Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Efficient Backprojection Algorithm Based on Wavenumber-Domain Spectral Splicing for Monostatic and Bistatic SAR Configurations

This paper introduces a fast backprojection synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging algorithm based on wavenumber-domain spectral splicing. The traditional fast backprojection (FBP) algorithm establishes the polar coordinate system with the center of the sub-aperture as the origin. Therefore, the coordinates of the image obtained from each sub-aperture are different. Sub-aperture images must be projected to a uniform coordinate system before they can be coherently superimposed to form the final image, which requires a large amount of calculation. In order to deal with this problem, this paper proposes a novel imaging method, which uses the same polar coordinate system for each sub-aperture. The sub-aperture images are then spliced in the wavenumber-domain, and directly added after upsampling. This method avoids the projection from each sub-aperture to the uniform coordinate system, thus improving the imaging accuracy and efficiency. At the same time, the algorithm is suitable for various configurations, and can achieve good imaging results for bistatic forward-looking SAR and high-speed mobile platform. Finally, simulations are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm.
Effectiveness of Multicomponent Home-Based Rehabilitation in Elderly Patients after Hip Fracture Surgery: A Randomized Controlled Trial

This randomized controlled study aimed to assess the clinical effectiveness of an 8-week personalized multicomponent home-based rehabilitation (MHR) program by comparing it with a home exercise program after discharge. Forty patients (≥60 years old) who underwent hip surgery were randomly assigned to multicomponent home-based rehabilitation (MHR) and home exercise groups. The MHR program included strength, endurance, balance, and breathing exercises; modifications to the home environment; education on assistive device use; pressure ulcer care; nutrition management; and motivational counseling. The MHR group received 24 visits from rehabilitation staff for 8 weeks (3 times a week), while the home exercise group received home exercises focusing on strengthening described in the leaflet. The rehabilitation staff prescribed the intensity of exercise at the first visit, and the home exercise group exercised without supervision after that for 8 weeks. Both groups received a 10-min phone call once a week for overall counseling to ensure high adherence to home exercises. Among the 40 participants, 29 (72.5%) completed the trial. The primary outcomes were balance and mobility. Balance was assessed using the functional reach test (FRT), and the timed up-and-go test (TUG) was used to assess balance and mobility. Data were analyzed using the intention-to-treat principle. The MHR group showed significant improvement compared to the home exercise group for FRT (mean difference (MD) 4.4 cm; 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.0 to 7.8) and TUG (MD: −4.2 s; 95% CI −8.0 to −0.3) after 8 weeks of intervention. Subjective pain and physical components of general health-related quality of life also improved significantly in the MHR group. No serious adverse events related to the interventions were observed. The eight-week of MHR program can effectively improve balance and mobility.
Volatility changes in cryptocurrencies: evidence from sparse VHAR-MGARCH model

ABSTRACT This study examines the volatility changes of 20 cryptocurrencies from January 2018 to May 2021 using sparse VHAR-MGARCH model. Our proposed model incorporates the high-dimensionality and time-varying conditional heterogeneity of cryptocurrency markets. We examined the time-varying spillover index, dynamic correlation structure, and connectivity between cryptocurrencies. Our empirical analysis clearly shows that there was a volatility shift on 13 March 2020, due to a market crash caused by COVID-19. This naturally divides the data into three periods: pre-crisis, during the crisis, and post-crisis regimes. The pre-crisis regime exhibited long-term cyclic fluctuations in the spillover index. However, after the market crash, the spillover index remained at a very high level with almost no interconnections between cryptocurrencies. The post-crisis regime showed quite a few irregular and sharp spikes in the spillover index, together with record-breaking prices and volumes.
Profiling and Functional Analysis of mRNAs during Skeletal Muscle Differentiation in Goats

Simple Summary The growth and development of skeletal muscle is strictly regulated by complex gene networks. In order to explore the genes involved in regulating the differentiation of skeletal muscle satellite cells (MuSCs) in goats, RNA sequencing was used to characterize gene expression profiles during the MuSC differentiation, and to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) among the different stages. A total of 2551 DEGs were found. Functional enrichment analysis revealed genes involved in muscle development-related GO terms and pathways, such as muscle structure development, muscle contraction, muscle cell development, muscle cell differentiation, and the MAPK signaling pathway. This study will be useful for future studies on muscle growth and development in goats. Abstract Skeletal myogenesis is a complicated biological event that involves a succession of tightly controlled gene expressions. In order to identify novel regulators of this process, we performed mRNA-Seq studies of goat skeletal muscle satellite cells (MuSCs) cultured under proliferation (GM) and differentiation (DM1/DM5) conditions. A total of 19,871 goat genes were expressed during these stages, 198 of which represented novel transcripts. Notably, in pairwise comparisons at the different stages, 2551 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified (p < 0.05), including 1560 in GM vs. DM1, 1597 in GM vs. DM5, and 959 in DM1 vs. DM5 DEGs. The time-series expression profile analysis clustered the DEGs into eight gene groups, three of which had significantly upregulated and downregulated patterns (p < 0.05). Functional enrichment analysis showed that DEGs were enriched for essential biological processes such as muscle structure development, muscle contraction, muscle cell development, striated muscle cell differentiation, and myofibril assembly, and were involved in pathways such as the MAPK, Wnt and PPAR signaling pathways. Moreover, the expression of eight DEGs (MYL2, DES, MYOG, FAP, PLK2, ADAM, WWC1, and PRDX1) was validated. These findings offer novel insights into the transcriptional regulation of skeletal myogenesis in goats.
Robust and compliance control for robotic knee prosthesis using admittance model and sliding-mode controller

Achieving compliance and flexibility under the premise of ensuring trajectory tracking performance and also reflecting the wearer’s movement intention, has not yet been well solved in the field of prosthesis. The aim of this paper is to provide a compliant, robust, and continuous control scheme for robotic knee prosthesis to solve the contradictory problems of trajectory tracking performance and compliance. The proposed scheme are based on the admittance model and radial basis function (RBF) neural network–enhanced nonsingular fast terminal sliding-mode controller (NFTSMC). The desired trajectory of the prosthetic knee joint is driven by humans and reshaped to reference trajectory by an admittance model, so that the prosthetic leg can reflect the human’s movement intention and being compliant. RBF neural network is introduced to achieve adaptive approximation of unknown models and ensure that the controller does not depend on the mathematical model of the “human-in-the-loop” prosthesis system. A novel NFTSMC was proposed to deal with the influence of ground reaction forces (GRFs) and fitting errors of the RBF neural network, which make the tracking error converge to zero in a finite time. The adaptive law of the RBF neural network is obtained by the Lyapunov method, and the stability and finite-time convergence of the closed-loop system are rigorously proved and analyzed mathematically. The simulation results prove the feasibility and effectiveness of the propose control scheme.
A Delphi Study on the Evaluation and Rehabilitation of Spinal Pain in Children and Adolescents with Overweight and Obesity

The present study aims to reach experts on spinal pain in children/adolescents with obesity and to conduct a Delphi study on the methods used in the evaluation and rehabilitation of the process. Experts experienced in rehabilitation of spinal pain and children/adolescents with overweight/obesity. To collect data, using e-mails, the 16-question form containing assessment and rehabilitation approaches for spinal pain and obesity was sent to clinicians and researchers working on spinal pain in children or adolescents with overweight, obesity. Delphi tour consisted of two rounds. Participants' responses in two rounds were calculated as percentages and numbers. 132 experts were invited, 14 experts participated in the first round and 10 experts participated in the second round. In the first round, eleven experts from Turkey, two experts from Cyprus, one expert was from Malta; in the second round nine experts from Turkey, one expert was from Cyprus. Back pain(n=9), neck pain(n=4), low back pain(n=10) as the spinal pain areas where children/adolescents with obesity often experienced pain in the first round; in the second round, back pain(n=3), neck pain(n=3), low back pain(n=7) were reported. In the evaluation methods of pain, Visual Analog Scale(n=11), Faces Pain Scale(n=7), Numeric Rating Scale(n=4) were used. It was reported that Visual Analog Scale(n=7); Faces Pain Scale(n=2), Numeric Rating Scale(n=2) were used in the second round. Considering the exercises given for spinal pain rehabilitation, in the first round, for spinal stabilization exercises(n=6), resistance exercises(n=12), aerobic exercise bicycle(n=8), walking(n=8); in the second round; resistance exercises(n=5), aerobic exercise bicycle(n=5), reported that they recommended walking(n=8). With all these results, it is seen that different approaches are used in the evaluation and rehabilitation methods of spinal pain in children/adolescents overweight/obesity. This study may guide the development of common ideas in assessment-rehabilitation methods of spinal pain in children/adolescents overweight/obesity in clinics.
Role of Four-Chamber Heart Ultrasound Images in Automatic Assessment of Fetal Heart: A Systematic Understanding

The fetal echocardiogram is useful for monitoring and diagnosing cardiovascular diseases in the fetus in utero. Importantly, it can be used for assessing prenatal congenital heart disease, for which timely intervention can improve the unborn child’s outcomes. In this regard, artificial intelligence (AI) can be used for the automatic analysis of fetal heart ultrasound images. This study reviews nondeep and deep learning approaches for assessing the fetal heart using standard four-chamber ultrasound images. The state-of-the-art techniques in the field are described and discussed. The compendium demonstrates the capability of automatic assessment of the fetal heart using AI technology. This work can serve as a resource for research in the field.
Forecasting the Chinese Stock Market Volatility with G7 Stock Market Volatilities: A Scaled PCA Approach

ABSTRACT In this study, we forecast the realized volatility (RV) of the Chinese stock market using the heterogeneous autoregressive (HAR) model and various extended models. To extract the volatility information from the G7 stock markets, we employ a newly proposed approach, the scaled principal component analysis (SPCA), to produce a diffusion index and extend the HAR benchmark (HAR-SPCA). To validate the effectiveness of the SPCA approach, we employ three other dimension reduction approaches, the kitchen sink model, and five popular forecast combinations to deal with multivariate information and make competing forecasts. The results suggest that the combined volatility information from the G7 stock markets significantly predicts Chinese stock market volatility. More importantly, the forecasts from the HAR-SPCA model are steadily more accurate than the benchmark and other competing models under various evaluation criteria. Finally, our results are persistent to various robustness checks and the evaluation of portfolio performance.
Time to Market in der Softwareentwicklung : ReUse und Standardisierung bei Getriebesteuerungen

Increasing demands made by vehicle manufacturers concerning safety, comfort and fuel consumption as well as the constantly increasing complexity in software development urgently call for new approaches in software development. More and more functions are performed by software. At the same time development cycles need to be drastically reduced, with improving quality. New development methods and tools already make a decisive contribution. Re-use of existing software components is of essential importance. At ZF a software and functional platform for automatic transmissions forms the basis for multiple use of components. By re-using ca. 70% of functional components, ZF has been able to distinctly reduce development time and expenses, with quality remaining at the same high level. Avoidance of parallel and multiple expenses and a high degree of testing penetration were crucial aspects in achieving this. Within the platform, components are re-used several times.
Importation of unprocessed logs into North America: a review of pest mitigation procedures and their efficacy

The effects of reduced harvests in North America can be minimized by importing timber, but pests on imported logs may present a significant threat to native forests. The development of effective mitigation procedures for imported logs will play a critical role in forest protection. This report reviews the efficacy of various mitigation procedures (e.g., heat, fumigation, and irradiation) in relation to controlling pests established deep in the wood. Except for heating, existing data on the mitigation procedures are inadequate to support their use to eliminate pests established beyond the surface of imported logs. Research needs for mitigating the risks of log imports are provided.
The Effect of the Water Tower of Typhoon Mangkhut (2018)

On 16 September 2018, the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) experienced heavy precipitation, with the local daily precipitation exceeding 250 mm. Using ERA5 reanalysis data and satellite observations from the GPM, we review this heavy rain event in terms of its meteorological triggers and water vapor transport. As the high-level water vapor produced by Typhoon Mangkhut continued to be transported northward, the precipitation in the YRD gradually increased, and stratus precipitation played a major role in this event. The high-level water vapor continued to be transported northward to the east of Taiwan Island without falling, so heavy precipitation did not appear to the east of Taiwan Island. In the present study, we suggest that the meteorological trigger of this event was mainly the gradual falling of ice particles moving northward from a high altitude. The high-level ice particles originated from the “water tower” at the center of Typhoon Mangkhut, which pumped low-level water vapor into the high-level water vapor. In general, the appearance of abnormal values of high-level water vapor transport is an important atmospheric disturbance related to heavy precipitation in the downstream areas of high-level wind, and the typhoon water tower can be used as an important forecast signal for long-distance heavy precipitation in China during the active typhoon period.
Algorithms and Methodology for Post-Manufacture Adaptation to Process Variations and Induced Noise in Deeply Scaled CMOS Technologies

His continuous help and insights had a significant impact on the research presented here. for taking the time to serve on my proposal and defense committees. I would like to acknowledge the help and support of my past and present lab-mates. I need to especially thank Utku Diril for patiently answering many of my questions and helping me even after he graduated from Georgia Tech. I would also like to thank Gigasale Research Center (GSRC) and National Science Foundation (NSF) for funding this research and providing different venues for interacting with industry experts and getting their valuable inputs. Finally, I would like to thank the members of the department staff (in particular from the administrative, financial, and IT offices) for their extraordinary patience and diligence.
Added Value of Local Sheep Breeds in Alpine Agroecosystems

This study is part of a project (Sheep Al.L. Chain, RDP Veneto Region) aiming to improve the competitiveness of local sheep breed farms through valorization of their links with mountain agroecosystems. We considered two local sheep breeds of the eastern Italian Alps, “Alpagota” and “Lamon”, which have a population of 400 and 3000 heads, respectively, and are used to produce lambs for typical products. A total of 35 farms (17 for Alpagota, with a total of 1652 heads; 18 for Lamon, with a total of 337 heads) were surveyed to collect data on farm organization, flock structure and management (farm questionnaire), land use management (GIS approach), and value chain organization (participatory processes). The link between the two local sheep breeds and mountain agroecosystems is very strong: land use is characterized by a large number of small patches of grasslands in marginal areas. Moving from the results of this study, a set of strategies aiming at improving the competitiveness of these systems have been proposed. Communication to the consumers and to the relevant stakeholders of the added value of local sheep breeds in marginal mountain agroecosystems can contribute to favor the resilience of small ruminant farms and the conservation of Alpine sheep breeds.
Internationalisation of Higher Education Institutions in Mozambique: Exploring the Rationales, Strategies and Challenges

Internationalisation is transforming higher education institutions worldwide. However, the understanding of internationalisation, the rationales presented, the strategies applied and the challenges encountered differ between contexts. One challenge, especially for universities in the Global South, is how to consider internationalisation with a decolonised approach. This study explores internationalisation in two major universities in Mozambique through documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews with academics and managers. The study was guided by two questions: (1) How have Mozambican universities undertaken internationalisation in terms of understanding, rationales, strategies and challenges? (2) How are global ideas of internationalisation interpreted and translated into local practices? The results are interpreted with a theoretical lens combining neo-institutionalism and decolonisation theory, both providing arguments for translation and adaptation of ideas and practices to the local context. The findings suggest that the approaches to internationalisation emphasise the adoption of Western templates and values and can be more deliberately decolonised.
4-Heteroaryl Substituted Amino-3,5-Dicyanopyridines as New Adenosine Receptor Ligands: Novel Insights on Structure-Activity Relationships and Perspectives

A new set of amino-3,5-dicyanopyridines was synthesized and biologically evaluated at the adenosine receptors (ARs). This chemical class is particularly versatile, as small structural modifications can influence not only affinity and selectivity, but also the pharmacological profile. Thus, in order to deepen the structure–activity relationships (SARs) of this series, different substituents were evaluated at the diverse positions on the dicyanopyridine scaffold. In general, the herein reported compounds show nanomolar binding affinity and interact better with both the human (h) A1 and A2A ARs than with the other subtypes. Docking studies at hAR structure were performed to rationalize the observed affinity data. Of interest are compounds 1 and 5, which can be considered as pan ligands as binding all the ARs with comparable nanomolar binding affinity (A1AR: 1, Ki = 9.63 nM; 5, Ki = 2.50 nM; A2AAR: 1, Ki = 21 nM; 5, Ki = 24 nM; A3AR: 1, Ki = 52 nM; 5, Ki = 25 nM; A2BAR: 1, EC50 = 1.4 nM; 5, EC50 = 1.12 nM). Moreover, these compounds showed a partial agonist profile at all the ARs. This combined AR partial agonist activity could lead us to hypothesize a potential effect in the repair process of damaged tissue that would be beneficial in both wound healing and remodeling.
Integrated Yaw Stability Control of Electric Vehicle Equipped with Front/Rear Steer-by-Wire Systems and Four In-Wheel Motors

This paper presents the integrated motion control method for an electric vehicle (EV) equipped with a front/rear steer-by-wire (SbW) system and four in-wheel motor (IWM). The proposed integrated motion control method aims to maintain stable cornering. To maintain vehicle agility and stability, the lateral force and yaw rate commands of the vehicle are generated by referring to the neutral steering characteristics. The driver’s driving force command, the lateral force command based on the bicycle model, and the yaw moment generated by the high-level controller are distributed into the driving force of each wheel and the lateral force of the front and rear wheels by the yaw moment distribution. Finally, the distributed forces are directly controlled by a low-level controller. To directly control the forces, a driving force observer and a lateral force observer were introduced via driving force estimation in the IWMs and rack force estimation in the SbW system. The control performance is verified through computer simulations.
Aerobic Exercise in the Fasted State: the Effects on Energy Metabolism in Healthy Adults

There are a number of factors that can affect energy metabolism in the context of aerobic exercise and potentially play a role in the increase of aerobic capacity. Reliance on fat oxidation is one such factor and strategies are sought to maximise adaptations in enhancing this metabolic switch. A strategy that has been explored in recent years is the nutritional pattern of the fasted state. With aerobic exercise and the fasted state harnessing congruent energy metabolism pathways, this literature review aimed to investigate an important interplay between aerobic exercise in the fasted state and potential benefits for energy metabolism. The hypothesis, ‘aerobic exercise in the fasted state will enhance energy metabolism in healthy adults’, was tested through an evaluation of energy metabolism patterns with aerobic exercise in the fasted state. A review of the relevant literature since 2005 relating to the healthy adult population was undertaken, resulting in the critical appraisal of 21 articles. The findings from this review support metabolic switching in fasted state aerobic exercise, demonstrating preferential reliance on fat oxidation, enhanced glucose metabolism and mitochondrial activity, all of which is coordinated through pathways regulated by nuclear hormone receptors. Fasted state aerobic exercise can be considered beneficial for enhanced energy metabolism in both the general and athlete population.