and most importantly not only responsible citizens in the local context, but as well as responsible towards the globe. Student learning outcomes, teaching and learning process, assessment and evaluation process within the scope of 8 global citizenship dimensions given in the UNICEF global citizenship framework (2013) were examined with Relational content analysis within qualitative paradigm as the research design. Data was collected with the help of a checklist and analyzed with the help of thematic analysis. Some major findings of the research include the emphasis on knowledge and understanding of ‘Economic and political processes’ and ‘World Geography’ in the content areas analyzed. Whereas, the dimension ‘Environment and sustainable development’ and ‘Globalization and interdependence’ is not much reflected in the analyzed content areas.