Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bronze Age dirks and rapiers as illustrated by examples from Durham and Northumberland

A new classification scheme for Irish-British dirks and rapiers is based on blade cross-sections rather than on the butt-shapes used by Trump (1962). Four groups are considered under the headings of associations, moulds, Continental evidence and typology. Group I weapons, with ribbed and/or grooved blades, belong mainly to MBA I (Acton Park phase), having developed from Camerton-Snowshill daggers. Group II, lozenge-sectioned blades, developed alongside Group I but were more subject to Continental influence. Group III, triple arris blades, include the long, elegant weapons of Ornament Horizon-Taunton-Barton Bendish phase. Group IV blades with flat mid-sections represent the last phase, with some influence from leafshaped swords; their main period of use is in the Penard phase (and Wallington in the Highland Zone). Ballintober, Chelsea and Lambeth/Rosnoen swords are distinguished by blade type. Although found on both sides of the Channel, Ballintobers are mainly British, Lambeth/Rosnoen French. Associated dirks and rapiers, and moulds from the British Isles, are listed. The Durham and Northumberland examples are classified by this scheme and discussed against their N English MBA background. -- AATA
Decellularization of Full Heart—Optimizing the Classical Sodium-Dodecyl-Sulfate-Based Decellularization Protocol

Compared to cell therapy, where cells are injected into a defect region, the treatment of heart infarction with cells seeded in a vascularized scaffold bears advantages, such as an immediate nutrient supply or a controllable and persistent localization of cells. For this purpose, decellularized native tissues are a preferable choice as they provide an in vivo-like microenvironment. However, the quality of such scaffolds strongly depends on the decellularization process. Therefore, two protocols based on sodium dodecyl sulfate or sodium deoxycholate were tailored and optimized for the decellularization of a porcine heart. The obtained scaffolds were tested for their applicability to generate vascularized cardiac patches. Decellularization with sodium dodecyl sulfate was found to be more suitable and resulted in scaffolds with a low amount of DNA, a highly preserved extracellular matrix composition, and structure shown by GAG quantification and immunohistochemistry. After seeding human endothelial cells into the vasculature, a coagulation assay demonstrated the functionality of the endothelial cells to minimize the clotting of blood. Human-induced pluripotent-stem-cell-derived cardiomyocytes in co-culture with fibroblasts and mesenchymal stem cells transferred the scaffold into a vascularized cardiac patch spontaneously contracting with a frequency of 25.61 ± 5.99 beats/min for over 16 weeks. The customized decellularization protocol based on sodium dodecyl sulfate renders a step towards a preclinical evaluation of the scaffolds.
The Impact of Rogue Nodes on the Dependability of Opportunistic Networks

Opportunistic Networks (OppNets) are an extension to the classical Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) where the network is not dependent on any infrastructure (e.g. Access Points or centralized administrative nodes). OppNets can be more flexible than MANETs because an end to end path does not exist and much longer delays can be expected. Whereas a Rogue Access Point is typically immobile in the legacy infrastructure based networks and can have considerable impact on the overall connectivity, the research question in this project evaluates how the pattern and mobility of a rogue nodes impact the dependability and overall "Average Latency" in an Opportunistic Network Environment. We have simulated a subset of the mathematical modeling performed in a previous publication in this regard. Ad hoc networks are very challenging to model due to their mobility and intricate routing schemes. We strategically started our research by exploring the evolution of Opportunistic networks, and then implemented the rogue behavior by utilizing The ONE (Opportunistic Network Environment, by Nokia Research Centre) simulator to carry out our research over rogue behavior. The ONE simulator is an open source simulator developed in Java, simulating the layer 3 of the OSI model. The Rogue behavior is implemented in the simulator to observe the effect of rogue nodes. Finally we extracted the desired dataset to measure the latency by carefully simulating the intended behavior, keeping rest of the parameters (e.g. Node Movement Models, Signal Range and Strength, Point of Interest (POI) etc) unchanged. Our results are encouraging, and coincide with the average latency deterioration patterns as modeled by the previous researchers, with a few exceptions. The practical implementation of plug-in in ONE simulator has shown that only a very high degree of rogue nodes impact the latency, making OppNets more resilient and less vulnerable to malicious attacks.
Grasping and Transport of Unstructured Collections of Massive Objects

We present a collection of sensorimotor models which, when paired with a custom, mobile manipulation platform, collectively enable the autonomous deconstruction of piles of debris to facilitate mobility in cluttered spaces. The models address the problems of visual debris segmentation, object selection, and visual grasp planning. They also exercise proprioceptive grasp control, and force-controlled object extraction to enact the grasping plan. The object selector segments a debris pile into a set of parts that appear disjoint from one another and executes a rule-based decision program to select the object that appears easiest to extract. Then a grasp planner identifies a grasping point and hand preshape at a location where the gripper configuration fits the shape of the object, while also satisfying kinematic and collision-avoidance constraints. Our geometric grasp-prototype concept allows the planner to establish grasp suitability by fitting a set of shape-grasp primitives to a 2.5D depth image of the pile. The robot then applies the grasp reactively, pushing against the object until a preset resistance is met. Finally, an admittance controller guides object extraction, allowing a prescribed end-effector compliance along task-frame axes to minimize adverse forces and torques on the hand. We show experiments demonstrating the applicability of those models in isolation and in concert, including grasp tests conducted on objects representative of of a human-scale urban environment.
PRODUCTION, PURIFICATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF THERMOSTABLE CHITINASE AS LYTIC ENZYME FROM Bacillus stearothermophilus AND ITS USE FOR PREVINTING THE GROWTH AND SPORULATION OF SOME PLANT PATHOGENIC FUNGI

Chitinases (glycanohydrolases, EC 3.2.1.14) are important enzymes in various fields such as biological control, pharmaceuticals and chemical purposes as well as food and feed industries. Therefore, the present study aimed to produce chitinase enzyme and the results revealed that: Maximum enzyme activity and cell density of B. stearothermophilus were obtained in the fourth day on the fermentation media containing 1.5% of chitin or chitin + arabinose or/and CM – cellulose as carbon source and 1.5% yeast extract as nitrogen source, which these nutrition factors induced the enzyme biosynthesis. The shaking of culture through the fermentation period greatly enhanced the formation of this enzyme. Initial pH 8.0 and 55 ° C as incubation temperature were found as the best environmental factors for enzyme production. 65% is the best saturation of ammonium sulphate which gives higher enzyme activity, recovery and purification folds. The purification of enzyme with DEAE – sephadex A – 50 gives higher purification folds and specific activity of enzyme. The fractionation of enzyme preparation showed 3 peaks of enzyme. This means that, this enzyme has three fractions of chitinase, which identified as three types of endo – chitinase. pH 6.0 and 65 ° C were found as the optima for enzyme activity. The enzyme showed higher stability against the different pH range between 5.0 to 8.0 and completely stable at pH 6.0. This means that the enzyme protein has acidic in its nature. Also, the enzyme was stable up to 75 ° C and lost little activity from its maximum up to 85 ° C. This means that, this enzyme was a thermostable one. Some metal ions activated the enzyme activity such as Mg +2 and Ca +2 , but others such as Ag + and Hg +2 were inhibited it. Enzyme preparations were successfully to hydrolysis different substrates with higher degree such as colloidal chitin, chitin and colloidal chitosan, but other such as dioligomer did not hydrolyze. This is may be due to its substrate specificity or substrate affinity of the enzyme. The enzyme also successfully to hydrolyse cell walls of some plant pathogenic fungi with higher degree. Also prevent the growth of these plant pathogenic as well as sporulation rate. This means that, this enzyme preparation may be used as a good antifungal agent in biological control or preventing the mould growth of pathogenic fungi.
Co-developmental trajectories of interpersonal relationships in middle childhood to early adolescence: Associations with traditional bullying and cyberbullying

This study explored the co-developmental trajectories of three different interpersonal relationship types (parent, teacher, and peer) and their relations to bullying behaviors (i.e., traditional bullying perpetration/victimization and cyberbullying perpetration/victimization) during middle childhood to early adolescence. A total of 4154 Chinese elementary school students in grades 3 and 4 (54.8% boy; Mage = 9.90, SD = 0.72) participated in assessments at five time points, using 6-month assessment intervals. Analyses were conducted using parallel process latent class growth modeling. Five distinct interpersonal relationship groups were identified: congruent-low group, congruent-high increasing group, congruent-moderate group, low mother–child relationships group, and low decreasing teacher–student relationships group. The identification of these patterns yielded a more comprehensive understanding of the nature of the developmental patterns of interpersonal relationships during this age period. Furthermore, the five co-developmental patterns of interpersonal relationships differentially associated with traditional bullying and cyberbullying, implying the need for intervention programs to be tailored to members of specific groups to reduce traditional bullying and cyberbullying.
Simulation of the Progression of the COVID-19 Outbreak in Northwest Syria Using a Basic and Adjusted SIR Model

Syria has experienced armed conflict since 2011, and the provision of health care has been severely compromised due to the hostilities. At the time of writing, Northwest Syria (NWS) was outside governmental control and faced the challenges of the COVID-19 outbreak. Since the emergence of this disease, several studies have looked at the dynamics of COVID-19 transmission, predicted its progression, and determined the impact of different preventive measures. While most of these studies’ settings were in stable contexts, this study investigated the progression of the COVID-19 pandemic in Northwest Syria, a conflict-affected region, for nine months (from July 2020 to March 2021) using the Suspected-Infected-Removed (SIR) model. We adjusted the SIR model to study the impact of wearing facial masks on the outbreak dynamics and progression. Based on available data and using the basic and adjusted SIR models, we estimated the value of the basic reproduction number (R0), which provides an initial prediction of disease progression. Using the basic SIR model, the estimated R0 for the first wave of SARS-CoV-2 in Northwest Syria was 2.38. The resulting figures were overestimated in comparison with the reported numbers and data on the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the results were significantly reasonable when we adjusted the model for a preventive measure (in this case, wearing face masks). Face masks, the most available preventive measure to be applied in emergency and conflict settings, remarkably affect the outbreak dynamics and may play a key role in controlling and limiting the spread of COVID-19. The novelty of the study is provided by simulating the progress of the COVID-19 outbreak in conflict settings, as it is the first study to predict the dynamics of COVID-19 disease in NWS by adjusting for face-mask-wearing as a preventive measure to explore its impact on outbreak dynamics.
Whose culture is Korean? Toward an anti-essentialist curriculum for heritage culture

ABSTRACT While having served to help immigrant children develop a sense of ethnic identity and belonging, heritage schools have also been documented to reproduce an essentialised understanding of heritage culture by teaching heritage culture as fixed, stable, and homogenous. To help students move beyond an essentialised conception of heritage culture, the authors collaboratively developed a curriculum engaging students with an alternative understanding of heritage culture and implemented it in a Korean heritage school in New York City. By documenting how the teacher encouraged children to explore the fluid, hybrid, and heterogeneous nature of heritage culture, this study not only provides practical implications for teaching heritage culture but also shows a possibility of making heritage schools a transformative space in which the boundaries of heritage culture and identity are constantly revisited.
Discussion of “Optimizing in a complex world: A statistician's role in decision making”

I’mpleased to thankChristineM.Anderson-Cook for a thought-provoking article that hit several “hot button” issues our profession is actively discussing anddebating today. These topics include: the roles that statisticians should strive for within their organizations, especially the consideration of leadership roles; how to best educate and train statisticians for such roles; how to approach large, complex, unstructured problems—thosewith no “textbook” solution; and how statistics and statisticians can provide tools to enhance “real” decision making; real in the sense of decisions having multiple considerations and/or constraints. Obviously, I couldn’t possibly do justice to each of these topics in a brief discussion. Therefore, I will focus my comments on how I feel that Dr. Anderson-Cook, through this research, has continued her leadership in the elucidation and promotion of the discipline of statistical engineering. Dr. Anderson-Cook notes the recent emergence of statistical engineering as a unique discipline in her introduction, and explains how this phenomenon has enhanced both statisticians’ roles and impact. It is important to acknowledge her critical role in this emergence, including co-editing a special edition of this journal devoted to statistical engineering (AndersonCook and Lu 2012), and a section on statistical engineering in the recently published “best of ” Statistical Roundtable articles from Quality Progress (AndersonCook and Lu 2016). In this current article, Dr. Anderson-Cook makes a strong case for why statistical engineering is needed,
An Efficient Defocus Blur Segmentation Scheme Based on Hybrid LTP and PCNN

The defocus or motion effect in images is one of the main reasons for the blurry regions in digital images. It can affect the image artifacts up to some extent. However, there is a need for automatic defocus segmentation to separate blurred and sharp regions to extract the information about defocus-blur objects in some specific areas, for example, scene enhancement and object detection or recognition in defocus-blur images. The existence of defocus-blur segmentation algorithms is less prominent in noise and also costly for designing metric maps of local clarity. In this research, the authors propose a novel and robust defocus-blur segmentation scheme consisting of a Local Ternary Pattern (LTP) measured alongside Pulse Coupled Neural Network (PCNN) technique. The proposed scheme segments the blur region from blurred fragments in the image scene to resolve the limitations mentioned above of the existing defocus segmentation methods. It is noticed that the extracted fusion of upper and lower patterns of proposed sharpness-measure yields more noticeable results in terms of regions and edges compared to referenced algorithms. Besides, the suggested parameters in the proposed descriptor can be flexible to modify for performing numerous settings. To test the proposed scheme’s effectiveness, it is experimentally compared with eight referenced techniques along with a defocus-blur dataset of 1000 semi blurred images of numerous categories. The model adopted various evaluation metrics comprised of Precision, recall, and F1-Score, which improved the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed scheme. Moreover, the proposed scheme used some other flavors of evaluation parameters, e.g., Accuracy, Matthews Correlation-Coefficient (MCC), Dice-Similarity-Coefficient (DSC), and Specificity for ensuring provable evaluation results. Furthermore, the fuzzy-logic-based ranking approach of Evaluation Based on Distance from Average Solution (EDAS) module is also observed in the promising integrity analysis of the defocus blur segmentation and also in minimizing the time complexity.
Stromal Myofibroblast Density in Dentigerous Cyst, Odontogenic Keratocysts and Ameloblastoma: An Immunohistochemical Study

Aims and objectives : This study aimed to analyze immunohistochemically the density of myofibroblast (MF) in dentigerous cyst (DC), odontogenic keratocyst (OKC) and ameloblastoma (AB). Methods : Thirty formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded specimens of DC, OKC and AB, ten each, were included in the present study. Immunohistochemical staining with anti- α -SMA primary antibody was performed. Area fraction of immunopositivity was measured by image analysis software followed by statistical analysis using Kruskal Wallis and post-hoc Dunn’s tests. Results : All cases of the three lesions were immunopositive for α -SMA. The median area fractions were 0.57, 8.72 and 17.87 for DC, OKC and AB respectively with a statistically non-significant difference between AB and OKC and statistically significant differences between AB and DC and between OKC and DC. A positive correlation was observed between the density of MF and the known biologic behavior of the lesions. Conclusion : Over- expression of α -SMA found in AB and OKC might be used as a reliable marker for aggressiveness.
Cohesion in Human and Machine Translation

Machine translation technology has consistently improved to the extent that it is frequently compared with human translation performance. This study reports a simple comparison of two translations of an Arabic literary text: a short story written by the Egyptian writer Yousef Idris. One translation is human made and the other is a machine translation using Google Translate. The study focuses on the use of some cohesive devices in the two translated texts. Two types of grammatical cohesion were selected for analysis, namely, reference and conjunction. The findings of the study show that cohesive properties vary according to the translation method involved, wither it is human or machine translation. The results obtained are indicative of the limitations of machine translation to produce a reliable translation of a literary work. Unlike the human translator whose use of cohesive devices is balanced and fairly distributed to the text, Google Translate uses such devices excessively, which makes the machine translated text incoherent, loose and ambiguous.
Nocturnal Atmospheric Oxidative Processes in the Indo‐Gangetic Plain and Their Variation During the COVID‐19 Lockdowns

This study investigates selected secondary atmospheric responses to the widely reported emission change attributed to COVID‐19 lockdowns in the highly polluted Indo‐Gangetic Plain (IGP) using ground‐based measurements of trace gases and particulate matter. We used a chemical box‐model to show that production of nighttime oxidant, NO3, was affected mainly by emission decrease (average nighttime production rates 1.2, 0.8 and 1.5 ppbv hr−1 before, during and relaxation of lockdown restrictions, respectively), while NO3 sinks were sensitive to both emission reduction and seasonal variations. We have also shown that the maximum potential mixing ratio of nitryl chloride, a photolytic chlorine radical source which has not been previously considered in the IGP, is as high as 5.5 ppbv at this inland site, resulting from strong nitrate radical production and a potentially large particulate chloride mass. This analysis suggests that air quality measurement campaigns and modeling explicitly consider heterogeneous nitrogen oxide and halogen chemistry.
Genetic Diversity of the Hemagglutinin Genes of Influenza a Virus in Asian Swine Populations

Swine influenza (SI) is a major respiratory disease of swine; SI is due to the influenza A virus of swine (IAV-S), a highly contagious virus with zoonotic potential. The intensity of IAV-S surveillance varies among countries because it is not a reportable disease and causes limited mortality in swine. Although Asia accounts for half of all pig production worldwide, SI is not well managed in those countries. Rigorously managing SI on pig farms could markedly reduce the economic losses, the likelihood of novel reassortants among IAV-S, and the zoonotic IAV-S infections in humans. Vaccination of pigs is a key control measure for SI, but its efficacy relies on the optimal antigenic matching of vaccine strains with the viral strains circulating in the field. Here, we phylogenetically reviewed the genetic diversity of the hemagglutinin gene among IAVs-S that have circulated in Asia during the last decade. This analysis revealed the existence of country-specific clades in both the H1 and H3 subtypes and cross-border transmission of IAVs-S. Our findings underscore the importance of choosing vaccine antigens for each geographic region according to both genetic and antigenic analyses of the circulating IAV-S to effectively manage SI in Asia.