Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Learning-Based URLLC-Aware Task Offloading for Internet of Health Things

In the Internet of Health Things (IoHT)-based e-Health paradigm, a large number of computational-intensive tasks have to be offloaded from resource-limited IoHT devices to proximal powerful edge servers to reduce latency and improve energy efficiency. However, the lack of global state information (GSI), the adversarial competition among multiple IoHT devices, and the ultra reliable and low latency communication (URLLC) constraints have imposed new challenges for task offloading optimization. In this article, we formulate the task offloading problem as an adversarial multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem. In addition to the average-based performance metrics, bound violation probability, occurrence probability of extreme events, and statistical properties of excess values are employed to characterize URLLC constraints. Then, we propose a URLLC-aware Task Offloading scheme based on the exponential-weight algorithm for exploration and exploitation (EXP3) named UTO-EXP3. URLLC awareness is achieved by dynamically balancing the URLLC constraint deficits and energy consumption through online learning. We provide a rigorous theoretical analysis to show that guaranteed performance with a bounded deviation can be achieved by UTO-EXP3 based on only local information. Finally, the effectiveness and reliability of UTO-EXP3 are validated through simulation results.
Joint Ordering and Markdown Policy for Short Lifetime Products With Competitive Price- and Freshness-Based Demand

Retailers with short lifetime products in stock always face a problem of whether new products should be ordered when on-hand products partially decay and how to deal with the old products if a new batch is ordered. In this article, we consider the sales of a perishable product with a fixed short lifetime in two shelves, where new items of the product in a regular shelf are sold in a preset normal price, and old items in a markdown (discount) shelf are sold in a discounted price. We study the problem of the joint ordering of new items and pricing of old items and propose a joint ordering and markdown policy when the demand of the product depends on its price, and freshness as well as unsatisfied demand is lost. First, we formulate a one-period model, in which the present shelf ages of items in the two shelves are considered and use the Karush–Kuhn–Tucker condition to analytically obtain the optimal solution of the joint ordering and markdown problem. Second, numerical experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the two-shelf policy when the optimal solution of the one-period model is applied to the multiperiod problem in the form of a myopic policy. The results show that the proposed two-shelf joint ordering and markdown policy for perishable products performs better than the traditional one-shelf policy. Note to Practitioners—In this article, we develop a joint ordering and markdown policy for perishable products deployed on two shelves: a regular shelf for fresh products and a markdown shelf for less fresh products. Although the closed-form policy is obtained for the one-period situation with deterministic demand, it is not difficult to extend it to the multiperiod case with random demand. This article not only reveals the underlying reason of employing both regular shelf and markdown shelf in the practice of retailing management for perishable products but also proposes an easy-to-implement ordering and markdown policy, which will bring higher profit than the traditional one-shelf policy and will improve the performance of managing a perishable products retailing system.
Highly Sensitive Electrochemical Impedance- Based Biosensor for Label-Free and Wide Range Detection of Fibrinogen Using Hydrothermally Grown AlFeO3 Nanospheres Modified Electrode

We report an ultra-selective biosensor for detection of fibrinogen (fib) using AlFeO<sub>3</sub> nanospheres modified screen-printed carbon electrode (AFO/SPCE) via electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The orthorhombic phase and nanospheres-like morphology of hydrothermally grown AlFeO<sub>3</sub> are confirmed via X-Ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) imaging, respectively. The sensor exhibits excellent selectivity, sensitivity and low limit of detection (LOD) of 14 ng mL<sup>−1</sup> with a wide dynamic range from <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$3~\mu \text{g}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> mL<sup>−1</sup> to <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$340\times 10 ^{3}\mu \text{g}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> mL<sup>−1</sup> which is more suitable for detecting both the deficiency and excess level of fib in the human blood. The decrease in charge transfer resistance (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{R}_{ct}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) with an increase in fib concentrations can be attributed to the strong interaction and electrooxidation of fib molecules forming protein carbonyl groups at the surface of the electrode with enhanced electrical conductivity. This is a report on the low-cost, simple electrochemical impedance sensor using perovskite AlFeO<sub>3</sub> for reliable and rapid sensing of fib which shows great potential for developing biosensors for healthcare.
A Downlink Multiuser MIMO–OFDM System With Nonideal Oscillators and Amplifiers: Characterization and Performance Analysis

In this article, we analytically investigate the performance of a downlink multiuser (MU) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system with hardware impairments. Specifically, we focus on the joint impact of nonideal oscillators and nonlinear high-power amplifiers, which can be quantified in terms of multiplicative and additive nonlinear distortions as well as phase noise, which causes inter-channel interference (ICI). We first derive the signal-to-distortion-plus-interference-plus-noise ratio (SDINR) and then utilize the SDINR to derive the closed-form expressions for symbol-error-rate and the average capacity of the aforementioned system. Our analysis shows that the statistics of an additive nonlinear distortion and additive white Gaussian noise are not affected by phase noise. However, the phase noise itself significantly deteriorates the performance of the MU-MIMO-OFDM system even in the absence of the nonlinear distortions. We further show that nonlinear distortion and ICI cause an irreducible error floor which considerably degrades the system error performance and also adversely affects the total capacity of the MU-MIMO-OFDM system. Comparisons are drawn between the performance of an ideal MU-MIMO-OFDM system and a MU-MIMO-OFDM system in presence of above impairments. In the end, we present the simulation results to validate the efficacy of our theoretical analysis.
Progress in Numerical Modeling of Non-Premixed Combustion

Progress is made on the numerical modeling of both laminar and turbulent non-premixed flames. Instead of solving the transport equations for the numerous species involved in the combustion process, the present study proposes reduced-order combustion models based on local flame structures. For laminar non-premixed flames, curvature and multi-dimensional diffusion effects are found critical for the accurate prediction of sooting tendencies. A new numerical model based on modified flamelet equations is proposed. Sooting tendencies are calculated numerically using the proposed model for a wide range of species. These first numerically-computed sooting tendencies are in good agreement with experimental data. To further quantify curvature and multi-dimensional effects, a general flamelet formulation is derived mathematically. A budget analysis of the general flamelet equations is performed on an axisymmetric laminar diffusion flame. A new chemistry tabulation method based on the general flamelet formulation is proposed. This new tabulation method is applied to the same flame and demonstrates significant improvement compared to previous techniques. For turbulent non-premixed flames, a new model to account for chemistry-turbulence interactions is proposed. %It is found that these interactions are not important for radicals and small species, but substantial for aromatic species. The validity of various existing flamelet-based chemistry tabulation methods is examined, and a new linear relaxation model is proposed for aromatic species. The proposed relaxation model is validated against full chemistry calculations. To further quantify the importance of aromatic chemistry-turbulence interactions, Large-Eddy Simulations (LES) have been performed on a turbulent sooting jet flame. %The aforementioned relaxation model is used to provide closure for the chemical source terms of transported aromatic species. The effects of turbulent unsteadiness on soot are highlighted by comparing the LES results with a separate LES using fully-tabulated chemistry. It is shown that turbulent unsteady effects are of critical importance for the accurate prediction of not only the inception locations, but also the magnitude and fluctuations of soot.
Cloning, Expression and Bioactivity of Human Tumor Necrosis Factor Alpha

A dramatic increase in the amount of recombinant proteins that used in therapeutic applications. TNF-α is one of over 750 recombinant proteins available for use in a broad range of therapeutic applications, including neutrophil chemotaxis, anticoagulatory inhibition, cytolysis and cytostasis of many tumor cell lines. Therefore, in this research Human TNF-α gene has been amplified from the PHA-stimulated peripheral mononuclear blood cells (PBMCs) cDNA pool isolated from healthy volunteers. The amplified human TNF-α gene was combined and was cloned to pPIC9 Plasmid. The fusion gene was expressed in the host strain p.pastoris GS115 using the electroporation technique and inserted under the AOX1promoter's control. Tricine-SDSPAGE and Western blotting were achieved for methanol-induced expression strain to confirm the successfully secretion of fusion TNF-α protein into the culture medium. Ni-NTA resin was used to purify the recombinant protein. (MTT) assay was used for screening the biological activity of the purified human TNF-α results showed that the Fusion TNF-α reduced the viability of HEP2 cells as long as metabolic activity in dose-dependent manner. Our findings show that TNF-α-gene expressed in the present study is active and had the same pharmacokinetic and biochemical properties as the standard TNF-α and recommended to be used therapeutically as treatment for human diseases, and could be helpful to develop new strategies to cancer therapy.
Association of lncRNA Polymorphisms with Myocardial Infarction: A Case-Control Study and a Meta-Analysis

Background: The long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have gradually been reported to be an important class of RNAs with pivotal roles in the development and progression of myocardial infarction (MI). In this study, we hypothesized that genetic variant of cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 2B antisense RNA (ANRIL) and metastasisassociated lung adenocarcinoma transcript 1 (MALAT1) may affect the prognosis of MI patients. Methods: The study included 401 Han Chinese MI patients and 409 controls. Four lncRNA tag single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)-ANRIL rs9632884 and rs1537373, MALAT1 rs619586 and rs3200401were selected. SNP genotyping was performed by an improved multiplex ligation detection reaction assay. A systematic review and metaanalysis of studies including 9,807 cases and 9.326 controls on the association of five ANRIL SNPs and the overall risk of MI or coronary artery disease (CAD) was performed. Results: rs9632884 and rs3200401 SNPs were significantly associated with lipid levels in both controls and MI patients (P 0.05 for all). In the meta-analysis, rs4977574 A>G and rs1333049 G>C ANRIL polymorphisms, but not rs1333040, rs1333042 or rs10757274, were correlated with overall MI or CAD risk. Conclusions: Taken together, this study provides additional evidence that genetic variation of the ANRIL rs9632884 and MALAT1 rs3200401 can mediate lipid levels in MI patients.
Modular environmental pleiotropy of genes involved in local adaptation to climate despite physical linkage

Physical proximity among alleles shaped by different sources of selection is a fundamental aspect of genetic architectures critical for predicting their evolution. Theory predicts that evolution in complex environments should select for modular genetic architectures with limited pleiotropy among modules. However, limited data exist to test this hypothesis because the field lacks consensus for how to control for intercorrelated climate variables. We aim to characterize the genetic architecture of adaptation to climate, including the modularity of the architecture (number of distinct climate factors), overlap among modules, and physical linkage among loci. We introduce a co-association network analysis, which parses loci into groups based on differing environmental associations, and use it to study the genetic architecture of local adaptation to climate in lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta). We identified several non-overlapping modules of genes associated with environmental factors (aridity, freezing, geography), which supports the hypothesis of modular environmental pleiotropy. Notably, we found moderate physical linkage among some candidate loci in different modules, which may facilitate or hinder adaptation depending on the multivariate trajectory of climate change. Moreover, we show that associations with environmental principal components would have missed candidates and resulted in a limited interpretation regarding the selective environment. Finally, simulations revealed that the propensity of co-association modules to arise under neutrality increased with demographic complexity, but also that true causal loci are more highly-connected within the module, which may be useful for prioritizing candidates.
Pathogenic and molecular detection of Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. albedinis isolates from different areas in southwest Algeria

Purpose: To investigate the intra-specific variations in eleven Fusarium oxysporum isolates from infected date palm using pathogenicity and molecular methods.Methods: Eleven isolates of Fusarium oxysporum obtained from infected date palms in the south-west region of Algeria were subjected to confirmatory test using a specific polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique with the primer pairs, TL3-FOA28 and BIO3-FOA1. Polymorphism in the 5’ domain of the large subunit rRNA was investigated. Small libraries of the domain, amplified by the primer pair, LR3/LROR, were constructed and the inserts sequenced.Results: The 11 isolates of Fusarium oxysporum collected from the infected date palm were confirmed as Fusarium oxysporun f. sp albedinis. Results from the investigation of polymorphism in the 5’ domain of the large subunit rRNA revealed that the sequences were 100 % homologous or extremely close (> 99.4 %, differing by no more than one to three nucleotides) to several Fusarium oxysporum sequences. In addition, F. inflexum (U34548.1) was highly homologous to one of the F. oxysporum f. sp. albedinis.Conclusion: The sequences of the 11 isolates are almost 100 % homologous to several F. oxysporum species. It is noteworthy that a sequence highly homologous to one of the F. oxysporum f. sp. albedinis is obtainable from a different species, F. inflexum (U34548.1). Keywords: Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. albedinis, Date palm, rRNA gene polymorphism
Effectiveness and Practicality of Usik Wiwitan Relaxation to Improve Quality of Life in Elderly with Hypertension in West Java

Introduction: The quality of life of elderly people tend to decline with the increase of age. Some theories and evidence had shown that relaxation can improve the quality of life of the elderly. Usik Wiwitan (UWI) in West Java, which is the local wisdom of relaxation practice, has a potential to improve quality of life. This research is a field experiment with to assess the effectiveness and practicality of UWI in improving the quality of life of the elderly. Method: Subjects were divided into two groups A and B randomly. The group A underwent the guided UWI for 10 weeks, while group B acted as controls. Measurement of quality of life in each group was performed at weeks 0, 5 and 10 using the WHOQOL-BREF instrument. The Generalized Estimating Equations analyses were used to evaluate the improved quality of life in repeated measurements. The confounding variables were socio-demographic factors and blood pressure. Results: There was a decrease in systole and diastolic blood pressures after intervention in both groups. However, there were no differences in blood pressure in the two groups after the intervention program ended. UWI increased quality of life scores by 5 points at 5th week and 7 points at 10th week. Conclusion: UWI is a simple method for the elderly and easy to do as well as entertaining and vastly improve the quality of life. UWI has the potential method for the elderly’s health programs.
Analysis and Optimization of Fog Radio Access Networks With Hybrid Caching: Delay and Energy Efficiency

In this article, delay and energy efficiency (EE) are investigated in fog radio access networks (F-RANs) with hybrid caching. With multiple caching and transmission strategies, hybrid caching offers great flexibility for file placement and file fetching. By using tools from stochastic geometry, we firstly derive tractable expressions of delay for coded cached, non-partitioned cached and uncached files. Then, we derive tractable expressions of EE by jointly considering power consumed in circuits, transmissions and fronthaul links. To balance delay and EE, the corresponding multi-objective optimization problem is formulated to obtain the optimal hybrid caching strategy. Furthermore, considering the NP-hard complexity of the problem, we first theoretically analyze the optimal structure of the caching result. Then, we convert the original problem into a classification problem. We further propose a gradual-replacement greedy algorithm to obtain a near optimal hybrid caching strategy, which ensures high accuracy with low complexity. Numerical results show a significant performance gain of the proposed near optimal hybrid caching strategy over baselines and flexibility in delay-sensitive and EE-sensitive scenarios.
Using Social Information Processing Theory to Counsel Aggressive Youth.

The social information processing (SIP) model, which involves a sequence of six cognitive processing steps, is frequently used by researchers to understand proactive and reactive aggression in youth; however, there has been little discussion in the literature regarding the application of the SIP model in school counseling. This article presents a review of the SIP model followed by a brief summary of the research regarding the relationship between SIP deficits and aggression. Counseling interventions related to each of the SIP steps for use with proactive and reactive aggressive youth are also presented.
Advanced Control Strategies for DC–DC Buck Converters With Parametric Uncertainties via Experimental Evaluation

In this paper, four control strategies for DC-DC buck converters are proposed, compared and analyzed: a single-loop adaptive control strategy (SA), a double-loop adaptive control strategy (DA), a single-loop disturbance observer-based control strategy (SDOB) and a double-loop disturbance observer-based control strategy (DDOB). First, the nominal system without considering the parametric uncertainties of the DC-DC buck converter is built to help develop the SA and DA. The SA is built by adaptive and backstepping control approaches, and the DA is set up by adaptive and sliding mode control approaches. Additionally, a model considering parametric uncertainties is introduced, giving the opportunity to develop the SDOB and DDOB. The SDOB is developed using a designed disturbance observer and backstepping control technique, and the DDOB is synthesized using a designed disturbance observer and sliding mode control method. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of the four proposed control strategies are compared and analyzed through experiments.
SAR Image Speckle Reduction Based on Nonconvex Hybrid Total Variation Model

Speckle noise inherent in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images seriously affects the visual effect and brings great difficulties to the postprocessing of the SAR image. Due to the edge-preserving feature, total variation (TV) regularization-based techniques have been extensively utilized to reduce the speckle. However, the strong scatters in SAR image with radiometry several orders of magnitude larger than their surrounding regions limit the effectiveness of TV regularization. Meanwhile, the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${\ell _{1}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-norm first-order TV regularization sometimes causes staircase artifacts as it favors solutions that are piecewise constant, and it usually underestimates high-amplitude components of image gradient as the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${\ell _{1}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-norm uniformly penalizes the amplitude. To overcome these shortcomings, a new hybrid variation model, called Fisher–Tippett (FT) distribution-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${\ell _{p}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-norm first-and second-order hybrid TVs (HTpVs), is proposed to reduce the speckle after removing the strong scatters. Especially, the FT-HTpV inherits the advantages of the distribution based data fidelity term, the nonconvex regularization, and the higher order TV regularization. Therefore, it can effectively remove the speckle while preserving point scatters and edges and reducing staircase artifacts well. To efficiently solve the nonconvex minimization problem, an iterative framework with a nonmonotone-accelerated proximal gradient (nmAPG) method and a matrix-vector acceleration strategy are used. Extensive experiments on both the simulated and real SAR images demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Immune Modulation by Microbiota Sources: Effects of Aloe vera gel and Butyrate

The role of gut microbiota and its related activities, like fermentation in immune modulation, are well documented. It was found that acemannan (AM), the extract of aloe leaf gel can exerts significant immune modulating activity. AM has been shown to activate macrophages and stimulate T cells that are involved in the defense against harmful microorganisms by likely acting as an adjuvant for health and disease. However, it should be noted that commercially available AM preparation used for these studies often contains a complex mixture because partially purified carbohydrate preparation containing about 60% acetylated mannan together with other carbohydrates, especially pectin, hemicellulose, and lectins. The beneficial effects of endogenous butyrate productions, delivery, and absorption by colonocytes have been well documented. Mechanistically, butyrate exerts its functions by acting as a histone deacetylase inhibitor or signaling through several G-protein-coupled receptors. Recently, butyrate has received particular attentions for its beneficial effects on intestinal homeostasis and energy metabolism.