Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Heart Failure Status among Acute Ischemic Stroke Patients: A Hospital-Based Study

Background Since heart failure (HF) and ischemic stroke have common risk factors, their concurrent occurrence is likely. Strokes in HF patients could be life-threatening and lead to severe disabilities, longer hospitalization time, and mortality. The present study aims to investigate the prevalence of HF and its severity based on ejection fraction (EF) in patients with acute ischemic stroke. Methods The present cross-sectional study included acute ischemic stroke patients admitted to Shahid Rajaei hospital in Karaj in 2020–2021. The diagnosis of HF was based on transthoracic echocardiography within 48 hours of symptom onset, and HF was classified into two groups: 41–49% as mildly reduced EF (HFmrEF) and ≤40% as reduced EF (HFrEF). Patients who did not complete cardiac studies were excluded. Results 257 acute ischemic stroke patients (62.6% male) were included. Among stroke patients, the prevalence of HF, including HFrEF and HFmrEF, was 30.0% (95% CI: 21.4–38.6). HFmrEF and HFrEF was diagnosed in 32 (12.5%) and 45 (17.5%) patients, respectively. HF was significantly associated with older age, hypertension, past myocardial infarction (MI), and arrhythmia. A history of previous MI significantly increased the odds of heart failure (OR: 3.25, 95% CI: 1.82–5.81). Conclusion There is a high prevalence of HF among acute ischemic stroke patients. Older patients with a history of hypertension and previous MI are at higher risk. Since patients with HF have a higher mortality and morbidity rate after experiencing an ischemic stroke, close cooperation between the neurology and cardiology specialists for providing advanced care for survivors is required.
A Survey on Energy Efficient Routing Techniques for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of unattended sensors with limited storage, energy (battery power) computation and communication capabilities. In wireless sensor networks, routing is bit more complex than other wired or wireless networks. Reliable routing of packets in WSNs from the sensor node to its base station is the most important task for the networks. The sensed data must be gathered and transmitted to a base station where it is further processed for end-user queries in Wireless Sensor Networks. Unlike other wireless networks routing in WSN should be the energy efficient one. This paper gives an overview of the different routing strategies used in Wireless Sensor Networks.
Acute Pancreatitis Related to COVID-19 Infection: A Systematic Review and Analysis of Data

There is increasing literature mentioning severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection (COVID-19 infection) causing acute pancreatitis (AP). It is hypothesized that SARS-Cov-2 causes pancreatic injury either by direct cytotoxic effect of the virus on pancreatic cells through the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptors - the main receptors for the virus located on pancreatic cells - or by the cytokine storm that results from COVID-19 infection or a component of both. Many viruses are related to AP including mumps, coxsackievirus, cytomegalovirus (CMV), Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), and as data evolves SARS-CoV-2 virus may be one of them as well. We conducted a systematic literature review to explore the current literature and provide an overview of the evidence of AP in COVID-19 infection. We studied the presence of AP in patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection and calculated the time of diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection with respect to the time of diagnosis of AP. We also studied the age, gender, clinical manifestations, time of onset of symptoms, laboratory values, imaging findings, mortality, length of stay, comorbidities, need for Intensive Care Unit (ICU) care, and excluded any other common causes of AP. We included 40 articles comprising 46 patients. All patients had a positive SARS-CoV-2 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test and all patients had AP as per Atlanta’s criteria. The most common clinical presentation was abdominal pain in 29 (63.0%). Edematous pancreas was the most common Computed Tomography Abdomen Pelvis (CTAP) scan finding in these patients (35 patients). Seventeen (37%) patients required ICU admission and six (13%) patients died. Our study provides an important overview of the available data on AP in COVID-19 patients and concludes that AP is an important complication in COVID-19 infection and should be considered as an important differential in patients with COVID-19 infection who complain of abdominal pain.
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Impact on Minors’ Life: A Qualitative Study with Children of ALS Patients in Italy

Abstract Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a rare progressive neurodegenerative disease that is currently not curable and complex to manage. This qualitative study aimed to describe how ALS impacted life of minors with a parent affected by this pathology. Twenty-seven participants (16 females and 22 males; aged 7–18 years – M = 11.61; SD = 2.97) responded to a semi-structured interview. From the analysis of their answers three thematic areas were found: difficulties in understanding the changes caused by ALS, difficulties in family life, loneliness, and friendship as source of resilience. Indications are reported on possible interventions to be implemented to support these young people.
Incentivizing the adoption of precision agricultural technologies in small‐scaled farming systems: A choice experiment approach

Precision farming technologies are expected to reduce nutrient surplus in agriculture. Uptake of these technologies in European farming systems, however, is low and policy incentives are needed to promote environmental bene ﬁ ts. We conducted a choice experiment with 418 Swiss farmers to elicit their preferences for site ‐ speci ﬁ c nitrogen fertilization technologies. Using a split ‐ sample approach, we elicit both willingness ‐ to ‐ accept and willingness ‐ to ‐ pay welfare measures. Results show that welfare measures for the nitrogen reduction potential vary signi ﬁ cantly between the two samples. This indicates that the policy design a ﬀ ects farmers' preferences and willingness to adopt precision farming technologies that reduce nitrogen losses from agricultural production.
Evolution of the Family Equidae, Subfamily Equinae, in North, Central and South America, Eurasia and Africa during the Plio-Pleistocene

Simple Summary The family Equidae enjoys an iconic evolutionary record, especially the genus Equus which is actively investigated by both paleontologists and molecular biologists. Nevertheless, a comprehensive evolutionary framework for Equus across its geographic range, including North, Central and South America, Eurasia and Africa, is long overdue. Herein, we provide an updated taxonomic framework so as to develop its biochronologic and biogeographic frameworks that lead to well-resolved paleoecologic, paleoclimatic and phylogenetic interpretations. We present Equus’ evolutionary framework in direct comparison to more archaic lineages of Equidae that coexisted but progressively declined over time alongside evolving Equus species. We show the varying correlations between body size, and we use paleoclimatic map reconstructions to show the environmental changes accompanying taxonomic distribution across Equus geographic and chronologic ranges. We present the two most recent phylogenetic hypotheses on the evolution of the genus Equus using osteological characters and address parallel molecular studies. Abstract Studies of horse evolution arose during the middle of the 19th century, and several hypotheses have been proposed for their taxonomy, paleobiogeography, paleoecology and evolution. The present contribution represents a collaboration of 19 multinational experts with the goal of providing an updated summary of Pliocene and Pleistocene North, Central and South American, Eurasian and African horses. At the present time, we recognize 114 valid species across these continents, plus 4 North African species in need of further investigation. Our biochronology and biogeography sections integrate Equinae taxonomic records with their chronologic and geographic ranges recognizing regional biochronologic frameworks. The paleoecology section provides insights into paleobotany and diet utilizing both the mesowear and light microscopic methods, along with calculation of body masses. We provide a temporal sequence of maps that render paleoclimatic conditions across these continents integrated with Equinae occurrences. These records reveal a succession of extinctions of primitive lineages and the rise and diversification of more modern taxa. Two recent morphological-based cladistic analyses are presented here as competing hypotheses, with reference to molecular-based phylogenies. Our contribution represents a state-of-the art understanding of Plio-Pleistocene Equus evolution, their biochronologic and biogeographic background and paleoecological and paleoclimatic contexts.
WNUT-2020 Task 1: Extracting Entities and Relations from Wet Lab Protocols

This paper presents the results of the wet lab information extraction task at WNUT 2020. This task consisted of two sub tasks-(1) a named entity recognition task with 13 participants; and (2) a relation extraction task with 2 participants. We outline the task, data annotation process, corpus statistics, and provide a high-level overview of the participating systems for each sub task.
Combating Adversarial Covert Channels in Wi-Fi Networks

Physical layer covert channels exploit the characteristics of radio signals to convey secret messages while remaining inconspicuous within wireless channels. With specifically designed modulation schemes, covert channels effectively disguise secret messages as noise. Since the intentionally embedded noise dissipates when the radio signal is decoded as a bitstream, adversaries can maintain a stealthy breach in communication systems. IoT devices, particularly, often utilize vendor-specific firmware and hardware whose security verification is too complex for everyday users. Hence, these devices can easily be compromised to transmit their data to unauthorized adversaries via the covert channels. To this end, we propose a novel countermeasure system, Ghost-Fi Detector, which detects the covert channels reliably and comprehensively. Our attack models reflect a real-world wireless network technology, Wi-Fi, and cover three aspects of its radio signal characteristics including amplitude, phase, and frequency. Since each model induces distinct manifestations in the received signal, there is no dominant universal detection mechanism that detects all the attack models simultaneously. Instead, Ghost-Fi detector consists of six precisely designed complementary defense mechanisms that perform passive radio-frequency analyses. Evaluation results show that Ghost-Fi Detector achieves an average hit rate of 95% with an almost zero false-positive rate for arbitrary Wi-Fi frames.
Low-Complexity Detectors for Uplink Massive MIMO Systems Leveraging Truncated Polynomial Expansion

In this work, we propose low-complexity detectors for massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. Particularly, we leverage variants of truncated polynomial expansion (TPE) in order to reduce the computational complexity of the signal detection in the uplink direction. Linear detectors such as zero-forcing (ZF) and minimum mean square error (MMSE) involve expensive matrix-matrix multiplication and matrix inversion operations. TPE-based detectors are appropriate candidates for approximating these linear detectors. However, tuning the normalization factor of TPE-based detectors may require calculating the minimum and the maximum eigenvalues of the channel Gram matrix. These calculations become computationally expensive for some massive MIMO systems, especially for systems with a large ratio of single-antenna user terminals to the number of antennas at the base station, i.e., loading factor. We propose to tune the normalization factor using appropriate approximations for the extreme eigenvalues. The proposed TPE-based detectors exhibit a bit error performance similar to that of the TPE-based detector with the optimal normalization factor. Moreover, our proposed detectors achieve the error performance of ZF and MMSE for different loading factors of spatially correlated and uncorrelated massive MIMO channels. The computational complexity of the proposed detector is proportional to the number of base station antennas and the number of users.
The efficiency of ProTaper rotary retreatment files in the removal of two different root filling materials

The ProTaper rotary retreatment files is one of the new files especially designedfor retreatment. The aim of this study is to test if root canals filled with Resilon pointsand RealSeal sealer (SybronEndo, USA) can be retreated using ProTaper rotaryretreatment files in the same manner as canals filled with gutta-percha and zinc oxideeugenol based sealer.Twenty extracted maxillary first molars with palatal roots having single straightcanal and fully formed apex were instrumented and randomly divided into two groupsof ten roots each according to the root filling material used (gutta-percha and zincoxide eugenol based sealer for group A and Resilon points and RealSeal sealer forgroup B). For all roots, removal of root filling material was done by using ProTaperrotary retreatment files (Dentsply-Maillefer, Ballaigues, Switzerland). The amount ofroot filling material remained and the time required for the removal process for allroots were recorded and statistically analyzed using SPSS version 15.The results showed that during retreatment procedures; removal of Resilon withRealSeal sealer from root canals can be achieved with ProTaper rotary retreatmentfiles but the amount of Resilon root filling material remained was more than GP andshowed a highly significant difference, it was also obvious that removal of Resilonroot filling material from root canals requires more time than roots filled with guttapercha.In conclusion, removal of resin based root filling material can be achieved withProTaper rotary retreatment files but it leaves more filling remnants and takes moretime than canals filled with gutta-percha.
Unsupervised Classification of Categorical Time Series through Innovative Distances

- In this paper, two novel distances for nominal time series are introduced. Both of them are based on features describing the serial dependence patterns between each pair of categories. The first dissimilarity employs the so-called association measures, whereas the second computes correlation quantities between indicator processes whose uniqueness is guaranteed from standard stationary conditions. The metrics are used to construct crisp algorithms for clustering categorical series. The approaches are able to group series generated from similar underlying stochastic processes, achieve accurate results with series coming from a broad range of models and are computationally efficient. An extensive simulation study shows that the devised clustering algorithms outperform several alternative procedures proposed in the literature. Specifically, they achieve better results than approaches based on maximum likelihhod estimation, which take advantage of knowing the real underlying procedures. Both innovative dissimilarities could be useful for practitioners in the field of time series clustering
Computation-Aided Design of Albumin Affibody-Inserted Antibody Fragment for the Prolonged Serum Half-Life

Single-chain variable fragments (scFvs) have been recognized as promising agents in cancer therapy. However, short serum half-life of scFvs often limits clinical application. Fusion to albumin affibody (ABD) is an effective and convenient half-life extension strategy. Although one terminus of scFv is available for fusion of ABD, it is also frequently used for fusion of useful moieties such as small functional proteins, cytokines, or antibodies. Herein, we investigated the internal linker region for ABD fusion instead of terminal region, which was rarely explored before. We constructed two internally ABD-inserted anti-HER2 4D5scFv (4D5-ABD) variants, which have short (4D5-S-ABD) and long (4D5-L-ABD) linker length respectively. The model structures of these 4D5scFv and 4D5-ABD variants predicted using the deep learning-based protein structure prediction program (AlphaFold2) revealed high similarity to either the original 4D5scFv or the ABD structure, implying that the functionality would be retained. Designed 4D5-ABD variants were expressed in the bacterial expression system and characterized. Both 4D5-ABD variants showed anti-HER2 binding affinity comparable with 4D5scFv. Binding affinity of both 4D5-ABD variants against albumin was also comparable. In a pharmacokinetic study in mice, the 4D5-ABD variants showed a significantly prolonged half-life of 34 h, 114 times longer than that of 4D5scFv. In conclusion, we have developed a versatile scFv platform with enhanced pharmacokinetic profiles with an aid of deep learning-based structure prediction.
Local cerebral blood flow assessment using transcranial Doppler ultrasonography in a dog with brain infarction in the right middle cerebral artery territory

A 12-year-old neutered male Chihuahua was diagnosed with acute brain infarction in the right middle cerebral artery (MCA) territory. Transcranial Doppler ultrasonography (TCD) was performed to assess the local cerebral blood flow at the time of diagnosis and after 4 and 31 hr. Initially, the right MCA retained blood flow but with a lower cerebral blood flow velocity (CBFV; 14.9 cm/sec) than the left MCA (27.9 cm/sec). The TCD vascular resistance variables were higher in the right than in the left MCA. An increase in the CBFV and a decrease in TCD vascular resistance variables were observed, consistent with improvements in neurological symptoms. TCD can be a non-invasive, and easy-to-use modality for bedside monitoring of cerebral edema and infarction.
Risk Assessment of Debris Flow in Huyugou River Basin Based on Machine Learning and Mass Flow

The Huyugou river basin is a typical debris flow river basin in the Shanxi Province, which has great harm after the outbreak and seriously affects the safety of people’s lives and property. Therefore, it is urgent to carry out debris flow risk assessment. In this paper, a machine learning algorithm is implemented to assess the disaster susceptibility of each branch gully in a river basin of the Huyugou. Furthermore, its high-susceptibility branch gully and main gully were selected as the starting points of debris flow simulation for numerical simulation. The machine learning algorithm is implemented in a cloud-edge platform to minimize the model training and prediction times. Under the simulated rainfall conditions of major debris flow disasters, e.g., the one that occurred in 1996, the accuracy rate reached 84%. The results show that the debris flow susceptibility of each branch gully in the study area is mainly affected by the peak flow rate of the river basin, the length of the main gully, and the relative height difference of the river basin. The total risk area of debris flow is 1.91 × 105 m2, and the high-risk area accounts for 52.18% of the total area. It is mainly located in the upper part of the main gully accumulation area and the confluence of each channel and the main gully. The middle-risk area accounts for 36.14% of the total area, and the low-risk area accounts for less. We also observed significant reduction, from 34.68% to 36.98%, in the training and prediction times of the machine learning models when implemented over the proposed edge-cloud framework. The reappearance of debris flow in the study area is relatively accurate, which provides a certain scientific basis for the risk assessment of debris flow in the future.
Experimental Verification of the Impact of Radial Internal Clearance on a Bearing’s Dynamics

This paper focuses on the influence of radial internal clearance on the dynamics of a rolling-element bearing. In the beginning, the 2—Degree of Freedom (DOF) model was studied, in which the clearance was treated as a bifurcation parameter. The derived nonlinear mathematical model is based on Hertzian contact theory and takes into consideration shape errors of rolling surfaces and eccentricity reflecting real operating conditions. The analysis showed characteristic dynamical behavior by specific clearance range, which reflects others in a low or high amplitude and can refer to the optimal clearance. The experimental validation was conducted with the use of a double row self-aligning ball bearing (SABB) NTN 2309SK in which the acceleration response was measured by various rotational velocities. The time series obtained from the mathematical model and the experiment were analyzed with the recurrence quantification analysis.
Spectral Characterization of the Epithermal Neutron Beam at the Brookhaven Medical Research Reactor

This paper discusses neutron spectrum measurements performed on the aluminum-oxide-filtered neutron beam at the Brookhaven Medical Research Reactor (BMRR). Two independent measurement techniques are used in the spectrum characterization: foil activation spectrometry and proton-recoil spectrometry. Activation foil assemblies are irradiated at the exit port of the beam facility. Dominant resonances in selected activation reactions are used to measure the epithermal neutron spectrum. The intermediate and fast energy ranges of the neutron spectrum are measured by threshold reactions and the {sup 10}B-filtered {sup 235}U fission reaction. Neutron spectral data are derived form the activation data by two approaches: an analysis that yields neutron flux values at the energies of the dominant or primary resonances in the epithermal activation reactions and an analysis that utilizes all the activation data simultaneously in a spectrum unfolding process using the FERRET data adjustment code. Hydrogen-filled proton-recoil proportional chambers are used at the beam port exit to acquire data of a higher energy resolution than that obtainable through foil activation techniques. These measurements ar made to determine if structure in the aluminum scattering cross section would produce significant structure in the filtered spectrum in the fast neutron region.
Oscillating flow heat transfer: a comprehensive review

ABSTRACT The oscillating flow heat transfer (OFHT) has been an area of interest to researchers for the last four decades due to the substantial improvement in the performance of such devices. The present paper reviews oscillatory flow heat transfer in detail by considering the type of interaction medium, design, and applications as essential criteria. This paper also overviews the role of oscillating flow heat transfer in the various heat exchanger types such as packed beds, parallel plate channels, finned tubes, ribbed tubes, and the application. Oscillating flow heat exchanger performance mainly depends on oscillation frequency, tidal displacement, axial temperature gradient, tube dimension, and fluid properties. The results of these investigations over a period of five decade are presented in terms of performance indicators viz. enhancement of effective thermal diffusivity by 17,900 folds, Heat flux from 60 to 104 W/m2, axial temperature gradient of 200 K/m, and Nusselt number of 65.93 to 139.8. The significant enhancement in the performance of OFHT is due to combined effect of increase in periodic lateral heat conduction and longitudinal convection due to flow oscillation in presence of axial temperature gradient. The design of the compact system is possible because of significant enhancement in these performance indicators. The significance of this mode of heat transfer is widely known in applications such as Stirling machines, cryogenic refrigerators, or pulsed-tube cryocoolers. Furthermore, heat transfer improvement through oscillatory and pulsating flows is essential in many fields of chemical and mechanical applications where a compact and efficient system is required. This study will benefit new researchers in the understanding of the oscillating flow heat transfer mechanism and the variety of applications for such heat exchangers.