Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evolutionary tuning of TRPA1 underlies the variation in heat avoidance behaviors among frog species inhabiting

2 Environmental temperature is a critical factor for all forms of life, and thermal tolerance defines the habitats 3 utilized by a species. Moreover, the evolutionary tuning of thermal perception can also play a key role in habitat 4 selection. Yet, the relative importance of thermal tolerance and perception in environmental adaptation remains 5 poorly understood. Thermal conditions experienced by anuran tadpoles differ among species due to the variation 6 in breeding seasons and water environments selected by parental frogs. In the present study, heat tolerance and 7 avoidance temperatures were compared in tadpoles from five anuran species that spatially and temporally inhabit 8 different thermal niches. These two parameters were positively correlated with each other and were consistent 9 with the thermal conditions of habitats. The species difference in avoidance temperature was 2.6 times larger 10 than that in heat tolerance, suggesting the importance of heat avoidance responses in habitat selection. In 11 addition, the avoidance temperature increased after warm acclimation, especially in the species frequently 12 exposed to heat in their habitats. Characterization of the heat-sensing TRPA1 ion channel revealed an amphibian- 13 specific alternatively spliced variant containing a single valine insertion relative to the canonical alternative 14 spliced variant of TRPA1, and this novel variant altered the response to thermal stimuli. The two alternatively 15 spliced variants of TRPA1 exhibited different thermal responses in a species-specific manner, which are likely to 16 be associated with a difference in avoidance temperatures among species. Together, our findings suggest that the 17 functional change in TRPA1 plays a crucial role in thermal adaptation processes.
Context Correlation Aware Network for Cardiac Segmentation

Automatically segmenting the anatomical structure of the heart from the cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) images offers a great potential to augment the traditional healthcare strategy for the quantitative analysis of cardiac contractile function. Most of the existing CNN-based methods for cardiac segmentation tend to ignore the misalignment issues during the feature aggregation process and not fully use multi-scale context and contour information, which may lead to the unexpected misclassification caused by the falsely aligned contextual features and the discontinuity in the edge of segmentation maps. To resolve these issues, we proposed a context correlation aware network (CCA-Net). In CCA-Net, a volume correlation flow module was designed to align contour features and semantic features from adjacent levels, which offered the guidance to wrap low-resolution semantic features into high-resolution features. Besides, a residual gated squeeze module was utilized to explicitly model the boundaries and enhance the representations. Extensive experiments on the multi-sequence cardiac magnetic resonance segmentation challenge (MS-CMRSeg 2019) dataset and MICCAI challenge 2017 automatic cardiac diagnosis challenge (ACDC) dataset demonstrated that CCA-Net was superior to other state-of-the-art methods.
OFDM-based Dual-Function Radar-Communications: Optimal Resource Allocation for Fairness

This paper investigates the problem of fairness in Dual-Function radar-communications system (DFRC) which exploits orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) waveforms for performing radar and communication operations simultaneously. A novel iterative algorithm are proposed to maximize the fairness among different communication users (CUs) with the constraint on radar user’s (RU) perfermance. In our considered system, the optimization problem falls into a mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem, which is generally NP-hard. In order to make this thorny problem easy to deal with, we propose an approximate algorithm based on BSUM theory to obtain the feasible solution of the original problem in polynomial time. It is shown, using simulation results, that the proposed optimization strategy outperform other strategies in term of fairness.
A Current Re-Use Quadrature RF Receiver Front-End for Low Power Applications: Blixator Circuit

This article presents the theory and implementation of a quadrature and differential RF front-end receiver. Combining balun, low-noise amplifier (LNA), mixer, and oscillator in a single stage, the proposed circuit, named the Blixator, is well suited for low-power applications. The baseband’s transimpedance amplifier (TIA) also shares part of its dc current with the Blixator cell, resulting in sub-milliwatt power consumption. To avoid additional power and area by quadrature LO generation, the I/Q signals are generated at RF, employing the inductors already required for providing the dc current path of the LNA transistors. The expressions for gain, noise figure (NF), and phase noise of the voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) are derived, and the behavior of the circuit is thoroughly investigated. The prototype of the Blixator receiver is implemented in a 0.18-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> CMOS technology. The experimental results show a NF of 10.5 dB, an IIP3 of −15.5 dBm, at the maximum gain, and an image rejection of 23 dB, which meets the requirements for the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) standard. The circuit consumes only 340-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{W}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, from a 0.8-V supply, and its die area is 0.75 mm<sup>2</sup>.
Tunable spectral manifestation of Tamm plasmon-polaritons in a hybrid structure with 2d black phosphorus in the terahertz range

ABSTRACT A structure consisting of the 2d black phosphorus (BP) film and a rugate filter (RF) divided by a liquid crystal (LC) layer is theoretically studied as a system in which Tamm plasmon-polaritons (TPP) can be excited. The spectral distribution of the reflection coefficient of the system in the RF band gap region is calculated for the cases when the band gap is in the regions of 1 and 10 THz. It is shown that, in both cases, the reflection coefficient dip associated with TPP excitation near the 2d BP film appears in the RF band gap region. The spectral position and magnitude of the reflection coefficient dip depend on the harmonic profile parameters of the RF refractive index, concentration and effective mass of the 2d BP charge carriers, and the LC layer thickness and refractive index. It was found that the TPP wavelength is a periodic function of the LC layer thickness and its refractive index, and with their increase, two or more TPP can appear at wavelengths within the RF band gap. The possibility of controlling the TPP spectral position using an external electric field is noted. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
An investigation of the effect of uneven blade spacing on the tonal noise generated by a mixed flow fan

The current study investigates the flow performance and sound quality for a standard and an alternative compressor design for use in a Dyson desk fan. The alternative compressor has an uneven blade spacing to spread the associated energy of a single blade passing frequency to several frequencies in order to improve sound quality. The flow performance and acoustic signature for the two designs are compared both as a standalone compressor and installed in product. A dedicated sound preference model was developed to objectively evaluate the acoustic signature of both designs. This methodology can be used to help optimise compressor design in terms of user preference. Originally published in FAN 2012, the International conference on Fan noise, technology and numerical methods An investigation of the effect of uneven blade spacing on the tonal noise generated by a mixed flow fan interest to the automotive and the aircraft industries [46]. One proposed solution to this problem and the one investigated in this paper is to unevenly space the blades of the compressor about the centre of rotation, in order to spread the single, large tone induced by the blade passing frequency into several reduced tones to improve overall sound quality. The novelty of the current study was to demonstrate this as a potential solution in the context of a domestic appliance. The issue of sound quality has been raised for radial fans [4] and axial propellers [5]. In both studies, the overall sound pressure level in dB or dB(A) and the magnitude of the tones were the important metrics used to evaluate sound quality following changes to the blade design. A different method of evaluation is presented in the current study using psychoacoustic metrics as a more thorough and relevant means to describe changes in sound quality. In the current study, a simple model highlighting the motivation for uneven blade spacing is described. An alternative compressor design is realised and the flow performance and acoustic signature for both compressor designs are measured experimentally as standalone units and as integrated components of AM01. Finally, the sound quality evaluation methodology using psychoacoustic metrics is described and the results of a validated human preference model are presented to allow for an objective comparison of sound quality between the two designs.
Recurrent Semantic Learning-Driven Fast Binary Vulnerability Detection in Healthcare Cyber Physical Systems

Healthcare cyber physical systems (HCPS) always pursuing high availability allow software providers to adopt multiple kinds of development languages to reuse third-party program codes, while leading to the wide propagation of hidden software vulnerabilities. However, it is impossible to accurately trace execution paths and locate the key elements during the software execution process, which makes semantic features of vulnerabilities in the binary code can not bed extracted. This is the key support in automated vulnerability detection practices. To address these problems, a novel fast vulnerability detection mechanism based on recurrent semantic learning is proposed, which does not require high-level permissions to access the compiling process and traverse all execution paths. Firstly, a programframe is constructed to integrate software run-time logic and executing environment, detecting vulnerabilities from multi-programming language binary codes. Secondly, to achieve the powerful software execution context-awareness ability, a cascaded-LSTM recurrent neural network is designated to extract semantic features from binary files with vulnerabilities. Besides, we establish an experimental toolkit named an intelligent vulnerability detector (IntVD) to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods. Extensive and practical experiments validate that the vulnerability recognition accuracy on the HCPS software including VLC and LibTIFF can reach more than 95%.
A New and Fast Method for On-line Estimation of d and q Axes Inductances of Interior Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machines Using Measurements of Current Derivatives and Inverter DC-Bus Voltage

This paper proposes a novel on-line technique for estimation of the inductances of an interior permanent magnet synchronous machine (IPMSM) based on the measurement of dc-bus voltage of the inverter and the stator current derivatives at certain voltage vectors during each pulsewidth modulation (PWM) cycle. This technique removes the requirement for the bulky and expensive shaft-locking mechanisms and test signal injection for obtaining the machine dq inductance parameters off line. It also overcomes the problems associated with other recursive on-line techniques which take a number of PWM cycles to update the parameters. The proposed method estimates the d and q axes inductances of IPMSMs within each PWM cycle without requiring knowledge of stator resistance, rotor flux linkage, and rotor speed. It also tracks the variations of the inductances (especially the q-axis inductance), which vary significantly due to q-axis magnetic saturation and cross saturation effect of the IPMSM, with sufficient accuracy. This paper presents full analysis, system simulation, and extensive experimental studies in order to verify the accuracy, quick tracking ability, and robustness of the proposed method.
Some Solutions for Designing and Organizing A Study Influence Quality Accreditation on the Development of Teacher Training Programs in Vietnam

This study presented the theoretical model applied to the research design with descriptions of the overall sample, survey sample, research location, etc. The main contents of the design and research organization and the results obtained in theory have been applied in practice. The results have fully met the scientific and technical requirements of the research nature of the major Measure and Evaluate in education. At the same time, the results obtained from this article hope to help standardize the toolkit to assess the influence of the accreditation of higher education institutions in general and the pedagogical training program in Vietnam, which is convenient, accurate and objective.
Knowledge Management Challenges in Start-up Companies in China's Great Bay Area

China's Great Bay Area covers Hong Kong S.A. R, Macau S.A. R, Shenzhen, and many other cities in Guangdong Province and is one of China's most economically prosperous areas. Thousands of people start their businesses in this area every year. It is a well-known belief that knowledge management can help business success; however, start-up companies may face many issues in applying knowledge management to achieve their success. Therefore, this study examines the challenges and problems of knowledge management implementation in start-up companies in this region. Conducting a series of semi-structured interviews with owners of start-up companies, this study tries to find several challenges of these companies, such as a lack of knowledge management systems and expertise in the domain. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study investigating the knowledge management challenges of start-up companies in China’s Great Bay Area. It also provides significant managerial implications that can help these companies to embark on the knowledge management journey successfully.
Calculating charge density of clays: An improvised method

Two benchmark Vertisols from Maharashtra, viz. Linga series (Typic Haplusterts in Nagpur district) and Pahur series (Sodic Haplusterts in Yavatmal district) of Maharashtra were chosen for the study. The fine clay fractions are dominated by smectite with small amounts of vermiculite. Reduced CECs of the fine clays were determined after the Greene-Kelly test. CEC and calculated surface charges are distributed in both the tetrahedral and octahedral layers of which the former (65%) is higher than the latter (35%). However, the proportion of octahedral CEC and charge increases (44%) with the deduction of the contribution of vermiculite and chlorite CEC from the tetrahedral (corrected) CEC. The The CEC and charge distribution exhibited fairly good relationship with some soil properties such as, fine clay, COLE, moisture retention at 1500 kPa, hydraulic conductivity and pH. The study also indicated that determination of reduced CECs from Greene-Kelley test is an effective means of measuring the octahedral and tetrahedral CECs and also for calculating the charge of soil clays. The Pahur soils could be more prone to hydroxy-interlayering owing to its higher tetrahedral charge than Linga soils. The surface area method overestimates the calculation of charge from CEC than formula weight method.In India, the black soils occupy about 116 m ha (Bhattacharyya et al., 2009) of which about 30 m ha is in Maharashtra and about 8.04 m ha is in Vidarbha region. These soils are developed in alluvium derived from weathering of Deccan basalt (Pal et al., 2006). The black soils of the Deccan Trap are rich in plagioclase feldspars and yield dioctahedral smectite as its first weathering product (Pal and Deshpande, 1987; Pal et al., 1989; Bhattacharyya et al., 1993). Earlier review on the Vertisols of India indicate that black soils of India are dominated by beidellite-nontronite type of minerals (Ghosh and Kapoor, 1982). However, fine clay smectite when subjected to the Greene-Kelly test (Greene-Kelly, 1953) by heating clays with Li and subjecting to glycerolsolvation, expands to about 18 A and contracts to ˜9.5 A indicating this to be a mixture of beidellite/nontronite and montmorillonite in which the amount of the former is more than the latter (Pal and Deshpande 1987; Ray et al., 2003)
During HCV DAA Therapy Plasma Mip1B, IP10, and miRNA Profile Are Distinctly Associated with Subsequent Diagnosis of Hepatocellular Carcinoma: A Pilot Study

Simple Summary Hepatitis C virus (HCV) therapy lowers risk of liver cancer. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) regulate immune response and pathogenesis of disease. We evaluated soluble markers of interferon signaling and liver cirrhosis, plasma miRNAs and other non-coding RNAs throughout HCV therapy prior to diagnosis of liver cancer to understand factors involved in the early stages of the cancer pathogenesis. Our results of the absence of cancer pathway suppressive miRNAs, in combination with serum immune biomarkers, may help enhance ability to identify patients at high risk for liver cancer and provide timely treatments. Abstract Background: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) therapy lowers risk of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Little is known about factors driving/preceding HCC in treated persons. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) regulate host response and pathogenesis of disease. We investigated plasma levels of these RNAs and select serum markers before, during, and after HCV therapy, preceding HCC. Methods: Of 187 DAA treated HCV patients where therapy oriented longitudinal sampling was performed at a time without HCC diagnosis, 9 were subsequently diagnosed with HCC within 2 years of therapy. They were matched with 7 patients not diagnosed with HCC over the same time period. RNASeq was performed on plasma, and serum was assessed for biomarkers of inflammation by ELISA. Results: HCC diagnosis was 19 months (6–28) after therapy start in the HCC group. 73 and 63 miRs were differentially expressed at baseline (before DAA therapy) and 12 weeks after DAA therapy comparing HCC and non-HCC groups. Several lncRNA- showed differential expression as well. Several miRNA suppressors of cancer-related pathways, lncRNA- and mRNA-derived stabilized short RNAs were consistently absent in the plasma of patients who developed HCC. Serum IP10, and MCP-1 level was higher in the HCC group 12 weeks after therapy, and distinct miRNAs correlated with IP10 and MCP-1. Finally, in a focused analysis of 8 miRNAs best associated with HCC we observed expression of mi576 and mi-5189 correlation with expression of a select group of PBMC mRNA. Conclusions: These results are consistent with complex interplay between RNA-mediated host immune regulation and cancer suppression, strikingly skewed 12 weeks following therapy, prior to HCC diagnosis.
Convolutional neural network-based deep Q-network (CNN-DQN) resource management in cloud radio access network

The recent surge of mobile subscribers and user data traffic has accelerated the telecommunication sector towards the adoption of the fifth-generation (5G) mobile networks. Cloud radio access network (CRAN) is a prominent framework in the 5G mobile network to meet the above requirements by deploying low-cost and intelligent multiple distributed antennas known as remote radio heads (RRHs). However, achieving the optimal resource allocation (RA) in CRAN using the traditional approach is still challenging due to the complex structure. In this paper, we introduce the convolutional neural network-based deep Q-network (CNN-DQN) to balance the energy consumption and guarantee the user quality of service (QoS) demand in downlink CRAN. We first formulate the Markov decision process (MDP) for energy efficiency (EE) and build up a 3-layer CNN to capture the environment feature as an input state space. We then use DQN to turn on/off the RRHs dynamically based on the user QoS demand and energy consumption in the CRAN. Finally, we solve the RA problem based on the user constraint and transmit power to guarantee the user QoS demand and maximize the EE with a minimum number of active RRHs. In the end, we conduct the simulation to compare our proposed scheme with nature DQN and the traditional approach.
Composite Right/Left-Handed Leaky-Wave Antenna With High Scanning Rate

The scanning rate of a composite right/left-handed (CRLH) leaky-wave antenna (LWA) is usually determined by the dispersive behavior of the corresponding CRLH unit cell. In this letter, a novel CRLH unit cell with high dispersive behavior is proposed and investigated. The unit cell is formed by four stubs embedded in a rectangular ring patch, which is grounded with several metal vias. The right-handed characteristic is enhanced by the ring patch, while the left-handed characteristic is reduced by the vias and the gaps between the patch and the stubs. Then, the unit cell is applied to design an LWA with high scanning rate. The measured result shows that the seamless scanning angle of the antenna prototype is 130° (−65° to +65°) within a frequency range from 9.3 to 9.93 GHz (i.e., 6.6% for fractional bandwidth). Therefore, the proposed LWA antenna is with a high scanning rate up to 19.7°/%BW.
MXene‐Germanium Schottky Heterostructures for Ultrafast Broadband Self‐Driven Photodetectors

A novel 2D layered material Ti3C2Tx (MXene) is favored by researchers in the application field of optoelectronics due to its tunable work function, great light transmittance, and excellent electrical conductivity. In this work, Ti3C2Tx/n‐germanium (MXene/n‐Ge) Schottky heterostructures are fabricated and investigated. Schottky contacts of MXene with n‐Ge are identified by ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS). Based on the MXene/n‐Ge Schottky junctions, an ultrafast, broadband, and self‐powered photodetector is demonstrated and studied. The MXene/n‐Ge device exhibits excellent photoresponse from ultraviolet to near‐infrared light illumination. In particular, it shows an excellent on/off ratio (≈104), a high responsivity (3.14 A/W), a larger specific detectivity (2.14 × 1011 Jones), and an ultrafast response speed (trise of 1.4 µs and tdecay of 4.1 µs). Moreover, the MXene/n‐Ge Schottky heterostructure photodetector also shows excellent low‐temperature work characteristics of 73 K. It is believed that this work will attract more researchers’ attention to MXene in the field of optoelectronic devices.
Clinical and blood count findings in dogs naturally infected with Dirofilaria immitis

Abstract Dirofilaria immitis is a nematode that infects canids worldwide as well as other mammalian species, including humans. Worms and dogs are well adapted to one another, making dogs the best urban host for the parasite. Nevertheless, 30% of dogs do not sufficiently present microfilaremia, that is, the low larval load impairs transmission by mosquitoes and diagnosis by its detection in the blood samples. Therefore, the canine diagnosis must always include a microfilaria test and serological tests to detect adult worm antigens. To describe the clinical findings in naturally infected dogs in Rio de Janeiro, 34 dogs were included in the study. All dogs were evaluated for history, anamnesis, physical examination, complete blood count (CBC), D. immitis testing for antigens (ELISA test SNAP 4Dx Plus®), and microfilarial burden. The most frequent complaint from the owners was coughing (14.7%, 5/34). The most common CBC finding was eosinophilia (29.4%), followed by thrombocytopenia (26.5%) and neutrophilia (14.7%). Of the 34 animals, 91.2% were microfilaremic, with a mean count of 11.939 microfilaria/mL. Veterinarians working in areas endemic to D. immitis should always undergo screening tests and pulmonary auscultation, and increased expiratory sounds, even in the absence of coughing, can be considered a sign of the disease, along with eosinophilia, thrombocytopenia, and neutrophilia.