Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
To Procrastinate or Not to Procrastinate: A Retrospective Study of the Optimal Timing of Containing the Global Spread of the COVID-19 Pandemic

As global public health is under threat by the 2019-nCoV and a potential new wave of large-scale epidemic outbreak and spread is looming, an imminent question to ask is what the optimal strategy of epidemic prevention and control (P&C) measures would be, especially in terms of the timing of enforcing aggressive policy response so as to maximize health efficacy and to contain pandemic spread. Based on the current global pandemic statistic data, here we developed a logistic probability function configured SEIR model to analyse the COVID-19 outbreak and estimate its transmission pattern under different “anticipate- or delay-to-activate” policy response scenarios in containing the pandemic. We found that the potential positive effects of stringent pandemic P&C measures would be almost canceled out in case of significantly delayed action, whereas a partially procrastinatory wait-and-see control policy may still be able to contribute to containing the degree of epidemic spread although its effectiveness may be significantly compromised compared to a scenario of early intervention coupled with stringent P&C measures. A laissez-faire policy adopted by the government and health authority to tackling the uncertainly of COVID19-type pandemic development during the early stage of the outbreak turns out to be a high risk strategy from optimal control perspective, as significant damages would be produced as a consequence.
The Evidence for Fertility Preservation in Pediatric Klinefelter Syndrome

Klinefelter syndrome (KS) is a common cause of non-obstructive azoospermia (NOA). Advances in fertility preservation (FP) techniques, such as the use of microdissection testicular sperm extraction (micro-TESE), have improved sperm retrieval rates (SRR) up to 40–50% in this population. Age has been suggested to have an impact on FP, postulating that sperm production may deteriorate over time due to germ cell loss. As such, sperm retrieval for patients with KS at a younger age has been proposed to further improve SRR; however, whether such practice pragmatically improves SRR is yet to be determined, and controversy remains with concerns over trauma caused by FP procedures on further impairment of testicular function. There has also been a debate on the ethics of performing FP procedures in the pediatric population. Optimizing FP for patients with KS invariably requires a holistic multidisciplinary approach. This review aimed to evaluate the latest evidence in performing FP in pediatric patients with KS, and discuss the controversy surrounding such practice. Hormonal changes in patients with KS during childhood and the use of hormonal manipulation to optimize SSR in this population have also been reviewed.
Novel Immune Cell-Based Therapies to Eradicate High-Risk Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Adverse genetic risk acute myeloid leukemia (AML) includes a wide range of clinical-pathological entities with extremely poor outcomes; thus, novel therapeutic approaches are needed. Promising results achieved by engineered chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells in other blood neoplasms have paved the way for the development of immune cell-based therapies for adverse genetic risk AML. Among these, adoptive cell immunotherapies with single/multiple CAR-T cells, CAR-natural killer (NK) cells, cytokine-induced killer cells (CIK), and NK cells are subjects of ongoing clinical trials. On the other hand, allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT) still represents the only curative option for adverse genetic risk AML patients. Unfortunately, high relapse rates (above 50%) and associated dismal outcomes (reported survival ~10–20%) even question the role of current allo-HSCT protocols and emphasize the urgency of adopting novel effective transplant strategies. We have recently demonstrated that haploidentical allo-HSCT combined with regulatory and conventional T cells adoptive immunotherapy (Treg-Tcon haplo-HSCT) is able to overcome disease-intrinsic chemoresistance, prevent leukemia-relapse, and improve survival of adverse genetic risk AML patients. In this Perspective, we briefly review the recent advancements with immune cell-based strategies against adverse genetic risk AML and discuss how such approaches could favorably impact on patients’ outcomes.
Assessing the Urban Eco-Environmental Quality by the Remote-Sensing Ecological Index: Application to Tianjin, North China

The remote-sensing ecological index (RSEI), which is built with greenness, moisture, dryness, and heat, has become increasingly recognized for its use in urban eco-environment quality assessment. To improve the reliability of such assessment, we propose a new RSEI-based urban eco-environment quality assessment method where the impact of RSEI indicators on the eco-environment quality and the seasonal change of RSEI are examined and considered. The northern Chinese municipal city of Tianjin was selected as a case study to test the proposed method. Landsat images acquired in spring, summer, autumn, and winter were obtained and processed for three different years (1992, 2005, and 2018) for a multitemporal analysis. Results from the case study show that both the contributions of RSEI indicators to eco-environment quality and RSEI values vary with the season and that such seasonal variability should be considered by normalizing indicator measures differently and using more representative remote-sensing images, respectively. The assessed eco-environment quality of Tianjin was, overall, improving owing to governmental environmental protection measures, but the damage caused by rapid urban expansion and sea reclamation in the Binhai New Area still needs to be noted. It is concluded that our proposed urban eco-environment quality assessment method is viable and can provide a reliable assessment result that helps gain a more accurate understanding of the evolution of the urban eco-environment quality over seasons and years.
Pedestrian Flow Prediction in Open Public Places Using Graph Convolutional Network

Open public places, such as pedestrian streets, parks, and squares, are vulnerable when the pedestrians thronged into the sidewalks. The crowd count changes dynamically over time with various external factors, such as surroundings, weekends, and peak hours, so it is essential to predict the accurate and timely crowd count. To address this issue, this study introduces graph convolutional network (GCN), a network-based model, to predict the crowd flow in a walking street. Compared with other grid-based methods, the model is capable of directly processing road network graphs. Experiments show the GCN model and its extension STGCN consistently and significantly outperform other five baseline models, namely HA, ARIMA, SVM, CNN and LSTM, in terms of RMSE, MAE and R2. Considering the computation efficiency, the standard GCN model was selected to predict the crowd. The results showed that the model obtains superior performances with higher prediction precision on weekends and peak hours, of which R2 are above 0.9, indicating the GCN model can capture the pedestrian features in the road network effectively, especially during the periods with massive crowds. The results will provide practical references for city managers to alleviate road congestion and help pedestrians make smarter planning and save travel time.
A Closed-Form Solution to Planar Feature-Based Registration of LiDAR Point Clouds

Since pairwise registration is a necessary step for the seamless fusion of point clouds from neighboring stations, a closed-form solution to planar feature-based registration of LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) point clouds is proposed in this paper. Based on the Plücker coordinate-based representation of linear features in three-dimensional space, a quad tuple-based representation of planar features is introduced, which makes it possible to directly determine the difference between any two planar features. Dual quaternions are employed to represent spatial transformation and operations between dual quaternions and the quad tuple-based representation of planar features are given, with which an error norm is constructed. Based on L2-norm-minimization, detailed derivations of the proposed solution are explained step by step. Two experiments were designed in which simulated data and real data were both used to verify the correctness and the feasibility of the proposed solution. With the simulated data, the calculated registration results were consistent with the pre-established parameters, which verifies the correctness of the presented solution. With the real data, the calculated registration results were consistent with the results calculated by iterative methods. Conclusions can be drawn from the two experiments: (1) The proposed solution does not require any initial estimates of the unknown parameters in advance, which assures the stability and robustness of the solution; (2) Using dual quaternions to represent spatial transformation greatly reduces the additional constraints in the estimation process.
Leveraging Road Characteristics and Contributor Behaviour for Assessing Road Type Quality in OSM

Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) is often collected by non-expert users. This raises concerns about the quality and veracity of such data. There has been much effort to understand and quantify the quality of VGI. Extrinsic measures which compare VGI to authoritative data sources such as National Mapping Agencies are common but the cost and slow update frequency of such data hinder the task. On the other hand, intrinsic measures which compare the data to heuristics or models built from the VGI data are becoming increasingly popular. Supervised machine learning techniques are particularly suitable for intrinsic measures of quality where they can infer and predict the properties of spatial data. In this article we are interested in assessing the quality of semantic information, such as the road type, associated with data in OpenStreetMap (OSM). We have developed a machine learning approach which utilises new intrinsic input features collected from the VGI dataset. Specifically, using our proposed novel approach we obtained an average classification accuracy of 84.12%. This result outperforms existing techniques on the same semantic inference task. The trustworthiness of the data used for developing and training machine learning models is important. To address this issue we have also developed a new measure for this using direct and indirect characteristics of OSM data such as its edit history along with an assessment of the users who contributed the data. An evaluation of the impact of data determined to be trustworthy within the machine learning model shows that the trusted data collected with the new approach improves the prediction accuracy of our machine learning technique. Specifically, our results demonstrate that the classification accuracy of our developed model is 87.75% when applied to a trusted dataset and 57.98% when applied to an untrusted dataset. Consequently, such results can be used to assess the quality of OSM and suggest improvements to the data set.
Density Functional Theory Modeling of MnO2 Polymorphs as Cathodes for Multivalent Ion Batteries

Multivalent ion batteries (MVIBs) provide an inexpensive and energy-dense alternative to Li-ion batteries when portability of the battery is not of primary concern. However, it is difficult to find cathode materials that provide optimal battery characteristics such as energy density, adequate charge/discharge rates, and cyclability when paired with a multivalent ion. To address this, we investigate six MnO2 polymorphs as cathodes for MVIBs using density functional theory calculations. We find voltages as high as 3.7, 2.4, 2.7, 1.8, and 1.0 V for Li, Mg, Ca, Al, and Zn, respectively, and calculate the volume change due to intercalation. We then focus specifically on Ca and compute the energy barriers which are associated with the diffusion of the ion throughout the materials. Our findings show that the α-phase displays the most rapid diffusion kinetics for a Ca ion, with a diffusion barrier as low as 190 meV. We then investigate the potential for the five polymorphs exhibiting the highest voltage to interc.
PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY OF WATER TREATMENT PROCESSES Crosslinked Calcium Alginates Porous Beads for Adsorption Removal of Ammonium Ions

Ammonia pollution of natural water can promote adverse undesirable environmental impacts on aquatic fauna, human and environment. Different techniques were elaborated for treatment of this pollution. Recently, polymer hydrogels have been successfully used as adsorbents of ammonium ions. Among the polysaccharides that can be used in the wastewater treatment, the alginates have the ability to adsorb various pollutants in the f lexible channels by electrostatic interaction between the ions in aqueous solution and the –COO– groups of the polymeric network. Alginates are natural biopolymers; they could be obtained from the brown seaweeds, extraction of alginates is often effectuated in a sodium form related to their fast solubility in cold water. In this work, sodium alginate solution was crosslinked by calcium divalent cations in the beads forms. The resulting beads are roughly spherical, when they are swollen; they become bigger in size, they were characterized by several techniques, which revealed that the sample contains different mineral and organic functional groups. Indeed, optimization of the contact time, temperature, pH, initial adsorbate concentration and initial adsorbent concentration has been studied. So, the maximal removal efficiency was 47.72% after 60 min, the favorable temperature of adsorption was 30°C where the maximal removal efficiency was 69.54%, the optimal pH is 7 with a maximum removal efficiency of 69.54%. Moreover, the removal efficiency decreased considerably from 69.54 to 34.26% at initial EAC varied from 10 mg/L to 1000 mg/L and an optimal initial adsorbent amount of 0.1 g where the removal efficiency was 69.54% and the equivalence EAC was 30.46 mg/L. Furthermore, study of adsorption isotherms indicated that the process was obeyed to both models of Langmuir and Freundlich with R2 values of 0.994 and 0.98 respectively, with a maximal adsorption capacity of 58.82 mg/g that calculated from Langmuir model. Finally, the spectral and the structural analyses after the adsorption process proved this phenomenon and allowed to apply these crosslinked beads-A in the treatment of waters charged with ammonium ions.
Pain perception of children after restorative treatments: Atraumatic restorative treatment versus chemomechanical removal – A noninferiority randomized clinical trial

Background: Atraumatic restorative treatment (ART) and chemomechanical removal of dental caries have been shown to be safe and effective restorative procedures. However, current literature lacks well-design studies comparing the pain perceived by infants using ART and chemo-mechanical removal techniques. Aims: To compare pain perception of children of two techniques (ART vs. chemomechanical removal) of restorative treatments for dental caries removal. Settings and Design: A randomized clinical trial with two parallels arms (1:1) was conducted in the cities of Manaus (AM) and Uberlândia (MG), Brazil. Methods: Children between 4 and 9 years old were selected. In both groups - ART (n = 20) and chemomechanical caries removal (Papaya® gel) (n = 20) - oximeter measurements (heart rate and blood oxygenation) were performed before the intervention and until the complete removal of the infected caries dentin. At the end of the treatment, a Wong-Baker scale was used to assess pain perception during the procedure. An independent researcher measured, in minutes, the duration of each technique. Statistical Analysis: Poisson regression analysis was used to evaluate the association between the outcome and the explicative variables. Results: No statistical difference in pain perception between the two procedures of carious tissue removal was observed. By contrast, a lower heart rate was observed when chemomechanical removal was used (P = 0.013). Conclusion: Children that underwent chemomechanical caries removal presented lower heart rate compared to those who underwent ART. However, both techniques showed minimal or absent perceived pain.
Cholestatic liver disease: Practice guidelines from the Saudi Association for the Study of Liver diseases and Transplantation

Cholestatic liver diseases (CLDs) are a group of diseases characterized by jaundice and cholestasis as the main presentation with different complications, which have considerable impact on the liver and can lead to end-stage liver disease, cirrhosis, and liver-related complications. In the last few years, tremendous progress has been made in understanding the pathophysiology, diagnosis, and treatment of patients with these conditions. However, several aspects related to the management of CLDs remain deficient and unclear. Due to the lack of recommendations that can help in the management, treatment of those conditions, the Saudi Association for the Study of Liver diseases and Transplantation (SASLT) has created a task force group to develop guidelines related to CLDs management in order to provide a standard of care for patients in need. These guidelines provide general guidance for health care professionals to optimize medical care for patients with CLDs for both adult and pediatric populations, in association with clinical judgments to be considered on a case-by-case basis. These guidelines describe common CLDs in Saudi Arabia, with recommendations on the best approach for diagnosis and management of different diseases based on the Grading of Recommendation Assessment (GRADE), combined with a level of evidence available in the literature.
Facile deposition of Pt nanoparticles on Sb-doped SnO2 support with outstanding active surface area for the oxygen reduction reaction

Understanding the influence of the support on the electrocatalytic behaviour of platinum is key to the development of novel Pt/oxide catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). For studies to isolate these effects, highly dispersed supported Pt nanoparticles with well-controlled particle sizes are required. In this study, we demonstrate a novel preparation process for Pt/oxide catalysts, with small Pt nanoparticles (2.5–3.5 nm), supported on a commercial Sb–SnO2 (ATO) nanopowder, with a very high utilization of the Pt-precursor. The organometallic chemical deposition method produces catalyst nanoparticles with a homogeneous distribution over the surface of the support even at high Pt metal loadings. Additionally, by using a mild hydrogen reduction treatment of the oxide support prior to Pt deposition, significantly smaller Pt nanoparticles were obtained with an outstanding mass-specific electrochemically active surface area exceeding 100 m2 g−1. Furthermore, by varying the Pt metal loading, several fundamental electrocatalytic effects that strongly influence the Pt/ATO system were distinguished. Good electrochemical stability during high-potential cycling was observed and was attributed to potential-dependent in situ conductivity switching of the ATO support. In turn, ORR activities of the Pt/ATO catalysts were found to be influenced by a combination of Pt particle size effects, ATO support in situ conductivity limitations at PEFC operation potentials, and electrocatalytic metal–support interactions. Therefore, in addition to demonstrating a powerful method for the preparation of exceptionally high surface area Pt/oxide catalysts, the present study contributes to the detailed understanding of the interplay between various phenomena that influence the electrocatalytic activity and stability of Pt/oxide systems for the ORR. Furthermore, the novel preparation approach for Pt/metal oxide catalysts could be of major interest for catalyst preparation in other fields of electrocatalysis and heterogeneous catalysis.
Geometric horizons in binary black hole mergers

We numerically study the algebraic properties of the Weyl tensor through the merger of two non-spinning black holes (BHs). We are particularly interested in the conjecture that for such a vacuum spacetime, which is zeroth-order algebraically general, a geometric horizon (GH), on which the spacetime is algebraically special and which is identified by the vanishing of a complex scalar invariant ( D ), characterizes a smooth foliation independent surface (horizon) associated with the BH. In the first simulation we investigate the level-0 sets of Re(D) (since Im(D)=0 ) in the head-on collision of two unequal mass BHs. In the second simulation we shall investigate the level-ɛ sets of |D| through a quasi-circular merger of two non-spinning, equal mass BHs. The numerical results, as displayed in the figures presented, provide evidence that a (unique) smooth GH can be identified throughout all stages of the binary BH merger.
Identification of the inter-basin water diversion project-effected local flood risk factor by using the fishbone-diagram method

When carrying out the inter-basin water diversion project, we must face problems such as the long river routing distance and complex hydro-meteorological conditions along the main channel. Under the condition of the unchangeable standard of the designed rainstorm, the changes of the underlying surface could inflect the designed flood. As a result, the drainage channel is not as consistent as the designed condition, therefore the flood discharge condition in the upper and lower sub-reaches changes, and the actual flow capacity of the hydraulic structure is reduced compared with the designed conditions. The above-mentioned situations could cause risk event of the rising of designed flood level in the left bank and will cause local flood risk, and also cause corresponding economic losses and social impacts. In this study, for the first time, the fishbone-diagram method is applied to identify the local flood risk factors of the inter-basin water diversion project. By using this method, the changes of characteristic values of watershed above cross section, villages, factories or other buildings at the outlet location of the drainage structures etc. are identified as the local flood risk factors, and there are mainly eight types of local flood risk factors which can be taken into consideration when selecting engineering and non-engineering measures to reduce or eliminate the risk factors. PACS: J0101
Design of On-line Simulation System for Signal Control of Urban Intersections Based on Visual Sensing Technology

Intersection area is the area with the most serious conflicts and accidents in the whole urban traffic system. Therefore, it is of great significance to combine modern computer technology, sensing technology and communication technology to intelligently control intersections, improve the efficiency of traffic signal control and reduce the delay time in conflict areas. Starting with video detection and using deep learning in the detection module, a video detection mechanism based on restricted Boltzmann machine network is proposed. Based on C # programming language, the intersection traffic signal simulation module is designed through COM interface provided by traffic simulation software VISSIM, which realizes road network import, parameter setting, signal timing change, simulation operation and simulation result output. Numerical experiments show that fuzzy control method with self-correcting factor is superior to timing control method and classical fuzzy control method in average delay time of vehicles.