Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Active Signal Priority for Light Rail Transit at Grade Crossings

The basic concept and implementation of an active priority system of light rail transit (LRT) for highway–rail grade crossings are presented. The proposed priority system consists of four major components: train detectors, train travel and dwell time predictors, priority request generator (PRG), and traffic signal controllers. As the brain of the system, the PRG adopts a three-scheme conditional priority control strategy. Scheme I, which applies to late LRT trains, features a timing optimization model. The objective of this optimization model is to minimize intersection delays for late trains and meanwhile to minimize impacts on other traffic. Unlike existing signal priority studies, which typically focus on isolated intersections, the proposed model deals with signal timings at multiple intersections and provides an optimized green band for an incoming train. The optimized green band would start at the right time to cover the predicted train arrival time and would be wide enough to accommodate prediction errors. A case study, based on the San Diego Trolley system, in California, demonstrates enormous intersection delay savings of 89.5% and 25.3 s/train for late trains after application of the proposed Scheme I strategy. At the same time, the impact on other traffic in the priority cycle is only 4.1 s/veh. For Schemes II and III when no priority is needed, traffic delay savings are 32.5% and 52.0%, respectively. A simulation study confirms the system benefits and validates the practicality of the active priority system for future field testing.
Rapid genetic divergence and mitonuclear discordance in the Taliang knobby newt (Liangshantriton taliangensis, Salamandridae, Caudata) and their driving forces

The Hengduan Mountains Region (HMR) is the largest “evolutionary frontier” of the northern temperate zone, and the origin and maintenance of species in this area is a research hotspot. Exploring species-specific responses to historical and contemporary environmental changes will improve our understanding of the role of this region in maintaining biodiversity. In this study, mitochondrial and microsatellite diversities were used to assess the contributions of paleogeological events, Pleistocene climatic oscillations, and contemporary landscape characteristics to the rapid intraspecific diversification of Liangshantriton taliangensis, a vulnerable amphibian species endemic to several sky-island mountains in the southeastern HMR. Divergence date estimations suggested that the East Asian monsoon, local uplifting events (Xigeda Formation strata), and Early-Middle Pleistocene transition (EMPT) promoted rapid divergence of L. taliangensis during the Pleistocene, yielding eight mitochondrial lineages and six nuclear genetic lineages. Moreover, population genetic structures were mainly fixed through isolation by resistance. Multiple in situ refugia were identified by ecological niche models and high genetic diversity, which played crucial roles in the persistence and divergence of L. taliangensis during glacial-interglacial cycles. Dramatic climatic fluctuations further promoted recurrent isolation and admixing of populations in scattered glacial refugia. The apparent mitonuclear discordance was likely the result of introgression by secondary contact and/or female-biased dispersal. Postglacial expansion generated two major secondary contact zones (Ganluo (GL) and Chuhongjue (CHJ)). Identification of conservation management units and dispersal corridors offers important recommendations for the conservation of this species.
Review of the Geant4-DNA Simulation Toolkit for Radiobiological Applications at the Cellular and DNA Level

Simple Summary A brief description of the methodologies to simulate ionizing radiation transport in biologically relevant matter is presented. Emphasis is given to the physical, chemical, and biological models of Geant4-DNA that enable mechanistic radiobiological modeling at the cellular and DNA level, important to improve the efficacy of existing and novel radiotherapeutic modalities for the treatment of cancer. Abstract The Geant4-DNA low energy extension of the Geant4 Monte Carlo (MC) toolkit is a continuously evolving MC simulation code permitting mechanistic studies of cellular radiobiological effects. Geant4-DNA considers the physical, chemical, and biological stages of the action of ionizing radiation (in the form of x- and γ-ray photons, electrons and β±-rays, hadrons, α-particles, and a set of heavier ions) in living cells towards a variety of applications ranging from predicting radiotherapy outcomes to radiation protection both on earth and in space. In this work, we provide a brief, yet concise, overview of the progress that has been achieved so far concerning the different physical, physicochemical, chemical, and biological models implemented into Geant4-DNA, highlighting the latest developments. Specifically, the “dnadamage1” and “molecularDNA” applications which enable, for the first time within an open-source platform, quantitative predictions of early DNA damage in terms of single-strand-breaks (SSBs), double-strand-breaks (DSBs), and more complex clustered lesions for different DNA structures ranging from the nucleotide level to the entire genome. These developments are critically presented and discussed along with key benchmarking results. The Geant4-DNA toolkit, through its different set of models and functionalities, offers unique capabilities for elucidating the problem of radiation quality or the relative biological effectiveness (RBE) of different ionizing radiations which underlines nearly the whole spectrum of radiotherapeutic modalities, from external high-energy hadron beams to internal low-energy gamma and beta emitters that are used in brachytherapy sources and radiopharmaceuticals, respectively.
A systematic review of preclinical studies on the taurine role during diabetic nephropathy: focused on anti-oxidative, anti-inflammation, and anti-apoptotic effects

Abstract Diabetic nephropathy is one of the most important and growing diseases globally and the leading cause of cardiovascular mortality in these patients. Taurine is an amino acid that has pleiotropic protective properties on some diseases. This study aimed to investigate the potential role of taurine in the treatment of diabetes-induced nephropathy. To achieve the aim of the present study, a comprehensive systematic search based on PRISMA guidelines has been conducted up to August 2021. A total of 382 articles were found in the electronic databases based on search keywords. After doing the screening, 14 articles were included in the present systematic review. The dated demonstrated elevation of oxidative stress, inflammatory and apoptotic pathways, and changes in other molecules' function plays an essential role in diabetes-induced renal tissue damage. Due to its multiple protective effects, taurine significantly prevented the activation of the pathways mentioned above and altered the function of molecules involved in these pathways, resulting in alleviating diabetic nephropathy. According to the obtained results, it was found that taurine can mitigate diabetes-induced nephropathy, mainly through its anti-oxidant activity, which is an essential factor in activating inflammation and apoptosis pathways.
A Frequency and Voltage Coordinated Control Strategy of Island Microgrid including Electric Vehicles

Frequency and voltage deviation are important standards for measuring energy indicators. It is important for microgrids to maintain the stability of voltage and frequency (VF). Aiming at the VF regulation of microgrid caused by wind disturbance and load fluctuation, a comprehensive VF control strategy for an islanded microgrid with electric vehicles (EVs) based on Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) is proposed in this paper. First of all, the SOC constraints of EVs are added to construct a cluster-EV charging model, by considering the randomness of users’ travel demand and charging behavior. In addition, a four-quadrant two-way charger capacity model is introduced to build a microgrid VF control model including load, micro gas turbine (MT), EVs, and their random power increment constraints. Secondly, according to the two control goals of microgrid frequency and voltage, the structure of DDPG controller is designed. Then, the definition of space, the design of global and local reward functions, and the selection of optimal hyperparameters are completed. Finally, different scenarios are set up in an islanded microgrid with EVs, and the simulation results are compared with traditional PI control and R(λ) control. The simulation results show that the proposed DDPG controller can quickly and efficiently suppress the VF fluctuations caused by wind disturbance and load fluctuations at the same time.
Two-Person Mutual Action Recognition Using Joint Dynamics and Coordinate Transformation

Skeleton-based action recognition has attracted lots of attention in computer vision. Human mutual interaction recognition relies on extracting discriminative features for better understanding details. In this work, we propose two vectors to encode joint dynamics and spatial interaction information. The proposed model shows remarkable performance at handling sequential data. Experimental results demonstrate that our model outperforms state-of-the-art approaches with much less overheads.
Minimum cost wavelength-path routing and wavelength allocation using a genetic-algorithm/heuristic hybrid approach

Minimum cost wavelength-path routing and wavelength allocation of multiwavelength all-optical transport networks using a genetic-algorithm (GA)/heuristic hybrid approach is described. A cost model is adopted which incorporates a dependency on link wavelength requirements. The hybrid algorithm developed uses an object-oriented representation of networks, and incorporates four operators: path mutation, single-point crossover, reroute and shift-out. In addition, an operator-probability adaptation mechanism is employed to improve operator productivity. Experimental results from seven fifteen-node test networks, obtained using a tool for optical network optimisation, modelling and design (NOMaD), suggest the GA/heuristic hybrid approach provides superior results compared to three recent wavelength-allocation heuristics, except when the network cost depends most heavily on wavelength requirement.
Three-dimensional pulse-width modulation technique in three-level power inverters for three-phase four-wired system

Shunt-connected trilevel power inverter in three-phase four-wired system as an active filter or individual current supply (peak-load supply) is studied by a novel technique: three-dimensional (3-D) voltage vectors pulse width modulation (PWM). In past decades, almost all the study for PWM is limited to the two-dimensional (2-D) domain, /spl alpha/ and /spl beta/ frames, in a three-phase three-wired system. However, in practical operation, there are many three-phase four-wired systems in distribution sites. The generalized study of 3-D two-level and three-level inverters is achieved in this paper so as to perform the basic theory of 3-D multilevel space vector switching PWM technique. The sign cubical hysteresis control strategy is proposed and studied with simulation results in 3-D aspect. The 3-D PWM technique in three-level inverters is accomplished.
A transcriptomic atlas of Aedes aegypti reveals detailed functional organization of major body parts and gut regional specializations in sugar-fed and blood-fed adult females

Mosquito vectors transmit numerous pathogens, but large gaps remain in our understanding of their physiology. To facilitate future explorations of mosquito biology, with specific attention to the major vector Aedes aegypti, we have created Aegypti-Atlas (http://aegyptiatlas.buchonlab.com/), an online resource hosting RNAseq profiles of Ae. Aegypti body parts (head, thorax, abdomen, gut, Malpighian tubules, and ovaries), gut regions (crop, proventriculus, anterior and posterior midgut, and hindgut), and a time course of blood meal digestion in the gut. Using Aegypti-Atlas, we provide new insights into the regionalization of gut function, blood feeding response, and immune defenses. We find that the anterior and posterior regions of the mosquito midgut possess clearly delineated digestive specializations which are preserved in the blood-fed state. Blood feeding initiates the sequential transcriptional induction and repression/depletion of multiple cohorts of peptidases throughout blood meal digestion. With respect to defense, immune signaling components, but not recognition or effector molecules, show enrichment in ovaries. Basal expression of antimicrobial peptides is dominated by two genes, holotricin and gambicin, that are expressed in the carcass and the digestive tissues, respectively, in a near mutually exclusive manner. In the midgut, gambicin and other immune effector genes are almost exclusively expressed in the anterior regions, while the posterior midgut exhibits the hallmarks of immune tolerance. Finally, in a cross-species comparison between the midguts of Ae. aegypti and Anopheles gambiae, we observe that regional digestive and immune specializations are closely conserved, indicating that our data may yield inferences that are broadly relevant to multiple mosquito vector species. We further demonstrate that the expression of orthologous genes is highly correlated, with the exception of a ‘species signature’ comprising a small number of highly/disparately expressed genes. With this work, we show the potential of Aegypti-Atlas to unlock a more complete understanding of mosquito biology.
A multi-scale kernel-based network with improved attention mechanism for rotating machinery fault diagnosis under noisy environments

Considering that the vibration signals are easily contaminated by strong and highly nonstationary noise, extracting more sensitive and effective features from the noised vibration signals is still a great challenge for intelligent fault diagnosis of rotating machinery. This paper proposes a multi-scale kernel-based network with an improved attention mechanism (IA-MKNet) to overcome this challenge. In the proposed method, an improved attention mechanism (IAM) for multi-scale convolution is firstly developed to adaptively extract the meaningful fault features and automatically suppress noise. Then, due to the inherent multiple time characteristics of vibration signals, an adaptive multi-scale kernel-based residual block with IAM is designed to capture fault features in multi-time scales of vibration signals. Finally, a combination strategy based on an adaptive ensemble learner is proposed to increase the diversity of features by fusing the outputs of multiple IA-MKNets, which further improves diagnostics accuracy and stability. The experimental results, verified by two bearing data sets with noise interference, confirm that the proposed method improves the fault diagnosis accuracy of rotating machinery under noisy environments, whose performance is superior to the other five benchmark methods.
NON-LINEAR ANALYSIS OF CENTRE OF PRESSURE PATTERNS IN THE GOLF SWING – POINCARE PLOTS

Little research exists in the golf swing examining shot to shot differences in the short or long term. The aim of this study was to use Poincare plots to examine if short and long term patterns exist among golfers. Five golfers performed 50 golf swings hitting a ball into a net while standing on two AMTI force plates. Centre of Pressure in the direction of the swing (CPy) was calculated for each swing. Poincare plots with CPy Range at swing N on the x-axis and CPy Range at swing N + 1 on the y-axis were constructed for each golfer. Plots were individual specific with short and long term variability highlighting interesting differences between golfers. Interesting shot to shot patterning existed, especially for one golfer. The use of Poincare plots in future work can provide useful information to the golfer and coach.
Programming of CNC Milling Machines Using Particle Swarm Optimization

This article proposes asystem for theautomatic programming of a CNC milling machine by particle swarm optimization (PSO). In the presented research, each individual swarm particle presents a possible numerical control (NC) program. Voxel representation of machining area was used. Bresenham's algorithm was implemented, for the rasterization of the cuts. Optimisation with PSO was carried out within a voxelized machining area. The system automatically finds the NC program for optimal machining. The NC program guarantees an optimal selection of tools, the shortest possible work and rapid motions, and minimization of the manufacturing time, thus achieving a reduction in machining costs and increased productivity. Testing using test workpieces and 2.5 D milling confirmed the efficiency of the proposed approach. The proposed intelligent system is easily adaptable for programming other types of CNC machines by PSO.
Early Aseptic Failure of the Tibial Component-Cement Interface in ATTUNE® Total Knee Arthroplasty: A Report of Three Cases

Total knee arthroplasty (TKA) systems are designed to maximize the longevity of the implant. However, an unusually high rate of aseptic tibial tray loosening was observed in the DePuy ATTUNE® total knee arthroplasty system (DePuy Synthes, Warsaw, USA). Affected patients noted symptoms of instability and reproducible pain at the bone-implant interface. However, there was no radiographic evidence of lucency or implant failure. Intra-operatively, the tibial component was grossly loose and lacked adhered cement. We hypothesize that the loosening is due to the smooth architecture of the undersurface of the tibial component, lacking either grit blasting or porous coating.
Optical Chemo-Sensors for Specific Markers in Transformer Insulating Oil Exploiting Molecularly Imprinted Polymers and Plasmonic Optical Fibers

2-FAL (2-furaldehyde) and furanic derivatives are the main by-products of the thermal degradation of cellulose paper insulation of power transformers’ windings. The detection of these compounds in the insulating oil of transformers is essential to investigate the ageing of the oil-paper system in order to avoid failures. To this aim, a non-conventional surface plasmon resonance (SPR) platform in plastic optical fiber (POF) was proposed for the monitoring of a biomimetic receptor specific to detect 2-FAL in transformer oil. In particular, the investigation was performed in mineral oil, which is currently the main insulating liquid for power transformers. A molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) receptor was used, giving the sensor device a noticeable selectivity and many advantages with respect to the biological counterparts. Furthermore, the study was extended to safer and more environmentally acceptable insulating fluids representing an alternative to mineral oil (i.e., esters). To this aim, the principle and limitations of the SPR chemo-sensor performances have been discussed in this work.
A Developed Adaptive Tracking Control Technique for a Four-Rotor Helicopter with External Disturbance

This paper deals with the tracking control problem of attitude angles for a four-rotor helicopter with external disturbance. A new direct adaptive compensation controller and its parameter adaptive laws are designed based on the Lyapunov stability theory, and the designed contorller can not only compensate the disturbance efficiently, but also can make the attitude angles of the four-rotor helicopter track a given reference output. By using the Barbalat lemma, the systems state tracking performance is proofed. Finally, the proposed adaptive technique is evaluated by a simulation example.
The association between body mass index and risk of obstructive sleep apnea among patients with HIV

Background: Although several studies show a positive association between body mass index (BMI) and a higher risk of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) in the general population, there are limited data on that in patients living with HIV (PLHIV). The objective of the current study is to determine the prevalence of high risk for OSA and the association between BMI and OSA in PLHIV. Materials and Methods: The study was conducted on 316 confirmed HIV cases aged ≥ 18 years who attended consulting centers in Tehran during 2019. For the diagnosis of OSA we used the Persian version of the modified Berlin questionnaire that includes ten questions broken down into three categories. A high risk for breathing problems was defined if the total score is ≥ 2. Logistic regression models were used to evaluate the association between BMI and OSA risk groups. Results: Among PLHIV, 52.1% of men and 41.6% of women were considered as high risk for breathing problems during sleep at the time of the study. Patients with a higher risk for breathing problems had significantly higher BMI levels compared to those categorized as low-risk levels (25.2 vs. 24.3 kg/m2). Each unit increase in the BMI increased the odds of being high risk for OSA by 6% in the multivariable model. (odds ratio [OR]: 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.06: 1.01–1.13). Considering BMI categories, compared to the normal weight, being obese (BMI ≥ 30 kg/m2) increased the high risk for OSA (OR [95% CI]: 2.54 [1.10–5.89]). Conclusion: We observed a significant association between general obesity and prevalence of OSA among PLHIV.
Top-down contribution to motor network reorganization during action preparation

BACKGROUND It is unclear whether the Bereitschaftspotential (BP) recorded in humans during action preparation mirrors motor areas activation escalation, or if its early and late phases reflect the engagement of different functional networks. OBJECTIVE Here, we aimed at recording the TMS evoked-potentials (TEP) stimulating the supplementary motor area (SMA) to assess whether and how cortical excitability and functional connectivity of this region change as the BP increases. We hypothesize that, at later stages, the SMA functional network should become more connected to regions relevant for the implementation of the final motor plan. METHODS We performed TMS-EEG recordings on fourteen healthy subjects during the performance of a visuomotor Go/No-go task, eliciting and recording cortical activity and functional connectivity at -700 ms and -300 ms before the onset of visual stimuli over the SMA. RESULTS When approaching stimulus onset, and thus BP peak, the SMA increased its functional connectivity with movement-related structures in the gamma and alpha bands, indicating a regional top-down preparation to implement the motor act. Beta-band connectivity, instead, was maintained constant for the whole BP time-course, being potentially related to sustained attention required by the experimental task. CONCLUSION These findings reveal that the BP is not a mere result of increased activation of the SMA, but the functional networks in which this region is involved qualitatively changes over time, becoming more related to the execution of the motor act.