Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Production, dissolution, accumulation, and potential export of biogenic silica in a Sargasso Sea mode‐water eddy

Rates of biogenic silica (bSiO2) production, dissolution, accumulation, and potential bSiO2 export were determined in a Sargasso Sea mode‐water eddy (MWE) during two occupations in April 2007. Standing stocks and production rates of bSiO2 within the MWE were 15–20 mmol Si m−2 and 0.8–1.1 mmol Si m−2 d−1, respectively; these values were about six times those reported in April at the nearby Bermuda Atlantic Time‐series Study (BATS) site. The MWE also showed positive net bSiO2 production in the upper 140 m (> 0.5 mmol Si m−2 d−1 produced during both occupations), and thus a capacity for bSiO2 accumulation and export. Consistent with previous observations in eddies, the diatom community was dramatically different from that typically observed at the BATS site; diatom abundances were an order of magnitude higher, and larger forms (e.g., Chaetoceros sp.) were prominent. When accounting for both the loss of bSiO2 (between occupations) and the observed positive net bSiO2 production within the MWE, the estimated bSiO2 export rate (1.27 mmol Si m−2 d−1) was twenty times higher than the mean export flux measured at the BATS site with no bloom in progress. If similar processes occur in eddies of other types, then these mesoscale features may be quantitatively important in the regional silica balance, with a strong coupling between increased bSiO2 export and altered diatom community structure.
Patient selection for chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy for aggressive B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphomas

Abstract CAR T-cells have transformed the therapeutic landscape for patients with relapsed/refractory aggressive B-cell lymphomas. Currently, three CAR T-cell products are approved or soon to be approved: axicabtagene ciloleucel, tisagenlecleucel, and lisocabtagene maraleucel. These products differ in construct, manufacturing, clinical trial design and toxicity profile. Patient selection for CAR T-cells, and the ideal product for a given patient, involves myriad considerations including age, fitness, prior therapies, comorbid diseases, organ function, logistics of administration, turnaround time, and institutional familiarity. This article reviews the proper patient and product selection for the management of patients with relapsed/refractory aggressive B-cell lymphomas.
A Review on Application of Blockchain in 5G and Beyond Networks: Taxonomy, Field-Trials, Challenges and Opportunities

Until now, every evolution of communication standard was driven by the need for providing high-speed connectivity to the end-user. However, 5G marks a radical shift from this focus as 5G and beyond networks are being designed to be future-proof by catering to diverse requirements of several use cases. These requirements include Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications, Massive Machine-Type Communications and Enhanced Mobile Broadband. To realize such features in 5G and beyond, there is a need to rethink how current cellular networks are deployed because designing new radio access technologies and utilizing the new spectrum are not enough. Several technologies, such as software-defined networking, network function virtualization, machine learning and cloud computing, are being integrated into the 5G networks to fulfil the need for diverse requirements. These technologies, however, give rise to several challenges associated with decentralization, transparency, interoperability, privacy and security. To address these issues, Blockchain has emerged as a potential solution due to its capabilities such as transparency, data encryption, auditability, immutability and distributed architecture. In this paper, we review the state-of-art application of Blockchain in 5G network and explore how it can facilitate enabling technologies of 5G and beyond to enable various services at the front-haul, edge and the core. Based on the review, we present a taxonomy of Blockchain application in 5G networks and discuss several issues that can be solved using Blockchain integration. We then present various field-trials and Proof of concept that are using Blockchain to address the challenges faced in the current 5G deployment. Finally, we discuss various challenges that need to be addressed to realize the full potential of Blockchain in beyond 5G networks. The survey presents a broad range of ideas related to Blockchain integration in 5G and beyond networks that address issues such as interoperability, security, mobility, resource allocation, resource sharing and management, energy efficiency and other desirable features.
Sequential delivery of dual drugs with nanostructured lipid carriers for improving synergistic tumor treatment effect

Abstract To improve synergistic anticancer efficacy and minimize the adverse effects of chemotherapeutic drugs, temozolomide (TMZ) and curcumin (CUR) co-loaded nanostructured lipid carriers (NLCs) were prepared by microemulsion in this study. And the physicochemical properties, drug release behavior, intracellular uptake efficiency, in vitro and in vivo anticancer effects of TMZ/CUR-NLCs were evaluated. TMZ/CUR-NLCs showed enhanced inhibitory effects on glioma cells compared to single drug loaded NLCs, which may be owing to that the quickly released CUR can sensitize the cancer cells to TMZ. The inhibitory mechanism is a combination of S phase cell cycle arrest associated with induced apoptosis. Notably, TMZ/CUR-NLCs can accumulate at brain and tumor sites effectively and perform a significant synergistic anticancer effect in vivo. More importantly, the toxic effects of TMZ/CUR-NLCs on major organs and normal cells at the same therapeutic dosage were not observed. In conclusion, NLCs are promising nanocarriers for delivering dual chemotherapeutic drugs sequentially, showing potentials in the synergistic treatment of tumors while reducing adverse effects both in vitro and in vivo.
MiR‐125b Loss Activated HIF1α/pAKT Loop, Leading to Transarterial Chemoembolization Resistance in Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) is a standard locoregional therapy for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients with a variable overall response in efficacy. We aimed to identify key molecular signatures and related pathways leading to HCC resistance to TACE, with the hope of developing effective approaches in preselecting patients with survival benefit from TACE.
Exposure to Toxoplasma gondii in Marine Otters (Lontra felina) and Domestic Cats (Felis catus) in an Arid Environment in Chile

Abstract: Toxoplasma gondii is a worldwide-distributed protozoon that infects warm-blooded animals. We determined T. gondii exposure in one marine otter (Lontra felina) and four domestic cats (Felis catus) along the northern and central coast of Chile, indicating a low seroprevalence of 5% (1/19) and 8% (4/50) respectively, likely related to arid environment.
Insights into aphid prey consumption by ladybirds: Optimising field sampling methods and primer design for high throughput sequencing

Elucidating the diets of insect predators is important in basic and applied ecology, such as for improving the effectiveness of conservation biological control measures to promote natural enemies of crop pests. Here, we investigated the aphid diet of two common aphid predators in Central European agroecosystems, the native Coccinella septempunctata (Linnaeus) and the invasive Harmonia axyridis (Pallas; Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) by means of high throughput sequencing (HTS). For acquiring insights into diets of mobile flying insects at landscape scale minimizing trapping bias is important, which imposes methodological challenges for HTS. We therefore assessed the suitability of three field sampling methods (sticky traps, pan traps and hand-collection) as well as new aphid primers for identifying aphid prey consumption by coccinellids through HTS. The new aphid primers facilitate identification to species level in 75% of the European aphid genera investigated. Aphid primer specificity was high in silico and in vitro but low in environmental samples with the methods used, although this could be improved in future studies. For insect trapping we conclude that sticky traps are a suitable method in terms of minimizing sampling bias, contamination risk and trapping success, but compromise on DNA-recovery rate. The aphid diets of both field-captured ladybird species were dominated by Microlophium carnosum, the common nettle aphid. Another common prey was Sitobion avenae (cereal aphid), which got more often detected in C. septempunctata compared to H. axyridis. Around one third of the recovered aphid taxa were common crop pests. We conclude that sampling methodologies need constant revision but that our improved aphid primers offer currently one of the best solutions for broad screenings of coccinellid predation on aphids.
Event-Triggered Integrated Robust Control for Non-Cooperative Fly-Around Mission With Prescribed Performance

This paper investigates the event-triggered integrated attitude and position robust control problem for non-cooperative fly-around mission with prescribed performance in the presence of uncertain dynamics and external disturbances. For the requirement of line-of-sight orientation, a coupled motion model of relative position and attitude of the spacecraft is established, where the relative orbit model is described in the line-of-slight frame. Based upon the prescribed performance functions and the model error transformation, an integrated robust adaptive controller is proposed such that the desired fly-around trajectory and attitude orientation can be tracked simultaneously. Moreover, an event-triggered condition is also designed, such that the number of control input updates can be reduced. By means of the constructed event-triggered condition, the closed-loop system still possesses the predetermined control performance, and Zeno phenomenon can be avoided. Simulation results are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed controller.
Cooperative Edge Caching in Small Cell Networks with Heterogeneous Channel Qualities

Cooperative caching between multiple small base stations (SBSs) plays a critical role for easing the traffic congestion of the backhaul link. Previous works assume that cooperative caching policies can achieve good performance when each user in the region is mainly served by its nearest SBS, which may not be the case in small cell networks with heterogeneous channel qualities. In this paper, we study cooperative caching problem in a small cell network with heterogeneous channel qualities when content popularity profile is unknown. These two features impose new challenges in optimizing content placement in multiple SBSs. To address this problem, we first propose a bayes-based learning algorithm that learn the popularity profile by sampling from a Beta distribution at each time period. Based on the estimated popularity profile, we then optimize the content placement at each time period by caching contents with higher popularity/size ratio in SBSs with better channel qualities. Numerical results show that the proposed algorithms outperforms three baselines in terms of average transmission delay and cache hit rate.
0-3 Barium Titanate-PDMS Flexible Film for Tactile Sensing

Lead free BaTiO3-PDMS piezoelectric composite thin films are fabricated with simple process. Composite films are prepared by dispersing 20, 30, 40, and 50 wt% of BaTiO3 in cross-linked PDMS matrix. Corona poling of the films is performed to improve the piezoelectric properties of the films. Piezoelectric properties of the films are studied by measuring the charge developed across the thickness of the film under a compressive force. A 50 wt% poled BaTiO3-PDMS film has shown a piezoelectric charge constant of 178 pC/N and achieves a dielectric constant of 4.59. Tensile tests indicate that these films are very soft and flexible with low Young’s modulus. A 50 wt % poled BaTiO3-PDMS film film has shown a Young’s modulus 3.92 Mpa. The film generates charge across the film proportional to the finger pressure applied on them. Thus it demonstrates effectiveness for tactile sensing. As a tactile sensor a 50 wt% poled film shows a sensitivity of 38.34 kPa−1. High charge response for tiny forces makes the composite a good candidate for tactile sensing applications such as robotic skin and touch pads.
Hot Carrier Degradation in Cryo-CMOS

28nm Gate First High-K Metal Gate (GF-HKMG) technology is analyzed for Hot-Carrier Degradation (HCD) under varying gate/drain (V<inf>G</inf>/V<inf>D</inf>) bias and temperature (T: 300K to 77K). A compact model is used to partition measured threshold voltage shift (ΔV<inf>T</inf>) into interface trap generation due to pure HCD (ΔV<inf>IT-HC</inf>), Bias Temperature Instability (BTI, ΔV<inf>IT-BT</inf>), and electron/hole trapping (ΔV<inf>ET</inf>/ΔV<inf>HT</inf>) subcomponents. The relative importance of the subcomponents is analyzed for varying T. Although pure HCD dominates under Cryo-CMOS operation, the T dependence is shown to be different for Si NMOS and SiGe PMOS FETs. Finally, the impact on the circuit (RO: Ring Oscillator) operation is analyzed.
Rapid Implementation of an Inpatient Telehealth Program during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract Background Relaxation of laws and regulations around privacy and billing during the COVID-19 pandemic provide expanded opportunities to use telehealth to provide patient care at a distance. Many health systems have transitioned to providing outpatient care via telehealth; however, there is an opportunity to utilize telehealth for inpatients to promote physical distancing. Objective This article evaluates the use of a rapidly implemented, secure inpatient telehealth program. Methods We assembled a multidisciplinary team to rapidly design, implement, and iteratively improve an inpatient telehealth quality improvement initiative using an existing videoconferencing system at our academic medical center. We assigned each hospital bed space a unique meeting link and updated the meeting password for each new patient. Patients and families were encouraged to use their own mobile devices to join meetings when possible. Results Within 7 weeks of go-live, we hosted 1,820 inpatient telehealth sessions (13.3 sessions per 100 bedded days). We logged 104,647 minutes of inpatient telehealth time with a median session duration of 22 minutes (range 1–1,961). There were 5,288 participant devices used with a mean of 3 devices per telehealth session (range 2–22). Clinicians found they were able to build rapport and perform a reasonable physical exam. Conclusion We successfully implemented and scaled a secure inpatient telehealth program using an existing videoconferencing system in less than 1 week. Our implementation provided an intuitive naming convention for providers and capitalized on the broad availability of smartphones and tablets. Initial comments from clinicians suggest the system was useful; however, further work is needed to streamline initial setup for patients and families as well as care coordination to support clinician communication and workflows. Numerous use cases identified suggest a role for inpatient telehealth will remain after the COVID-19 crisis underscoring the importance of lasting regulatory reform.
Collision-Free Trajectory Planning With Deadlock Prevention: An Adaptive Virtual Target Approach

Most human-centred robotic applications require robots to follow a certain pre-defined path. This makes the robot’s autonomous movements acceptable and predictable for humans. Planning a trajectory for the robot thus involves guiding it along this desired path. The classical approach of segmenting a path into multiple waypoints and tracking them only works well in environments which are obstacle-free or contain fixed stationary obstacles. Movable or dynamic obstacles that can potentially lie directly on waypoints result in deadlock situations causing the robot to oscillate around the desired waypoint without moving forward. This chapter presents a novel approach for trajectory planning in which an Adaptive Virtual Target (AVT) is formulated that follows the desired path irrespective of surrounding obstacles. The AVT essentially plays the role of a moving reference for the trajectory planner to track. Additionally, the AVT velocity can be adapted such that the robot can catch up in case of deviations from the path due to obstacle avoidance manoeuvres. A model predictive control (MPC) based trajectory planner tracks the AVT and accounts for obstacle avoidance. The proposed approach allows the robot to keep moving towards the goal by preventing deadlocks while simultaneously minimizing deviation from the desired path. Simulations based on a medical X-ray robot are provided to validate the approach.
Battery-less HF RFID sensor tag for humidity measurements based on TiO2 nanoparticles

This paper shows the feasibility of a High Frequency RFID passive sensor tag equipped with a novel humidity sensor based on a Si substrate, properly functionalized with a solution of nanoparticles of TiO2 in order to increase its sensitivity. The characterization of the sensor is performed at variable humidity and using a properly designed front-end circuit. The reading circuit employed in the final prototype is tailored on the energy harvesting requirement. The obtained results prove that the solution conceived is satisfactory and that the sensor has good sensing properties in a large humidity range. The proposed system can be applied in the IoT framework in manifold monitoring scenarios, especially in humidity and soil moisture applications.
Aptamer-Enhanced Organic Electrolyte-Gated FET Biosensor for High-Specificity Detection of Cortisol

Organic field-effect transistor (FET) devices offer a low-cost manufacturing and simple integration of biorecognition molecules for biosensory applications. In electrolyte-gated organic FET (EGOFET) biosensors, a biofluid is directly integrated as the OFET gate dielectric for label-free bioelectronic sensing. The critical constraints of these devices are biofouling and the organic polymer's susceptibility to environmental effects. In this letter, we solve these issues by implementing a multilayered gate dielectric system in our low-cost OFET biosensor, encompassing the bioelectrolyte and an aptamer-enhanced top gate surface for the rapid high-sensitivity detection of cortisol in synthetic buffer solutions. To emphasize the crucial architectural and operational differences to EGOFETs, we have termed these devices as organic electrolyte-gated FET (OEGFETs). We also reported a numerical model that can be fitted to predict the behavior of the cortisol-specific OEGFET biosensors and highlighted the distinct advantages of our system, compared with the more traditional EGOFET sensors. The specificity of our cortisol biosensor is rigorously tested using two negative control biomolecules, i.e., progesterone and cortisone. Molecules that structurally resemble cortisol and like cortisols are present in detectable concentrations in the saliva. The detectable cortisol concentration range of our OEGFET biosensor is currently identified as 27.3 pM–27.3 μM.
Sparse-YOLO: Hardware/Software Co-Design of an FPGA Accelerator for YOLOv2

Convolutional neural network (CNN) based object detection algorithms are becoming dominant in many application fields due to their superior accuracy advantage over traditional schemes. Among them, You Look Only Once (YOLO) is one of the most popular detection frameworks that show best trade-offs between speed and accuracy. However, due to the intrinsic high computational workload of CNN, it is still challenging when targeting high-throughput processing with low cost in energy consumption. In this paper, we propose a hardware/software (HW/SW) co-design methodology targeting CPU+FPGA-based heterogeneous platforms. Firstly, we extend a novel sparse convolution algorithm to the YOLOv2 framework, and then develop a resource-efficient FPGA accelerator architecture based on asynchronously executed parallel convolution cores. Secondly, algorithm-level optimization schemes, including hardware-aware neural network pruning, clustering and quantization are introduced, which successfully save the computational workload of the YOLOv2 algorithm by 7 times. Finally, an end-to-end design space exploration flow for FPGA-based accelerator design is presented and two HW/SW partition strategies are studied and implemented. Experimental results show that our design can achieve a peak throughput of 2.13 TOPS (72.5 fps) on an Intel Arria-10 GX1150 FPGA under the working frequency of 211 MHz, while the detection accuracy is 74.45 on the PASCAL VOC2007 dataset.
AGRONOMY & SOILS Seed Size and Oil Content Are Key Determinants of Seedling Vigor in Gossypium hirsutum

Despite the plethora of information on seed characteristics and seedling vigor in cotton, the near-continuous release of new cultivars coupled with limited information on seedling vigor for field conditions necessitates re-evaluation of seed characteristics important for vigorous seedling growth and plant establishment. Consequently, seedling vigor (fresh weight at the 2 to 3 leaf stage) and stand establishment were evaluated for 11 cotton cultivars across five locations in Georgia during the 2012 growing season. Seed size, seed oil content, and seed protein content were also evaluated for each cultivar. Cultivar differences in seedling vigor existed under field conditions for the genotypes evaluated. Genotypic correlations and regression analysis revealed a negative relationship between oil (%) and protein contents for quiescent seeds (r 2 = 0.945). Additionally, positive relationships were observed between seedling vigor and total seed oil content (r 2 = 0.573), and seedling vigor and seed size (r 2 = 0.642). Cultivar differences existed in germination responses to incubation time and temperature, but these responses were not necessarily predictive of seedling vigor. These data indicate that information on seed oil content and seed size could help identify cultivars or seed sources with potential for high seedling vigor for use in production scenarios where reduced seedling vigor may limit productivity.
On the Receiver Design for Nonlinear NOMA-OFDM Systems

Besides traditional orthogonal multiple access (OMA), 5G and other future wireless communication systems will also involve non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA). In that context, the combination of NOMA systems with the popular orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) will arise naturally in highly spectral efficient communications. Since OFDM signals are very prone to nonlinear distortion effects, the receiver design of NOMA-OFDM systems should be modified accordingly. In this work, we consider an efficient, nonlinear power amplification for NOMA-OFDM systems and we propose different reception strategies to cope with the nonlinear distortion. It is shown that the performance of conventional power-domain NOMA is very poor under nonlinear transmission scenarios. However, it is also demonstrated that Bussgang receivers combined with optimum detection schemes might be an excellent alternative1.