Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Agreement between isokinetic eccentric hamstring strength, Nordic hamstring strength and Nordic break-point angle in a sample of trained and healthy individuals

ABSTRACT Different eccentric strength assessments are used to identifying the risk of hamstring injury in athletes. However, there is scarce information to determine the association between Nordic-based measurements and the gold standard measurement of eccentric hamstring strength in an isokinetic dynamometer. To investigate the relationship of different measures of eccentric hamstring strength (break-point angle and eccentric strength during Nordic exercise) with eccentric hamstring peak torque measured with an isokinetic dynamometer. Forty-six participants volunteered to participate in this study. Eccentric peak force in the Smart-Nordic System and break-point angle measured as trunk lowering at >20°/s and >150°/s2 during the Nordic exercise via high-frequency video-analysis were compared to eccentric hamstring peak torque in an isokinetic dynamometer set to produce knee extension at 30°/s. There was a moderate association between peak eccentric strength with the Smart-Nordic and isokinetic eccentric hamstring peak torque (r = −0.65, p < 0.001, 95%CI = [−0.76-(−0.50)]). The association between Nordic break-point angle measured at 20°/s (r = 0.49, p < 0.001, 95%CI = [0.30–0.64]) and at 150°/s2 (r = 0.52, p < 0.001, 95%CI = [0.33–0.66]) presented statistically significant but lower associations with isokinetic eccentric hamstring peak torque. All Nordic-based measurements presented acceptable associations with the gold standard isokinetic eccentric hamstring peak torque. However, peak eccentric force measured on the Smart-Nordic device had a better agreement with eccentric peak torque measured with an isokinetic dynamometer than the video-based measurements. Highlights Peak eccentric force measured on the isometric strain-gauges device had a better agreement with eccentric hamstring peak torque measured with an isokinetic dynamometer than the break-point angle. The Nordic-based measurements are an alternative cost-effective method to assess eccentric muscle strength and weakness when the access to isokinetic dynamometry is not feasible. Caution should be taken with certain variables such as participants body mass, hip position and movement speed when interpreting the results of Nordic-based measurements.
Using Case Studies to Explore Need Satisfaction and Frustration in Puzzle Video Games

Self-Determination Theory proposes that people are intrinsically motivated to play video games to fulfil the psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness. However, video games can also actively thwart and frustrate these needs. This paper investigates how need frustration affected motivation to solve cognitively challenging puzzle video games. Participants (n = 27) played two cognitively challenging puzzle video games, with data collected through a survey, recorded gameplay footage and interviews. The analysis reveals that when a player’s primary need for playing was frustrated, they quit easily and did not enjoy the game and when a player’s primary need for playing was satisfied, they displayed resilient behaviours and enjoyed the game. These findings suggest cognitively challenging video games that are more likely to be used in educational contexts should contain features that support autonomy and relatedness as well as competence, in order to be motivating for as many players as possible.
Preconditioning process for dermal tissue decellularization using electroporation with sonication

Abstract Decellularization to produce bioscaffolds composed of the extracellular matrix (ECM) uses enzymatic, chemical and physical methods to remove antigens and cellular components from tissues. Effective decellularization methods depend on the characteristics of tissues, and in particular, tissues with dense, complex structure and abundant lipid content are difficult to completely decellularize. Our study enables future research on the development of methods and treatments for fabricating bioscaffolds via decellularization of complex and rigid skin tissues, which are not commonly considered for decellularization to date as their structural and functional characteristics could not be preserved after severe decellularization. In this study, decellularization of human dermal tissue was done by a combination of both chemical (0.05% trypsin-EDTA, 2% SDS and 1% Triton X-100) and physical methods (electroporation and sonication). After decellularization, the content of DNA remaining in the tissue was quantitatively confirmed, and the structural change of the tissue and the retention and distribution of ECM components were evaluated through histological and histochemical analysis, respectively. Conditions of the chemical pretreatment that increase the efficiency of physical stimulation as well as decellularization, and conditions for electroporation and sonication without the use of detergents, unlike the methods performed in previous studies, were established to enable the complete decellularization of the skin tissue. The combinatorial decellularization treatment formed micropores in the lipid bilayers of the skin tissues while removing all cell and cellular residues without affecting the ECM properties. Therefore, this procedure can be widely used to fabricate bioscaffolds by decellularizing biological tissues with dense and complex structures.
TweetDrought: A Deep-Learning Drought Impacts Recognizer based on Twitter Data

Acquiring a better understanding of drought impacts becomes increasingly vital under a warming climate. Traditional drought indices describe mainly biophysical variables and not impacts on social, economic, and environmental systems. We utilized natural language processing and bidirectional encoder representation from Transformers (BERT) based transfer learning to ﬁne-tune the model on the data from the news-based Drought Impact Report (DIR) and then apply it to recognize seven types of drought impacts based on the ﬁltered Twitter data from the United States. Our model achieved a satisfying macro-F1 score of 0.89 on the DIR test set. The model was then applied to California tweets and validated with keyword-based labels. The macro-F1 score was 0.58. However, due to the limitation of keywords, we also spot-checked tweets with controversial labels. 83.5% of BERT labels were correct compared to the keyword labels. Overall, the ﬁne-tuned BERT-based recognizer provided proper predictions and valuable information on drought impacts. The interpretation and analysis of the model were consistent with experiential domain expertise.
Assessing the Vulnerability of Marine Benthos to Fishing Gear Impacts

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA) requires US fishery management plans to minimize, to the extent practicable, the adverse effects of fishing on essential fish habitats (EFHs). To meet this requirement, fishery managers would ideally be able to quantify such effects and visualize their distributions across space and time. Here, we develop a framework to quantify and assess benthic impacts of the six most common bottom-tending gears (>99% of bottom-tending fishing effort) in New England: otter trawls, scallop dredges, hydraulic clam dredges, gillnets, longlines, and traps. We first conducted a comprehensive review of the habitat impacts literature relevant to Northeast USA fishing gears and seabed types. We then used this information to develop a framework for generating and organizing quantitative susceptibility (based on percent loss of structural habitat from a single interaction with the gear) and recovery (i.e., the time required for recovery of lost structure) parameters for each biological (e.g., sponges, ascidians, mollusks) and geological (e.g., mud burrows, sand ripples, cobble, and boulder piles) feature common to the following five substrates: mud, sand, granule–pebble, cobble, and boulder in low- and high-energy environments. In general, we found that both susceptibility and recovery scores were highest for hydraulic dredges, slightly lower for otter trawls and scallop dredges, and much lower for fixed gears (i.e., gillnets, longlines, and traps). For bottom trawls and scallop dredges, geological features in mud, sand, and cobble-dominated substrates were more susceptible to gear impacts than features found in granule–pebble and boulder substrates. Meanwhile, biological features were largely equally susceptible to impacts across the five substrate types. Average susceptibility scores for both biological and geological substrate features were not affected by energy level. Average recovery times for geological features affected by bottom trawls and dredges were much longer in low-energy granule–pebble, and low- and high-energy cobble and boulder than in mud and sand substrates. Meanwhile, there was no difference among substrates or energy levels for biological feature recovery times. These results collectively suggest that cobble and boulder substrates are the most vulnerable to impacts from mobile bottom-tending gear. Recovery from the relatively minor impacts caused by fixed gear required slightly longer in the three coarser substrate types than in mud and sand. Our findings highlight the importance of considering the resilience of specific components of habitat such as emergent epifauna or geological formations that serve as EFH by providing shelter and a source of food for fish. When coupled with the distribution of geological substrates and energy environments that exist in a particular region, our framework offers fisheries resource managers a tool to assess gear-specific spatial impacts on benthic substrates and identify benthic habitat vulnerability hotspots.
A Small Area 5GHz LC VCO with an On-Chip Solenoid Inductor using a 0.13 μm Digital CMOS Technology

This paper presents a small area LC VCO with an on-chip solenoid inductor using 0. 13μm digital CMOS technology. This on-chip solenoid inductor is vertically built by metal and via layers with a horizontal occupation which gives the advantages of small area due to 3-D nature compared to a spiral inductor. Based on 3-D EM simulation and analysis, the unified equivalent model for a solenoid inductor is proposed so that it could be adapted for LC Voltage controlled oscillator in the digital standard CMOS process. The designed LC VCO has the occupation area as 0.013 mm 2 and the frequency tuning range as 1GHz. The measured phase noise of VCO was measured as -105.25dBc/Hz at a 1MHz offset with the power consumption of 13.2mW with total area of 0.028mm 2 .
Sheet metal productivity improvement through a new press brake design

A new press brake design proposed as a reconfigurable bending press machine (RBPM) is reported. The design is a means of increasing sheet metal bending productivity. Conventional press brakes are dedicated machines with fixed capacity, but the RBPM has characteristics of a reconfigurable machine tool, which enables the new press brake to be scalable, customisable and flexible. The RBPM design has two major objectives, namely geometric transformation and productivity adjustment. Geometric transformation is achieved through vertical and horizontal reconfigurability, while productivity adjustment is enabled by plug and produce devices. Geometric transformation allows sheet metal benders to adjust the press brake's height and length, thus improving the capability of the RBPM. This allows small-scale manufacturers of sheet metal products such as door frames to be able to adjust their machines to produce various sizes of products at low cost. A scaled-down prototype was made to specifications of 1.2 m total length and total capacity 30 kN (3 tons) for bending aluminium sheets of up to 0.51 mm thickness.
Value of travel time for home-based school tours in California

The behavioral value of travel time is an important factor for evaluating alternative transportation facility or service improvement projects based on road user-benefit approach. This article presents the behavioral value of travel time with reference to home-based school tour in California. Initially a single value of travel time is quantified from multinomial logit and nested logit (NL) model estimate. Later random parameter logit (RPL) model is employed by specifying a random component for the travel time attribute. The values of travel time emanating from RPL model estimate are quantified across student population by assuming different types of tent-shaped random distributions such as triangular and normal. In this study the value of travel time is investigated separately for two types of home-based school tour: grade school and college-university. Overall this study examines the effect of alternative logit model specifications on quantification of value of travel time. The study is demonstrated using household travel diary data of the state of California, which is revealed preference in nature.
Fast service restoration for large-scale distribution systems with priority customers and constraints

A fast, effective service restoration method is designed for large-scale distribution systems with priority customers. The service restoration problem is formulated as a constrained multi-objective optimization problem. A ranking-based search method employing analytical information obtained from three-phase power flow simulations is designed to restore service to as many priority customers as possible while maximizing the amount of total load restored and minimizing the number of required switch operations. The proposed method is designed with consideration to networks which have predominantly manual switches. Comprehensive simulation results of the search method, including priority customers, single and multiple faults and multiple out-of-service areas are presented for a 416 bus distribution network.
Application of Six Sigma in a small food production plant of India: a case study

Six Sigma is a highly praised methodology in the field of quality management for continuous improvements and is found to be fruitful for hundreds of companies. A food production plant of India has been continuously facing an increasing amount of defective produce. A Six Sigma project was then initiated to seek out the solutions of the problems. The project followed DMAIC phases to bring the changes in the production line. The implementation of the recommendations resulted in lowering of production defects, reduction in production time, standardisation of procedures and increased commitment from operators. Statistical approaches to the problem resulted in reduction of defects from 8.21% to 0.46% and an increase of Sigma level from 2.91 to 4.10. Process capability index increased from 0.97 to 1.37 and overall equipment effectiveness increased from 64.81% to 81.45%.
Genetic identification of the local mukodamashi varieties of foxtail millet (Setaria italica (L.) P. Beauv) in Japan

ABSTRACT Different varieties of foxtail millet (Setaria italica (L.) P. Beauv) are grown in Japan; there are several varieties of Mukodamashi, and they are cultivated in more than 10 prefectures. However, while most of Mukodamashi varieties have white grains and waxy endosperms, it is uncertain whether they have the same or different genotypes. In this study, five Mukodamashi varieties, from Gunma, Miyazaki, Ehime, Kochi, and Nara Prefectures, as well as 23 other local varieties of foxtail millet, were examined using simple sequence repeat markers to elucidate their genetic identities. The five Mukodamashi varieties have different genotypes. Therefore, we concluded that different varieties in different areas have been named Mukodamashi. It is possible that local varieties with the same name are actually different varieties, even if they have similar characters. Graphical Abstract
Pectin self-assembly and its disruption by water: Insights into plant cell wall mechanics

Plant cell walls undergo multiple cycles of dehydration and rehydration during their life. Calcium crosslinked low methoxy pectin is a major constituent of plant cell walls. Understanding the dehydration-rehydration behavior of pectin gels may shed light on the water transport and mechanics of plant cells. In this work, we report the contributions of microstructure to the mechanics of pectin-Ca gels subjected to different extents of dehydration and subsequent rehydration. This is investigated using a pectin gel composition that forms ‘egg-box bundles’, a characteristic feature of the microstructure of low methoxy pectin-Ca gels. Large Amplitude Oscillatory Shear (LAOS) rheology along with Small Angle Neutron Scattering and Near Infrared (NIR) spectroscopy on pectin gels are used to elucidate the mechanical and microstructural changes during dehydration-rehydration cycles. As the extent of dehydration increase, the reswelling ability, strain-stiffening behavior and the yield strain decreases. These effects are more prominent at faster rates of dehydration and are not completely reversible upon rehydration to the initial undried state. Microstructural changes due to the aggregation of egg-box bundles and single chains and the associated changes in the water configurations lead to these irreversible changes.
Mapping the UK thesis landscape: Phase 1 project report for Unlocking Thesis Data

This report details the work (April-July 2015) of Unlocking Thesis Data, where the project carried out a survey of EThOS institutions, interviewed staff at six universities for more in-depth case studies, and synthesised the findings. Overall, there is much appetite for applying DOIs to theses and their data (which includes datasets, software components and other non-textual supplementary files) and ORCiDs to research students. Glasgow, Southampton and East London universities each minted a DOI for an existing thesis, demonstrating the viability of our intent, but the case studies showed there are constraints in both processes and technologies to be addressed before persistent identifiers (PID) for theses can be a nationwide reality in the UK. The project makes five recommendations for further work in a second phase: 1. Hold at least three thesis “clinics” to investigate opportunities and barriers to assigning DOI and ORCiD identifiers in UK universities 2. Engage with system suppliers/vendors to identify opportunities for enhancing software with required PIDs 3. Consult with EThOS formally to understand what needs to change in EThOS systems and processes to harvest and display PIDs and related metadata for theses and their data 4. Evaluate approaches to updating UKETD profile, initially in EPrints, before planning software enhancements 5. Investigate requirements and solutions for those institutions that use EThOS as their first-point repository.
Exploring the Feminization of Backseat Gaming Through Girlfriend Reviews YouTube Channel

This paper scrutinizes the feminization of backseat gaming by examining the successful YouTube gaming reviews channel, Girlfriend Reviews. As video games are considered a male-dominated hobby, this channel, which provides the perspective of a male gamer’s girlfriend offers a compelling case study to explore the ways in which women can access the gaming community. Through analyzing the opinions and sentiments expressed in the comment sections, we explore how viewers engage with the channel and why they support or condone it. We argue that viewers gravitate toward the channel for three significant reasons: the girlfriend being (1) a supportive backseat gamer, (2) who holds no prior knowledge on gaming, and (3) does not engage with feminist discourse. We argue that the position of “the girlfriend”/“backseat gamer” provides women an alternative pathway into the gaming community. However, moments of pushback demonstrate the fragility of women’s position in such presumed male-dominated communities.
First report of
 Hymenoscyphus fraxineus
 causing ash dieback in Spain

In August 2021, mature Fraxinus excelsior trees and associated regeneration with typical symptoms of ash dieback (shoot dieback, wilting of leaves, necrotic rachises and lenticels, and fungal fruiting bodies) were observed in the localities of Oviedo (43.3804, -5.8679) and Bulnes (43.2352, -4.8241) in the principality of Asturias in north-western Spain (Figs. 1–2). The lethal disease is caused by the ascomycete fungus Hymenoscyphus fraxineus (anamorph Chalara fraxinea), which was introduced into Europe from Asia. Since its introduction in the mid1990s in north-east Poland,H. fraxineushas spread across Europe causing severe decline and increased mortality of European ash (Fraxinus excelsior) (Kowalski, 2006; Queloz et al., 2011) and narrow-leaved ash (Fraxinus angustifolia). In both Oviedo and Bulnes, 10–15 necrotic rachises and fruiting bodies were collected in August 2021 (Fig. 3). The rachises were dried and fresh fruiting bodies stored in 99% (v/v) ethanol until further processing. For fungal isolation, five rachises per site were wiped clean with 70% (v/v) ethanol, then small wedges were cut out with a scalpel and laid on ash malt extract agar (five wedges per rachis, i.e. 25 isolates per site; Gross et al., 2014). Fungal cultures were left to grow at 20C (daylight) for two weeks. Forty-two cultures showed the typical mycelial morphology of H. fraxineus on ash malt agar, that is dark discolouration of the agar at the edge of the culture and creamy-white mycelium (Fig. 4), five cultures were contaminated with Penicillium and three wedges showed no fungal growth. Phialophores and conidia of the Chalara anamorph were observed under the microscope from cultures considered to beH. fraxineus (Fig. 5). FourH. fraxineus-like isolates and one fruiting body per site were chosen for molecular analysis.
Bottleneck Starvation Indicators for Shop Floor Control

Abstmct-A graphical tool for inventory and production control, currently in use at a major U.S. semiconductor manufacturer, is presented. The tool supports a bottleneck starvation avoidance policy. Equations for calculating the bottleneck in a clean room manufacturing environment are presented. A new constraint which must be satisfied to ensure starvation avoidance is introduced. A technique for helping a manual decision process conform to this constraint is presented. Many graphs are given to illustrate the concepts.
Comparative analysis of three methods in anti‐dsDNA antibodies detection: implications for Systemic Lupus Erythematosus diagnosis

The evaluation of anti‐dsDNA antibodies represents one of the essential diagnostic and prognostic marker features in patients affected by Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE). In this study, we have compared immunoblotting (IB) with Crithidia luciliae indirect immunofluorescence test (CLIFT) and chemiluminescent immunoassay (CLIA) in 91 patients referred to our hospital for anti‐dsDNA antibodies detection. The concordance and correlation measured by Cohen's kappa and Spearman's coefficient respectively was significant between CLIFT and CLIA (0.70; 0,7404, P < .0001) and among CLIA and IB (0.79; 0,5377, P < 0,0001) and lower between CLIFT and IB (0.55; 0,4373, P <0,0001). Among the 46 IB‐positive samples, 14 were positive for either CLIA or CLIFT. It is noteworthy that 11 out of these 14 samples had the final diagnosis of SLE. Thirteen out of fourteen samples were also positive for anti‐nucleosome antibodies as measured concomitantly in immunoblotting. While our observations are based on a limited number of samples and will have to be confirmed in a bigger cohort, they underline the contribution of immunoblotting as an additional assay in defining the anti‐dsDNA antibody profile in association with other well‐established methods such as CLIA and CLIFT.