Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prediction of Coronavirus Disease (covid-19) Evolution in USA with the Model Based on the Eyring Rate Process Theory and Free Volume Concept

A modification arguing that the human movement energy may change with time is made on our previous infectious disease model, in which infectious disease transmission is considered as a sequential chemical reaction and reaction rate constants obey the Eyrings rate process theory and free volume concept. The modified model is employed to fit current covid-19 outbreak data in USA and to make predictions on the numbers of the infected, the removed and the death in the foreseeable future. Excellent fitting curves and regression quality are obtained, indicating that the model is working and the predictions may be close to reality. Our work could provide some ideas on what we may expect in the future and how we can prepare accordingly for this difficult period.
Trajectories without quantum uncertainties

Common knowledge suggests that trajectories of particles in quantum mechanics always have quantum uncertainties. These quantum uncertainties set by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle limit precision of measurements of fields and forces, and ultimately give rise to the standard quantum limit in metrology. With the rapid developments of sensitivity of measurements these limits have been approached in various types of measurements including measurements of fields and acceleration. Here it is shown that a quantum trajectory of one system measured relatively to another “reference system” with an effective negative mass can be quantum uncertainty–free. The method crucially relies on the generation of an Einstein‐Podolsky‐Rosen entangled state of two objects, one of which has an effective negative mass. Such state has been created experimentally and thus, from a practical perspective, these ideas open the way towards force and acceleration measurements at new levels of sensitivity far below the standard quantum limit.
Structural Analysis of Agent Oriented Methodologies

Agent-oriented software engineering (AOSE) systems are often distinguished with intelligence, autonomy, and reasoning. The main purposes of development AOSE methodologies are to facilitate the process of developing software lifecycle, and increase the quality of software products. Now, there are no agreements on constructing agents or modeling them in the lifecycle development process. Large number of AOSE methodologies with various backgrounds, was available in the last years. However, assessment of these methodologies faced several difficulties; the completeness of various methodologies varies explicitly, for this, comparing agent methodologies is more difficult; as they cover different aspects or differ in their terminology. The main objective of this study is to analyze several agent-based methodologies in an attempt to assess and understand the relationship among these agent-oriented methodologies by performing structural analysis.
HIV decision support: from molecule to man

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is recognized to be one of the most destructive pandemics in recorded history. Effective highly active antiretroviral therapy and the availability of genetic screening of patient virus data have led to sustained viral suppression and higher life expectancy in patients who have been infected with HIV. The sheer complexity of the disease stems from the multiscale and highly dynamic nature of the system under study. The complete cascade from genome, proteome, metabolome and physiome to health forms a multidimensional system that crosses many orders of magnitude in temporal and spatial scales. Understanding, quantifying and handling this complexity is one of the biggest challenges of our time, which requires a highly multidisciplinary approach. In order to supply researchers with an interactive framework and to provide the medical professional with appropriate tools and information for making a balanced and reliable clinical decision, we have developed ‘ViroLab’, a collaborative decision-support system (http://www.virolab.org/). ViroLab contains computational models that cover various spatial and temporal scales from atomic-level interactions in nanoseconds up to sociological interactions on the epidemiological level, spanning years of disease progression. ViroLab allows for personalized drug ranking. It is on trial in six hospitals and various virology and epidemiology laboratories across Europe.
The effect of an elevated atmospheric CO(_2) concentration on secondary metabolism and resource allocation in plantago maritima and armeria maritima

There are relatively few reports concerning carbon and nitrogen partitioning into secondary metabolism in plants grown in elevated atmospheric CO(_2). This thesis investigates the effects of changes in atmospheric CO(_2) and soil nitrogen availability on compatible solute accumulation and resource allocation in Plantago maritima and Armeria maritima. It was hypothesised that contrasting metabolic responses to abiotic stress cause a species-specific response in P. maritima and A. maritima in resource allocation. In response to drought, P. maritima accumulates the carbon based compatible Solute sorbitol, whilst A. maritima accumulates the nitrogen based solutes betaine and proline. Over ten weeks, A. maritima was more responsive to changes in C and N availability than P. maritima, especially in the amount of C fixed into leaf matter. After elevated CO(_2) exposure for one year, the biomass of P. maritima increased and of A. maritima decreased, compared to the respective plants at ambient CO(_2). Compatible solute concentrations were increased by drought at ambient CO(_2) but decreased in droughted plants at elevated CO(_2). This was hypothesised to be due to lower transpiration rates. Rates of transpiration in P. maritima decreased in response to elevated CO(_2) but A. maritima did not. Tissue water-potential was also lowered in response to elevated CO(_2). This thesis also examines resource allocation to other major C and N sinks. In P. maritima grown at elevated CO(_2) for one year, total soluble phenolic concentrations increased and the concentration of soluble protein decreased. In A. maritima, phenolic concentrations decreased and protein concentrations increased. The effect of enhanced CO(_2) on the secondary metabolism of P. maritima was investigated in greater detail. Six phenolics were identified using metabolite profiling, namely p-coumaric acid, ferulic acid, caffeic acid, verbascoside, plantamajoside and luteolin. P. maritima exposed to elevated CO(_2) had higher concentrations of some of these individual phenolic compounds and histochemical analysis identified increases in the number of lignified vessels and a decrease of lignified vessel-wall thickness.
Laser manipulation of metastable neon atoms

The photon statistics of resonance fluorescence are studied by means of an atomic beam deflection experiment; The expected sub-Poissonian statistics are a manifestation of the quantummechanical nature of light. We present extensive results giving the deviation from Poissonian photon statistics as a function of the intensity and the detuning of the exciting laser field. We compare the data with results from a numerical simulation and give an explicitly real-valued expression for the integrated photon waiting time distribution. Due to a transient effect a large difference between the two level theory and our experimental data in case of q excitation is observed. However, excellent agreement between the experimental data and the numerical simulation is demonstrated. 10 Chapter 2: Photon statistics of resonance fluorescence
Changes in Endothelial Function after Acute Resistance Exercise Using Free Weights

We determined the effects of an acute bout of free-weight resistance exercise (ARE) on cardiovascular hemodynamics and endothelial function in resistance-trained individuals. Nineteen young, healthy, resistance-trained individuals performed two randomized sessions consisting of ARE or a quiet control (CON). The ARE consisted of three sets of 10 repetitions at 75% 1-repetition maximum for the squat, bench press, and deadlift. Cardiovascular hemodynamics was assessed using finger photoplethysmography. Forearm blood flow (FBF), and vasodilatory capacity markers, were assessed using venous occlusion plethysmography. Forearm vascular conductance was calculated by the division of mean FBF by mean arterial pressure. A two-way ANOVA was used to compare the effects of condition (ARE, CON) across time (rest, recovery). There were significant (p ≤ 0.05) decreases in mean arterial pressure and total peripheral resistance across conditions and time. There were significant condition-by-time interactions (p ≤ 0.05) for heart rate, stroke volume, and cardiac output after the ARE compared to the CON and rest. FBF was significantly (p = 0.001) increased during the recovery from ARE, as well as vasodilatory capacity markers such as peak blood flow (p = 0.05) and reactive hyperemia-induced blood flow (p = 0.0001). These data suggest that whole-body free-weight exercises acutely reduced blood pressure while simultaneously augmenting FBF, and vasodilatory capacity markers.
Singing voice detection with deep recurrent neural networks

In this paper, we propose a new method for singing voice detection based on a Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BLSTM) Recurrent Neural Network (RNN). This classifier is able to take a past and future temporal context into account to decide on the presence/absence of singing voice, thus using the inherent sequential aspect of a short-term feature extraction in a piece of music. The BLSTM-RNN contains several hidden layers, so it is able to extract a simple representation fitted to our task from low-level features. The results we obtain significantly outperform state-of-the-art methods on a common database.
Winners and losers in the Arab Uprisings: A Mediterranean Tourism

This paper analyses the effects of the recent Arab uprisings on tourism destinations located along the Mediterranean coastline. It uses time-series analysis to model international tourist arrivals. First, autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models are estimated for the period 1980-2009 and predicted for 2010-2014 to establish suitable country controls. Second, Bayesian Structural Time-Series models designed primarily to determine causal impacts in on-line marketing campaigns are used to establish the effects of the events in Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Turkey, Spain and Greece. The main conclusion is that the models clearly capture the negative impact of the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt and their positive impacts on Morocco and Turkey. However, the effects on Spain and Greece are less clear and depend crucially on the set of controls used in the analysis.
PMThreads: persistent memory threads harnessing versioned shadow copies

Byte-addressable non-volatile memory (NVM) makes it possible to perform fast in-memory accesses to persistent data using standard load/store processor instructions. Some approaches for NVM are based on durable memory transactions and provide a persistent programming paradigm. However, they cannot be applied to existing multi-threaded applications without extensive source code modifications. Durable transactions typically rely on logging to enforce failure-atomic commits that include additional writes to NVM and considerable ordering overheads. This paper presents PMThreads, a novel user-space runtime that provides transparent failure-atomicity for lock-based parallel programs. A shadow DRAM page is used to buffer application writes for efficient propagation to a dual-copy NVM persistent storage framework during a global quiescent state. In this state, the working NVM copy and the crash-consistent copy of each page are atomically updated, and their roles are switched. A global quiescent state is entered at timed intervals by intercepting pthread lock acquire and release operations to ensure that no thread holds a lock to persistent data. Running on a dual-socket system with 20 cores, we show that PMThreads substantially outperforms the state-of-the-art Atlas, Mnemosyne and NVthreads systems for lock-based benchmarks (Phoenix, PARSEC benchmarks, and microbenchmark stress tests). Using Memcached, we also investigate the scalability of PMThreads and the effect of different time intervals for the quiescent state.
Titration of the Iranian White Spot Virus isolate, on Crayfish Astacus leptodactylus and Penaeus semisulcatus

White Spot Virus (WSV) is currently the most serious viral pathogen of shrimp worldwide; it causes mortality up to 100% within 7-10 days in commercial shrimp farms. Infected Indian white shrimp Fenneropenaeus indicus samples were collected from Guatr shrimp site in Sistan and Baluchestan province in south of Iran and WSV infection was confirmed by Nested PCR. WSV was isolated from infected shrimp samples by centrifugation and filtration and multiplied in crayfish by intramuscular inoculation, the isolated virus was called WSV/IRN/1/2010. In order to determine the dilution resulting in 90-100% mortality in Penaeus semiculcatus, diluted virus stock in steps from 10 0 till 10 5 times in sterile PBS was injected intramuscularly to 14 shrimps in each group. Also the virus stock was diluted in steps from 1/2 till 1/32 times in sterile PBS and injected intramuscularly in Astacus leptodactylus crayfish. Therefore the LD50 of live virus stock in Astacus leptodactylus and Penaeus semiculcatus crayfish were calculated by the Karber method 10 3.29 /ml and 10 5.35
Pooled RNA extraction and PCR assay for efficient SARS-CoV-2 detection

Testing for active SARS-CoV-2 infection is a fundamental tool in public health measures taken to control the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the overwhelming use of SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests worldwide, availability of test kits has become a major bottleneck. Here we demonstrate the reliability and efficiency of two simple pooling strategies that can increase testing capacity about 5-fold to 7.5-fold, in populations with a low infection rate. We have implemented the method in a routine clinical diagnosis setting, and already tested 2,168 individuals for SARS-CoV-2 using 311 RNA extraction and RT-PCR kits.
"SMART" MEDIATORS FOR SELF-CONTROLLED INDUCTIVE HEATING

INTRODUCTION: Hyperthermia is a rapidly developing technique in cancer therapy. It takes advantage of the higher sensitivity of tumor tissue to heat and typically involves heating of the affected organ to 43 – 45 °C. Magnetic fluid hyperthermia [1] attracts increasing attention, since it allows minimizing side effects by the localized heating of only desired parts of the organism, including tumors located deep inside the patient’s body. The method involves introduction of ferromagnetic particles (mediators) into the desired part of the organism and heating them with an alternating electromagnetic field of radio-frequency range (RF). Magnetic fluids based on nanocrystalline Fe3O4, stabilized by biocompatible surfactants [2-6], are typically used as mediators. Unfortunately, it is impossible to control the local temperature near the mediator particles, possibly causing local overheating and necrosis of normal tissue. This problem could be solved with ferromagnetic particles of high RF absorption and a Curie temperature (Tc) of ca. 42 45 °C. Thus, local temperature control can be ensured even with a nonuniform distribution of mediator particles throughout the tissue, variable RF intensity and uneven dissipation of the evolving heat. If Tc of this material can be purposefully varied, mediators could be adapted to the particular medical application. Similar approach is used in cancer thermal therapies, which utilize implantable “thermoseeds” with a particular Curie temperature [7,8]. These macroscopically sized solid units are surgically inserted in the affected organ and are heated by an external RF. The Tc of the “thermoseed” determines the temperature of the heating. Significant limitations of these methods are the necessity of a stressful surgical intervention and a relatively small volume around each “thermoseed” which can be effectively heated. The reduction of size of the heatproducing elements so that they can be delivered as a suspension via catheter into the bloodstream of the tumor and spread throughout its capillaries, is the obvious solution of these problems. Sato et al [9,10] reported using 50 μm flakes of an amorphous ferromagnetic metal alloy with Tc of ca. 45 °C for intratissue hyperthermia in dogs. However, these relatively large electrically conducting particles are heated in an RF field by eddy currents even above Tc. and do not penetrate into small capillaries. Numerous studies [1-6,12,13] have shown that submicron-sized non-conducting particles are most effective for hyperthermia. The goal of this work was to produce biologically compatible, electrically non-conductive nanoparticles with Tc in the range of 40-50°C. Individual ferromagnetic substances with Tc in this range do not exist, but by combining several elements and by varying the composition of the mixture it is possible to produce alloys, amorphous structures, ferrites and other multi-component systems consisting of metals and metalloids. We used several synthesis techniques to produce a variety of ultradisperse particles with suitable Tc and tested their behavior in an RF field.
Dung decomposition of cattle grazing from mixed pastures of Signalgrass (Brachiaria decumbens Stapf.) and tree legumes

The mineralization rate of ruminant manure may influence the fertilization management of pastures. This study aimed to evaluate feces decomposition of heifers grazing signalgrass (Brachiaria decumbens Stapf.) fertilized or not with N, or intercropped with legumes in the dry forest region. Two experiments were conducted; the first one was a CRD that evaluated the evolution of CO2 from a mixture of soil and feces (10:1) during 22 days of incubation in a hermetically sealed bucket with a solution of NaOH 0.5 mol L -1 . The second one was a RCBD that evaluated the in situ decomposition of feces in nylon bags in time periods 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 and 256 days after incubation above ground. The single negative exponential mathematical model was adequate (P ≤ 0.0001) to quantify the CO2 evolution of the mixture of soil and feces, indicating that 78% of CO2 was released at the beginning of the incubation, especially for the feces collected in the signalgrass pastures intercropped with Gliricidia sepium (Jacq.) Kunth ex Walp. (gliricídia). After the first 5 days, CO2 evolution was more stable. Remaining biomass in the litterbag along decomposition fitted the single negative exponential model (P < 0.001). Greater relative decomposition rate (k) of bovine fecal biomass occurred for the Nfertilized signalgrass treatment (k = 0.0031 g g -1 day -1 ) and a lesser rate for the treatment intercropped with Mimosa caesalpiniifolia Benth. (sabiá) (k = 0.0018 g g -1 day -1 ). Nitrogen fertilization in signalgrass pasture favored the decomposition of bovine feces at the end of 256 days of incubation.
Psychological impact of infectious disease outbreaks on pregnant women: rapid evidence review

Objectives Infectious disease outbreaks can be distressing for everyone, especially those deemed to be particularly vulnerable such as pregnant women, who have been named a high-risk group in the current COVID-19 pandemic. This paper aimed to summarise existing literature on the psychological impact of infectious disease outbreaks on women who were pregnant at the time of the outbreak. Study design The design of this study is a rapid review. Methods Five databases were searched for relevant literature, and main findings were extracted. Results Thirteen articles were included in the review. The following themes were identified: negative emotional states; living with uncertainty; concerns about infection; concerns about and uptake of prophylaxis or treatment; disrupted routines; non-pharmaceutical protective behaviours; social support; financial and occupational concerns; disrupted expectations of birth, prenatal care and postnatal care and sources of information. Conclusions Pregnant women have unique needs during infectious disease outbreaks and could benefit from up-to-date, consistent information and guidance; appropriate support and advice from healthcare professionals, particularly with regards to the risks and benefits of prophylaxis and treatment; virtual support groups and designating locations or staff specifically for pregnant women.
Modelling effects of phytobiotic administration on coherent responses to Salmonella infection in laying hens

Abstract Practice of layer poultry farming and commercial egg production relies on the optimal use and improvement of the welfare and genetically determined functional abilities of laying hens, their efficient intake of feed and its components, adaptation to housing conditions and resistance to infectious diseases including salmonellosis. Previous studies were focussed on relationships of chicken performance and resistance with the expression profiles of individual genes involved in metabolic processes and immune system, or with genetic markers that can be closely associated with these processes in chickens. In this study, mathematical models of coherent changes in laying hens were developed for the expression of eight genes involved in immunity and metabolism, on the one hand, and biochemical and immunological blood parameters, on the other hand, in response to Salmonella infection and administration of a phytobiotic Intebio. The proposed modelling approach can be a further basis for an in-depth research of the relationship between the gene expression, functional state and welfare of poultry, impact of pathogenic microorganisms and use of immunomodulatory drugs. HIGHLIGHTS Improved egg production and resistance rely on hens’ potential in gene expression and metabolism. We developed mathematical models for coherent responses of hens’ gene expression and blood indices to Salmonella infection and phytobiotic intake. This approach can be used for further studying relationship between gene expression, functional state, impact of pathogens and antimicrobial drugs.
International Capital Flows and the ‘Feldstein Horioka Puzzle’ Evidence from Emerging Asian Economies

This paper revisits the Feldstein and Horioka (FH) (1980) hypothesis for a panel of 8 emerging Asian economies. The saving-investment relationship is estimated over the period 1965-2013 (full sample period) as well as for the sub-period 1965-1994. The later period is assumed to be an era when the Asian economies were not as open to the global capital markets compared to the current times. The study uses Fully Modified OLS (FMOLS), Dynamic OLS (DOLS) and the panel cointegration techniques to estimate the FH β coefficient for these countries. It finds that the savings and investment are cointegrated for both the sample periods. Further, the FMOLS and the DOLS results show that the value of β is significantly higher for the full sample period as compared to the sub-sample period. This indicates that during the post liberalisation period capital flows have significantly increased in these countries. Hence, the study confirms the claim of FH that a high correlation between the savings and investment shows a lower capital mobility. JEL classification: F32; E2