Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Function of Immunoproteasomes—An Immunologists’ Perspective

Proteasomes are responsible for intracellular proteolysis and play an important role in cellular protein homeostasis. Cells of the immune system assemble a specialized form of proteasomes, known as immunoproteasomes, in which the constitutive catalytic sites are replaced for cytokine-inducible homologues. While immunoproteasomes may fulfill all standard proteasome’ functions, they seem specially adapted for a role in MHC class I antigen processing and CD8+ T-cell activation. In this way, they may contribute to CD8+ T-cell-mediated control of intracellular infections, but also to the immunopathogenesis of autoimmune diseases. Starting at the discovery of its catalytic subunits in the genome, here, we review the observations shaping our current understanding of immunoproteasome function, and the consequential novel opportunities for immune intervention.
Energy Efficiency for Green Internet of Things (IoT) Networks: A Survey

The last decade has witnessed the rise of the proliferation of Internet-enabled devices. The Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming ever more pervasive in everyday life, connecting an ever-greater array of diverse physical objects. The key vision of the IoT is to bring a massive number of smart devices together in integrated and interconnected heterogeneous networks, making the Internet even more useful. Therefore, this paper introduces a brief introduction to the history and evolution of the Internet. Then, it presents the IoT, which is followed by a list of application domains and enabling technologies. The wireless sensor network (WSN) is revealed as one of the important elements in IoT applications, and the paper describes the relationship between WSNs and the IoT. This research is concerned with developing energy-efficiency techniques for WSNs that enable the IoT. After having identified sources of energy wastage, this paper reviews the literature that discusses the most relevant methods to minimizing the energy exhaustion of IoT and WSNs. We also identify the gaps in the existing literature in terms of energy preservation measures that could be researched and it can be considered in future works. The survey gives a near-complete and up-to-date view of the IoT in the energy field. It provides a summary and recommendations of a large range of energy-efficiency methods proposed in the literature that will help and support future researchers. Please note that the manuscript is an extended version and based on the summary of the Ph.D. thesis. This paper will give to the researchers an introduction to what they need to know and understand about the networks, WSNs, and IoT applications from scratch. Thus, the fundamental purpose of this paper is to introduce research trends and recent work on the use of IoT technology and the conclusion that has been reached as a result of undertaking the Ph.D. study.
Safety of African Swine Fever Vaccine Candidate Lv17/WB/Rie1 in Wild Boar: Overdose and Repeated Doses

African swine fever (ASF) is a highly lethal infectious disease that affects domestic pigs and wild boar. Outbreaks of ASF have grown considerably in the last decade causing important economic consequences for the swine industry. Its control is hampered by the lack of an effective treatment or vaccine. In Europe, the wild boar is a key wild reservoir for ASF. The results of the oral vaccination trial of wild boar with Lv17/WB/Rie1 are hope for this problem. However, this vaccine candidate has certain safety concerns, since it is a naturally attenuated vaccine. Therefore, the current study aims to evaluate the safety of this vaccine candidate in terms of overdose (high dose) and repeated doses (revaccination) in wild boar. Low-dose orally vaccinated animals developed only a slight transient fever after vaccination and revaccination. This was also the case for most of the high-dose vaccinated wild boar, except for one of them which succumbed after revaccination. Although this fatality was related to hierarchical fights between animals, we consider that further studies are required for clarification. Considering these new results and the current epidemiological situation of ASF in wild boar, this vaccine prototype is a promising tool for the control of the disease in these wild populations, although further studies are needed.
Prediction of Agricultural Commodities Futures Prices: A DQN-LSTM Method

This paper combines deep Q network (DQN) with long and short-term memory (LSTM) and proposes a novel hybrid deep learning method called DQN-LSTM framework. The proposed method aims to address the prediction of five Chinese agricultural commodities futures prices over different time duration. The DQN-LSTM applies the strategy enhancement of deep reinforcement learning to the structural parameter optimization of deep recurrent networks, and achieves the organic integration of two types of deep learning algorithms. The new framework has the capacity of self-optimization and learning of parameters, thus improving the performance of prediction by its own iteration, which shows great prospects for future application in financial prediction and other directions. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated by comparing the effectiveness of the DQN-LSTM method with that of traditional predicting methods such as auto-regressive integrated moving average (ARIMA), support vector machine (SVR) and LSTM. The results show that the DQN-LSTM method can effectively optimize the traditional LSTM structural parameters through policy iteration of the deep reinforcement learning algorithm, which contributes to a better long and short-term prediction accuracy. In particular, the longer the prediction period, the more obvious the advantage of prediction accuracy of a DQN-LSTM method.
GEOCHEMICAL CLUSTER ANALYSIS OF MINE WATER QUALITY WITHIN THE MONONGAHELA BASIN

The objective of this research was to conduct a cluster analysis of mean water quality data of 1,624 samples collected from 84 mine discharge sites within the Monongahela River basin over a 10 year period. This analysis produced four basic clusters. These four clusters were distinguished primarily by three factors: total dissolved solids, degree of acid neutralization, and mine discharge maturity. Most of the mine discharge sites (84%) were classified into a single cluster by the level one cluster analysis. Most of the discharges in this dominant grouping were older discharges from mines abandoned more than 15 years prior to discharge sampling. The discharges in the other three level one clusters exhibiting higher TDS levels tended to be more acidic and also to be from active mines, mines in the process of flooding, or mines flooded for less than 15 years Future research should be devoted towards identifying the discharge maturity and flooding status of the various mine sites within the dataset, as well as the coal seam and overburden characteristics. The identification of these characteristics for all of the mine discharge sites would permit the analysis of separate datasets with comparable characteristics.
The Implementation and Review of Cognitive Remediation Training for First Episode Psychosis in Singapore

Objective: Early intervention in patients with first episode psychosis (FEP) can improve cognitive abilities, with both short- and long-term benefits. In this paper, we describe the implementation and review of cognitive remediation training (CRT) in an Asian FEP population. The outcomes of the training are also evaluated and discussed. Methods: This naturalistic paper describes in detail the real-life implementation and conduct of CRT in an early psychosis intervention service. One hundred and nine patients with FEP underwent a 24-session CRT programme, using Cogpack and Neuropsychological Educational Approach to Remediation. The program is evaluated with pre- and post-CRT assessment scores which included Montreal Cognitive Assessment and Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia. The rates of improvement on these cognitive assessments were evaluated using paired t-tests, with statistical significance set at p ≤ 0.05. Results: Of the 109 patients who underwent CRT, a total of 92 (84.4%) completed all 24 sessions. Paired t-tests between pre- and post-CRT assessments scores revealed that participants significantly improved on majority of the measures, including verbal memory, digit sequencing, and symbol coding. Conclusion: As with other cognitive remediation programmes, CRT has shown to improve cognitive functioning in patients with FEP. The results support the use of CRT in an Asian context and may serve as guidance for the implementation of similar training programmes in other Asian early psychosis intervention services.
Design of 2D Planar Sparse Binned Arrays Based on the Coarray Analysis

The analysis of the beampattern is the base of sparse arrays design process. However, in the case of bidimensional arrays, this analysis has a high computational cost, turning the design process into a long and complex task. If the imaging system development is considered a holistic process, the aperture is a sampling grid that must be considered in the spatial domain through the coarray structure. Here, we propose to guide the aperture design process using statistical parameters of the distribution of the weights in the coarray. We have studied three designs of sparse matrix binned arrays with different sparseness degrees. Our results prove that there is a relationship between these parameters and the beampattern, which is valuable and improves the array design process. The proposed methodology reduces the computational cost up to 58 times with respect to the conventional fitness function based on the beampattern analysis.
Observations Related to Plate Tectonics

It is useful to assess the global data sets that are most relevant to plate tectonics. Below are a series of global maps that help to confirm various aspects of plate tectonic theory. Plate boundaries are classified as ridges, transform faults, or subduction zones based on basic observations of topography (Figure 1) and seismicity (Figure 2). Remarkably, nearly all seafloor spreading ridges lie at a depth of 2500-3000 m below sea level which is the level of isostasy for hot thin lithosphere. Depths gradually increase away from the ridges because of cooling and thermal contraction so old ocean basins are commonly 4500-5000 m deep. Fracture zones and aseismic ridges also show up on these maps. Global seismicity (magnitude > 5.1 Figure 2) highlights the plate boundaries and reveals their tectonic style. Shallow normal-faulting earthquakes (< 30 km deep) are common along slow-spreading ridges but largely absent along faster-spreading ridges where the plates are too thin and weak to retain sufficient elastic energy to generate large earthquakes. Transform faults are characterized by relatively shallow (< 30 km) strike-slip earthquakes and they are common along both fast-and slow-spreading ridges. The deeper earthquakes (green and blue dots in Figure 2) occur only in subduction zones where sheets of seismicity (i.e., Benioff zones) are critical evidence that relatively cold lithosphere is subducting back into the mantle. But even convergent boundaries are characterized by shallow extensional earthquakes on the ocean side of the trenches. Some regions (e.g., Africa. Asia, western North America, Indian ocean) have distributed earthquake activity, indicating broad deformational zones. Topography and seismicity provide strong evidence for tectonic activity but little or no information on the rate of plate motion. Marine magnetic anomalies, combined with relative plate motion directions based on satellite altimeter measurements of fracture-zone trends, have been used to construct a global age map (Figure 3) of the relatively young (< 180 Myr) oceanic lithosphere. Finally the distribution of off-ridge volcanoes that have been active during the Quaternary mainly occur directly behind trenches where wet subducting slabs reach asthenospheric depths and trigger back-arc volcanism (Figure 4). A few active volcanoes occur in the interiors of the plates and in diffuse extensional plate boundaries. The geoid (Figure 5) shows little correlation–at long wavelengths– with surface tectonics and primarily reflects mass anomalies deep in the mantle. It is expected that the dynamic topography–the topography not due to crustal and near-surface variations–and the stress-state …
Personal Identification Based on

With an increasing emphasis on security, automated personal identification based on biometrics has been receiving extensive attention over the past decade. Iris recognition, as an emerging biometric recognition approach, is becoming a very active topic in both research and practical applications. In general, a typical iris recognition system includes iris imaging, iris liveness detection, and recognition. This paper focuses on the last issue and describes a new scheme for iris recognition from an image sequence. We first assess the quality of each image in the input sequence and select a clear iris image from such a sequence for subsequent recognition. A bank of spatial filters, whose kernels are suitable for iris recognition, is then used to capture local characteristics of the iris so as to produce discriminating texture features. Experimental results show that the proposed method has an encouraging performance. In particular, a comparative study of existing methods for iris recognition is conducted on an iris image database including 2,255 sequences from 213 subjects. Conclusions based on such a comparison using a nonparametric statistical method (the bootstrap) provide useful information for further research.
Static And Dynamic Properties Of Active Joints

In this paper the realisation and the first experimental results of a new electrostatic actuator, the 'active joint' are presented. This structure is capable of delivering large forces and large deflections. When a sinusoidal voltage is applied with an amplitude larger than the critical voltage and a frequency close to the resonant frequency, the active joints shows a chaotic response. A first model is presented in order to describe the dynamic behaviour of active joints.
Blockchain-Based Authentication in Internet of Vehicles: A Survey

Internet of Vehicles (IoV) has emerged as an advancement over the traditional Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) towards achieving a more efficient intelligent transportation system that is capable of providing various intelligent services and supporting different applications for the drivers and passengers on roads. In order for the IoV and VANETs environments to be able to offer such beneficial road services, huge amounts of data are generated and exchanged among the different communicated entities in these vehicular networks wirelessly via open channels, which could attract the adversaries and threaten the network with several possible types of security attacks. In this survey, we target the authentication part of the security system while highlighting the efficiency of blockchains in the IoV and VANETs environments. First, a detailed background on IoV and blockchain is provided, followed by a wide range of security requirements, challenges, and possible attacks in vehicular networks. Then, a more focused review is provided on the recent blockchain-based authentication schemes in IoV and VANETs with a detailed comparative study in terms of techniques used, network models, evaluation tools, and attacks counteracted. Lastly, some future challenges for IoV security are discussed that are necessary to be addressed in the upcoming research.
Investigation of Flexure Effect on Transfer Alignment Performance

Transfer Alignment (TA) is the initialisation process of the Inertial Navigation System (INS) of an air-launched weapon before its release by using the data from the aircraft INS. The aim of this paper is to improve the TA performance by taking into account the aircraft flexures deterministically. The developed procedure neither requires captive carry tests for determination of flexures nor increases the size of the problem, and can be used in real-time missions of any type of military aircraft. The procedure is evaluated for the Velocity Match (VM) method as well as the Velocity and Attitude Match (VAM) method, which are applied through a Kalman Filter (KF). Using a short-time Wing-Rock (WR) manoeuvre, the results of both methods are compared to each other for two cases in which either the flexures are taken into account deterministically, or modelled as noise by assuming that they are unknown. Standard deviations of the errors and the Circular Error Probable (CEP) variations have shown that the TA performance of the VAM method can be much improved if aircraft flexures are incorporated deterministically into the method. The improved performance makes possible target of opportunity missions at shorter weapon ranges, and it decreases target strike errors.
An integrative approach reveals a new species of Zoantharia (Cnidaria, Anthozoa), Terrazoanthus silveirai, in the South-western Atlantic Ocean

ABSTRACT The recently erected macrocnemic family Hydrozoanthidae comprises relatively few species recorded from tropical and subtropical regions. In the Atlantic Ocean, this family has been reported only from three locations: the Caribbean Sea, the Argentine continental shelf and the Cape Verde Islands. Based on a study of colonies collected during scuba diving at Alcatrazes Archipelago’s main island (São Paulo State), south-eastern Brazil, a new species belonging to the genus Terrazoanthus is described as T. silveirai sp. nov. Vaga, Migotto & Kitahara. Morphological and ecological observations coupled with molecular analyses revealed a unique cnidome, a novel facultative association with sponges, and confirmed the phylogenetic position of this new species within Hydrozoanthidae. Our results represent the second record of Hydrozoanthidae and Terrazoanthus from the South-western Atlantic, expanding the sparse taxonomic knowledge of the order Zoantharia in this area. http://zoobank.org/3969190B-A039-457C-8101-44FEF60B4D43
A critical review of surgical strategies to minimise venous stenosis in arteriovenous grafts

It is inevitable that complications arising from surgical procedures are ascribed to surgical technique, and this applies to venous stenosis (VS) in arteriovenous grafts. However, despite a wide range of cellular studies, computer modelling, observational series and clinical trials, there remains uncertainty on whether surgical technique contributes to VS. This article reviews evidence from basic science, fluid dynamics and clinical data to try and rationalise the main surgical options to modify the occurrence of venous stenosis. There is sufficient data from diverse sources to make recommendations on clinical practice (size of target vein, shape of anastomosis, angle of approach, distance from venous needling, trauma to the target vein) whilst at the same time this emphasises the need to carefully report the practical aspects of surgical technique in future clinical trials.
Multimodal, multiclass stochastic dynamic traffic assignment for evaluating information provision strategies

A multimodal, multiclass stochastic dynamic traffic assignment model was developed to evaluate pre-trip and enroute travel information provision strategies. Three different information strategies were examined: user optimum [UO], system optimum [SO] and mixed optimum [MO]. These information provision strategies were analyzed based on the levels of traffic congestion and market penetration rate for the information equipment. Only two modes, bus and car, were used for evaluating and calculating the modal split ratio. Several scenarios were analyzed using day-to-day and within day dynamic models. From the results analyzed, it was found that when a traffic manager provides information for drivers using the UO strategy and drivers follow the provided information absolutely, the total travel time may increases over the case with no information. Such worsening occurs when drivers switch their routes and face traffic congestion on the alternative route. This phenomenon is the 'Braess Paradox'.
Assessment of Knowledge on the Prevention of Central-Line-Associated Bloodstream Infections among Intensive Care Nurses in Poland—A Prospective Multicentre Study

The presence of a central venous catheter (CVC) leads to a high risk of blood infections, which are considered major causes of morbidity, mortality and high medical costs. The aim of this study was to assess the knowledge of nursing staff working in intensive care units (ICUs) regarding the prevention of central-line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs). A nationwide survey was conducted among ICU nurses from August 2016 to April 2017. A modified Polish version of the questionnaire developed by Labeau et al. was used to assess the nurses’ knowledge. Of the 750 questionnaires distributed, 468 were returned. Women accounted for 95.73% of all respondents, and over 80% were university educated. Most of the nurses surveyed (85.9%) had previously received training in CVC guidelines, and thus over 82% rated their knowledge as good or very good. The guidelines introduced in hospitals were the main declared sources of information. In addition, more than half (68%) of respondents also knew the international guidelines. The knowledge of nursing staff in the study area is not sufficient. Studies show that the guidelines for the prevention of CLABSIs in ICUs should be standardized, and continuous training of personnel in this field should be provided.
Development and Use of Open Educational Resources in Research Methods for Psychology

Research methods course(s), a standard in psychology programs, often use multiple textbooks to address conceptual and data-analytic information. This study involved transitioning from traditional textbooks to open educational resources in a research methods course. Two psychology instructors, each offering course sections, identified open-access textbooks that aligned with course learning objectives and developed instructional materials to accompany those textbooks. All materials were organized publicly in an institutional subject guide. We compared students’ grades, pretest-posttest scores, and survey reports of resource use and evaluation in a spring semester, when traditional/costly textbooks were used, to the following fall semester, when no-cost textbooks were used. Student grades and pretestposttest growth, and reported use and ratings of course materials, were similar across semesters. Though the present findings are limited in scope, they suggest that no-cost resources can be used successfully for teaching research methods with minimal transition difficulties and without student learning deficits.
Optimization of Design Parameters Using Taguchi Method of Off-line Quality Control—A Few Indian Case Studies

SUMMARY This paper highlights the importance of design parameters for successful product design, manufacture and performance. In particular, the ‘noise’introduced to product performance is investigated for its cause and effect. A Taguchi method of off-line quality control is used to optimize the parameter design process and some examples from Indian industry are given.