Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Smart home technology solution for night-time wandering in persons with dementia

Introduction More than half of persons with dementia will experience night-time wandering, increasing their risk of falls and unattended home exits. This is a major predictor of caregiver burnout and one of the major causes of early institutionalization. Methods Using smart home technologies such as sensors, smart bulbs, pressure mats and speakers, the Night-time Wandering Detection and Diversion system is designed to assist caregivers and persons with dementia that are at risk of wandering at night. Being placed in homes around Ottawa for a 12-week trial, the system allows caregivers to rest peacefully in the night, as it detects when the person with dementia gets out of bed and automatically provides cue lighting to guide them safely to the washroom. The system also uses prerecorded audio prompts, if they venture from the bedroom, only waking the caregiver when the person with dementia opens an exit door. Results Thus far, the average depression and anxiety in caregivers have been improved after the 12 weeks, and most have said that they sleep more peacefully. Conclusion The system has proven successful in supporting the safety of persons with dementia as well as their caregivers.
License Plate Location and Recognition on Neural Network

This paper takes autonomous driving technology as the research background, and aims to improve the efficiency of the traffic system in real life, and proposes a neural network recognition method for license plates. The method realizes accurate location and recognition of LP (license plate) by constructing two neural recognition networks. For the LP location, a 11-layer convolution recognition network (CNN) is constructed. The basic step is to roughly locate the LP after preprocessing the image, and use the neural network to accurately locate the LP. For LP recognition, the 10-layer convolutional neural network constructed by inputting the segmented LP is used to realize character recognition, and the output result is obtained. The method is efficient and accurate, and can be applied to handheld devices in transportation systems.
Numerical study on the tight focusing of radially polarized beams with polarization-insensitive metalenses

Radially polarized beam (RPB) could be focused to a tighter spot than a spatially homogeneous polarized beam with a high numerical aperture (NA) objective lens. However, the traditional objective lens suffers from high cost and bulky size. In this paper, polarization-insensitive nanopillar metalenses were designed to execute tight focusing without the requirement of the incident beams to be specific polarized states. It was found that the focal spot of RPB was potentially smaller than that of a linear polarized beam because of the longitudinal component. Diffraction-limited focusing of RPB was achieved by a high NA polarization-insensitive metalens through an annular aperture illumination. This study may contribute to high-resolution photonics and optoelectronic applications.
The Past, Present, and Future of Behavioral IR

Abstract Originally developed by applying models from cognitive psychology to the study of foreign policy decision making, the field of behavioral IR is undergoing important transformations. Building on a broader range of models, methods, and data from the fields of neuroscience, biology, and genetics, behavioral IR has moved beyond the staid debate between rational choice and psychology and instead investigates the plethora of mechanisms selected by evolution for solving adaptive problems. This opens new opportunities for collaboration between scholars informed by rational choice and behavioral insights. Examining the interactions between the individual's genetic inheritance, social environment, and downstream behavior of individuals and groups, the emerging field of behavioral epigenetics offers novel insights into the methodological problem of aggregation that has confounded efforts to apply behavioral findings to IR. In the first instance empirical, behavioral IR raises numerous normative and philosophical questions best answered in dialogue with political and legal theorists.
Moderate cardiovascular risk factor among Indonesian: do carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT) predict further?

Determining management strategies in an individual with intermediate cardiovascular risk represent a great challenge. The impact of increased CIMT to improve estimated cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk score in individual at intermediate cardiovascular risk has not yet been fully elucidated. For this reason, we sought to determine the association between CIMT increment and incident of CVD. We conducted a longitudional retrospective cohort study involving 28 patients with intermediate cardiovascular risk (Framingham risk score 10% - 20%). Subjects with criteria fulfillment had their data collected through history taking, physical examination, and CIMT re-measurement using echocardiography. Bivariate analysis with regression logistic showed significant correlation between increased CIMT with CVD event (p=0.016). CIMT measurement is a plausible noninvasive method to predict subclinical cardiovascular disease to further promote more aggressive management.
Machine Learning-Based Approach to Predict Energy Consumption of Renewable and Nonrenewable Power Sources

In today’s world, renewable energy sources are increasingly integrated with nonrenewable energy sources into electric grids and pose new challenges because of their intermittent and variable nature. Energy prediction using soft-computing techniques plays a vital role in addressing these challenges. As electricity consumption is closely linked to other energy sources such as natural gas and oil, forecasting electricity consumption is essential for making national energy policies. In this paper, we utilize various data mining techniques, including preprocessing historical load data and the load time series’s characteristics. We analyzed the power consumption trends from renewable energy sources and nonrenewable energy sources and combined them. A novel machine learning-based hybrid approach, combining multilayer perceptron (MLP), support vector regression (SVR), and CatBoost, is proposed in this paper for power forecasting. A thorough comparison is made, taking into account the results obtained using other prediction methods.
Transacting Business and Transforming Communities: The Mission Statements of Community Foundations Around the Globe

Analyzing mission statements from 1,420 community foundations, this research aims to determine whether community foundations portray themselves as primarily transactional or transformational in their leadership style. Results indicate that approximately half of the community foundations present themselves as transformational dominant although about a third demonstrate transactional dominance. The well-established leadership categories of transformational and transactional (a) give us a new way to explore community foundations’ roles in their communities, (b) help us better understand the way community foundations perceive themselves and their leadership, and (c) provide a mechanism to assess how community foundations are presenting their missions to their communities. In addition, by examining organizations as the unit of analysis, this research answers long-standing calls in leadership studies to consider levels of analysis beyond the individual.
A Cointegration Analysis of the Nordic Roundwood Markets

The integration of the Nordic timber markets has been analysed to provide market information to various decision-makers, e.g., climate and industrial policies and investment decisions. This study addresses the interlinkage between Nordic (Sweden, Norway and Finland) roundwood markets (Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.)) and Norway spruce ((Picea abies L.) sawlogs and pulpwood). In total, eleven markets were analysed using quarterly data over the period 2006Q1–2017Q4 where various unit root and stationary tests were performed together with Johansen’s cointegration test. In addition, directional causality analyses between the integrated markets were also performed. The results show that the law-of-one-price (LOP) hypothesis can be rejected for most of the studied markets and that no individual market emerges as the price-leader. Only the Swedish and Norwegian pine sawlog markets are integrated suggesting a single market for both countries. Price affecting national and forest-related policies as well as investments in the forestry sector, forest industries, bioenergy sector and other forest product using sectors, will not disperse into a larger international market structure; instead, the price effect will be national and more likely have a more profound effect.
Adaptation and acclimation of seed performance

Seed performance after dispersal is highly dependent on parental environmental cues, especially during seed formation and maturation. Here we examine which environmental factors are the most dominant in this respect and whether their effects are dependent on the genotypes under investigation. We studied the influence of light intensity, photoperiod, temperature, nitrate and phosphate during seed development on 5 plant attributes and 13 seed attributes, using 12 Arabidopsis genotypes that have been reported to be affected in seed traits. As expected, the various environments during seed development resulted in changed plant and/or seed performances. Comparative analysis clearly indicated that, overall, temperature plays the most dominant role in both plant and seed performance, whereas light has prominent impact on plant traits. In comparison to temperature and light, nitrate mildly affected some of the plant and seed traits while phosphate had even less influence on those traits. Moreover, clear genotype-by-environment interactions were identified. This was shown by the fact that individual genotypes responded differentially to the environmental conditions. Low temperature significantly increased seed dormancy and decreased seed longevity of NILDOG1 and cyp707a1-1, whereas low light intensity increased seed dormancy and decreased seed longevity of NILDOG3 and NILDOG6. This also indicates that different genetic and molecular pathways are involved in the plant and seed responses. By identifying environmental conditions that affect the dormancy vs longevity correlation in the same way as the earlier identified naturally occurring loci, we have here identified selective forces that probably shaped evolution for these important
Performance Assessment of Combination in Stacking Ensemble Model for Credit Default Classification

Credit Default is one of the most discussed and reviewed problems in a financial institution. The ever-changing factors and variables towards the consideration of credit grant remains a challenge to prevent loss caused by non-performing loans. In the light of the machine learning era, one of the methods that can be applied to solve this problem is by using classification models. Ensemble Method is known for improving better model performance. This paper would focus on assessing the performance of various combination of 7 well-known classification algorithm such as SVC, Decision Tree (CART), Naïve Bayes, Logistic Regression, Random Forest, Extra Trees and XG-Boost.Out of using total 848combination of 1-7 algorithm with 7 meta classifier, this experiment shows that models from stacking ensemble does indeed generally perform better compared to single base-classifier. Assessing the performance between two credit datasets with different product type, the experiment concludes that the most ideal iteration is between 2-5 base-learner combination using SVC as the meta-classifier for this case. This study also suggests the usage of cost function for assessing credit classification problem for its ability to simulate a projection of loss and gain by implementation.
Thermodynamic stability of hnRNP A1 low complexity domain revealed by high‐pressure NMR

We have investigated the pressure‐ and temperature‐induced conformational changes associated with the low complexity domain of hnRNP A1, an RNA‐binding protein able to phase separate in response to cellular stress. Solution NMR spectra of the hnRNP A1 low‐complexity domain fused with protein‐G B1 domain were collected from 1 to 2500 bar and from 268 to 290 K. While the GB1 domain shows the typical pressure‐induced and cold temperature‐induced unfolding expected for small globular domains, the low‐complexity domain of hnRNP A1 exhibits unusual pressure and temperature dependences. We observed that the low‐complexity domain is pressure sensitive, undergoing a major conformational transition within the prescribed pressure range. Remarkably, this transition has the inverse temperature dependence of a typical folding‐unfolding transition. Our results suggest the presence of a low‐lying extended and fully solvated state(s) of the low‐complexity domain that may play a role in phase separation. This study highlights the exquisite sensitivity of solution NMR spectroscopy to observe subtle conformational changes and illustrates how pressure perturbation can be used to determine the properties of metastable conformational ensembles.
Production of Indole Acetic Acid (IAA) Hormone from Fungal Isolates Collected from Rhizosphere of Aromatic Rice in Tana Toraja

South Sulawesi, especially Tana Toraja district is an aromatic rice center area that has potential to be developed. Applied cultivation in this area is still traditionally and based on local wisdom, i.e. no use of fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals. Based on this fact, it is suggested that there are a high diversity of microorganisms from the rice rhizosphere, especially fungus that produce Indole Acetic Acid (IAA) hormone. A series of dilution method was done for isolation of fungal isolates. Purified isolates were cultivated on Potato Dextrose Agar (PDA) until further use. Measurements of IAA production were performed using standard methods. From rhizosphere of aromatic rice Pare Kaloko, 19 fungal isolates were successfully collected, whereas from 15 isolates were collected from Pare Bau. Average production of IAA was ranged from 0.556-2.190 mg /l among isolates of Pare Kaloko, and 0.048-1.810 mg/l among fungal isolates from Pare Bau. Aromatic rice
Biosynthesis and Characterization of Silver Nanoparticles From Pantoea agglomerans and Some of Their Antibacterial Activities

Recently, the biosynthesis of nanoparticles from bacteria have attracted attention, this study has been made for biosynthesize and characterizes silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) from local clinical isolate Pantoea agglomerans. The ability of those particles to inhibit the virulence factors biofilm and hemolysin produced by some local clinical multidrug-resistant human pathogenes including Acinetobactor haemolyticus, Escherichia coli, Serratia marcescens and Staphylococcus aureus were investigated by treating all of the test isolates with sub-MIC(16 mg/ml) AgNPs. The AgNPs produced were characterized using Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). Pantoea agglomerans were found to have the ability to synthesize AgNPs at room temperature within 24hrs and were spherical in shape as depicted by AFM. The AgNPs produced exhibited a potential antibiofilm and hemolysin inhibition activities against tested pathogens.
Water sources for red maple trees in a northern hardwood forest under a changing climate

Climate models project increased growing season air temperatures and decreased depth and duration of winter snowpack for the north‐eastern United States, leading to greater frequency of soil freeze/thaw cycles in winter over the next century. We utilized the Climate Change Across Seasons Experiment (CCASE) at Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire to determine how projected changes in climate in this region affect the depth from which trees take up water, which to our knowledge has yet to be determined. We determined the stable isotopic composition of water in soils and branch xylem three times throughout the growing season to partition potential sources of water for red maple (Acer rubrum) trees. Using a Bayesian mixing model approach, we determined that all trees used similar water sources in the early (June) and mid (July) growing season. However, in the late growing season (August), trees exposed to ambient and warmer growing season soil temperatures took up more than 40% of their water from between 90‐ and 100‐cm soil depth, likely due to greater water availability at this depth. In contrast, those trees exposed to soil freeze/thaw cycles in winter utilized water from all depths (0–100 cm) evenly (8–10%), possibly due to soil freezing causing compensatory root growth in the following growing season, compared with trees in the reference and warmed plots. These results demonstrate that the projected changes in climate for the north‐eastern United States are likely to alter the depth from which trees access water, especially in the late growing season.
Analysis of a highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1) virus causing the first outbreak in domestic poultry in Bulgaria in January 2015

This study documents the clinical signs, necropsy findings and viral antigen distribution of the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 virus infection in domestic poultry (a backyard farm) and the phylogenetic analysis of the virus. On January 29, 2015, an outbreak of HPAI H5N1 in domestic poultry was reported on a backyard farm in Bulgaria. Out of the twenty-two chickens with clinical signs, twenty died while the remaining two were destroyed. The morbidity was 100%, whereas the overall mortality and lethality were 90.91%. The clinical observations made were sudden death, high mortality, weakness, and recumbency. Although multisystemic lesions were observed occasionally, the main pathologic findings were observed in the nervous, circulatory, respiratory, and gastrointestinal systems. An influenza virus nucleocapsid protein was identified by an immunohistochemical analysis in all the analysed organs: brain 3/3, trachea 3/3, lung 3/3, intestine 3/3, heart 3/3, which confirmed the systemic infection. The phylogenetic analyses of the virus showed a close genetic relationship with the H5N1 viruses of Asian origin, isolated in 2012 and 2013, belonging to the clade 2.3. 2.1c. The HA-gene genetically clusters with HPAI H5N1 viruses isolated from wild pelicans in Romania and Bulgaria, thereby demonstrating the link between wild and domestic birds in the epidemiology of avian influenza. The contact between the affected chickens and migrating water birds over Bulgaria’s territory was suspected as a reason for the outbreak in the backyard farm. In addition, the detection of the virus in wild bird populations in Bulgaria three days earlier strongly supports the hypothesis of migrating wild birds spreading HPAI H5N1.
Characterization of candidate genes governing complex multicellularity in Neurospora crassa

Complex multicellularity (CM) occurs exclusively in the Eukarya domain and emerged independently within six distinct eukaryotic clades including ascomycete fungi such as Neurospora crassa. All CM organisms are characterized by three-dimensional (3D) cellular organization, cell differentiation and intercellular communication. It was hypothesized that new aspects of CM could be discovered by searching for genes present in CM fungi but absent in unicellular yeast counterparts. To this end, we performed bioinformatics analysis to identify genes expressed in Pezizomycotina and Neolecta irregularis but absent in budding and fission yeast. In total, we identified 147 genes that fit our criteria and we characterized four of which displayed an observable growth defect in N. crassa knockout strains. Interestingly, the protein product of one of the candidate gene, ROGDI, was found to interact with a subunit of the Vacuolar H+-translocating ATPase (VATPase) complex as part of the Regulator of ATPase of Vacuoles and Endosomes (RAVE) complex and could potentially function to maintain vacuolar pH levels. Another candidate protein, Spz1, was shown to interact with proteins known to function in cell polarity through its coiledcoil domain. Altogether, the results from this study provide clues on the extant of genes required for CM.
Comparison of MUC1 variable number tandem repeat polymorphisms in three yak breeds/populations

Gao, J., Jiang, Z. -R. , Liu, X. , Zhao, Y. -H. , Huang, L. , Peng, H. -J., Zedan, D. , Jin, S. -Y. and Zheng, Y. -C. 2014. Comparison of MUC1 variable number tandem repeat polymorphisms in three yak breeds/populations. Can. J. Anim. Sci. 94: 411-416. The objective of this study was to compare the MUC1 variable number tandem repeat polymorphisms with adjacent distribution regions in three yak (Bos grunniens) breeds/populations. A total of 215 yaks of three yak breeds/populations (Maiwa yak breed, Jiulong yak breed and Changtai yak population) were surveyed by the polymorphisms of Mucin 1 gene (MUC1). Six MUC1 alleles (B, C, D, F, G and H) forming 16 genotypes were identified. Cloning and sequencing of these alleles demonstrated that they differed in the numbers of variable number tandem repeats (VNTR) units ranging from 14 to 20, and allele H (14 VNTR units) was a new allele in yaks and observed only in Maiwa yak with a very low frequency. Cluster analysis based on MUC1 polymorphisms suggested that Changtai yak population has a closer association with Maiwa yak breed than with the Jiulong yak breed, and may represent an independent yak breed/population. These results provided useful genetic information on the three yak breeds/populations and could be used in yak breeding practice.