Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Zinc Status Impacts the Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor and Downstream Protein Expression in A549 Cells

Zinc has been suggested to play a role in carcinogenesis and tumor progression. Serum zinc levels of lung cancer patients are for example lower than in healthy individuals. The activation and expression of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), which plays a role in tumor biology, are presumably influenced by zinc. EGFR activation influences cell adhesion and immune escape. This study provides insights into the impacts of zinc on the EGFR activation and expression of downstream proteins such as E-cadherin and PD-L1 in the alveolar carcinoma cell line A549. To model chronic changes in zinc homeostasis, A549 cells were cultured in media with different zinc contents. EGFR surface expression of unstimulated and stimulated A549 cells was determined by flow cytometry. EGFR phosphorylation as well as the protein expression of E-cadherin and PD-L1 were analyzed by Western blot. In our hands, chronic zinc deficiency led to increased EGFR surface expression, decreased E-cadherin protein expression and increased PD-L1 protein expression. Zinc supplementation decreased EGFR surface expression and PD-L1 protein expression. In summary, zinc-deficient A549 cells may display a more malignant phenotype. Thus, future clinical research should further focus on the possible benefits of restoring disturbed zinc homeostasis, especially in lung cancer patients.
Gender and Age Comparison of Information Communication and Technology Usage among Ghanaian Higher Education Students

The paper attempts to explore gender and age differences in intention to use ICT and ICT usage, by students of higher educational institutions in Ghana. Cross-sectional survey designed was employed for the data collection. The study was carried on 950 Ghanaian higher educational students. We use the t-test statistics to investigate the difference among groups. There was no difference in intention to use ICT between male and female student. However, there were significance differences in the use of ICT among gender, male students actually use the ICT for learning and research more than their female counterpart. There were mixed results in the use of ICT between the young and the old students, however, there was no significant difference in the use of ICT for learning and research. Promoters of ICT usage in higher education must institute measures that could bridge the gap between male and female ICT use behaviour. Self confidence building programs must be organized for the female student so that can comfortably communicate with their peers and lecturers.
Responses and adaptations to acute and chronic high-intensity intervaltraining

Sprint interval training (SIT) involving repeated 30-s “all out” efforts appears to be an effective and time-efficient stimulus for fitness improvement. Three studies were completed for this dissertation. The purposes were: 1) to perform a meta-analysis to assess the population effect of SIT on aerobic capacity; 2) to compare physiological responses of two SIT protocols of different modality; and 3) to determine the effects of a SIT intervention on fitness and performance. The meta-analysis revealed SIT has a small-to-moderate effect (Cohen’s d = 0.32, 95% CI: 0.10, 0.55; z = 2.79, p 0.05), but calculated effect sizes revealed a meaningful difference in %VO2peak (Cohen’s d = 0.51) and %HRpeak (Cohen’s d = 0.57). In the third study, moderately-trained members of the Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) completed 4 weeks of exercise training 3 days∙wk-1 consisting of either ~60 min of typical cadet physical training (TCT) or whole-body calisthenics (HIT) involving 4-7 sets of 30-s “all out” burpees separated by 4 min of active recovery. Following training, there were no changes in VO2peak, anaerobic capacity or Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT) performance (p > 0.05). For the TCT group, mitochondrial function (Tc: time constant of recovery) was improved (2.4 ± 4.6 s decrease in Tc; p = 0.081; d = -0.51 (-2.37, 1.35)); whereas, mitochondrial function decreased in HIT (2.4 ± 4.6 s increase in Tc; p = 0.087; d = 0.50 (-1.36, 2.36)). In conclusion, studies in the literature indicate that SIT has a large effect on aerobic capacity relative to no exercise and an effect similar to prolonged, moderate-intensity continuous exercise. SIT involving whole-body calisthenic exercise elicits vigorous cardiovascular responses with peak values less than cycling SIT. SIT involving low-volume whole-body calisthenics sustains fitness in Army ROTC cadets. A program that includes SIT as part of a larger program may be well suited to moderately-trained armed forces personnel seeking to maintain fitness with minimal time commitment and without access to equipment.
High-resolution CT reconstruction from Zoom-In Partial Scans (ZIPS) with simultaneous estimation of inter-scan ROI motion

The Zoom-In Partial Scans (ZIPS) method is a recently introduced high-resolution CT technique that utilizes the high geometric magnification in off-center regions in the CT scanner’s field-of-view to boost the intrinsic spatial resolution of existing clinical multi-slice CT. ZIPS performs two off-center partial high-resolution scans of a region of interest (ROI), then an image reconstruction algorithm merges the partial scan data to produce a final high-resolution reconstructed image. In this study, we illustrate the feasibility of ZIPS image reconstruction with simultaneous estimation of inter-scan rigid ROI motion between the two partial scans. A total-variation and an entropy-based image alignment loss function was introduced for registration of the ROI between the two partial scans. Optional denoising filters were also introduced to stabilize the image alignment loss function. The feasibility of the ZIPS reconstruction framework is evaluated in a Catsim simulation environment. Results show that the proposed algorithmic compensation of ROI motion produced images visually indistinguishable from the images reconstructed with the ground truth positions of the ROI. The residual errors of the estimated ROI positions were no greater than 0.12 mm in x- and y- translation and 0.26 degree in rotation. Up to twofold improvement in the modulation transfer function (MTF) was achieved by ZIPS CT relative to a conventional centered scan.
Research on transmission conductor extraction method based on mainline projection LSD algorithm

Reliable extraction of transmission lines is crucial for line feature identification, fault diagnosis and condition evaluation. The existing image extraction methods still have deficiencies such as inaccurate wire extraction, high arithmetic power consumption, and inability to complete operations at the edge side. This paper proposes a transmission conductor extraction method based on the main line projection LSD algorithm. First, the conductor is segmented from the background by the LSD algorithm, a processing matching algorithm for the main line projection is proposed for the errors in the results, and a conductor parameter estimation method is established based on the extraction results. The method requires low arithmetic power of the equipment and can be deployed at the side end to achieve conductor extraction and provide a basis for further data analysis.
State of the Art on the Microbial Production of Industrially Relevant Organic Acids

The industrial relevance of organic acids is high; because of their chemical properties, they can be used as building blocks as well as single-molecule agents with a huge annual market. Organic acid chemical platforms can derive from fossil sources by petrochemical refining processes, but most of them also represent natural metabolites produced by many cells. They are the products, by-products or co-products of many primary metabolic processes of microbial cells. Thanks to the potential of microbial cell factories and to the development of industrial biotechnology, from the last decades of the previous century, the microbial-based production of these molecules has started to approach the market. This was possible because of a joint effort of microbial biotechnologists and biochemical and process engineers that boosted natural production up to the titer, yield and productivity needed to be industrially competitive. More recently, the possibility to utilize renewable residual biomasses as feedstock not only for biofuels, but also for organic acids production is further augmenting the sustainability of their production, in a logic of circular bioeconomy. In this review, we briefly present the latest updates regarding the production of some industrially relevant organic acids (citric fumaric, itaconic, lactic and succinic acid), discussing the challenges and possible future developments of successful production.
Experience: practical indoor localization for malls

We report our experiences of developing, deploying, and evaluating MLoc, a smartphone-based indoor localization system for malls. MLoc uses Bluetooth Low Energy RSSI and geomagnetic field strength as fingerprints. We develop efficient approaches for large-scale, outsourced training data collection. We also design robust online algorithms for localizing and tracking users' positions in complex malls. Since 2018, MLoc has been deployed in 7 cities in China, and used by more than 1 million customers. We conduct extensive evaluations at 35 malls in 7 cities, covering 152K m2 mall areas with a total walking distance of 215 km (1,100 km training data). MLoc yields a median location tracking error of 2.4m. We further characterize the behaviors of MLoc's customers (472K users visiting 12 malls), and demonstrate that MLoc is a promising marketing platform through a promotion event. The e-coupons delivered through MLoc yield an overall conversion rate of 22%. To facilitate future research on mobile sensing and indoor localization, we have released a large dataset (43 GB at the time when this paper was published) that contains IMU, BLE, GMF readings, and the localization ground truth collected by trained testers from 37 shopping malls.
Numerical Simulation of Compositional Flow in Porous Media under Gravity

This paper is concerned with the numerical simulation of multiphase, multicomponent flow in porous media. The model equations are based on compositional flow with mass interchange between phases. The compositional model consists of Darcy’s law for volumetric flow velocities, mass conservation for hydrocarbon components, thermodynamic equilibrium for mass interchange between phases, and an equation of state for saturations. High-accurate finite volume methods on unstructured grids are used to discretize the model governing equations. Special emphasis is placed on studying the influence of gravitational effects on the overall displacement dynamics. In particular, free and forced convections, diffusions, and dispersions are studied in separate and combined cases, and their interplays are intensively analyzed for gravitational instabilities. Extensive numerical experiments are presented to validate the numerical study under consideration.
Fast and Precise Application Code Analysis using a Partial Library

Long analysis times are a key bottleneck for the widespread adoption of whole-program static analysis tools. Fortunately, however, a user is often only interested in finding errors in the application code, which constitutes a small fraction of the whole program. Current application-focused analysis tools overapproximate the effect of the library and hence reduce the precision of the analysis results. However, empirical studies have shown that users have high expectations on precision and will ignore tool results that don't meet these expectations. In this paper, we introduce the first tool QueryMax that significantly speeds up an application code analysis without dropping any precision. QueryMax acts as a pre-processor to an existing analysis tool to select a partial library that is most relevant to the analysis queries in the application code. The selected partial library plus the application is given as input to the existing static analysis tool, with the remaining library pointers treated as the bottom element in the abstract domain. This achieves a significant speedup over a whole-program analysis, at the cost of a few lost errors, and with no loss in precision. We instantiate and run experiments on QueryMax for a cast-check analysis and a null-pointer analysis. For a particular configuration, QueryMax enables these two analyses to achieve, relative to a whole-program analysis, an average recall of 87%, a precision of 100% and a geometric mean speedup of 10x.
Influence of annealing on electrical and optical properties of NiO thick film Sensors developed by screen printing technique

The current study present the preparation of NiO thick film sensors by using screen printing technique on glass substrate and study influence of annealing on electrical and optical properties of prepared thick films. Prepared films were annealed at in the range of 250°C to at 400°C using muffle furnace for 2 hours. Electrical properties of NiO thick film sensors were studied using resistivity, temperature coefficient ratio, and activation energy and optical properties were studied using FTIR and UV spectroscopy. It has been found that the resistivity of all prepared NiO thick film sensor decreased as annealing temperature increased. The energy band gap (Eg) of un-annealed and annealed at 250, 300, 350 and 400 °C NiO thick film sensors was found to be 3.25, 2.99, 2.81, 2.73, and 2.49 eV respectively. The change in optical band gap energy, reveals the impact of annealing on optical properties of the NiO films.
PCR and microsatellite analysis of diminazene aceturate resistance of bovine trypanosomes correlated to knowledge, attitude and practice of livestock keepers in South-Western Ethiopia

African Animal Trypanosomosis is threatening the agricultural production and cattle breeding more severely than any other livestock disease in the continent, even more since the advent of drug resistance. A longitudinal study was conducted from November 2012 to May 2013 in the Ghibe valley to evaluate diminazene aceturate (DA) resistance and assess livestock owner’s perception of trypanocidal drug use. Four Peasant Associations (PAs) were purposively selected and the cattle randomly sampled in each PAs. At the beginning of the study (t0), 106 bovines positive for trypanosomes by the haematocrit centrifugation technique (HCT) and 119 negative control animals were recruited for six months followup using HCT, 18S-PCR-RFLP, DpnII-PCR-RFLP and microsatellite analysis. Prevalence of trypanosomosis was 18.1% based on the HCT technique and the mean PCV value was 23.6 ± 5.1% for the 587 sampled cattle. Out of the 106 HCT positive, 64 (60.4%) were positive for the presence of trypanosomes using the 18S-PCR-RFLP. Species detection showed 38 (59.4%) Trypanosoma congolense savannah, 18 (28.1%) Trypanosoma vivax, 5 (7.8%) Trypanosoma theileri and 3 (4.7%) T. congolense Kilifi. Among the T. congolense savannah samples, 31 (81.6%) showed a DA resistant RFLP profile, 2 (5.3%) a mixed profile and 5 did not amplify using the DpnII-PCR-RFLP. A positive HCT had a significant effect on PCV (p < 0.001) with the mean PCV value equal to 24.4 ± 0.2% in the absence of trypanosomes and to 20.9 ± 0.3% in the presence of trypanosomes. PCV increased significantly (p < 0.001) with 4.4 ± 0.5% one month after treatment. All T. congolense savannah type were analyzed using microsatellite markers TCM1, TCM3 and TCM4. The main events were new infections (40.0%) and relapses (37.5%) with cures lagging at 22.5%. In 10 purposively selected PAs a semi-structured questionnaire was used. The average herd size was the highest in Abelti PA (6.7 ± 1.8 TLU) and the mean herd size was statistically different (p = 0.01) in the 10 PAs. Trypanosomosis was designated as the main disease affecting cattle by 97% of the respondents. DA was used by 95.5% of the farmers though more than half of them (51.9%) were not familiar with isometamidium (ISM). There was a trend to overdose young small animals and to underdose large ones. Oxen were treated very frequently (nearly 20 times/year) and calves almost never. To improve the situation in the Ghibe valley, extension messages should be delivered to promote a rational drug use, improved livestock management and the application of strategic vector control methods.
Graph-based codes for hierarchical recovery

In this paper, we consider approaches to designing Tanner codes to protect against symbol loss from multiple erasures. First, we note that Tanner codes inherit locality and availability from their inner codes, allowing one to design longer codes with specified locality and availability. Availability is desirable in that multiple disjoint repair groups increase the likelihood that symbols are available to repair erased ones. Even so, particular patterns of erasures well-distributed across the repair groups may prevent recovery. Hence, we consider an alternative using hierarchical locality which implements tiered recovery, where the tier utilized depends on the number of erasures. Finally, we define hierarchical stopping sets to characterize local message-passing decoder failure at the various repair levels.
Leaf area index in oil palm plantations under different management practices and in re-growing tree islands in Sumatra, Indonesia

vii Zusammenfassung . ix 1 Introduction . 1 1.1 Oil palm plantations and ecosystem functions . 1 1.2 Restoration of ecosystem functions . 2 1.3 Leaf area index and ecosystem functions . 3 1.4 Leaf area index assessment in the CRC990 project . 3 2 Materials and Methods . 6 2.1 Study sites description . 6 2.2 Instrumentation . 10 2.3 Sampling technique . 10 2.4 Statistical analysis . 14 3 Results . 17 3.1 Leaf area index in conventional OP plantation . 17 3.1.1 Conventional oil palm plantation . 17 3.1.2 OPM experiment . 17 3.2 Leaf area index in the enrichment experiment . 17 3.2.1 LAI changes across the enriched plots . 17 3.2.2 Plot size and species richness relationship to LAI . 19 3.2.3 Species identity and species interaction effect on LAI . 21 3.3 Leaf area index in naturally established tree islands . 23 3.4 Leaf area index across treatments in the oil palm landscape . 23 4 Discussion . 25 4.1 Leaf area index (LAI) sampling technique . 25 4.2 Leaf area index in conventional managed plantation . 26 4.3 Leaf area index in alternatively management experiment . 27 4.4 Leaf area index in tree enriched islands . 28 4.4.1 Changes of mean LAI across species richness levels and plots size . 28 4.4.2 Plot size and species richness relationship to LAI . 29 4.4.3 Species identity and species interaction effect on LAI . 29 4.5 Leaf area index in naturally established tree islands . 30 5 Conclusions . 32 6 References . 33 7 Appendixes . 44
KETOGENIC DIET AND EPILEPSY: A NARRATIVE REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Several studies have already explored the role of ketone bodies on the physiological processes involved in the onset of seizures and ketogenic diet is a common treatment option in drug-resistant epilepsy either in children, adolescents or adults. This narrative review aims to summarize the available evidence on the possible mechanisms of action, and on the efficacy of the ketogenic diet and its variants on the treatment of epilepsy from infants to adults. Even though there is a robust biologic plausibility and either mechanistic studies and randomized controlled trials supporting ketogenic diet as a valid approach to reduce seizures in drug-resistant childhood epilepsy, the level of evidence is not as strong for the treatment of drug-resistant epilepsy in adults.
Convolutional Neural Network using Plot Image Data for Abnormal Scenario Diagnosis in Nuclear Power Plants

The safety of nuclear power plants (NPPs) can be threatened because of a variety of causes. The NPP operators should take proper action after identifying the cause of an accident. However, the human errors of the operators that have to identify the accident in a limited situation (i.e., limited time and many surveillance elements) can increase. Recently, many studies have been conducted to assist operators using artificial intelligence (AI) aiming to reduce human errors. Since the NPP data have timeseries characteristics, it has a high performance by applying time-series data-based methods (recurrent neural network, long short-term memory, gated recurrent unit, etc.). In addition, the application of explainable AI (XAI) to ensure the AI reliability in various fields is being conducted. However, the application of XAI is more actively performed on image data compared to time-series data. In this paper, we have conducted basic research for a real-time image-based accident identification system. Here, this study focused on the abnormal situation of the NPPs. Specifically, this study was carried out in the following steps; 1) image conversion of time-series data, 2) converted image data-based AI application, and 3) application of XAI. First, in researches related to image conversion of time-series data, the Gramian angular field (GAF) method is mainly utilized [1]. The GAF method is a technique that converts the one-dimensional time-series data into a two-dimensional matrix by maintaining the time relationship between variables. However, there are several problems to apply to this study; 1) the conversion time of image data is not suitable for the real-time system, and 2) the converted image is difficult to understand intuitively. Therefore, a trend-based plot image conversion method that can be suitable for realtime systems and extract an intuitive image, is utilized. Second, a convolutional neural network (CNN) [2], which is mainly utilized in AI studies using image data, has been adopted as an application model. Finally, the application of gradient-weighted class activation mapping (Grad-CAM), which is an XAI method in the CNN model is considered. By applying XAI method, the operators can intuitively verify the focusing point of AI in the plot image. Therefore, it is expected to enhance the AI reliability by confirming the focusing point of the AI. 2. Method
(INVITED)Review of Optical Fiber Technologies for Optogenetics

Research in the field of Optogenetics has matured to the extent that in vivo implementations are more frequent in the literature. The majority of these employs different variants of optical fibers, including standard optical fibers, fiber bundles and tapered fibers. In the present contribution we review the application of optical fibers in optogenetics, in terms of critical requirements (biocompatabiliy, minimal invasiveness, spatial accuracy, etc) for in vivo demonstrations.
Effects of Exponentially Modified Sinusoidal Oscillation and Amplitude on Bridge Deck Flutter Derivatives

AbstractWith the use of a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) numerical simulation, in this study an unusual exponentially modified sinusoidal (EMS) oscillation was forcibly imposed on deck section to simulate amplitude-varying self-excited forces. This approach facilitated the investigation of the influence of EMS transient oscillation and amplitude on self-excited forces and flutter derivatives. Study results show that for an ideal thin plate, the sensitivities of H2*, H4*, A2*, and A4* to oscillation decaying/diverging ratio (ξ) were higher than those of H1*, H3*, A1*, and A3*. With different amplitudes, ξ, and reduced wind velocities, the self-excited forces of one flat plate and two bluff bridge decks were numerically calculated and the flutter derivatives were extracted and compared with the theoretical and experimental results. If |ξ| < 0.1, its influence was almost negligible, by which the traditional sinusoidal oscillation technique was validated. The heaving and torsional amplitudes had different.