Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Life history parameters and predation capacities of Nesidiocoris volucer: a new biological control agent for tomato crop

Abstract Whiteflies are one of the major pests of tomato under greenhouses, and their control partly relies on biocontrol strategies. Among those biocontrol agents, parasitoids or predators are widely used. However, the introduction of a biocontrol agent in a new area is not trivial. For that reason, we investigated the use of a tropical native mirid, Nesidiocoris volucer (Hemiptera: Miridae), for the biological control of whiteflies among other insect pests on tomato crops under greenhouses in the subtropical island of La Réunion, France. Nesidiocoris volucer life history traits and plant injury were examined. Nymphs developed and survived between 15 and 30°C and required on average 49.41 days at 15°C and on average 10.50 days at 30°C to develop (nymph survival >94%). At 25°C, each female produced on average 65 eggs. Nesidiocoris volucer was able to feed on several prey species, but performed better on whiteflies than on spider mites or thrips. No N. volucer feeding injury was observed on tomato. Nesidiocoris volucer has also been found in tropical countries of Africa, and we believe that the data presented on this natural enemy could be of great importance for the biocontrol of whiteflies in tropical areas.
Social Communication Apprehension, Self-Esteem and Facebook Addiction Among University Students in Uganda

This study aimed at furthering the research on the relationship between social communication apprehension, self-esteem and Facebook addiction. To measure the three variables, a questionnaire comprised of The Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA-24), The Rosenberg SelfEsteem Scale (RES), and The Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale (BFAS) was administered to 654 university students in Uganda. Pearson’s correlation analysis and multiple linear regression coefficient analysis were carried out. A positive significant relationship between communication apprehension and Facebook addiction and a negative significant relationship between self-esteem and Facebook addiction were reported. Findings further revealed that self-esteem and communication apprehension significantly predicted Facebook addiction.
An adaptable multi-learner serious game for learning cultural heritage

The current study presents an adaptable light game engine, which is used to produce interactive educational settings focused on cultural heritage. The tool is implemented using inexpensive and open source technologies. In this paper we first discuss the architecture of the application and we then present two games developed by using the proposed engine. The produced games are multi-user and support the collaboration and communication among learners and among learners and instructors. Learners earn marks, badges and certificates as they study the material and complete the quizzes. Various evaluation experiments have been realized to understand the suitability of the produced content in educational activities. The evaluation results of the authentic educational actions were quite positive and supportive by both students and teachers.
Dependence of the Distribution and Structure of the White Mulberry (Morus alba) Population in Wrocław on the Intensity of Anthropopressure and Thermal Conditions

The selection of species which show the highest possible tolerance to negative habitat conditions, also among plants of foreign origin, is a pressing issue. One of the species we would like to recommend for planting in urban areas is the white mulberry species (Morus alba) due to both its outstanding adaptability and its ecosystem services. There are no reliable studies on the distribution of this species in urbanized areas in Poland, nor sufficient analyses of the methods of its renewal, both deliberate and spontaneous spread through self-seeding. Collecting data on the population of an alien species within individual regions and forecasting potential changes in the population’s size and structure, as well as its possible impacts on other organisms, is one of the basic measures to reduce biological invasions, which is one of the six priority objectives of the European Biodiversity Strategy and an element of the Strategy on Invasive Alien Species. The aim of this study was to determine the size and structure of the white mulberry population in the city of Wrocław and to analyse the relationship between this structure and intensity of anthropopressure and thermal conditions.
One-dimensional compression creep change under temperature and suction effects

ABSTRACT The impact of temperature and unsaturation on the creep behaviour of bentonite is an important topic for environmental geotechnics as in the case of waste storage and energy geostructures. This paper presents an experimental study on the one-dimensional creep of Maghnia bentonite (MB), using two high-pressure oedometer cells, allowing to impose temperature and suction conditions for an unsaturated medium . The characteristics of these two cells and the protocol developed in the framework of this experimental study are briefly presented. The findings highlight a new perspective on the hypothesis (A) which distinguishes between primary and secondary consolidation, and hypothesis (B), which is governed by structural viscosity. The results indicated that the creep behaviour followed the principle of hypothesis (A) under temperature effect, while it followed hypothesis (B) principle under the suction effect. The void ratio variability under secondary compression depends not only on the vertical stress, but also on the temperature and the first load level . Moreover, as soil suction descreases, the normalized void ratio become higher. The creep coefficient (Cαe) increased as temperature and vertical stress increased, while they decreased as the suction increased.
An Automatic Optical Inspection System for Assembly and Evaluation of an Optical Encoder

This study presented an automatic optical inspection system for the assembly and evaluation of an optical encoder, and the system analyzed the output signal quality of the light transmission grating linear encoder. The reference grating was affixed to the side architecture of the detection system in order to maintain the correct optical path, and the main grating was driven by the x–y Precision platform. Brightness variations can be detected and recorded by a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera during grating movements, using image noise depression, background separation, and fringe calculation with new image processing algorithms. The output imaging signal of a traditional linear encoder passes through a circuit filter, where amplification and rectification form a sinusoidal waveform. This system can accurately measure the light intensity variations of the encoder through machine visioning and image processing, while simultaneously determining noise and non-uniformity. This study conducted analysis on the moire width between the gratings of the flip relationship, implemented grating alignment and adjustment, and improved the assembly position and resolution of the image, in order to obtain good quality in output signals.
A Novel Design Technique of One Stage CMOS OTA For High Frequency Applications

A novel design technique for one stage CMOS Operational Transconductance Amplifier (OTA), based on local common mode feedback circuits is proposed. The idea is to achieve improved gain-bandwidth product (GBW), DC gain, settling time, and slew rate. This is well known that, these parameters are important for high frequency, fast settling applications, such as switched capacitor filters, and analog to digital converters. They have a vast application areas through analog design field, implemented in 0. 5μm MIETEC process parameters. The proposed OTA achieves 41.6 MHz (GBW), 67.8dB (DC) gain, 33.7ns settling time and 20.7 V/μs slew rate in ±2.5V supply voltage. The static power consumption is 625μw while driving 15pF load capacitor. Simulation results are included. Index Term CMOS OTA Design, Local Common Mode Feedback Circuit, High Frequency Applications.
What About Failures? Suggestions for an Alternative Computing Education Activity

In computing education, students are given some real life experience with the development of computer systems. This experience usually does not include project failure and especially escalation situations with difficult decisions that deepen or compound the problems a project has. We argue that the only way in which students will be able to recognize escalation is by actually experiencing a project that is escalating and that will fail. In the first part of the paper escalation and the determinants of escalation are discussed, this is followed by a description of the experiment conducted and the results. From the result of the experiment we conclude that students act in the same way as practitioners do. From this we claim that if we do not change the way in which students are taught, we perpetuate the problem. We end the paper with ideas on how to change computing education to make students aware of, but also understand the problem of escalation situations. Abstract In computing education, students are given some real life experience with the development of computer systems. This experience usually does not include project failure and especially escalation situations with difficult decisions that deepen or compound the problems a project has. We argue that the only way in which students will be able to recognize escalation is by actually experiencing a project that is escalating and that will fail. In the first part of the paper escalation and the determinants of escalation are discussed, this is followed by a description of the experiment conducted and the results. From the result of the experiment we conclude that students act in the same way as practitioners do. From this we claim that if we do not change the way in which students are taught, we perpetuate the problem. We end the paper with ideas on how to change computing education to make students aware of, but also understand the problem of escalation situations.
Recent applications of quantitative analytical FTIR spectroscopy in pharmaceutical, biomedical, and clinical fields: A brief review

Abstract Qualitative Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy has long been established and implemented in a wide variety of fields including pharmaceutical, biomedical, and clinical fields. While the quantitative applications are yet to reach their full potential, this technique is flourishing. It is tempting to shed light on modern engaging and the applicability of analytical quantitative FTIR spectroscopy in the aforementioned fields. More importantly, the credibility, validity, and generality of the application will be thoroughly demonstrated by reviewing the latest published work in the scientific literature. Utilizing FTIR spectroscopy in a quantitative approach in pharmaceutical, biomedical, and interdisciplinary fields has many undeniable advantages over traditional procedures. An insightful account will be undertaken in this regard. The technique will be introduced as an appealing alternative to common methods such as high performance liquid chromatography. It is anticipated that the review will offer researchers an update of the current status and prospect on the subject among the pharmacy and biomedical sciences both in academic and industrial fields.
Performance Analysis of V-BLAST System Using Different Modulation Schemes

Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) multiplexing is a promising technology that could greatly increase the channel capacity without additional spectral resources. The challenge is to design low complexity and high performance algorithms that capable of accurately detecting the transmitted signals. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the design of multipleâ€“antenna wireless systems that exploit the Spatial multiplexing concept and can achieve data throughput. In this paper, the BER performance and the receiver complexity of Vertical Bell Labs layered spaceâ€“time (V-BLASTâ€“OFDM) is presented with different modulation schemes. We have used channel imperfection for rayleigh fading for the performance analysis in V-BLAST using minimum mean square error (MMSE) detection with ordered successive interference cancellation(SIC).
Harnessing Synthetic Lethal Interactions for Personalized Medicine

Two genes are said to have synthetic lethal (SL) interactions if the simultaneous mutations in a cell lead to lethality, but each individual mutation does not. Targeting SL partners of mutated cancer genes can kill cancer cells but leave normal cells intact. The applicability of translating this concept into clinics has been demonstrated by three drugs that have been approved by the FDA to target PARP for tumors bearing mutations in BRCA1/2. This article reviews applications of the SL concept to translational cancer medicine over the past five years. Topics are (1) exploiting the SL concept for drug combinations to circumvent tumor resistance, (2) using synthetic lethality to identify prognostic and predictive biomarkers, (3) applying SL interactions to stratify patients for targeted and immunotherapy, and (4) discussions on challenges and future directions.
Evaluation of Absorbed Energy in Collision of Ships

To verify the effectiveness of Minorsky's formula that is used in the current regulation of ship with anti-collision structure, the simplified analysis based on the rigid-plastic analysis is developed. The collision of test ship with T2 tanker and Suezmax class tanker is analyzed, and it was shown that the Minorsky's formula, which assumes same collapse length for striking and struck ship, gives incorrect estimation of the energy balance when the strength of ship bow and side has big difference. Also, the results are compared with those by dynamic FEM analysis, and good agreements are observed. It was shown that the simplified analysis method is an effective tool in the early design stage.
Predicting Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma Survival Using Kurtosis of Cytoplasm in the Hematoxylin Channel from Histology Slides

Purpose Grade-dependent decrease of lipid storage in clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) leads to morphology changes in HE sections. This study investigated the role of cytoplasmic features in frozen sections of ccRCC on prognosis using the digital pathology approach. Methods We established an automatic pipeline that performed tumor region selection, stain vector normalization, nuclei segmentation, and feature extraction based on the pathologic data from Shanghai General Hospital and The Cancer Genome Atlas database. Extracted features were subjected to survival analysis. Results Kurtosis of the cytoplasm in the hematoxylin channel was correlated with progression-free survival (HR 0.10, 95% CI: 0.04–0.24, p=6.52∗10−7) and overall survival (HR 0.11, 95% CI: 0.05–0.31, p=1.72∗10−5) in ccRCC, which outperformed other texture features in this analysis. Multivariate Cox regression analysis revealed that low kurtosis of cytoplasm in the hematoxylin channel was an independent predictor for a shorter progression-free survival time (p=0.044) and overall survival time (p = 0.01). Kaplan–Meier survival analysis of progression-free survival and overall survival also showed a significantly worse prognosis in patients with low kurtosis of the cytoplasm in the hematoxylin channel (both p < 0.0001). Lower kurtosis of cytoplasm in the hematoxylin channel was associated with higher pathologic grade, less cholesterol ester, and more mitochondrial DNA content. Conclusion Kurtosis of the cytoplasm in the hematoxylin channel predicts survival in clear cell renal cell carcinoma.
Restructuring of erythrocytes in persons of mature and elderly age on the background of diabetes mellitus

Background: The high incidence of diabetes mellitus in modern conditions dictates the need to search for new, including microscopic, opportunities to identify pathological changes in the course of various physiological processes. The aim of the study: To study the peculiarities of changes in the properties and parameters of erythrocytes in various types of diabetes mellitus (types 1 and 2) in women of mature and elderly age. Materials and methods: Venous blood of 55 women aged 30 to 70 years, divided into study groups (women with type DM, women with type II DM, control without endocrinopathy) was examined using atomic force and scanning probe microscopy. Results: The authors found an increase in the percentage of pathological forms of erythrocytes in patients with diabetes mellitus. An increase in the number of macrocytic forms of erythrocytes was observed not only when compared with the control group (DM I 12.20±2.14, DM II 10.00±1.20, control 4.40±0.15), but and when comparing two age groups of patients with type 2 DM (30-45 years old 10.00±1.20, 60-70 years old 13.20±1.90). The same tendency is typical for microcytes. Geriatric changes in the geometric parameters of erythrocytes in the group of patients with type 2 DM were characterized by an increase in the volume, as well as the maximum height of erythrocytes with increasing age of the patients. Conclusion: The use of atomic force microscopy in the study of the biophysical parameters of erythrocytes makes it possible to identify paОригинальная статья Original article Научные результаты биомедицинских исследований. 2021;7(4:400-409 Research Results in Biomedicine. 2021:7(4):400-409 401 tients from high-risk groups by determining such changes as an increase in the number of macrocytes, microcytes and pathologically altered forms of erythrocytes, a decrease in the average volume and area of erythrocytes.
Fingerprint Distortion Removal And Enhancement By Effective Use Of Contextual Filtering

Automated personal authentication has become increasingly important in our information driven society and in this regard fingerprint based personal identification is considered to be the most effective tool. In order to ensure reliable fingerprint identification and improve fingerprint ridge structure, novel fingerprint enhancement approaches are proposed based on local adaptive contextual filtering. This dissertation presents the aims and objectives of the research along with the motivation and proposed research approaches for fingerprint enhancement mentioned below. In the first part of this research, a twofold enhancement technique is proposed that involves processing both in frequency and spatial domain. The fingerprint image is first filtered in frequency domain and then local directional filtering in spatial domain is applied to obtain enhanced fingerprint. Two major advantages of the proposed enhancement technique are; avoiding the hazards of frequency estimation errors and making spatial domain filtering quite simple by using a global 1D Gaussian smoothing filter. In order to determine the performance evaluation of the proposed enhancement, extensive evaluation of the proposed method against well-known enhancement approaches has been carried out on publicly available standard databases. Experimental results demonstrate that proposed enhancement performs better as compared to other well-known enhancement techniques. In the second part of this work, a fingerprint image with non-uniform ridge frequencies is considered as a 2-D dynamic signal. A non-uniform stress on the sensorâ€™s sensing area applied during fingerprint acquisition may result in a nonlinear distortion that disturbs the local frequency of ridges, adversely affecting the matching performance. This study presents a new approach based on short time Fourier transform (STFT) analysis and local adaptive contextual filtering for frequency distortion removal and enhancement. In the proposed approach, the whole image is divided into sub-images and local dominant frequency band and orientation are estimated. Gaussian Directional band pass filtering is then adaptively applied in frequency domain.These filtered sub-images are then combined using our proposed technique to obtain the enhanced fingerprint image of high ridge quality and uniform inter-ridge distance. Experimental results show efficacy of the proposed enhancement technique.
Principal component analysis denoising improves sensitivity of MR diffusion to detect white matter injury in neuroHIV

Diffusion‐weighted imaging is able to capture important information about cerebral white matter (WM) structure. However, diffusion data can suffer from MRI and biological noise that degrades the quality of the images and makes finding important features difficult. We investigated how effectively local and nonlocal denoising increased the sensitivity to detect differences in cerebral WM in neuroHIV.
Investigation of Cardiac Abnormalities with ECG Signal Analysis: A Review Work

Uday Maji Dept. of Applied Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering Haldia Institute of Technology Haldia Abstract: Abnormal electrical activities in the heart cause various types of arrhythmia or cardiac dysrhythmia. Atrial fibrillation and atrial flutter are most important among them. Various methodologies have been used for the automatic detection of this arrhythmia for last two decades. In this paper we review most of the technique that have been successfully applied to detect this dysrhythmia. Finally a comparative analysis, based on the used methods and performance parameter is done. In this comparative study includes type of arrhythmia consider, number of lead used, type of signal i.e. ECG, BCG, EEG or other, and analysis based on the features and classification technique. The comparative study includes the cases where training and testing data come from the same and different sessions (days). The results show that most of the algorithms that have been proposed for atrial arrhythmia diagnosis perform well when the training and testing data come from the same session.
Design of Compact Low Pass Microstrip Filter For Wireless Communication System

Abstract A compact microstrip low pass filter has been designed using step impedance technique. Two slots were cut in the ground plane just below the high impedance microstrip lines. The proposed filter has spurious free response for wide band width with sharp cut-off characteristics. The filter has been designed for a cutoff frequency 2.5 GHz and provides good agreement between the simulated and measured results.
FTY720 requires vitamin B12-TCN2-CD320 signaling in astrocytes to reduce disease in an animal model of multiple sclerosis

FTY720 (fingolimod) is a sphingosine 1-phosphate (S1P) receptor modulator and sphingosine analogue approved for multiple sclerosis (MS) therapy, which can functionally antagonize the S1P receptor, S1P1. Vitamin B12 (B12) deficiency produces neurological manifestations resembling MS. Here, we report a new mechanism where FTY720 suppresses neuroinflammation by regulating B12 metabolic pathways. Nuclear RNA-seq of c-Fos-activated astrocytes (called ieAstrocytes) from experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) spinal cords identified up-regulation of CD320, a transcobalamin 2 (TCN2)-B12 receptor, by S1P1 inhibition. CD320 was reduced in MS plaques. Deficiency of CD320 or dietary B12 worsened EAE and eliminated FTY720’s efficacy, while concomitantly down-regulating type I interferon signaling. TCN2 functioned as a chaperone for FTY720 and sphingosine, which induced astrocytic CD320 internalization. An accompanying paper identified a requirement for astrocyte sphingosine kinases in FTY720 efficacy and its altered expression in MS brains, molecularly linking MS and B12 deficiency that can be accessed by sphingolipid/fingolimod metabolic pathways.