Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tools for Decoding Ubiquitin Signaling in DNA Repair

The maintenance of genome stability requires dedicated DNA repair processes and pathways that are essential for the faithful duplication and propagation of chromosomes. These DNA repair mechanisms counteract the potentially deleterious impact of the frequent genotoxic challenges faced by cells from both exogenous and endogenous agents. Intrinsic to these mechanisms, cells have an arsenal of protein factors that can be utilised to promote repair processes in response to DNA lesions. Orchestration of the protein factors within the various cellular DNA repair pathways is performed, in part, by post-translational modifications, such as phosphorylation, ubiquitin, SUMO and other ubiquitin-like modifiers (UBLs). In this review, we firstly explore recent advances in the tools for identifying factors involved in both DNA repair and ubiquitin signaling pathways. We then expand on this by evaluating the growing repertoire of proteomic, biochemical and structural techniques available to further understand the mechanistic basis by which these complex modifications regulate DNA repair. Together, we provide a snapshot of the range of methods now available to investigate and decode how ubiquitin signaling can promote DNA repair and maintain genome stability in mammalian cells.
Estimation of Pulmonary Arterial Wave Reflection by Echo-Doppler: A Preliminary Study in Dogs With Experimentally-Induced Acute Pulmonary Embolism

Background: Pulmonary arterial (PA) wave reflection provides additional information for assessing right ventricular afterload, but its applications is hampered by the need for invasive pressure and flow measurements. We tested the hypothesis that PA pressure and flow waveforms estimated by Doppler echocardiography could be used to quantify PA wave reflection. Methods: Doppler echocardiographic images of tricuspid regurgitation and right ventricular outflow tract flow used to estimate PA pressure and flow waveforms were acquired simultaneously with direct measurements with a dual sensor-tipped catheter under various hemodynamic conditions in a canine model of pulmonary hypertension (n = 8). Wave separation analysis was performed on echo-Doppler derived as well as catheter derived waveforms to separate PA pressure into forward (Pf) and backward (Pb) pressures and derive wave reflection coefficient (RC) defined as the ratio of peak Pb to peak Pf. Results: Wave reflection indices by echo-Doppler agreed well with corresponding indices by catheter (Pb: mean difference = 0.4 mmHg, 95% limits of agreement = −4.3 to 5.0 mmHg; RC: bias = 0.13, 95% limits of agreement = −0.25 to 0.26). RC correlated negatively with PA compliance. Conclusion: This echo-Doppler method yields reasonable measurement of reflected wave in the pulmonary circulation, paving the way to a more integrative assessment of pulmonary hemodynamics in the clinical setting.
Enhancing Well-Being and Social Connectedness for Māori Elders Through a Peer Education (Tuakana-Teina) Programme: A Cross-Sectional Baseline Study

Background: Māori kaumātua (elders) face stark health and social inequities compared to non-Māori New Zealanders. The tuakana-teina (older sibling-younger sibling) peer education programme is a strengths-based approach to enhance well-being and social connectedness. The purpose of this study is to present the baseline data from this programme and identify correlates of well-being outcomes. Method: Participants included 128 kaumātua who completed a self-report survey about health-related quality of life, spirituality, social connection and loneliness, life satisfaction, cultural identity and connection, elder abuse, health service utilisation and demographics. Findings: Multiple regression models illustrated the following correlates of outcomes: (a) self-rated health: needing more help with daily tasks (β = −0.36) and housing problems (β = –0.17); (b) health-related quality of life: needing more help with daily tasks (β = –0.31), housing problems (β = –0.21), and perceived autonomy (β = 0.19); (c) spiritual well-being: understanding of tikanga (cultural protocols) (β = 0.32) and perceived autonomy (β = 0.23); (d) life satisfaction: social support (β = 0.23), sense of purpose (β = 0.23), cultural identity (β = 0.24), trouble paying bills (β = –0.16), and housing problems (β = –0.16); (e) loneliness: elder abuse (β = 0.27), social support (β = –0.21), and missing pleasure of being with whānau (extended family) (β = 0.19). Conclusions: Key correlates for outcomes centred on social support, housing problems, cultural connection and perceived autonomy. These correlates are largely addressed through the programme where tuakana/peer educators provide support and links to social and health services to teina/peer recipients in need. This study illustrates needs and challenges for kaumātua, whilst the larger programme represents a strengths-based and culturally-centred approach to address health issues related to ageing in an Indigenous population.
Critiquing the Critique: Resisting Commonplace Criticisms of Antidepressants in Online Platforms

Critiques of antidepressants in public spaces such as print media, blogs, social media, websites, and radio and television programs are now commonplace. Such critiques typically center on issues such as the side effects and risks of antidepressants, overblown claims of effectiveness, the fallacy of the chemical imbalance hypothesis, overprescribing, and the availability of equally or more effective nonmedication interventions for depression. In this article, we employ a discursive analysis to show how online commenters fashion a particular counter-argument to these critiques. Prominent in this counter-argument is that only “real” depression benefits from antidepressants, and that a “one-size-does-not-fit-all” understanding of these medications is needed. We argue that, while this nuanced counter-critique contains features that make it difficult to undermine, it simultaneously embeds many unanswered questions.
ANTIMICROBIAL EFFECTS OF VARIETY OF FRESH AND DRIED BANANA PEEL EXTRACTS

Banana one of the precious source for sustaining human health. The utilize of fresh banana peel extracts for antimicrobial properties can be of great importance in therapeutic treatments. Objective: This research point to assess the antibacterial activity of both fresh and dried various banana peel extracts. Materials and Methods: Alcoholic extract of banana peel extracts was subjected to antibacterial efficacy againcy Grampositive and Gramnegative bacteria by the well agar diffusion method. Results: The alcoholic extract of fresh and dried banana peel exhibited a various inhibitory effect against various microbial isolated. Higher inhibitory effects were noticed on Nendran and Poovan against Staphylococcus Aureus (13.55±0.04), Bacillus Subtilis (13.26±0.02) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa(14± 000). Conclusion: Alcoholic peel extracts of fresh and dried banana could be observed as a good antibacterial agent both Grampositive and Gramnegative bacteria.
Development and Extension of the NRTL Functional Activity Coefficient (NRTL-FAC) Model Using High Quality and Critically Evaluated Phase Equilibria Data. 2

The non-randomness two-liquid model (NRTL) has been used widely in chemical engineering to calculate phase equilibria. Different forms of the NRTL model have been developed so far, including original NRTL, electrolyte NRTL (e-NRTL), polymer NRTL and segment-based NRTL (NRTL-SAC). All of the mentioned NRTL based models require experimental data to tune the interaction parameters. In the previous work (Fluid Phase Equilibria, 541 (2021) 113088), we have developed the NRTL functional activity coefficient (NRTL-FAC) model based on the highquality experimental vapor-liquid equilibrium (VLE) data. In the present study, the number of NRTL-FAC groups was extended from 50 to 55. In addition, the temperature type of interaction parameters in the current version of the NRTL-FAC was changed compared to the previous version to better fit the experimental data. The quality of experimental data was checked using different thermodynamic consistency tests, including Herington test, Van Ness test, point test, infinite dilution test, EoS test, and endpoint test. Besides, 156 molecules with 55 main groups were used in the extension of the NRTL-FAC model. To account the combinatorial contribution of the NRTL-FAC model, the Stavermann-Guggenheim term was usd. Excellent agreement was obtained between the experimental data and model results. The NRTL-FAC activity coefficient model performs superior to other versions of group contribution models, including UNIFAC, UNIFACLBY, and UNIFAC-DMD models.
Graph Based Trajectory Mining

In the field of video-surveillance analysis, the problem of tracking a person of interest given one ground truth image (query), in a large crowded spatiotemporal region is known as “Trajectory Mining” [1], [2]. This problem suffers from algorithmic challenges arising due to absence of information about 1) the length of the true trajectory, 2) the identities of various persons (except for the query), and 3) starting or end point or the position of query in the true trajectory. We are interested in the scenario where m persons are moving in a spatial zone and being detected by cameras. Every detection is represented as a tuple (fi, ti, (sxi, syi)), where fi is the i frame / detection, ti is the timestamp and (sxi, syi) are the spatial coordinates of the detected person or the camera. We tackle this problem via a graph signal processing approach. The novelty lies in modeling the tuples (fi, ti, (sxi, syi)) as node signals and edge weights as a fusion of visual, spatial and temporal information.
An Improved Subspace Identiﬁcation Method with the Minimum Variance and Input Design

—Subspace identiﬁcation has received considerable attention due to its noniterative way of estimating the system model by linear algebraic steps, which identiﬁes the parameter matrices of the system model by projecting them into a subspace related to input and output. However, these steps which do not have a explicit function make the statistical analysis of identiﬁcation results much more complex, especially the analysis of the variance. Then, the complexity of the variance analysis in the subspace method leads to the difﬁculty of obtaining the optimal input signal to achieve stable identiﬁcation results with the minimum variance. To tackle these problems, we propose an improved subspace method which has an explicit identiﬁcation function with respect to the input and output to facilitate the variance analysis, and then present an input design algorithm to minimize the variance of the identiﬁcation results. The proposed method identiﬁes the Markov parameter matrix of an LTI system and obtains the identiﬁcation function by constructing a block Hankel matrix related to the input and output. We design the input signal to minimize the variance of the identiﬁcation results of the matrices of the system model by splitting the non-convex variance analysis problem into two sub-problems. Both of the sub-problems are relaxed and solved with the optimal solution guaranteed. We prove the convergence of our algorithm. A simulation demonstrates the effectiveness of our algorithm.
The EU and Non-Trade Provisions in Trade Agreements: A Synthetic Control Approach

EU trade policy is increasingly evolving toward the inclusion of non trade-related provisions (NTP) in trade agreements. The effects of this strategy on socio-economic outcomes in partner countries are theoretically ambiguous and little has been done to test them empirically in a comprehensive and systematic way. Given its increasing uptake against a much inconclusive assessment, the debate on whether and how such strategy actually affects partner countries’ policy environment is drawing a lot of attention (Bilal and Hoeckman, 2019).
Micro- and Nano-Scales Three-Dimensional Characterisation of Softwood

Understanding the mechanical response of cellular biological materials to environmental stimuli is of fundamental importance from an engineering perspective in composites. To provide a deep understanding of their behaviour, an exhaustive analytical and experimental protocol is required. Attention is focused on softwood but the approach can be applied to a range of cellular materials. This work presents a new non-invasive multi-scale approach for the investigation of the hygro-mechanical behaviour of softwood. At the TOMCAT beamline of the Paul Scherrer Institute, in Switzerland, the swelling behaviour of softwood was probed at the cellular and sub-cellular scales by means of 3D high-resolution phase-contrast X-ray imaging. At the cellular scale, new findings in the anisotropic and reversible swelling behaviour of softwood and in the origin of swelling hysteresis of porous materials are explained from a mechanical perspective. However, the mechanical and moisture properties of wood highly depend on sub-cellular features of the wood cell wall, such as bordered pits, yielding local deformations during a full hygroscopic loading protocol.
Physical Activity, Stress, Depression, Emotional Intelligence, Logical Thinking, and Overall Health in a Large Lithuanian from October 2019 to June 2020: Age and Gender Differences Adult Sample

This study aimed to examine relationships and group differences among adult people’s (aged 18–74) physical activity (PA), expression of stress, depression, emotional intelligence (EI), logical thinking (LT), and overall health assessment. Two hypotheses were formulated before the study. The first hypothesis is that overweight and obesity in young adults (18 to 34 years) females and males, in particular, should increase sharply and this should be associated with decreased PA, abruptly deteriorating subject health, increased stress, depression, and poorer emotion management and EI. Second hypothesis: We further thought that the better people’s reflective thinking, the more they should live a healthier life (e.g., exercise more and eat healthier), their overweight and obesity should be small or none. We aimed to confirm or reject these two hypotheses. We applied a quantitative cross-sectional study design. The study results revealed that during the lifespan of 18–24 and 25–34 years (young adults) there was a sharp increase in overweight and obesity, a decrease in PA (and especially vigorous physical activity (VPA)) (and this was particularly evident in the male), while research participants felt less stress and depression, subjective assessment of health did not change, and EI increased steadily with age (18–24 to 65–74 years). The higher the EI of the research participants from 18–24 to 65–74 years of age the higher their moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), the less stress and depression they felt. Based on the results, it can be said that both females and males prefer PA “with a hot heart rather than a cold mind. ” We base this conclusion on the fact that females and males who have the highest EI also have the highest MVPA while LT is not associated with MVPA.
Bifunctional Inhibitors of Influenza Virus Neuraminidase: Molecular Design of a Sulfonamide Linker

The growing resistance of the influenza virus to widely used competitive neuraminidase inhibitors occupying the active site of the enzyme requires the development of bifunctional compounds that can simultaneously interact with other regulatory sites on the protein surface. When developing such an inhibitor and combining structural fragments that could be located in the sialic acid cavity of the active site and the adjacent 430-cavity, it is necessary to select a suitable linker not only for connecting the fragments, but also to ensure effective interactions with the unique arginine triad Arg118-Arg292-Arg371 of neuraminidase. Using molecular modeling, we have demonstrated the usefulness of the sulfonamide group in the linker design and the potential advantage of this functional group over other isosteric analogues.
VEHICLE TRAJECTORIES RESULTING FROM TRAVERSING FDOT STREET CURBS

This project seeks to determine the trajectories of vehicles after they impact street curbs such as the Florida Department of Transportation Type E and Type F curbs. Various vehicles impacting the curbs at different velocities and approach angles were studied and a variety of possible roadway-curb configurations were considered in order to obtain reliable predictions regarding real-life situations. The impact scenarios were studied using computer simulation (finite element method), with selected cases being verified experimentally to validate the discrete model. Influences such as friction between tires and the roadway, resistance of steering and suspension characteristics were studied. The computer simulations allowed the displacements, velocities, accelerations, and stresses and strains for all parts of the vehicle to be collected for each scenario. Results verified that computer simulation was an effective way to obtain information regarding vehicle behavior in time and space. Findings from the numerical analyses suggest that the Type F curb may serve as a roadside safety device only for small vehicles and only for relatively low values of impact angles, since this curb does not significantly influence the trajectory of large vehicles and therefore does not prevent traversing the curb. The Type E curb should not be considered as a roadside safety device for any vehicle since its inclined shape causes low reduction of initial velocity and permits relatively easy traversing of the curb. Using the trajectories provided in this report, roadside safety devices can be placed to stop errant vehicles after their entrance on the sidewalk. Other factors that should be considered in the prediction of vehicle behavior are discussed.
Clustering Routing Algorithm for Heterogeneous WSN with Energy Harvesting

Focus on the character of energy harvesting sensor network in heterogeneous sensor network and some shortage in SEP algorithm, an improved algorithm for EH-SEP is been proposed. EH-SEP considers both residual energy and energy support of nodes in cluster-head election process . Improved algorithm achieves higher probability that the advanced nodes with high residual energy to be cluster-head, and lower probability that the traditional nodes with low residual energy to be cluster-head. During the state of data sensing, this paper adopted multiple hop data transmission to avoid long distance communication between the cluster head and base station, so it can improve the network energy utilization. The simulation result shows that: EH-SEP algorithm is not only suitable for energy harvesting of wireless sensor network, but also effectively prolong the work time in the network stable stage.
mRNA, a Revolution in Biomedicine

The perspective of using messenger RNA (mRNA) as a therapeutic molecule first faced some uncertainties due to concerns about its instability and the feasibility of large-scale production. Today, given technological advances and deeper biomolecular knowledge, these issues have started to be addressed and some strategies are being exploited to overcome the limitations. Thus, the potential of mRNA has become increasingly recognized for the development of new innovative therapeutics, envisioning its application in immunotherapy, regenerative medicine, vaccination, and gene editing. Nonetheless, to fully potentiate mRNA therapeutic application, its efficient production, stabilization and delivery into the target cells are required. In recent years, intensive research has been carried out in this field in order to bring new and effective solutions towards the stabilization and delivery of mRNA. Presently, the therapeutic potential of mRNA is undoubtedly recognized, which was greatly reinforced by the results achieved in the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic, but there are still some issues that need to be improved, which are critically discussed in this review.
Preliminary study on in-vivo dielectric properties of tissues in the human oral cavity at microwave frequencies

This paper reports on a preliminary characterisation of the complex permittivity of tissues within the oral cavity. In-vivo dielectric measurements were conducted on the lips and on five different areas of the tongue corresponding to different anatomical areas (ventral, dorsal, tip, left and right sides). The study included 25 patients having different ages and for each patient, three independent measurements were repeated for each tissue type. From this study, it has been observed that no statistical difference exists between the different areas of the tongue. However, there exists a statistical difference between the average dielectric properties of the tongue and lips.
An Efficient Group-Based Replica Placement Policy for Large-Scale Geospatial 3D Raster Data on Hadoop

Geospatial three-dimensional (3D) raster data have been widely used for simple representations and analysis, such as geological models, spatio-temporal satellite data, hyperspectral images, and climate data. With the increasing requirements of resolution and accuracy, the amount of geospatial 3D raster data has grown exponentially. In recent years, the processing of large raster data using Hadoop has gained popularity. However, data uploaded to Hadoop are randomly distributed onto datanodes without consideration of the spatial characteristics. As a result, the direct processing of geospatial 3D raster data produces a massive network data exchange among the datanodes and degrades the performance of the cluster. To address this problem, we propose an efficient group-based replica placement policy for large-scale geospatial 3D raster data, aiming to optimize the locations of the replicas in the cluster to reduce the network overhead. An overlapped group scheme was designed for three replicas of each file. The data in each group were placed in the same datanode, and different colocation patterns for three replicas were implemented to further reduce the communication between groups. The experimental results show that our approach significantly reduces the network overhead during data acquisition for 3D raster data in the Hadoop cluster, and maintains the Hadoop replica placement requirements.
Topology and Control of an Enhanced Dual-Active Bridge Converter With Inherent Bipolar Operation Capability for LVDC Distribution Systems

Low-voltage direct current (LVDC) distribution is an efficient way to accommodate high penetration of renewable energy sources, energy storage systems, and electronic loads in the distribution systems. This article presents an enhanced dual-active bridge (DAB) converter for bipolar LVDC distribution systems. By employing a dedicated winding connection in the ac-link transformer, the operation of two dc poles on the input side can be fully decoupled. Hence, the DAB can provide full bipolar operation capability on the input side without additional power-semiconductor devices or magnetic components. The positive- and negative-pole dc currents on the input side could be independently controlled by the dedicated differential- and common-mode current controllers. Hence, in case one pole of the bipolar LVDC distribution is failed due to, e.g., damage of cable, the dc-link input current of the faulty pole on the input side of the DAB converter can be transferred to the healthy pole immediately and sustain the power supply to the output side. The effectiveness of the topology and the current control scheme proposed in this work are verified through simulations and experiments on a fabricated 7.2 kW 600 V SiC converter prototype. In asymmetric operations, the proposed three-phase DAB (DAB3) converter presents efficiency boost up to 1.5% compared with the conventional system with a DAB3 converter and a voltage balancer attributed to the reduced stage of power conversion.