Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cross-stream migration of non-spherical particles in a second-order fluid – theories of particle dynamics in arbitrary quadratic flows

Particle migration in viscoelastic suspensions is vital in many applications in the biomedical community and the chemical/oil industries. Previous studies have provided insight into the motion of spherical particles in simple viscoelastic flows, yet the combined effect of more complex flow profiles and particle shapes is under-explored. Here, we develop approximate analytical expressions for the polymeric force and torque on an arbitrarily shaped particle in a second-order fluid, subject to a general quadratic flow field. This model is exact for the case when the first and second normal stress coefficients satisfy $\unicode[STIX]{x1D713}_{1}=-2\unicode[STIX]{x1D713}_{2}$. Under this assumption, we examine how particle shape alters cross-stream particle migration (i.e. lift) and particle orientation in both shear- and pressure-driven flows. In shear-driven flows, we observe that spheroidal particles adjust their orientation to align their longer axis along the vorticity direction, although significant deviations from slender-body theories occur for finite aspect ratios. In a slit-like pressure-driven flow, we identify scaling theories to quantify how the particle lift depends on shape for a wide variety of shapes. We find that prolate particles slowly transition to a log-rolling state as they approach the flow centre, with the lift initially being larger than that of an equal-volume sphere, but then becoming smaller as log-rolling emerges. The net effect is a smaller average migration speed for particles with larger aspect ratio. Lastly, we discuss future directions for experimental studies on particle dynamics as well as directions to extend the current work towards more complicated systems.
From Possession to Relationship -An Investigation of the Consumer-driven Anthropomorphism of Fashion Goods-

This qualitative study delves into consumers'' meanings, perceptions, and behaviors toward the anthropomorphism of fashion goods based on personal experiences. Previous studies focused on consumer responses to the marketer-driven anthropomorphism of products, messages, and brands; however, the present study examines consumers'' spontaneous anthropomorphism focusing on personal meanings as a possessor and meanings in their social relationships. A qualitative methodology is adopted that involves in-depth interviews with eleven males and females in their 20s and 30s. Participants stated that were engaged in the anthropomorphic practice of fashion goods on a daily basis. Data analysis was based on grounded theory. Findings on consumerdriven anthropomorphism are discussed at personal and interpersonal levels. At the personal level, anthropomorphic objects are their companions that are often called “baby. ” Interestingly, anthropomorphism reduces the stigmas of materialism from the participants'' side. At the interpersonal level, anthropomorphic practice is a ritual of sharing a common interest and assuring intimacy. Implications and suggestions for future research are also discussed.
SEMPLICe: Um Modelo Sequencial de Proficiência em Comunidades Online para Aprendizado de Idioma ∗

O Reddit é uma rede social online em que usuários interessados em um mesmo tópico interagem uns com os outros em subreddits. Subreddits para aprendizado de idioma vem atraindo usuários de diferentes nı́veis de pro- ficiência a cada ano, buscando melhorar o aprendizado. Em particular, no subreddit German, os usuários são aconselhados a informar seu nı́vel de pro- ficiência ao escrever um post. Contudo, apenas 20% dos posts possuem tais tags. Abordamos aqui o problema de classificar a proficiência dos usuários a partir de suas publicações. Conduzimos uma série de experimentos que demonstram que classificadores que tratam as publicações como observações independentes tem baixo desempenho. À vista disso, propomos um novo modelo, SEMPLICe, que considera as caracterı́sticas textuais e também o histórico de um usuário no subreddit para classificar sua proficiência ao longo do tempo. Baseado na suposição de que a proficiência é não decresce desde que um usuário permaneça ativo, SEMPLICe alcança um F 1 ponderado até 29,6% maior que os métodos anteriores. SEMPLICe utiliza programação dinâmica para obter complexidade linear no tamanho do histórico de cada usuário.
Towards an Understanding of Participants’ Sustained Participation in Crowdsourcing Contests

ABSTRACT This study explores the factors that influence individuals’ sustained participation in crowdsourcing contests. By conducting an empirical study using data from an online crowdsourcing contest platform, Kaggle, we found that tenure, previous performance, price amount, number of competitors, and competition duration have a statistically significant effect on individuals’ continued participation. This research contributes to the literature by identifying the factors influencing individuals’ sustained participation in crowdsourcing contests that have both collaborative and competitive components.
Native ribonucleases process sgRNA transcripts to create catalytic Cas9/sgRNA complexes in planta

The current CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing dogma for single guide RNAs (sgRNA) delivery is based on the premise that 5′ and 3′ nucleotide overhangs negate Cas9/sgRNA catalytic activity in vivo. This has led to engineering strategies designed to either avoid or remove extraneous nucleotides on the 5′ and 3′ termini. Previously, we used a Tobacco mosaic virus viral vector to express both GFP and a sgRNA from a single virus-derived mRNA in Nicotiana benthamiana. This vector yielded high levels of GFP and catalytically active sgRNAs. Here, in an effort to understand the biochemical interactions of this result, we used in vitro assays to demonstrate that nucleotide overhangs 5′, but not 3′, proximal to the sgRNA do in fact inactivate Cas9 catalytic activity at the specified target site. Next we showed that in planta sgRNAs bound to Cas9 are devoid of the expected 5′ overhangs transcribed by the virus. Furthermore, when a plant nuclear promoter was used for expression of the GFP-sgRNA fusion transcript it also produced indels when delivered with Cas9. These results reveal that 5′ “auto-processing” of progenitor sgRNAs occurs natively in plants. Towards a possible mechanism for the perceived “auto-processing”, we found, using in vitro generated RNAs and those isolated from plants, that the 5′ to 3′ exoribonuclease XRN1 can degrade elongated progenitor sgRNAs whereas the mature sgRNA end-products are resistant. Comparisons with other studies suggest that sgRNA “auto-processing” may be a phenomenon not unique to plants, but other eukaryotes as well. Summary Native Nicotiana benthamiana ribonucleases cleave exogenous nucleotides 5′ to the sgRNA spacer transcript to create catalytic Cas9/sgRNA complexes in planta.
FPGAaaS: A Survey of Infrastructures and Systems

The popularity of cloud computing services for delivering and accessing infrastructure on demand has significantly increased over the last few years. Concurrently, the usage of FPGAs to accelerate compute-intensive applications has become more widespread in different computational domains due to their ability to achieve high throughput and predictable latency while providing programmability and improved energy efficiency. Computationally intensive applications such as big data analytics, machine learning, and video processing have been accelerated by FPGAs. With the exponential workload increase in data centers, major cloud service providers have made FPGAs and their capabilities available as cloud services. However, enabling FPGAs in the cloud is not a trivial task due to incompatibilities with existing cloud infrastructure and operational challenges related to abstraction, virtualization, partitioning, and security. In this article, we survey recent frameworks for offering FPGA hardware acceleration as a cloud service, classify them based on their virtualization mode, tenancy model, communication interface, software stack, and hardware infrastructure. We further highlight current FPGAaaS trends and identify FPGA resource sharing, security, and microservicing as important areas for future research.
Mountainous Tourism Development in Crete: Local Perspective

Mountainous tourism is perceived as an effective catalyst of socio-economic development and is relied upon as a means of addressing the challenges that peripheral rural communities in Crete are facing, primarily those related to the decline of traditional industries. Studies elsewhere show that it has the potential to assist local communities, such as the mountainous village of Anogia, which is the area of research in this paper. This study examines residents’ perceptions regarding the impacts of tourism development. The limited knowledge in relation to the residents’ perspective of tourism development in mountainous areas was the driving force for undertaking this study. A qualitative method was employed for the purpose of this study. A purposive sample of 50 residents was interviewed using semi-structured and conversational interviews. The analysis of the collected data shows that mountain tourism can produce significant negative impacts as well as the expected positive outcomes. A significant finding of this study was that residents in Anogia support tourism development, but it is their view that such tourism should be responsible to, and respectful of their local traditions and customs. Keywords: Mountainous tourism development, village tourism, local residents, impacts, responsible tourism, Crete
Lessons Learned from the Population-Based Multiple Sclerosis Registries in the Developed Countries

Context: The prevalence of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) in the world has grown and has attracted particular attention on the international level and governments, has considered prevention interventions and managing the symptoms of the disease to reduce the economic burden and has improved the quality of life of these patients necessary. One of the most important strategies in this field is MS population-based registry. Accordingly, this study was designed to identify the components of MS population-based registries within the developed countries. Evidence Acquisition: The present study is a review article that was conducted in 2018. The population of the study consisted of MS population-based registry systems of developed countries such as USA, France, and Denmark. Based on the combination of related keywords, about 60 papers appropriately and after extraction, categorization and integration were formulated in the form of proper sequence for the purpose of the study. Results: The main components of MS population-based registries in developed countries included registry goals, information resources, Minimum Data Sets (MDS), types of processes, types of reports, quality control measures, data transmission time limits, responsible for recording and collecting data, responsible organization and executor, data transmission method and the privacy practices Conclusion: With regard to the results, it is suggested that the developing countries must consider creating an MS population-based registry as a national program due to their health system and the MS population-based registries structure in developed countries, so that they can adopt a suitable strategy for preventing and controlling the disease.
The concept of “chaos measure” in the aspect of social synergetics

We understand chaos as a bifurcation process, the quantitative characteristic of which is reduced to the number of possibilities for the further evolution of the system, which in real time is directly expressed by self-oscillations of chaos and order (bifurcation cascade). The questions are being investigated: the scientific correctness of such formulations as ―chaos measure‖, ―evolution of chaos‖, correlation of the concepts ―measure of chaos‖ and ―magnitude of entropy‖; does the concept of ―measure of chaos‖ correlate with the concept of entropy; how the concepts of ―measure of chaos‖ and ―measure of order‖ relate, and is it possible to ―control‖ chaos? Models that study the evolution of open systems provide a bifurcation picture of development opportunities in at least two directions: complication and simplification, progress and regression, hierarchization of systems and their de-hierarchization, where a quantitative measure of chaos corresponds to the number of possible outcomes. The conclusion drawn from this is that human influence on the vector of the evolutionary process is reduced to a deliberate impact on the structure, which is commonly called the norm: an individual is able to comprehend the "measure of chaos" of the system of which he is an element, correlate it with the "measure of order" of the system and, setting the norm, thereby determine the direction to the superattractor.
Geometric variability of organs at risk in head and neck radiotherapy

Many head and neck cancer patients live with side effects due to the radiation therapy. Xerostomia (having a dry mouth) is a serious and common side effect, which can persist long after the treatment. Predictive models can be used to calculate the probability of the occurrence of a certain complication, the ' normal tissue complication probability (NTCP) '. NTCP models for xerostomia often use the mean dose to the major salivary gland (parotid gland). The NTCP can be used to select patients for an advanced treatment. However, there is variation in the delineation of organs at risk (such as the parotid gland). Also, the shape and size of the parotid gland change during the course of radiotherapy. These variations in geometry lead to variations in the mean dose, and therefore to inconsistent values of NTCP. In this dissertation, the size and the effect of variations in delineation and changing anatomy are studied, and solutions to reduce these variations or limit its consequences are proposed. The most important results are internationally approved delineation guidelines, which have been implemented world-wide. This will reduce interobserver variability and allow the generic application of NTCP models. In addition, a method is proposed to select patients with a large dose variation in the parotid gland for adaptive radiotherapy. In this way, the risk of xerostomia will be reduced and quality of life improved.
Multiomics Analysis of the mdx/mTR Mouse Model of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a progressive neuromuscular disease characterized by extensive muscle weakness. Patients with DMD lack a functional dystrophin protein, which transmits force and organizes the cytoskeleton of skeletal muscle. Multiomic studies evaluate combined changes in the transcriptome, proteome, and metabolome, and have been proposed as a way to obtain novel insight about disease processes from preclinical models. We therefore sought to use this approach to study pathological changes in dystrophic muscles. We evaluated hindlimb muscles of male mdx/mTR mice, which lack a functional dystrophin protein and have deficits in satellite cell abundance and proliferative capacity. Wild type (WT) C57BL/6J mice served as controls. Muscle fiber contractility was measured, along with changes in the transcriptome using RNA sequencing, and in the proteome, metabolome, and lipidome using mass spectroscopy. While mdx/mTR mice displayed gross pathological changes and continued cycles of degeneration and regeneration, we found no differences in fiber contractility between strains. However, there were numerous changes in the transcriptome and proteome related to protein balance, contractile elements, extracellular matrix, and metabolism. There was only a 53% agreement in fold change data between the proteome and transcriptome, highlighting the need to study protein abundance along with gene expression measures. Numerous changes in markers of skeletal muscle metabolism were observed, with dystrophic muscles exhibiting elevated glycolytic metabolites. These findings highlight the utility of multiomics in studying muscle disease, and provide additional insight into the pathological changes in dystrophic muscles that might help to guide evidence-based exercise prescription in DMD patients.
Prevalence of hypertension and associated risk factors among Bhutanese Monks in Thimphu, Bhutan: A cross-sectional study

Hypertension is a major health problem and it accounts for more than 9.4 million people to die every year globally due to its high complications. It is a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases and high research importance has been given due to its high prevalence. The objective of the present study was to determine the prevalence of hypertension and to assess its risk factors among monks populations in Thimphu. A cross-sectional study with purposive sampling method was conducted among the five different monasteries in Thimphu. A self administered questionnaire was structured for 307 monks from age 18 and above. The prevalence rate of hypertension in the present study was 32.6% among Bhutanese monks. Hypertension is significantly higher in elder age groups which conclude that hypertension increase with the increase of age and have a strong association. Alcohol use, betel consumption, and physical inactivity were found to be significant risk factors for developing hypertension. With the 32.6% prevalence rate, only 26% of them are receiving medications. There is an impending need for effective intervention strategies.
Topology planning for autonomous MMGs: an ordered binary decision diagram‐based approach

This paper finds its motivation from the perspective of utility planners, where the flexibility of choice while reconfiguring a distribution system into Multi-Micrgrids (MMGs) is critical. To address the topology planning problem for MMGs from this dimension, a holistic algorithm incorporating graph theory, ordered binary decision diagrams, and a modified Gauss Siedel power flow algorithm is proposed. This multi-indexed, multi-tier scheme guarantees self-adequacy and reliability of individual microgrids (MGs) by effectively solving a modified balanced partitioning problem, and ensures validation of inequality constraints through power flow studies. The available solutions are ranked according to two system-level performance indices to provide a hierarchically feasible solution list to system planner. This algorithm is presented as an alternate tool for heuristic techniques to ensure a complete search of solution space and to increase the number of available topology planning solutions for the system operator. The flexibility of choice offered by this planning algorithm, tendency to be employed as a resource assessment tool, and incorporation of power flow analysis for autonomous MGs renders it to be practically superior to its counterparts. The proposed algorithm is tested to furnish its advantages and applicability in practical utility systems.
Model Predictive Control mit MATLAB und Simulink - Model Predictive Control with MATLAB and Simulink

Modellbasierte prädiktive Regelungen (Model Predictive Control, MPC) haben sich in den letzten drei Jahrzehnten zu einem leistungsfähigen Ansatz für die Lösung anspruchsvoller Aufgaben der Mehrgrößenregelung mit Beschränkungen der Stellund Regelgrößen entwickelt. Sie werden in der Industrie inzwischen in vielen Bereichen erfolgreich eingesetzt. Mit der MPC Toolbox des Programmsystems MATLAB®/Simulink® steht ein Werkzeug zur Verfügung, das in der Praxis der Einsatzvorbereitung realer MPC-Regelungen dient, aber auch für die Lehre und Forschung an Universitäten und Hochschulen verwendet wird. Das vorliegende Buch gibt eine Übersicht über die Grundideen und Anwendungsvorteile des MPC-Konzepts. Es zeigt, wie mit Hilfe der Toolbox in MATLAB® und Simulink® MPC-Regelungen entworfen, eingestellt und simuliert werden können. Ausgewählte Beispiele aus dem Bereich der Verfahrenstechnik demonstrieren mögliche Vorgehensweisen und vertiefen das Verständnis. Das Buch richtet sich an in der Industrie tätige Ingenieure, die mit Hilfe von MATLAB®/Simulink® MPCRegelungen planen, entwickeln und betreiben wollen, aber auch an Studierende unterschiedlicher technischer Fachdisziplinen, die in das Arbeitsgebiet Model Predictive Control einsteigen wollen.
Slow Axonal Transport and Presynaptic Targeting of Clathrin Packets

Clathrin has established roles in endocytosis, with clathrin-cages enclosing membrane infoldings, followed by rapid disassembly and reuse of clathrin-monomers. In neurons, clathrin synthesized in cell-bodies is conveyed via slow axonal transport – enriching at presynapses – however, mechanisms underlying transport/targeting are unknown, and its role at synapses is debated. Combining live-imaging, mass-spectrometry (MS), Apex-labeled EM-tomography and super-resolution, we found that unlike dendrites where clathrin assembles and disassembles as expected, axons contain stable ‘clathrin transport-packets’ that move intermittently with an anterograde bias, conveying endocytosis-related proteins. The overall kinetics generate a slow biased flow of axonal clathrin, and we identify actin/myosin-VI as putative tethers. Inhibiting endocytosis does not affect clathrin transport-packets, suggesting specialized roles in trafficking and synaptic delivery. Presynapses have integer-numbers of clathrin assemblies resembling packets, circumferentially abutting the synaptic-vesicle cluster – an alignment that may have functional implications. The data offer a new nanoscale view of neuronal clathrin, and a mechanistic basis for its slow transport and presynaptic targeting.
Renal Dysfunction among HIV-infected Patients on Tenofovir-Based Antiretroviral Therapy at Ronald Ross Hospital in Zambia

Objective: Tenofovir Disoproxil Fumerate (TDF) is contraindicated for use in HIV infected patients when creatinine clearance (CrCl) is below 50ml/min. We determined prevalence and factors associated with renal dysfunction at 18 months follow up in adult HIV positive patients on TDF-based antiretroviral therapy (ART). Methods: We conducted a cross sectional study of 445 HIV positive patients’ records on a TDF-regimen at Ronald Ross General Hospital in Zambia. Patient’s records in data management software (SMARTCARE) from 2008 to 2014 were reviewed to determine proportions of patients on TDF developing renal dysfunction. We estimated glomerular filtration rate (GFR) by creatinine clearance using the Cockcroft-Gault formula to determine renal dysfunction. CrCl level ≤ 50 ml/min indicated renal dysfunction. Multiple logistic regression was used to determine factors associated with renal dysfunction. Results: At baseline (n=429), median age of patients was 35 years (IQR 30, 42), median CrCl level 106.2 ml/ min (IQR: 79.9, 127.8). At 18 months, median CrCl 102 ml/min (IQR: 81.6, 123.2) which remained within normal physiological range (88-137 ml/min). Point prevalence of renal dysfunction was 18.6% (95% CI; 0.2-28.3). Multivariable analysis showed that ages <50 years than older (AOR: 0.06 95%CI 0.01-0.27; p<0.0001), and those with higher CD4+ cell count ≥ 350 cells/uL than lower (AOR: 0.19 95%CI 0.03-0.21; P=0.014) had lower likelihood of renal dysfunction. Conclusion: We found a high prevalence of renal dysfunction among HIV positive adults on tenofovir-based therapy. This was concentrated in older patients with low CD4+ cell counts suggesting a need for close renal function monitoring in this population when initiating tenofovir-based treatment.