Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Modeling Most Blood Biomarkers Related to Vitamin Status , One-Carbon Metabolism , and the Kynurenine Pathway Show Adequate Preanalytical Stability and Within-Person Reproducibility to Allow Assessment of Exposure or Nutritional Status in Healthy Women and Cardiovascular Patients 1 – 3

Knowledgeof stability during sample transportation and changes in biomarker concentrationswithin personover timeare paramount for proper design and interpretation of epidemiologic studies based on a single measurement of biomarker status. Therefore, we investigated stability and intraindividual vs. interindividual variation in blood concentrations of biomarkers related to vitamin status, onecarbonmetabolism, and the kynurenine pathway.Whole blood (EDTA and heparin, n = 12) was stored with an icepack for 24 or 48 h, and plasma concentrations of 38 biomarkers were determined. Stability was calculated as change per hour, intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), and simple Spearman correlation. Within-person reproducibility of biomarkers was expressed as ICC in samples collected 1–2 y apart from 40 postmenopausal women and in samples collected up to 3 y apart from 551 patients with stable angina pectoris. Biomarker stabilitywassimilar inEDTAandheparinblood.Most biomarkerswereessentially stable, except for cholineand total homocysteine (tHcy), which increased markedly. Within-person reproducibility in postmenopausal women was excellent (ICC > 0.75) for cotinine, all-trans retinol, cobalamin, riboflavin, a-tocopherol, Gly, pyridoxal, methylmalonic acid, creatinine, pyridoxal 5#-phosphate, and Ser; was good to fair (ICC of 0.74–0.40) for pyridoxic acid, kynurenine, tHcy, cholecalciferol, flavin mononucleotide, kynurenic acid, xanthurenic acid, 3-hydroxykynurenine, sarcosine, anthranilic acid, cystathionine, homoarginine, 3-hydroxyanthranilic acid, betaine, Arg, folate, total cysteine, dimethylglycine, asymmetric dimethylarginine, neopterin, symmetric dimethylarginine, and Trp; and poor (ICC of 0.39–0.15) for methionine sulfoxide, Met, choline, and trimethyllysine. Similar reproducibilities were observed in patients with coronary heart disease. Thus, most biomarkers investigated were essentially stable in cooled whole blood for up to 48 h and had a sufficient within-person reproducibility to allow one-exposure assessment of biomarker status in epidemiologic studies. TheWestern Norway B Vitamin Intervention Trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NTC00354081. J. Nutr. 144: 784–790, 2014.
Nano-enabled environmental products and technologies - opportunities and drawbacks: Miljøprojekt nr. 1803, 2015

DTU Orbit (02/04/2019) Nano-enabled environmental products and technologies opportunities and drawbacks: Miljøprojekt nr. 1803, 2015 The project aims to investigate the benefits for health and environment that the use of nanomaterials in products and technologies may have. More specifically, the project provides an overview of the most relevant nano-enabled environmental technologies, different types of products and technologies on the (Danish) market, as well as products and technologies, which are still in R&D and it will provide a qualitative overview of health and environmental pros and cons of these technologies. The project has focused on technologies applied in: 1) purification of water and wastewater, 2) remediation of soil and groundwater, 3) cleaning of air, 4) reduction of energy consumption and 5) for improving hygiene in the health care sector by utilizing the antibacterial properties of certain nanomaterials.
Matching for Support : A Scenario Based Study on Creating a Platform for the Rare Disease Population ∗

The rare diseases population is often faced with many challenges, the biggest one being finding a sufficient amount of support in their lives. Here we present a method in which the rare disease population’s insights can be used to effectively develop a system that can eliminate these challenges. This paper presents a scenario based method for evaluating what features would be most beneficial in creating a place where those with rare diseases can provide one another with social, emotional, and informational support. This method uses participants’ responses to the scenarios as the focus of analysis. Our results *fill in later*. We propose that the addition of a social-matching algorithm would be beneficial for this application, along with *features identified as useful by participants*.
A CRITIQUE OF THE CONSTANT ELASTICITY OF TRANSFORMATION (CET) LINEAR SUPPLY SYSTEM

An elusive restriction maintained in earlier CET supply models with three or more products is shown to result in a potentially serious misspecification. Its impact on empirical estimates is found to be substantial, and an alternative formulation is presented which overcomes the problem while still maintaining the CET hypothesis. In a 1968 article, Powell and Gruen (P&G) developed the constant elasticity of substitution (CES) analog on the production possibilities surface and demonstrated how it permits estimation of a linear approximation to supply response along the surface. When applied to perfectly competitive firms, considerable estimation appeal occurred because of its parsimony in number of parameters requiring estimation for an n-product system. Their supply model was very much in the spirit of the Rotterdam demand models in which the specified demand (supply) equations are intended to map only locally back to the utility (production) functions of the space in which agents optimize utility (costs). Global mapping was not intended nor claimed. The authors further noted that the supply system was limited as an empirical device to measuring supply response in the very short run C. Richard Shumway is professor of agricultural economics at Texas A&M University. Alan A. Powell is
Scots Pine (pinus sylvestris L.) on Shingle Fields: A Dendrochronologic Reconstruction of Early Summer Precipitation in Mideast Sweden

Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) trees growing on shingle fields offer a unique possibility to reconstruct precipitation and study climate variability in the fairly humid eastern part of central Sweden. Tree-ring characteristics were compared with monthly (1890–2001) and daily (1961–2001) climate data from an adjacent meteorological station. Chronologies for latewood (LW), earlywood (EW), and tree-ring widths (RW) were constructed from 73 living and dead trees. Correlation analyses show that tree growth is most sensitive to early summer precipitation. EW shows the strongest correlation with precipitation in May and June while LW is best correlated with June and July precipitation. A reconstruction model for May–June precipitation was calculated using principal component analysis (PCA) regression (regular regression) including EW, LW, and RW for present and previous years. The model explained 46% of the variation in May–June precipitation and allowed a reconstruction back to 1560. Information about wet and dry years was collected from historical documents and was used to validate the result. Periods with precipitation above and below the mean show agreement with previous reconstructions of spring precipitation from tree rings in Finland and of spring floods from estuary sediments in the region. Analyses of correlations between meteorological stations and reconstructed precipitation show that the model is valid for the coastal part of central Sweden. The authors conclude that Scots pine trees on shingle fields are well suited for precipitation reconstruction, and the separate analyses of LW and EW improve the reconstruction.
Investigation Of The Infestation Of Dermestes Maculatus On Clarias Gariepinus Atdifferentintervals

Eating dried fish is one prevalent dietary habit for local Nigerians due to the requisite for nutritional quality, infested or not. The aim of this study is to investigate the infestation of smoked ready-to-eat dried Clarias gariepinus obtained from Oja-Oba market in Ikare, Ondo State, Nigeria and fresh catfishes processed in the laboratory by Dermestes maculatus at different intervals. A total of twenty catfish was obtained for the study. The twenty catfish were divided into 2 groups of ten catfish each as follows; group 1-smoked ready-to-eat and group 2-fresh catfish processed in the laboratory. The dried catfish were macerated and weighed in each group to obtain a weight of 500g. The macerated catfish in each group were infested with Dermestes maculatus larva in 3 replicates per group. The nutritional composition and moisture contents were determined every two weeks using proximal analysis in an experiment that lasted 56 days. Data were subjected to two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Duncan Multiple Range Test (DMRT). P ≤ 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant. The result revealed that carbohydrate content, crude protein, fat content, ash content, mineral composition and vitamin c in oven-dried fishes exposed to Dermestes maculatus were significantly different (P ≤ 0.05) from those obtained from the local market as days progressed from 0 – 56 days. Result also showed that moisture content (%) reduced from 0 – 56 days (146.32±9.22 to 132.09±2.58 and 146.32±9.22 -142.55±2.95) for both smoked catfishes obtained from the local market and laboratory oven-dried catfishes respectively. This implies that the high moisture content influenced the nutritional composition of the laboratory processed catfishes compared to those obtained from the local market. Therefore, protecting smoked ready-to-eat dried catfishes from local market by Dermestes maculatus infestations are important to guide the nutritional quality.
PREDICTING EARTHQUAKE-INDUCED LANDSLIDE DISPLACEMENTS USING NEWMARK'S SLIDING BLOCK ANALYSIS

A principal cause of earthquake damage is landsliding, and the ability to predict earthquake-triggered landslide displacements is important for many types of seismic-hazard analysis and for the design of engineered slopes. Newmark's method for modeling a landslide as a rigid-plastic block sliding on an inclined plane provides a workable means of predicting approximate landslide displacements; this method yields much more useful information than pseudostatic analysis and is far more practical than finite-element modeling. Applying Newmark's method requires knowing the yield or critical acceleration of the landslide (above which permanent displacement occurs), which can be determined from the static factor of safety and from the landslide geometry. Earthquake acceleration-time histories can be selected to represent the shaking conditions of interest, and those parts of the record that lie above the critical acceleration are double integrated to determine the permanent landslide displacement. For approximate results, a simplified Newmark method can be used, which estimates Newmark displacement as a function of landslide critical acceleration and earthquake shaking intensity.
15.73 Gb/s Visible Light Communication With Off-the-Shelf LEDs

Visible light communication (VLC) can provide high-speed data transmission that could alleviate the pressure on the conventional radio frequency spectrum with the looming capacity crunch for digital communication systems. In this paper, we present experimental results of a VLC system with a data rate of 15.73 Gb/s after applying forward error correction coding over a 1.6 m link. Wavelength division multiplexing is utilized to efficiently modulate four wavelengths in the visible light spectrum. Four single color low-cost commercially available light emitting diodes (LEDs) are chosen as light sources. This confirms the feasibility and readiness of VLC for high-data rate communication. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) with adaptive bit loading is used. The system with the available components is characterized and its parameters, such as LED driving points and OFDM signal peak-to-peak scaling factor, are optimized. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest data rate ever reported for LED-based VLC systems.
Diffusions with position dependent volatility and the Metropolis-adjusted Langevin algorithm

We propose a new position dependent Metropolis-adjusted Langevin algorithm (MALA) which is based on a Langevin diffusion with invariant density π with respect to Lebesgue measure in contrast with a recently proposed different position dependent MALA (MMALA). We compare analytically the two algorithms, and show that they are equivalent in some cases but are distinct in general. A different specification of the MMALA scheme, based on a Langevin diffusion with invariant density with respect to Hausdorff measure, is also introduced and compared to the other two MALA schemes. A simulation study illustrates the gain in efficiency provided by the new position dependent MALA algorithm.
Long-Term Land Cover Dynamics (1986-2016) of Northeast China Derived from a Multi-Temporal Landsat Archive

Northeast China is a major grain production area, an ecological important forest area, and the largest old industrial base which is now suffering from economic growth slowdown and brain drain. Accurate and long-term dynamic land cover maps are highly demanded for many regional applications. In this study, we developed a set of continuous annual land cover mapping product at 30 m resolution using multi-temporal Landsat images. The maps in year 2000 and 2015 were tested using another independent validation dataset and the overall accuracies were 80.69% and 88.38%, respectively. The accuracies of the maps were improved by the integration of multi-temporal Landsat images and post-classification strategies. We found a general trend that the total area of land that experienced a change in land cover each year increased over time. The area change of each land cover type is also detected. The area of forests was 3.92 × 10 5 km 2 in 1986, fluctuated under fire disturbance, but declined in a quite high rate over the period of 1989 to 2006, and finally stayed relatively stable in area around 3.58 × 10 5 km 2 . The expansion of croplands was the leading land cover change from 1986 to 2000, and then the total area of croplands slightly declined under the Grain to Green Project of China, while shrublands, grasslands and wetlands began to increase. The area of impervious surfaces increased by more than 502% during the last three decades, and about 73% of the new built-up area was converted from croplands. We also demonstrated the our maps could capture the important land cover conversion processes, such as urbanization, forest logging activities, and agricultural expansion.
IdentIfyIng dIsease-related expressIons In revIews UsIng CondItIonal random fIelds

As the as the volume of user-generated content in social media expands so do the potential benefits of mining social media to learn about patient conditions, drug indications, and beneficial or adverse drug reactions. In this paper, we apply Conditional Random Fields (CRF) model for extracting expressions related to diseases from patient comments. Our method utilizes hand-crafted features including contextual features, dictionaries, clusterbased and distributed word representation generated from unlabeled user posts in social media. We compare our CRF-based approach with deep recurrent neural networks and a dictionary-based approach. We examine different word embeddings generated from unlabeled user posts in social media and scientific literature. We show that CRF outperformed other methods and achieved the F1-measures of 69.1% and 79.4% on recognition of disease-related expressions in the exact and partial matching exercises, respectively. Qualitative evaluation of disease-related expressions recognized by our feature-rich CRF-based approach demonstrates the variability of reactions from patients with different health conditions.
Video capture of non-rigidly moving faces out of five different viewpoints

Here we describe the procedure and technical details of how we filmed non-rigidly moving faces out of different viewpoints for further usage as stimuli in psychophysical experiments. Faces of actors who made four different facial expressions were filmed out of five different perspectives (0° and 22° as well as 45° on either side of the face).
Active vision and sensor fusion for inspection of metallic surfaces

This paper deals with strategies for reliably obtaining the edges and the surface texture of metallic objects. Since illumination is a critical aspect regarding robustness and image quality, it is considered here as an active component of the image acquisition system. The performance of the methods presented is demonstrated -- among other examples -- with images of needles for blood sugar tests. Such objects show an optimized form consisting of several planar grinded surfaces delimited by sharp edges. To allow a reliable assessment of the quality of each surface, and a measurement of their edges, methods for fusing data obtained with different illumination constellations were developed. The fusion strategy is based on the minimization of suitable energy functions. First, an illumination-based segmentation of the object is performed. To obtain the boundaries of each surface, directional light-field illumination is used. By formulating suitable criteria, nearly binary images are selected by variation of the illumination direction. Hereafter, the surface edges are obtained by fusing the contours of the areas obtained before. Following, an optimally illuminated image is acquired for each surface of the object by varying the illumination direction. For this purpose, a criterion describing the quality of the surface texture has to be maximized. Finally, the images of all textured surfaces of the object are fused to an improved result, in which the whole object is contained with high contrast. Although the methods presented were designed for inspection of needles, they also perform robustly in other computer vision tasks where metallic objects have to be inspected.
Modeling of Knudsen Layer Effects in Micro/Nanoscale Gas Flows

We propose a power-law based effective mean free path (MFP) model so that the Navier-Stokes-Fourier equations can be employed for the transition-regime flows typical of gas micro/nanodevices. The effective MFP model is derived for a system with planar wall confinement by taking into account the boundary limiting effects on the molecular free paths. Our model is validated against molecular dynamics simulation data and compared with other theoretical models. As gas transport properties can be related to the mean free path through kinetic theory, the Navier-Stokes-Fourier constitutive relations are then modified in order to better capture the flow behavior in the Knudsen layers close to surfaces. Our model is applied to fully developed isothermal pressure-driven (Poiseuille) and thermal creep gas flows in microchannels. The results show that our approach greatly improves the near-wall accuracy of the Navier-Stokes-Fourier equations, well beyond the slip-flow regime.
Correlative Optical and X‐Ray Imaging of Strain Evolution During Double‐Torsion Fracture Toughness Measurements in Shale

Mode‐I Fracture Toughness, KIc, was measured in six shale materials using the double‐torsion technique. During loading, crack propagation was imaged both using twin optical cameras, and with fast X‐ray radiograph acquisition. Samples of Bowland, Haynesville, Kimmeridge, Mancos, Middlecliff, and Whitby shales were tested in a range of orientations. The measured fracture toughness values were found to be in good agreement with existing literature values. The two imaging techniques improve our understanding of local conditions around the fracture‐tip, through in situ correlation of mechanical data, inelastic zone size, and fracture‐tip velocity. The optical Digital Image Correlation technique proved useful as a means of determining the validity of individual experiments, by identifying experiments during which strains had developed in the two “rigid” specimen halves. Strain maps determined through Digital Image Correlation of the optical images suggest that the scale of the inelastic zone is an order of magnitude smaller than the classically used approximation suggests. This smaller damage region suggests a narrower region of enhanced permeability around artificially generated fractures in shales. The resolvable crack‐tip was tracked using radiograph data and found to travel at a velocity around 470 μm/s during failure, with little variation in speed between materials and orientations. Fracture pathways in the bedding parallel orientations were observed to deviate from linearity, commonly following layer boundaries. This suggests that while a fracture traveling parallel to bedding may travel at a similar speed to a bedding perpendicular fracture, it may have a more tortuous pathway, and therefore access a larger surface area.
Cluster-based False Data Filtering Scheme

Today, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are applied to various industries such as building automation, medical, security, intelligent agriculture, and disaster monitoring. A WSN consists of hundreds to thousands of tiny sensor nodes that perform monitoring tasks. A small sensor node has a limited amount of internal memory and energy resources. Sensor nodes are used to detect a variety of data in specific environmental areas. As a result, WSN should be energy efficient. Sensor nodes are vulnerable to false report injection attacks because they are deployed in an open environment. A false report injection attack consumes the limited energy of a node more quickly and confuses the user. CFFS has been proposed to prevent such an attack using a method of en-route filtering false reports by dividing nodes into clusters. However, the CFFS scheme is vulnerable for repeated false report injection attacks. In this paper, we propose an approach to prolong the WSN lifetime by adjusting the dynamic security threshold value and using a fuzzy logic-based key redistribution selection of cluster head nodes. The proposed method increases the detection rate for repeated false report injection attacks by adding the additional key distribution phase in the existing method. The experimental results show that the energy efficiency of the proposed method was increased by 40.278%.
From good practices to needs for improvement: Implications for staff development in higher education

The aim of the paper is to present and discuss the results of mapping faculty teaching practices and needs for improvement and identifying subgroups of teachers to tailor educational development. A survey was completed by academics from 7 Italian universities (Bari, Camerino, Catania, Florence, Foggia, Genoa, Turin). The survey included three open-ended questions, aimed at exploring innovative practices developed by faculty, critical aspects and types of desired support. Answers were first analyzed using content analysis, while a latent class analysis was then performed to classify teachers into distinct subgroups, according to different combinations of their teaching aspects. Teachers may be grouped into 10 homogeneous classes. Features identified in these subgroups are now guiding institutional choices to offer educational development initiatives.
Constructionofa stableGFP-taggedVibrio harveyi strain for bacterial dynamics analysis ofabalone infection

Constructionofa stableGFP-taggedVibrio harveyi strain for bacterial dynamics analysis ofabalone infection Marie-Agnès Travers, Annaı̈ck Barbou, Nelly Le Goı̈c, Sylvain Huchette, Christine Paillard & Marcel Koken France Haliotis, Kerazan, Lilia, Plouguerneau, France; and Laboratoire des sciences de l’Environnement MARin, CNRS UMR 6539, Institut Universitaire Européen de la Mer, Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Plouzané, France