Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Perturbation Effect of Fiducial Marker on 3D Dose Distribution in External Surrogates Radiotherapy

Article type: Original Paper Introduction: Tumor motion is a challenging issue in radiotherapy, which complicates the process of tumor delineation, localization, and dose delivery. External surrogate radiotherapy is one of the available strategies that provides motion dataset for a consistent prediction model to track tumor motion using internal-external markers. Regarding this, the present study was conducted to investigate the effect of implanted fiducial on 3D uniform dose distribution. Material and Methods: For the purpose of the study, a Monte Carlo code was utilized to simulate clip with different dimensions and material structures against four therapeutic beams. Moreover, a combinational clip made of golden and covered by polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) was proposed to be used with lower dose perturbation. Finally, it was proposed to implant a clip outside tumor volume at specific distances from tumor site to keep dose uniformity on tumor volume. To investigate this issue, the correlation coefficient parameter was calculated as the metric among the motion dataset of tumor and clip. Results: Based on the results, dose perturbation caused by implanted clip was remarkable at hadron therapy depending on its size and material, mainly at the downstream part of the clip. Conclusion: As the findings indicated, the golden marker covered with PMMA could remarkably reduce dose perturbation. The most important concern in this domain is the presence of a possible correlation between tumor motion and motion of the clip implanted outside the tumor volume. The results of the correlation coefficient revealed a close relationship between tumor motion and clip motion. Article history: Received: Nov 08, 2019 Accepted: Jan 12, 2020
The effect of verbal anchoring with charity logos on the willingness to donate in two countries: Netherlands and Hungary

Organizations are oftentimes perceived through their pictorial appearance also known as logos. Previous studies have mainly focused on the visual impact of logos of for-profit organizations. However, scarcely any study examined the impact of logos of charity organizations anchored by verbal stimuli among different cultures or nationalities. Thus, the current study investigated how Dutch and Hungarian participants perceived the logos of two charity organizations with different level of verbal anchoring conditions (no-, incomplete-, complete) on the attitude towards the logos, the attitude towards the charity, donation intention, and tolerance of ambiguity. 130 Dutch and 65 Hungarian participants took part in an online experiment. In the online experiment, participants were exposed to both logos with one of the verbal conditions. Findings suggested that, there was no cultural difference between the Netherlands and Hungary. Moreover, generally participants were not affected by the level of verbal condition in terms of attitude towards the logo, attitude towards the charity organization and donation intention. However, nationality was found to have a significant impact on attitude towards the logo and towards the charity organization. It is, therefore, advisable for charity organizations in these countries that instead of a culture specific strategy, organizations adapt their strategy to nation.
Six Puzzles in Indian Agriculture

A quarter century after India’s historic shift to a more market-oriented economy, the agriculture sector continues to be racked by severe policy distortions, despite its importance for the livelihoods of the majority of India’s population and in addressing major long-term challenges facing the country, from food security to natural resource sustainability. The paper highlights some key empirical realities and data anomalies to raise some fundamental questions about Indian agriculture and anchors the analysis in six major puzzles: prices; procurement; political economy; trade; productivity; and exit. While the list is neither exhaustive nor original in and of itself, these puzzles raise important policy issues. We conclude by arguing that more unified frameworks of analysis are needed for effective policy in a much neglected but crucial sector for securing India’s future. JEL Codes: D43, D45, O1, Q11, Q12, Q13, Q18 Chatterjee: sc20@princeton.edu. Kapur: dkapur@upenn.edu. The authors would like to thank Amarsingh Gawande and Beeban Rai for excellent research assistance.
Co-Design in Architecture: A Modular Material-Robot Kinematic Construction System

Modern developments of construction robotics generally utilize a robot-oriented design approach to develop viable systems for the building industry. This has led to highly sophisticated automation of conventional, but at best slightly altered construction processes. In this paper, we argue for a material-robot oriented design process for the creation of novel construction robotic systems, which can expand the repertoire of current building practice and architectural possibilities. The co-design of a modular material-robot kinematic chain construction system in which the material, robot, and process inform the overall system is introduced from the architectural design, robotic mechatronic development, and task and motion planning perspectives. We present initial research on how material-robot kinematic chains can work in parallel to assemble, disassemble and rearrange large structures. Keywords— construction robotics, architecture, task and motion planning, modular robotics
Offline Signature Recognition and Verification using Neural Network

- Computers have become common and are used in almost every field including financial transactions, so it’s necessary to provide additional security measures. Considering consumers’ expectations, these security measures must be reliable, cheap and un-intrusive to the authorized person. This technique of signature recognition has advantage over the other biometric techniques like voice, iris, fingerprint etc. as it is mostly used for daily routine procedures like document analysis, banking operations, access control, electronic funds transfer etc. Most importantly, people are less likely to object it because its easy. The technique described in this paper uses neural network which enables the user to recognize whether a signature is original or a fraud. Scanned images are introduced into the computer, their quality is modified with the help of image enhancement and noise reduction techniques, specific features are extracted and neural network is trained. The different stages of the process involve image preprocessing followed by feature extraction and pattern recognition through neural networks. This method will be more efficient and provide more accurate results than the existing techniques.
DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF MULTIPLIER BY USING SWITCHING MODE 4:2 COMPRESSORS

: Multiplier plays a vital role in many applications such as digital image processing, digital signal processing etc. so it is important to design the multiplier with low power consumption and reduced delay. A conventional multiplier using adders can give us exact results and have high power consumption, more area and delay. In order to reduce this factors we design the multiplier using four 4:2 compressors and these compressors has a dual quality property and this property is used to switch between the exact and approximate modes. When it operates at approximate mode it reduces the power consumption and area at the cost of low accuracy . when it operates at exact mode it produces the exact results and has high power consumption and area. In this paper, we propose four 4:2 compressors, which have the flexibility of switching between the exact and approximate operating modes. In the approximate mode, these dual-quality compressors provide higher speeds and lower power consumptions at the cost of lower accuracy. Using these compressors in the structures of parallel multipliers provides configurable multipliers whose accuracies may change dynamically during the runtime. The efficiencies of these compressors are used in a proposed multiplier which provides lower delay and power consumption in the approximate mode compared to exact mode.
Glycerol electro-oxidation in alkaline media using Pt and Pd catalysts electrodeposited on three-dimensional porous carbon electrodes

In this work, Pd and Pt electrocatalysts were electrodeposited on three-dimensional carbon paper and carbon nanofoam with the purpose of increasing the catalytic area to improve the glycerol electro-oxidation. SEM and cross-sectional SEM micrographs showed that Pd and Pt particles were well-distributed over the entire three-dimensional electrode surfaces. Commercial Pd/C and Pt/C catalysts deposited by the spray method were used for comparison, showing lower surface area (SA) utilization than those electrodeposited. The electrodeposition effectiveness to cover the electrode surfaces was evaluated by changes in overall SA and through the calculation of electrochemically active surface area (EASA) and specific surface area (SSA). Despite the larger EASA values found for Pd and Pt on nanofoam, Pt on paper showed the highest utilization of the surface area, obtaining an SSA of 58.1 m2 g−1. Moreover, the electrodeposition of Pd and Pt dramatically increased the EASA versus the geometrical area, improving this ratio 16 (Pd on paper), 151 (Pt on paper), 158 (Pd on nanofoam) and 277-fold (Pt on nanofoam). The electrodeposited porous Pt electrodes showed good activity for glycerol oxidation, exhibiting a more negative potential than Pd-based materials. However, for fuel cell applications operated at intermediate temperatures, Pd on carbon paper is the optimal candidate to be used as an anode because of its high current density and excellent poisoning tolerance.
Lab-on-a-Chip Impedance Detection of Microbial and Cellular Activity

Liju Yang, Xuanhong Cheng, Yi-Shao Liu, and Rashid Bashir Biomanufacturing Research Institute and Technology Enterprise, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, North Carolina Central University, Durham, NC 27707 Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Program of Bioengineering, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 18015 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of Bioengineering, Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801
Co-simulation as a Fundamental Technology for Twin Ships

The concept of digital twins, characterized by the high fidelity with which they mimic their physical counterpart, provide potential benefits for the next generation of advanced ships. It allows analysis of data and monitoring of marine systems to avoid problems before they occur, and plan for the future by using simulations. However, issues related to integration of heterogeneous systems and hardware, memory, and CPU utilization makes implementing such a digital twin in a monolithic or centralized manner undesirable. Co-simulation addresses this problem, allowing different sub-systems to be modelled independently, but simulated together. This paper presents the ongoing work towards realizing a digital twin of the Gunnerus research vessel by applying co-simulation and related standards. The paper does not present a complete, ready-to-use digital twin. Rather it presents the preliminary results, procedure, and enabling technologies used towards realizing one. In order to accommodate this goal, a novel co-simulation solution, developed in cooperation by members of the Norwegian maritime industry, is presented. Furthermore, a maneuvering case-study is carried out, utilizing pre-recorded sensor data obtained from the Gunnerus. Through a comparative study with the real maneuver in terms of speed, course, and power consumption, the proposed approach is verified in simulation.
Approximate reciprocal relationship between two cause-specific hazard ratios in COVID-19 data with mutually exclusive events

Abstract COVID-19 survival data presents a special situation where not only the time-to-event period is short, but also the two events or outcome types, death and release from hospital, are mutually exclusive, leading to two cause-specific hazard ratios (csHR d and csHR r ). The eventual mortality/release outcome is also analyzed by logistic regression to obtain odds-ratio (OR). We have the following three empirical observations: (1) The magnitude of OR is an upper limit of the csHR d : |log(OR)| ≥ |log(csHR d )|. This relationship between OR and HR might be understood from the definition of the two quantities; (2) csHR d and csHR r point in opposite directions: log(csHR d ) ⋅ log(csHR r ) < 0; This relation is a direct consequence of the nature of the two events; and (3) there is a tendency for a reciprocal relation between csHR d and csHR r : csHR d ∼ 1/csHR r . Though an approximate reciprocal trend between the two hazard ratios is in indication that the same factor causing faster death also lead to slow recovery by a similar mechanism, and vice versa, a quantitative relation between csHR d and csHR r in this context is not obvious. These results may help future analyses of data from COVID-19 or other similar diseases, in particular if the deceased patients are lacking, whereas surviving patients are abundant.
Reliability of COVID-19 data: An evaluation and reflection

Importance: The rapid proliferation of COVID-19 has left governments scrambling, and several data aggregators are now assisting in the reporting of county cases and deaths. The different variables affecting reporting (e.g., time delays in reporting) necessitates a well-documented reliability study examining the data methods and discussion of possible causes of differences between aggregators. Objective: To statistically evaluate the reliability of COVID-19 across aggregators. Design, Setting, and Participants: Cases and deaths were collected daily by volunteers via state and local health departments, as primary sources and newspaper reports, as secondary sources. In an effort to begin comparison for reliability statistical analysis, BroadStreet collected data from other COVID-19 aggregator sources, including USAFacts, Johns Hopkins University, New York Times, The COVID Tracking Project. Main Outcomes and Measures: COVID-19 cases and death counts at the county and state levels. Results: Lower levels of inter-rater agreement were observed across aggregators associated with the number of deaths, which manifested itself in state level Bayesian estimates of COVID-19 fatality rates. Conclusions and Relevance: A national, publicly available data set is needed for current and future disease outbreaks and improved reliability in reporting.
Have news reports on suicide and attempted suicide during the COVID-19 pandemic adhered to guidance on safer reporting? A UK-wide content analysis study

Associations between sensational news coverage of suicide and subsequent increases in suicidal behaviour in the general population have been well documented. Amidst growing concern over the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on suicide rates, it is especially important that news coverage of suicidal behaviour adheres to recommended standards for the responsible reporting of suicide. Using a set of dimensions based on international media guidelines, we analysed the quality and content of all UK news reports of possible COVID-19 related suicides and suicide attempts in the first four months of the pandemic (N=285 reports of 78 individual incidents published in print and online newspapers between 16th March and 12th July 2020). The majority of news reports made an explicit link between suicidal behaviour and the COVID-19 pandemic in the headline (187/285, 65.5%), and portrayed this association as strong and direct (n=196/272, 72.1%), mostly based on statements by family, friends or acquaintances of the deceased (171/285, 60%). The impact of the pandemic on suicidal behaviour was most often attributed to feelings of isolation (78/285, 27.4%), poor mental health (42, 14.7%) and sense of entrapment (41, 14.4%) as a result of government-imposed restrictions. Although rarely of poor overall quality, reporting was biased towards young people, frontline staff and relatively unusual suicides (including those involving a celebrity, murder-suicide and violent methods) Also, to varying degrees, reports failed to meet recommended standards; for example, 41.1% (117/285) did not signpost readers to sources of support, a quarter (69, 24.2%) included examples of sensational language and a third provided over-simplistic explanations for the suicidal behavior (93, 32.6%). While news reporting has improved compared to earlier coverage of suicide in the UK, it is essential that careful attention is paid to the quality and content of reports, especially as longer-term consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic develop. Keywords: suicide, media, newspaper, reporting, media guidelines, COVID-19
Increasing sample diversity in psychiatric genetics – Introducing a new cohort of patients with schizophrenia and controls from Vietnam – Results from a pilot study

Abstract Objectives Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) of Schizophrenia (SCZ) have provided new biological insights; however, most cohorts are of European ancestry. As a result, derived polygenic risk scores (PRS) show decreased predictive power when applied to populations of different ancestries. We aimed to assess the feasibility of a large-scale data collection in Hanoi, Vietnam, contribute to international efforts to diversify ancestry in SCZ genetic research and examine the transferability of SCZ-PRS to individuals of Vietnamese Kinh ancestry. Methods In a pilot study, 368 individuals (including 190 SCZ cases) were recruited at the Hanoi Medical University's associated psychiatric hospitals and outpatient facilities. Data collection included sociodemographic data, baseline clinical data, clinical interviews assessing symptom severity and genome-wide SNP genotyping. SCZ-PRS were generated using different training data sets: (i) European, (ii) East-Asian and (iii) trans-ancestry GWAS summary statistics from the latest SCZ GWAS meta-analysis. Results SCZ-PRS significantly predicted case status in Vietnamese individuals using mixed-ancestry (R2 liability = 4.9%, p = 6.83 × 10−8), East-Asian (R2 liability = 4.5%, p = 2.73 × 10−7) and European (R2 liability = 3.8%, p = 1.79 × 10−6) discovery samples. Discussion Our results corroborate previous findings of reduced PRS predictive power across populations, highlighting the importance of ancestral diversity in GWA studies.
Phytochemical Analysis of the Leaf of the Fuji Apple Tree

We obtained volatile oil from the leaf of Malus pumila, var domestica CV ‘Fuji,’ by steam distillation, and extracted floral water (hydrosol) with hexane. We also analysed the aroma component of the leaf using the headspace method (HS method). Analysis of the extracts by flame ionization detectorgas chromatography and mass spectrometer-gas chromatography identified 34 components in the oil, of which phytol (34.2%) and (E, E)-α-farnesene (9.5%) were yielded as the principal components. In contrast, 47 components were identified from floral water, of which terpinen-4-ol (30.4%) and linalool (21.0%) accounted for 50% or more. Twenty-two compounds were identified as scent components, including E-2-hexenal (48.4%), 1-penten-3-ol (12.4%), and 3-pentanone (7.4%). Farnesene showed the antioxidant action. In order to shut down free radicals in the body and to prevent lifestyle-related diseaseas, and arteriosclerosis, I think that such fundamental studies become still more important.
The Effect of Talc on the Mechanical, Crystallization and Foaming Properties of Poly(Lactic Acid)

ABSTRACT Poly(lactic acid) (PLA)/talc composites containing different contents of talc were prepared by melt blending. Multiple properties of the prepared composites were investigated including mechanical, rheological and crystallization as well as foaming properties. Tensile test results indicated that the mechanical properties of the composite with 3% wt. talc showed significant reinforcement and toughening effect. When the talc content reached 10%, Young's modulus of the composite was increased by 35% compared with pure PLA. The morphological results showed that the talc layers were partially delaminated and uniformly dispersed in the PLA matrix at low loading. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and polarized optical microscopy (POM) results indicated that 3% wt. talc significantly increased the crystallinity of the PLA matrix. The thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) results demonstrated that the thermal stability of PLA/talc composites was enhanced as well. Moreover, talc at low loading could act as a plasticizer in the polymer flow, which was investigated by rheological tests. The batch foaming experiments revealed that 3% wt. talc loading had the most notable heterogeneous nucleation effect, with the cell size decreasing from 15.4 μm for neat PLA to 8.5 μm and the cell density increasing by 298%.
Spectral range for analysis of natural gas by Raman spectroscopy

In the present work, the method of evaluation of component composition of natural gas is based on the decomposition of Raman spectrum into spectra of the individual components is described. To implementing of this method the spectral ranges 250-2500 cm-1 and 3600-3700 cm-1 were selected. The Raman spectra of the main components of natural gas are presented. Results of Raman gas analyzer approbation on a real natural gas sample are presented. A comparison of the experimental results obtained with the results of chromatographic analysis demonstrates their good agreement. It is experimentally established that the given Raman gas analyzer can reliably determine the content of all molecular natural gas components whose content exceeds 0.005% for 100 s.
UoT-UWF-PartAI at SemEval-2021 Task 5: Self Attention Based Bi-GRU with Multi-Embedding Representation for Toxicity Highlighter

Toxic Spans Detection(TSD) task is defined as highlighting spans that make a text toxic. Many works have been done to classify a given comment or document as toxic or non-toxic. However, none of those proposed models work at the token level. In this paper, we propose a self-attention-based bidirectional gated recurrent unit(BiGRU) with a multi-embedding representation of the tokens. Our proposed model enriches the representation by a combination of GPT-2, GloVe, and RoBERTa embeddings, which led to promising results. Experimental results show that our proposed approach is very effective in detecting span tokens.