Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Expression of Bioactive Lunasin Peptide in Transgenic Rice Grains for the Application in Functional Food

Lunasin, a bioactive peptide initially isolated from soybean, has anticancer, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant activity. Due its great application value, lunasin seems to be a candidate gene in improving the nutritional value of crops. In this study, lunasin was inserted into the rice genome to evaluate whether it was feasible to express lunasin using the rice expression system and improve the bioactivity of protein in rice for our needs. We generatedlunasin-overexpressing rice lines, and chose three independent transgenic rice lines for further study. The lunasin content in trans-lunasin rice detected by UPLC-MS/MS was 1.01 × 10−3 g·kg−1 dry rice flour with grease removal in the lunasin extracts. The antioxidant efficacy of LET (lunasin-enriched fraction from trans-lunasin rice) and PEW (peptide-enriched fraction from wild type rice) was compared. Due to the presence of lunasin, LET showed higher (p < 0.05) antioxidant activity than PEW. LET exhibited high DPPH radical scavenging activity (IC50 value, 8 g·L−1), strong ABTS+ radical scavenging activity (IC50 value, 1.18 g·L−1), and great oxygen radical scavenging activity (170 μmol·L−1 Trolox equivalents when the concentration reached 4 g·L−1). Moreover, LET presented significantly higher (p < 0.05) anti-inflammatory activity on macrophage cells, and the NO production and the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL-6, MCP1, and TNF-α) were significantly inhibited by LET. However, because of the low purity, LET showed weaker antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activity when compared to the Lunasin standard. These results suggested that it is feasible to use the rice expression system to express the exogenous lunasin in rice, and lunasin-overexpressing rice seems to be a candidate resource for application in functional food. Rice rich in lunasin is beneficial for human health, and could be used as a functional food in the diets of cancer and obese patients in the future.
The optical coherence tomography angiography findings of rheumatoid arthritis patients taking hydroxychloroquine

Purpose: The aim of this study is to measure retinal vessel density and thickness of the macula by optical coherence tomography angiography in patients with rheumatoid arthritis taking hydroxychloroquine. Methods: The study included 40 patients with rheumatoid arthritis taking hydroxychloroquine and 20 age-, gender-, and axial length-matched control subjects. Patients were divided into two groups according to the duration of hydroxychloroquine use. Twenty four of the patients were taking hydroxychloroquine for more than 5 years (Group 1), and the rest of 16 were taking hydroxychloroquine for less than 5 years (Group 2). A total of 20 age- and gender-matched volunteers with similar axial length were selected as Group 3. All of the patients underwent optical coherence tomography angiography, and 3 mm × 3 mm scanning mode was chosen for analyzing vascular density and morphological characteristics on the choriocapillaris layer. In addition, Humphrey visual field 10–2 was evaluated in each subject. Results: The temporal deep vascular density was measured as 48.13% ± 8.5% in Group 1, 54.42% ± 10.3% in Group 2, and 60.35% ± 13.1% in Group 3. Deep temporal and deep hemi-inferior vascular density was significantly lower in Group 1 in comparison with Group 3 (p = 0.041 and p = 0.046, respectively). Visual field testing was normal in all patients. Conclusion: The optical coherence tomography angiography findings showed that the parafoveal deep temporal and deep hemi-inferior vascular plexus density was reduced in patients taking hydroxychloroquine for more than 5 years despite having normal perimetry. This observation, which can be obtained only through optical coherence tomography angiography, may be relevant to the early findings of hydroxychloroquine toxicity.
Patterns and correlates of use of evidence-based interventions to control diabetes by local health departments across the USA

Objective The nearly 3000 local health departments (LHDs) nationwide are the front line of public health and are positioned to implement evidence-based interventions (EBIs) for diabetes control. Yet little is currently known about use of diabetes-related EBIs among LHDs. This study used a national online survey to determine the patterns and correlates of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Community Guide-recommended EBIs for diabetes control in LHDs. Research design and methods A cross-sectional study was conducted to survey a stratified random sample of LHDs regarding department characteristics, respondent characteristics, evidence-based decision making within the LHD, and delivery of EBIs (directly or in collaboration) within five categories (diabetes-related, nutrition, physical activity, obesity, and tobacco). Associations between delivering EBIs and respondent and LHD characteristics and evidence-based decision making were explored using logistic regression models. Results Among 240 LHDs there was considerable variation among the EBIs delivered. Diabetes prevalence in the state was positively associated with offering the Diabetes Prevention Program (OR=1.28 (95% CI 1.02 to 1.62)), diabetes self-management education (OR=1.32 (95% CI 1.04 to 1.67)), and identifying patients and determining treatment (OR=1.27 (95% CI 1.05 to 1.54)). Although all organizational supports for evidence-based decision making factors were related in a positive direction, the only significant association was between evaluation capacity and identifying patients with diabetes and determining effective treatment (OR=1.54 (95% CI 1.08 to 2.19)). Conclusion Supporting evidence-based decision making and increasing the implementation of these EBIs by more LHDs can help control diabetes nationwide.
Transmission Optimization Metrics Setup Issues in the Field of Time Constrained Communications

This article introduces a new approach in the field of network optimization based on Transmission Optimization Metric (TOM), which is aimed at improving traffic flow continuity and increasing the chances for traffic flow sustainability in a way that helps to minimize inter-packet gaps. The work is mainly focused on harsh transmission conditions in narrow-band networks. Finally, the presented approach has impact on better resource allocation as fewer attempts are necessary for successful completion of a transmission. A significant part of the article deals with parameterization of coefficients used by the TOM optimization method. Examples of analysis for several topologies of narrow-band wireless networks based on CSMA/CA and TDMA protocols are used to demonstrate various issues related to proper setting of parameters. The introduced TOM metric has the potential to become a standard for optimization, for example, in sensor networks that are characterized by the specific nature of data traffic.
Limits to sustained energy intake. XXIX. The case of the golden hamster (Mesocricetus auratus)

ABSTRACT Golden hamster females have the shortest known gestation period among placental mammals, and at the same time raise very large litters of up to 16 offspring, which are born in a naked and blind state and are only able to pick up food from days 12 to 14 onwards. We quantified energy metabolism and milk production in female golden hamsters raising offspring under cold (8°C), normal (22°C) and hot (30°C) ambient temperature conditions. We monitored energy intake, subcutaneous body temperature, daily energy expenditure, litter size and pup masses over the course of lactation. Our results show that, in line with the concept of heat dissipation limitation, female golden hamsters had the largest energy intake under the coldest conditions and a significantly lower intake at 30°C (partial for influence of ambient temperature: F2,403=5.6; P=0.004). Metabolisable energy intake as well as milk energy output showed the same pattern and were significantly different between the temperatures (partial for milk energy production: F1,40=86.4; P<0.0001), with consistently higher subcutaneous temperatures in the reproductive females (F1,813=36.77; P<0.0001) compared with baseline females. These data suggest that raising offspring in golden hamsters comes at the cost of producing large amounts of body heat up to a level constraining energy intake, similar to that observed in some laboratory mice. Notably, we observed that females seemed to adjust litter size according to their milk production, with the smallest litters (3.4±0.7 pups) being raised by hot-exposed mothers. Future research is needed to unravel the mechanism by which females assess their own milk production capabilities and how this may be linked to litter size at different ambient temperatures. Golden hamsters reach 8–10 times resting metabolic rate when raising offspring under cold conditions, which is compatible with the findings from laboratory mice and other rodents. Summary: Raising offspring in golden hamsters comes at the cost of producing large amounts of body heat up to a level constraining energy intake.
Long noncoding RNA LINC00261 induces chemosensitization to 5‐fluorouracil by mediating methylation‐dependent repression of DPYD in human esophageal cancer

Approximately 85% of a single administered dose of 5‐fluorouracil (5‐FU) will be degraded by dihydropyrimidine dehydrogenase (DYPD). Studies have highlighted a link between the complete or partial loss of DYPD function and clinical responses to 5‐FU; however, the underlying molecular basis of DPD deficiency remains poorly understood. Hence, the aim of the present study was to evaluate the prevailing hypothesis which suggests that overexpression of LINC00261 possesses the ability to modulate the methylation‐dependent repression of DPYD, ultimately resulting in an elevation of the sensitivity of human esophageal cancer cells to 5‐FU. LINC00261 levels were initially quantified, followed by analysis of DYPD methylation within the cancerous tissues collected from 75 patients diagnosed with esophageal cancer undergoing 5‐FU–based adjuvant chemotherapy. In an attempt to determine the levels of LINC00261 related to the esophageal cancer cell resistance to 5‐FU and to identify the interaction between the levels of LINC00261 and methylation of the DYPD promoter, esophageal cancer cells TE‐1 and ‐5 were prepared, in which LINC00261 and the 5‐FU–resistant TE‐1 and ‐5 cells were overexpressed. The levels of LINC00261 were reduced among the cancerous tissues obtained from patients exhibiting resistance to 5‐FU. Overexpression of LINC00261 was determined to dramatically inhibit proliferation and resistance to apoptosis among 5‐FU–resistant TE‐1 and ‐5 cells, whereas silencing of LINC00261 was determined to enhance proliferation and resistance to apoptosis among the TE‐1 and ‐5 cells. DPYD, a confirmed target of LINC00261, displayed a greater incidence of DNA methylation among patient's sensitive to 5‐FU. A key finding revealed that overexpressed LINC00261 could increase the methylation of the DPYD promoter through the recruitment of DNA methyltransferase (DNMT), which, in turn, acts to decrease DPYD activity in 5‐FU–resistant TE‐1 cells, whereas a reversible change was recorded once the demethylation reagent 5‐aza‐2′‐deoxyctidine was employed to treat the 5‐FU–resistant TE‐1 cells. Taken together, the results of the study provided evidence emphasizing the distinct antitumor ability of LINC00261 in cases of esophageal cancer, which was manifested by overexpression of LINC00261 detected to increase the sensitivity of human esophageal cancer cells to 5‐FU by mediating methylation‐dependent repression of DPYD. Our study highlighted the potential of LINC00261 as a novel target capable of improving the chemotherapeutic response and survival of patients with esophageal cancer. —Lin, K. , Jiang, H. , Zhuang, S. ‐S. , Qin, Y. ‐S. , Qiu, G. ‐D. , She, Y. ‐Q. , Zheng, J.‐T. , Chen, C. , Fang, L. , Zhang, S. ‐Y. Long noncoding RNA LINC00261 induces chemosensitization to 5‐fluorouracil by mediating methylation‐dependent repression of DPYD in human esophageal cancer. FASEB J. 33, 1972–1988 (2019). www.fasebj. org
Adjunct Proceedings of the 10th International ACM Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications

This paper investigates whether an Augmented Reality Head-up Display (AR-HUD) supports usability and reduces visual demand during conditionally automated driving. In a driving simulator study, 24 drivers experienced several driving scenarios while driving with conditional automation. The drivers completed one drive with a fully developed HMI designed for automated driving (AD-HMI) that presented visual information in the cluster display and included auditory and tactile output. In another drive, the same drivers were additionally supported by dynamic and static visual feedback via an AR-HUD concept. The latter was preferred by more than 80% of the sample due to the higher information content and the possibility to leave the eyes on the road. Drivers rated the AR concept to be better understandable and more useful. Eye-tracking revealed lower percentage of gazes to the instrument cluster during AR-HUD drives.
Adjunct Proceedings of the 10th International ACM Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications

While Fully Automated Vehicles (FAVs) have the potential to significantly expand older adults’ access to mobility, limited research has focused on older adults’ perceptions of such technology. The current driving simulation-based study will investigate factors that may govern older adults’ perceptions of FAVs with respect to trust, acceptability, and safety. Participants (65+) will experience scenarios of manual and fully automated driving in a high-fidelity driving simulator. Their perceptions of the FAV will be measured before and after the driving experiences using questionnaires. Physiological and behavioral data will also be collected throughout the driving sessions to investigate whether positive or negative perceptions of technology are associated with behavioral or physiological responses. In addition, driving performance and driving styles of participants will be captured during manual driving to investigate whether an alignment between an individual’s driving style and the FAV driving style will lead to a more positive perception towards FAVs.
Objectification using procedure-relational, matrix decomposition and synchronization dynamics

Code in legacy systems is often written in procedures and functions (rather than using more modern object-oriented mechanisms). But those procedures/functions can be combined with other similar procedures/functions (and associated data), and thus be converted/re-factored into objects that can be re-used throughout the system. The question then is how to reverse and re-engineer to these objects reliably (logically cohesive and coherent sets of procedures) and how to assess the resultant objects' correctness. Our proposed solution to the first question is to create a similarity matrix of all the functions/methods/procedures based on a given criterion such as shared variable access or procedure calls. We then use a synchronization process to identify related procedures using their values in this similarity matrix. The synchronization results in sets of related groups that, based on a cohesive measure of each group, prompts selection of cohesive procedures, towards objects.
ParkLoc

Locating a vehicle indoors (e.g., underground parking garages) has been a difficult problem to tackle, due to the unavailability of GPS and/or Wi-Fi signals. Current GPS-free indoor localization efforts often rely on infrastructure supports such as Wi-Fi or BLE beacons, whereas the smartphone-only proposals mostly require significant data collection and training efforts per garage. In this context, we propose ParkLoc, a novel lightweight smartphone-only solution for vehicular localization in GPS/Wi-Fi-deprived environments such as indoor parking garages. ParkLoc exploits the inherent planar graph structure of the navigable paths in parking facilities, in order to match a vehicle trajectory onto a sub-section of the map, by modeling these as sparse directed graphs. Exploiting an approximate graph matching method, ParkLoc is able to track a vehicle in real-time with a median error of 4.8m and localize a parked vehicle with a median error of 2m from the nearest parking space. Furthermore, ParkLoc adopts the popular GraphSLAM algorithm from robotics research; it learns the map graph from the observed trajectory graphs and a given set of bootstrap (seed) landmark nodes, in a semi-supervised manner. A key benefit of our approach is that ParkLoc works off-the-shelf without any expensive on-site training or sensor data collection per garage. A comprehensive evaluation of ParkLoc through extensive experiments performed in 4 different parking facilities reveals the promising performance of our graph-based approach for both localization and mapping.
Unobtrusive Assessment of Students' Emotional Engagement during Lectures Using Electrodermal Activity Sensors

Modern wearable devices enable the continuous and unobtrusive monitoring of human physiological parameters, including heart rate and electrodermal activity. Through the definition of adequate models these parameters allow to infer the wellbeing, empathy, or engagement of humans in different contexts. In this paper, we show that off-the-shelf wearable devices can be used to unobtrusively monitor the emotional engagement of students during lectures. We propose the use of several novel features to capture students' momentary engagement and use existing methods to characterize the general arousal of students and their physiological synchrony with the teacher. To evaluate our method we collect a data set that -- after data cleaning -- contains data from 24 students, 9 teachers, and 41 lectures. Our results show that non-engaged students can be identified with high reliability. Using a Support Vector Machine, for instance, we achieve a recall of 81% -- which is a 25 percentage points improvement with respect to a Biased Random classifier. Overall, our findings may inform the design of systems that allow students to self-monitor their engagement and act upon the obtained feedback. Teachers could profit of information about non-engaged students too to perform self-reflection and to devise and evaluate methods to (re-)engage students.
3D segmentation of mandible from multisectional CT scans by convolutional neural networks

Segmentation of mandibles in CT scans during virtual surgical planning is crucial for 3D surgical planning in order to obtain a detailed surface representation of the patients bone. Automatic segmentation of mandibles in CT scans is a challenging task due to large variation in their shape and size between individuals. In order to address this challenge we propose a convolutional neural network approach for mandible segmentation in CT scans by considering the continuum of anatomical structures through different planes. The proposed convolutional neural network adopts the architecture of the U-Net and then combines the resulting 2D segmentations from three different planes into a 3D segmentation. We implement such a segmentation approach on 11 neck CT scans and then evaluate the performance. We achieve an average dice coefficient of $ 0.89 $ on two testing mandible segmentation. Experimental results show that our proposed approach for mandible segmentation in CT scans exhibits high accuracy.
Moderate-intensity Arm-cranking Exercise may not Improve Arterial Function in Healthy Adult Men

Abstract Endurance exercises, such as cycling or running, are useful for improving arterial function. However, people suffering from partial paralysis or arthritis are unable to perform these kinds of lower-limb exercises. In the present study, we explored the acute effect of upper-arm exercise on arterial stiffness in healthy men. Fourteen healthy adult men performed two experimental trials. The order of experiments was randomized between a 30-min arm-cranking exercise at 50% V̇O2max (A-trial) and a 30-min leg-cycling exercise at 50% V̇O2max (C-trial). The brachial to ankle pulse wave velocity (baPWV), brachial systolic/diastolic blood pressure and heart rate were obtained with subjects in the supine position. The baseline hemodynamic values were not markedly different between the two trials. Compared with the baseline value, the baPWV was significantly reduced at 30 and 60 min after the C-trial. In the A-trial, however, there were no significant changes in the baPWV throughout the trial. These results indicate that acute 50% V̇O2max arm-cranking exercise induced relatively little change in the baPWV, which was the opposite of the finding observed with leg-cycling exercise. Therefore, in order to improve arterial function via aerobic upper-arm exercises, the exercise mode/intensity or other approaches should be considered.
Image Denoising via Improved Dictionary Learning with Global Structure and Local Similarity Preservations

We proposed a new efficient image denoising scheme, which leads to four important contributions. The first is to integrate both reconstruction and learning based approaches into a single model so that we are able to benefit advantages from both approaches simultaneously. The second is to handle both multiplicative and additive noise removal problems. The third is that the proposed approach introduces a sparse term to reduce non-Gaussian outliers from multiplicative noise and uses a Laplacian Schatten norm to capture the global structure information. In addition, the image is represented by preserving the intrinsic local similarity via a sparse coding method, which allows our model to incorporate both global and local information from the image. Finally, we propose a new method that combines Method of Optimal Directions (MOD) with Approximate K-SVD (AK-SVD) for dictionary learning. Extensive experimental results show that the proposed scheme is competitive against some of the state-of-the-art denoising algorithms.
Electrospinning of Ultrafine Conducting Polymer Composite Nanofibers with Diameter Less than 70 nm as High Sensitive Gas Sensor

Polyvinyl alcohol/poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PVA/PEDOT:PSS) composite ultrafine fibers were successfully fabricated by high pressure airflow assisted electrospinning. The electrical properties of PVA/PEDOT:PSS nanofibers with different diameters were characterized. The average diameter of the nanofibers can be down to 68 nm. Due to its large specific surface area, ammonia sensing of the ultrafine nanofibers is more sensitive than the traditional electrospun fibers (average fiber diameter of 263 nm). The ammonia sensing properties of the samples were tested by impedance analysis. The results show that ultrafine PVA/PEDOT:PSS nanofibers are more suitable for detecting low concentrations of ammonia with higher sensitivity.
Planting attack on latent fingerprints

The fingerprint is arguably the most successfully deployed biometric data in a broad spectrum of applications for identification and verification purposes. While fingerprint matching algorithms are fairly matured, most studies have so far focused on improving the matching precision, and some effort has been channelled to combat spoofing attacks on biometric readers through liveness detection. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the feasibility of planting attacks of latent fingerprints has not been reported in the literature. In this study, the authors present a low-cost latent fingerprint planting attack involving steps that can be performed by an untrained person who has no prior knowledge in forensics. Experiment results based on a publicly available database suggest that this approach feasibly leads to planted latent fingerprints being indistinguishable from real ones. It is also verified that the planted latent fingerprints could be utilised to identify their corresponding rolled fingerprints, suggesting the viability of the proposed latent fingerprint planting attack.