Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Single Sea Surface Image Dehazing Using Multi-scale Cascaded Convolutional Neural Network

Most of the sea surface images are characterized by sky and sea water, and the color is monotonous so that the haze is often unevenly distributed, so the sea surface images dehazing are especially challenging. This paper presents a novel multi-scale cascaded network structure that can directly restore clear images from original hazy images without estimating the transmission map. The dehazed image is clearly sharper, so that the target on the sea can be better identified. The dehazing performances of our proposed method are evaluated on synthetic images as well as real sea surface images and also compared with other state-of-the-art techniques.
Transcriptome Analysis of Oleoresin-Producing Tree Sindora Glabra and Characterization of Sesquiterpene Synthases

Terpenes serve important physiological and ecological functions in plants. Sindora glabra trees accumulate copious amounts of sesquiterpene-rich oleoresin in the stem. A transcriptome approach was used to determine the unique terpene biosynthesis pathway and to explore the different regulatory mechanisms responsible for the variation of terpene content among individuals. Analysis of de novo-assembled contigs revealed a complete set of genes for terpene biosynthesis. A total of 23,261 differentially expressed unigenes (DEGs) were discovered between high and low oil-yielding plants. DEG enrichment analysis suggested that the terpene biosynthesis process and the plant hormone signal transduction pathway may exert a major role in determining terpene variation in S. glabra. The expression patterns of candidate genes were further verified by quantitative RT-PCR experiments. Key genes involved in the terpene biosynthesis pathway were predominantly expressed in phloem and root tissues. Phylogenetic analysis and subcellular localization implied that S. glabra terpene synthases may evolve from a common ancestor. Furthermore, two sesquiterpene synthase genes, SgSTPS1 and SgSTPS2, were functionally characterized. SgSTPS1 mainly generated β-caryophyllene from farnesyl pyrophosphate. SgSTPS2 is a versatile enzyme that catalyzes the formation of 12 sequiterpenes from farnesyl pyrophosphate and synthesis of three monoterpenes using geranyl pyrophosphate. Together, these results provide large reservoir for elucidating the molecular mechanism of terpene biosynthesis and for exploring the ecological function of sesquiterpenes in S. glabra.
Analysis of two adjacent articulation Quranic letters based on MFCC and DTW

Reciting al-Quran in the correct way is an obligatory duty for Muslims, and therefore learning al-Quran is a continuous education until the correct recitation is achieved. It is important to learn Tajweed rules to master the recitation of Quranic verses. Moreover, mastering the pronunciation of Arabic sounds is the first and key step to achieve accurate recitation of al-Quran. The rules were guided by the Islamic Scholars in fields related to al-Quran from their knowledge and experiences. Very limited researches were found in the perspective of sciences and engineering. In this paper two Quranic letters (^^d0 and ^^d2) that are articulated from adjacent points of articulation were analyzed using Mel- frequency coefficient analysis. MFCCs matrices were calculated then compared using the dynamic time warping DTW technique to calculate the similarity matrices and find the similarity distance. Results show that letters from the same point of articulation have less similarity distance compared to the letters from different point of articulation.
Age Effects on Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Response Inhibition: An MEG Study

Inhibition, the ability to suppress irrelevant information, thoughts or movements, is crucial for humans to perform context-appropriate behaviors. It was suggested that declined cognitive performance in older adults might be attributed to inhibitory deficiencies. Although previous studies have shown an age-associated reduction in inhibitory ability, the understanding regarding its cortical spatiotemporal maps remained limited. Thus, we used a whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG) to elucidate the age effects on response inhibition, and to explore the brain activation differences in high- and low-performing seniors. We recruited 22 younger and 22 older adults to participate in the visual Go/No-go task. Both behavioral performance and neuromagnetic responses to No-go stimuli were analyzed. The behavioral results showed that the older adults made more false alarm (FA) errors than the younger adults did. The MEG results showed that the seniors exhibited declined cortical activities in middle temporal gyrus (MTG) and delayed activation in MTG, prefrontal cortex (PFC) and pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA). Furthermore, among the older adults, more recruitment of the left PFC was found in the high-performers than in the lower-performers. In conclusion, age-related deficiencies in response inhibition were observed in both behavioral performance and neurophysiological measurement. Our results also suggested that frontal recruitment plays a compensatory role in successful inhibition.
Energy-Efficient and Load-Proportional eNodeB for 5G User-Centric Networks: A Multilevel Sleep Strategy Mechanism

Today, dense network deployment is being considered as one of the effective strategies to meet the capacity and connectivity demands of the fifth-generation (5G) cellular system. Among several challenges, energy consumption will be a critical consideration in the 5G era. In this direction, base station (BS) on/off operation (sleep mode) is an effective technique for mitigating the excessive energy consumption in ultradense cellular networks. However, the current implementation of this technique is unsuitable for dynamic networks with fluctuating traffic profiles because of coverage constraints, quality-of-service (QoS) requirements, and hardware switching latency. To address this, we propose an energy/load proportional approach for 5G BSs with control/data plane separation. The proposed approach depends on a multistep sleep mode profiling and predicts the BS vacation time in advance. Such a prediction enables selecting the best sleep mode strategy while minimizing the effect of BS activation/reactivation latency, resulting in significant energy savings.
A Study of Blockchain based on Graph Database for Software Quality Measurement Integrity

As the complexity of software increases, the importance of software quality is ever increasing, as everyone recognizes. In order to secure software quality, various engineering methods have been proposed. However, because these methods are very specialized, the reality is that it is difficult to apply them to a distributed and small-scale development environment. So, to solve this problem, a tool to analyze the quality of source code is used. Still, it is not easy to rely on code quality in a distributed development environment. In this study, source code quality data measured in a distributed development environment is stored in a blockchain ledger based on a graph database. In this way, the reliability of code quality in a distributed development environment can be enhanced.
Small Motion Magnification Using Automated RoI Selection and Spatial Co-ordinate Approach

This paper presents a new framework to magnify small motions present in videos, which are invisible to the naked eyes. The proposed method is based on spatial coordinates. It has an ability to magnify motions of our interest in presence of large background motions as well as static background. It is assumed that the camera is static when the video is recorded. Initially, regions of interest (RoI) are detected in our method, which need to be magnified. Histogram of oriented gradients (HoG) with thresholding is used to estimate the RoIs. Subsequently, a feature point tracker is used to detect the motion of feature points with respect to time. Finally, the velocity of these feature points are amplified by a magnification factor, which results in a video with small motions amplified. The proposed method provides a newly introduced block based spiral search technique for automatically detecting RoIs. The qualitative analysis of the experimental results shows that the proposed method can produce significant motion magnification even for very small motions. The experimental results show the efficacy of the proposed motion amplification scheme.
An Improved Compatibility Based on Weighted Local and Global Information for Graph Matching

Graph matching is a fundamental NP-problem in computer vision and pattern recognition. The computing of compatibility is a key problem in graph matching. In order to overcome the limitation of Euclidean distance when computing the compatibility, we introduce the weighted local and global topology structure information as a second order compatibility term. We have tested our method on a group of synthetic graphs, the CMU house sequence and the real images. Experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of our weighted compatibility based on the local and global topology structure information as compared with the traditional method based on the Euclidean distance.
Standalone Heartbeat Extraction in SCG Signal Using Variational Mode Decomposition

In this paper, a variational mode decomposition (VMD) based heartbeat extraction framework is proposed for seismocardiogram (SCG) signal. A reference cardiac signal such as ECG is not needed in our proposed method. The proposed method consists of four major steps: signal decomposition using VMD algorithm, heart rate (HR) envelope construction, low pass filtering of constructed envelope, and annotation of smoothed envelope. The method annotates the HR envelope in terms of characteristic points such as PZCI, NZCI, PI, and TI. Each of the characteristic points can be used for SCG cycle extraction. The proposed method is tested and validated with CEBS database available at the Physionet archieve. Based on the experimental results, it is observed that the proposed method with peak instances (PI) achieves consistent results with good accuracy among all. The qualitative analysis of performance results shows good performance of the proposed method for healthy subjects.
A Novel Hybrid Analog-Digital Multibeam Antenna Array for Massive MIMO Applications

In this paper, a novel hybrid analog-digital multibeam antenna array is proposed for massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) application. Passive multibeam antennas fed by analog beamforming networks are used for handling multiple beams in the elevation plane simultaneous. The radiation beam steers horizontally by arranging the passive multibeam antennas in the azimuth plane and shifting the signal phases in a digital beamformer. Because of the implementing of a passive beamformer network, a large number of antenna elements are employed by less channels. The digital beamforming (DBF) processing is simplified the power consumption can be decreased. To verify the concept, a $4x8$ modified Butler matrix is adopted and implemented in the substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) form with the 13.45% bandwidth at 26 GHz. An 8-beam antenna consists of two tapered slot antenna (TSA) arrays fed by the Butler matrixes which inclines ±5.5 orespectively to achieve high beam crossing levels and enlarge the scan coverage. Then, a 128-channel hybrid analog-digital multibeam receiver array module is fabricated by arranging 168-beam antennas. The measured results show that the scan coverage larger than $\pm 45 \circ $ in both azimuth and elevation planes. The performance of the proposed architecture is excellent and it presents an excellent candidate for 5G communication systems.
SIRT6 Is Involved in the Progression of Ovarian Carcinomas via β-Catenin-Mediated Epithelial to Mesenchymal Transition

SIRT6 is involved in various cellular signaling pathways including those involved in tumorigenesis in association with β-catenin. However, the role of SIRT6 in tumorigenesis has been controversially reported and the studies on the role of SIRT6 in ovarian cancers is limited. In this study, we evaluated the expression and roles of SIRT6 in conjunction with the expression of active β-catenin in 104 human ovarian carcinomas and ovarian cancer cells. In human ovarian carcinomas, the expressions of SIRT6 and active β-catenin were associated with higher tumor stage, higher histologic grade, and platinum-resistance. Moreover, nuclear expression of SIRT6 (104 ovarian carcinomas; P = 0.010, 63 high-grade serous carcinomas; P = 0.040), and activated β-catenin (104 ovarian carcinomas; P = 0.013, 63 high-grade serous carcinomas; P = 0.005) were independent indicators of shorter overall survival of ovarian carcinoma patients in multivariate analysis. In OVCAR3 and OVCAR5 ovarian cancer cells, knock-down of SIRT6 significantly inhibited the migration and invasion of cells, but did not inhibit the proliferation of cells. SIRT6-mediated invasiveness of ovarian cancer cells was associated with the expression of epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition-related signaling molecules such as snail, vimentin, N-cadherin, E-cadherin, and activated β-catenin. Especially, SIRT6-mediated increase of invasiveness and activation of epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition signaling was attenuated by knock-down of β-catenin. In conclusion, this study suggests that SIRT6-β-catenin signaling is involved in the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition of ovarian cancer cells, and the expression of SIRT6 and active β-catenin might be used as indicators of poor prognosis of ovarian carcinoma patients. In addition, our results suggest that SIRT6-β-catenin signaling might be a new therapeutic target of ovarian carcinomas.
NADPH Oxidase 4 Regulates Inflammation in Ischemic Heart Failure: Role of Soluble Epoxide Hydrolase.

Aims: Oxidative stress is implicated in cardiomyocyte cell death and cardiac remodeling in the failing heart. The role of NADPH oxidase 4 (NOX4) in cardiac adaptation to pressure overload is controversial, but its function in myocardial ischemic stress has not been thoroughly elucidated. This study examined the function of NOX4 in the pathogenesis of ischemic heart failure, utilizing mouse models, cell culture, and human heart samples. Results: Nox4-/- mice showed a protective phenotype in response to permanent left anterior descending coronary artery ligation with smaller infarction area, lower cardiomyocyte cross-sectional area, higher capillary density, and less cell death versus wild-type (WT) mice. Nox4-/- mice had lower activity of soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH), a potent regulator of inflammation. Nox4-/- mice also showed a 50% reduction in the number of infiltrating CD68+ macrophages in the peri-infarct zone versus WT mice. Adenoviral overexpression of NOX4 in cardiomyoblast cells increased sEH expression and activity and CCL4 and CCL5 levels; inhibition of sEH activity in NOX4 overexpressing cells attenuated the cytokine levels. Human hearts with ischemic cardiomyopathy showed adverse cardiac remodeling, increased NOX4 and sEH protein expression and CCL4 and CCL5 levels compared with control nonfailing hearts. Innovation and Conclusion: These data from the Nox4-/- mouse model and human heart tissues show for the first time that oxidative stress from increased NOX4 expression has a functional role in ischemic heart failure. One mechanism by which NOX4 contributes to ischemic heart failure is by increasing inflammatory cytokine production via enhanced sEH activity.
Investigation of the Role That NADH Peroxidase Plays in Oxidative Stress Survival in Group B Streptococcus

Macrophages play an important role in defending the host against infections by engulfing pathogens and containing them inside the phagosome, which consists of a harsh microbicidal environment. However, many pathogens have developed mechanisms to survive inside macrophages despite this challenge. Group B Streptococcus (GBS), a leading cause of sepsis and meningitis in neonates, is one such pathogen that survives inside macrophages by withstanding phagosomal stress. Although a few key intracellular survival factors have been identified, the mechanisms by which GBS detoxifies the phagosome are poorly defined. Transcriptional analysis during survival inside macrophages revealed strong upregulation of a putative NADH peroxidase (npx) at 1 and 24 h post-infection. A deletion mutant of npx (Δnpx) was more susceptible to killing by a complex in vitro model of multiple phagosomal biochemical/oxidant stressors or by hydrogen peroxide alone. Moreover, compared to an isogenic wild type GBS strain, the Δnpx strain demonstrated impaired survival inside human macrophages and a reduced capacity to blunt macrophage reactive oxygen species (ROS) production. It is therefore likely that Npx plays a role in survival against ROS production in the macrophage. A more thorough understanding of how GBS evades the immune system through survival inside macrophages will aid in development of new therapeutic measures.
Lessons from the Ocean: Whale Baleen Fracture Resistance

Whale baleen is a keratin‐based biological material; it provides life‐long (40–100 years) filter‐feeding for baleen whales in place of teeth. This study reveals new aspects of the contribution of the baleen's hierarchical structure to its fracture toughness and connects it to the unique performance requirements, which require anisotropy of fracture resistance. Baleen plates are subjected to competing external effects of hydration and varying loading rates and demonstrate a high fracture toughness in transverse loading, which is the most important direction in the filtering function; in the longitudinal direction, the toughness is much lower since delamination and controlled flexure are expected and desirable. The compressive strength is also established and results support the fracture toughness measurements: it is also highly anisotropic, and exhibits a ductile‐to‐brittle transition with increasing strain rate in the dry condition, which is absent in the hydrated condition, conferring impact resistance to the baleen. Using 3D‐printing prototypes that replicate the three principal structural features of the baleen plate (hollow medulla, mineralized tubules, and sandwich‐tubular structure) are created, and the role of its structure in determining its mechanical behavior is demonstrated. These findings suggest new bioinspired engineering materials.
Double-sides sticking mechanism of vinblastine interacting with α,β-tubulin to get activity against cancer cells

Abstract Vinblastine (VLB) and its derivatives have been used for clinical first-line drugs to treat various cancers. Due to the resistance and serious side effects from using VLB and its derivatives, there is a need to discover and develop novel VLB derivatives with high activity against cancer cells. In order to better discover and develop new VLB derivatives, we need to study the structural basis of VLB's anti-cancer cytotoxicity and the mechanism of its interaction with α,β-tubulins. Based on the crystal structure of α,β-microtubule complex protein, the molecular dynamics method including the sampling PMF method was used to study the variation of dissociation free energy (ΔG) of α,β-tubulins under different system conditions, and then from which to study the mechanism of the interaction between VLB and α,β-tubulins. The obtained results show that the dissociation of pure α,β-tubulins requires 197.8 kJ·mol−1 for ΔG. When the VLB molecule exists between the interface of α,β-tubulins, the dissociation ΔG of α,β-tubulins reaches 220.5 kJ·mol−1, which is greater than that of pure α,β-tubulin. The VLB molecule is formed by connecting a vindoline moiety (VM) molecule with a catharanthine moiety (CM) molecule through a carbon-carbon bond, which is a larger molecule. When the CM molecule exists in the middle of α,β-tubulin interface, the dissociation ΔG of α,β-tubulins is 46.2 kJ·mol−1, during which the CM moves with β-tubulin. When the VM molecule exists between the middle of α,β-tubulin interface, the dissociation ΔG of α,β-tubulins is 86.7 kJ·mol−1, during which it moves with α-tubulin. Therefore, the VLB molecule is like a double-sides tape to stick α-tubulin and β-tubulin together. The VLB molecule intervenes the dynamic equilibrium between dissociation and aggregation of α-tubulin and β-tubulin by a double-sides sticking mechanism to exert high activity with toxicity against cancer cell. Besides, our results demonstrate that VLB has its structural basis for anticancer cytotoxicity due to its two compositions composed of a CM molecule and a VM molecule although they have little toxicity against cancer cell alone.
Common Sparsity and Cluster Structure Based Channel Estimation for Downlink Massive MIMO-OFDM Systems

In this letter, we propose a new channel estimation scheme for downlink channels in massive multiple-input multiple-output systems, where orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing is adopted. To estimate the downlink channels in the multi-subcarrier scenario, the common sparsity and cluster structure is exploited, which is unknown to the user. The common sparsity property is described and a local beta process is assumed on each of the common local clusters in a new constructed Bayesian framework. Then, we propose a common structure based multi-subcarrier Bayesian compressive sensing approach for the downlink channel estimation. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
Robust Automatic Multi-Camera Viewpoint Stabilization using Harris Laplace corner detection and Spanning Tree

In this paper, an algorithm to improve image stabilization process in 3D for multiple camera viewpoints from different angle is developed. It can automatically simplify the region of interest with unique key-points matching. Harris Laplace corner detection has been used to find accurate matching key points for different photometric changes, scaling in images. Spanning tree has been used to improve the connectivity of correct matching pairs by minimizing the global error value. Spanning tree is the key for stabilized randomly positioned camera viewpoints. It always gives successful stabilization output. This process doesn’t need to analyze the key-points twice. The results show that the proposed algorithm can process more than 120 camera viewpoints in less than two (<2) seconds. It shows a great consistency for different image sets for different viewpoints of cameras.
In loco retention effect of magnetic core mesoporous silica nanoparticles doped with trastuzumab as intralesional nanodrug for breast cancer

Abstract Breast cancer is women’s most common type of cancer, with a global rate of over 522,000 deaths per year. One of the main problems related to breast cancer relies in the early detection, as the specialized treatment. In this direction was developed, characterized and tested in vivo a smart delivery system, based on radiolabelled magnetic core mesoporous silica doped with trastuzumab as intralesional nanodrug for breast cancer imaging and possible therapy. The results showed that nanoparticles had a size of 58.9 ± 8.1 nm, with specific surface area of 872 m2/g and pore volume of 0.85 cm3/g with a pore diameter of 3.15 nm. The magnetic core mesoporous silica was efficiently labelled with 99mTc (97.5% ±0.8) and doped >98%. The cytotoxicity assay, demonstrated they are safe to use. The data were corroborated with the IC50 result of: 829.6 µg ± 43.2. The biodistribution showed an uptake by the tumour of 7.5% (systemic via) and 97.37% (intralesional) with less than 3% of these nanoparticles absorbed by healthy tissues. In a period 6-h post-injection, no barrier delimited by the tumour was crossed, corroborating the use as intralesional nanodrug.