Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Solar Power Generation System With Power Smoothing Function

The output power from a solar power generation system (SPGS) changes significantly because of environmental factors, which affects the stability and reliability of a power distribution system. This study proposes a SPGS with the power smoothing function. The proposed SPGS consists of a solar cell array, a battery set, a dual-input buck-boost DC-AC inverter (DIBBDAI) and a boost power converter (BPC). The DIBBDAI combines the functions of voltage boost, voltage buck and DC-AC power conversion. The BPC acts as a battery charger between the solar cell array and the battery set. For the proposed SPGS, the DC power that is provided by the solar cell array or the battery set is converted into AC power through only one power stage. The solar cell array also charges the battery set through only one power stage. This increases the power conversion efficiency for the solar cell array, the battery set and the utility. The battery set is charged/discharged when the output power of the solar cell array changes drastically, in order to smooth the output power from the SPGS. In addition, the DIBBDAI can suppress the leakage current that is induced by the parasitic capacitance of the solar cell array. The proposed power conversion interface increases power efficiency, smooths power fluctuation and decreases leakage current for a SPGS. A hardware prototype is completed to verify the performance of the proposed SPGS.
Category Alignment Adversarial Learning for Cross-Modal Retrieval

Cross-modal retrieval aims to retrieve one semantically similar media from multiple media types based on queries entered by another type of media. An intuitive idea is to map different media data into a common space and then directly measure content similarity between different types of data. In this paper, we present a novel method, called Category Alignment Adversarial Learning (CAAL) for cross-modal retrieval. It aims to find a common representation space supervised by category information, in which the samples from different modalities can be compared directly. Specifically, CAAL first employs two parallel encoders to generate common representations for image and text features respectively. Furthermore, we employ two parallel GANs with category information to generate fake image and text features which next will be utilized with already generated embedding to reconstruct the common representation. At last, two joint discriminators are utilized to reduce the gap between the mapping of the first stage and the embedding of the second stage. Comprehensive experimental results on four widely-used benchmark datasets demonstrate the superior performance of our proposed method compared with the state-of-the-art approaches.
THE CORRELATION BETWEEN L-CARNITINE UPTAKE AND SOME HEMATOLOGICAL PARAMETERS IN OXIDATIVE STRESSED RATS

The objective of this research was to determine the effect of L-carnitine antioxidant ability on some hematological parameters such as the extent of red blood corpuscles (RBCs), "Packed cells volume (PCV)", Hemoglobin (Hb), and Mean cellular volume (MCV) in normal and oxidative stress exposed rats respectively. Using an animal model, "Hydrogen peroxide ((H2O2 0.5 %)" was mixed with drinking tap water to induce oxidative stress through the experiment period (30 days). Three groups were used in this study (each containing 7 rats) one of them was the negative control group and the other two were the positive control group (oxidative stress group treated with H2O2) and the treatment group treated with H2O2 + L-carnitine. The oxidative stress group showed a significant decrease (P<0.05) in RBCs count, and no significant differences (P<0.05) were observed in Hb, PCV, and MCV compared with the control group on the other hand the treatment group revealed a significant increase (P<0.05) in RBCs count in cooperation with the oxidative stress group. It can be concluded that L-carnitine has a positive key role toward H2O2 induced oxidative stress. This role positively affects the red bone marrow and erythropoiesis through balancing the negative effect of oxidative stress and can be monitored through RBCs count only.
Using patient-reported data from a smartphone app to capture and characterize real-time patient-reported flares in rheumatoid arthritis

Abstract Objective We aimed to explore the frequency of self-reported flares and their association with preceding symptoms collected through a smartphone app by people with RA. Methods We used data from the Remote Monitoring of RA study, in which patients tracked their daily symptoms and weekly flares on an app. We summarized the number of self-reported flare weeks. For each week preceding a flare question, we calculated three summary features for daily symptoms: mean, variability and slope. Mixed effects logistic regression models quantified associations between flare weeks and symptom summary features. Pain was used as an example symptom for multivariate modelling. Results Twenty patients tracked their symptoms for a median of 81 days (interquartile range 80, 82). Fifteen of 20 participants reported at least one flare week, adding up to 54 flare weeks out of 198 participant weeks in total. Univariate mixed effects models showed that higher mean and steeper upward slopes in symptom scores in the week preceding the flare increased the likelihood of flare occurrence, but the association with variability was less strong. Multivariate modelling showed that for pain, mean scores and variability were associated with higher odds of flare, with odds ratios 1.83 (95% CI, 1.15, 2.97) and 3.12 (95% CI, 1.07, 9.13), respectively. Conclusion Our study suggests that patient-reported flares are common and are associated with higher daily RA symptom scores in the preceding week. Enabling patients to collect daily symptom data on their smartphones might, ultimately, facilitate prediction and more timely management of imminent flares.
Trajectory Tracking of Underactuated Unmanned Surface Vessels: Non-Singular Terminal Sliding Control with Nonlinear Disturbance Observer

An underactuated unmanned surface vessel (USV) is a nonholonomic system, in which trajectory tracking is a challenging problem that has drawn more and more attention from researchers recently. The control of trajectory tracking is of critical importance since it determines whether the task can be carried out successfully. In this paper, a non-singular terminal sliding model (NTSM) controller is proposed for the trajectory tracking control of the underactuated USV, with a nonlinear disturbance observer which is designed to measure complex environmental disturbances such as wind, waves, and currents. Exploratory simulations were carried out and the results show that the proposed controller is effective and robust for the trajectory tracking of underactuated USVs in the presence of environmental disturbances.
Metered Boot: Trusted Framework for Application Usage Rights Management in Virtualized Ecosystems

The adoption of virtualization and cloud computing technologies have revolutionized how services and applications can be developed, deployed, and operated to achieve better elasticity, flexibility, and scalability. Multiple stakeholders can be involved for providing online services; each of them plays one or more roles (i.e., service operator, application vendor, and infrastructure provider) to create a customized operating model based on the business requirements. The operating model changes from one business to another, and it may even change at different stages of the same business. A trusted relationship among stakeholders for secure information exchange is the key to enable such flexibility. However, traditional usage compliance methods (e.g., in-person audit, dynamic licensing, and subscription) lack explicit trust among involved parties and the flexibility and scalability to support dynamic sizing of services and applications with low overhead. In this work, we argue the need for a new trust framework to manage application usage rights and propose Metered Boot to provide trusted, capacity/usage-based usage rights management for services and applications deployed in virtualized environments. Metered Boot decouples application workload instantiation for service operators, usage rights governance for application vendors, and resource provisioning for infrastructure providers. We leverage cryptoprocessors (e.g., Trusted Platform Module (TPM)) on commodity servers to generate trusted proofs which are managed by efficient cryptographic construction, Merkle hash tree, for usage rights compliance. We integrated our framework with OpenStack and demonstrate that Metered Boot is able to achieve high scalability and low overhead for instantiating virtual network functions (VNFs).
The Effects of Vitamins and Micronutrients on Helicobacter pylori Pathogenicity, Survival, and Eradication: A Crosstalk between Micronutrients and Immune System

Helicobacter pylori as a class I carcinogen is correlated with a variety of severe gastroduodenal diseases; therefore, H. pylori eradication has become a priority to prevent gastric carcinogenesis. However, due to the emergence and spread of multidrug and single drug resistance mechanisms in H. pylori, as well as serious side effects of currently used antibiotic interventions, achieving successful H. pylori eradication has become exceedingly difficult. Recent studies expressed the intention of seeking novel strategies to improve H. pylori management and reduce the risk of H. pylori-associated intestinal and extragastrointestinal disorders. For which, vitamin supplementation has been demonstrated in many studies to have a tight interaction with H. pylori infection, either directly through the regulation of the host inflammatory pathways or indirectly by promoting the host immune response. On the other hand, H. pylori infection is reported to result in micronutrient malabsorption or deficiency. Furthermore, serum levels of particular micronutrients, especially vitamin D, are inversely correlated to the risk of H. pylori infection and eradication failure. Accordingly, vitamin supplementation might increase the efficiency of H. pylori eradication and reduce the risk of drug-related adverse effects. Therefore, this review aims at highlighting the regulatory role of micronutrients in H. pylori-induced host immune response and their potential capacity, as intrinsic antioxidants, for reducing oxidative stress and inflammation. We also discuss the uncovered mechanisms underlying the molecular and serological interactions between micronutrients and H. pylori infection to present a perspective for innovative in vitro investigations, as well as novel clinical implications.
Sociaaleconomische status en institutioneel vertrouwen in een tijd van corona

During the corona pandemic, governments of all countries made heavy demands on the trust of their populations by taking drastic social and economic measures to prevent the spread of the virus. In this study we aim to provide insight into mechanisms that influence the level of institutional trust during the corona pandemic. We are specifically interested in how three explanatory factors, socio-economic status (SES), perceived economic uncertainty and dissatisfaction with the corona policy, can mutually explain differences in institutional trust. This study is based on data from a large-scale survey of the social impact of COVID-19, conducted by the research agency Kieskompas (N = 22,696). With a serial mediation analysis, we show that SES has both a direct and indirect effect on the degree of institutional trust: people with a higher SES experience less economic uncertainty and have less dissatisfaction with the corona policy and partly as a result, more institutional trust. Additionally, economic uncertainty increases dissatisfaction with the corona policy, and partly as a result of this weakens the degree of institutional trust.
Dietary Patterns and Their Associations with Intermediate Age-Related Macular Degeneration in a Japanese Population

This population-based cross-sectional study investigated the influence of dietary patterns on age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in a Japanese population. The Tsuruoka Metabolomics Cohort Study enrolled a general population aged 35–74 years from among participants in annual health check-up programs in Tsuruoka City, Japan. Eating habits were assessed using a food frequency questionnaire. Principal component analysis was used to identify dietary patterns among food items. The association between quartiles of scores for each dietary pattern and intermediate AMD was assessed using multivariate logistic regression models. Of 3433 participants, 415 had intermediate AMD. We identified four principal components comprising the Vegetable-rich pattern, Varied staple food pattern, Animal-rich pattern, and Seafood-rich pattern. After adjusting for potential confounders, higher Varied staple food diet scores were associated with a lower prevalence of intermediate AMD (fourth vs. first quartile) (OR, 0.63; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.46–0.86). A significant trend of decreasing ORs for intermediate AMD associated with increasing Varied staple food diet scores was noted (p for trend = 0.002). There was no significant association between the other dietary patterns and intermediate AMD. In a Japanese population, individuals with a dietary pattern score high in the Varied staple food pattern had a lower prevalence of intermediate AMD.
Effect of Chinese Traditional Wushu on Cancer-Related Fatigue, Sleep Quality and Upper Limb Dysfunction of Breast Cancer Survivors: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Objective This study is aimed at evaluating the effect of Chinese traditional Wushu (CTW) on cancer-related fatigue (CRF), sleep quality, and upper limb dysfunction. Data Sources. We searched studies containing randomized controlled trials up to July 2021 in PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang database, and China Biological Medicine on this topic. Methods A randomized controlled trial of CTW on major outcome indicators such as CRF, sleep quality, and upper limb dysfunction of breast cancer survivors. Study screening, data extraction, and risk of bias assessment were performed independently by two reviewers. Meta-analysis was conducted with Stata 16.0 software. The quality of the evidence was assessed by the Cochrane Collaboration Risk of Bias (ROB2.0). Results Eighteen studies met the requirements for meta-analysis (n = 1331). We found that CTW has no obvious effect on improving breast cancer survivors' CRF (SMD = −0.733; P = 0.059; I2 = 89.3%), but it can effectively improve their sleep quality (WMD = −2.266; P = 0.022; I2 = 99.2%) and upper limb dysfunction (SMD = 1.262; P ≤ 0.001; I2 = 88.5%). Conclusion Although more studies on this topic are needed to prove the effectiveness of this method, the results of our review show that CTW is significantly helpful for better sleep and upper limb dysfunction. But the effects on CRF will need to be confirmed further. Implications for Cancer Survivors. In the future intervention process, to verify the effectiveness of CTW on improving CRF for breast cancer survivors, it would be suggested to pay close attention to breast cancer survivors' response to exercise, achieve regular follow-up, strictly conduct the intervention scheme on the premise of ensuring absolute security, and reduce the loss of intervention objects.
Design, Characterization, and In Vitro Assays on Muscle Cells of Endocannabinoid-like Molecule Loaded Lipid Nanoparticles for a Therapeutic Anti-Inflammatory Approach to Sarcopenia

Inflammatory processes play a key role in the pathogenesis of sarcopenia owing to their effects on the balance between muscle protein breakdown and synthesis. Palmitoylethanolamide (PEA), an endocannabinoid-like molecule, has been well documented for its anti-inflammatory properties, suggesting its possible beneficial use to counteract sarcopenia. The promising therapeutic effects of PEA are, however, impaired by its poor bioavailability. In order to overcome this limitation, the present study focused on the encapsulation of PEA in solid lipid nanoparticles (PEA-SLNs) in a perspective of a systemic administration. PEA-SLNs were characterized for their physico-chemical properties as well as cytotoxicity and cell internalization capacity on C2C12 myoblast cells. Their size was approximately 250 nm and the encapsulation efficiency reached 90%. Differential scanning calorimetry analyses demonstrated the amorphous state of PEA in the inner SLN matrix, which improved PEA dissolution, as observed in the in vitro assays. Despite the high internalization capacity observed with the flow cytometer (values between 85 and 94% after 14 h of incubation), the Nile Red labeled PEA-SLNs showed practically no toxicity towards myoblasts. Confocal analysis showed the presence of SLNs in the cytoplasm and not in the nucleus. These results suggest the potentiality provided by PEA-SLNs to obtain an innovative and side-effect-free tool in the medical treatment of sarcopenia.
Sugar signal mediates flavonoid biosynthesis in tea leaves

Abstract Sugar metabolism and flavonoid biosynthesis vary with the development of tea leaves. In order to understand the regulatory mechanisms underlying the associations between them, a comprehensive transcriptomic analysis of naturally growing tea leaves at different stages of maturity was carried out. Based on weighted gene coexpression network analysis, the key gene modules (Modules 2 and 3) related to the varying relationship between sugar metabolism and flavonoid biosynthesis as well as the corresponding hub genes were obtained. KEGG (Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes) enrichment analysis showed that the transcription factors (TFs) in Modules 2 and 3 were mainly enriched in the pathway of plant hormone signal transduction. An in vitro study showed that the transcriptional levels of ERF1B-like TF for hexokinase inhibitor and sucrose treatments were upregulated, being respectively 28.1- and 30.2-fold higher than in the control, suggesting that ERF1B-like TFs participate in the sugar-induced regulation of flavonoid biosynthesis. The results of yeast one-hybrid and dual-luciferase assays demonstrated that CsF3′H, encoding flavonoid 3′-hydroxylase, was the target flavonoid biosynthetic gene for CsERF1B-like TF. Our study identified the potential key regulators participating in the metabolism of sugars and flavonoids, providing new insights into the crosstalk between sugar metabolism and flavonoid biosynthesis in tea plants.
Compact Dual-Band Dual-Polarized Stack Patch Antenna Array With Capacitive Feed for Fifth-Generation (5G) Applications

In this article, a compact 4 3 4 dualband dual-polarized antenna array with a wide bandwidth operating at the Ka band is presented. A stacked patch topology is used for dual-band operation, and feeding probes are used to excite the antenna array. Higher band elements have parasitic patches to achieve higher gain and increase the bandwidth. Moreover, a small metal ground on top of the common ground plane is designed for each element to suppress the coupling between the antenna elements and effectively improve the beam scanning range. The proposed antenna array with the size of 19 mm 3 19 mm operates at the center frequencies of 28 GHz and 38 GHz, and the simulated results show that both wide bandwidth and stable gain were achieved. The 10 dB impedance bandwidths are 17.5% and 13.5% in the lower and higher bands, respectively. The realized gain is almost stable over the bandwidth and is around 16.45 dB and 17.28 dB for the lower and higher bands. Meanwhile, it has a relatively wide scanning angle, ranging from 458 to þ458, with stable gain and sidelobe level.
Pathway Phenotypes Underpinning Depression, Anxiety, and Chronic Fatigue Symptoms Due to Acute Rheumatoid Arthritis: A Precision Nomothetic Psychiatry Analysis

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory and autoimmune disorder which affects the joints in the wrists, fingers, and knees. RA is often associated with depressive and anxiety symptoms as well as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS)-like symptoms. This paper examines the association between depressive symptoms (measured with the Beck Depression Inventory, BDI), anxiety (Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale, HAMA), CFS-like (Fibro-fatigue Scale) symptoms and immune–inflammatory, autoimmune, and endogenous opioid system (EOS) markers, and lactosylcer-amide (CD17) in RA. The serum biomarkers were assayed in 118 RA and 50 healthy controls. Results were analyzed using the new precision nomothetic psychiatry approach. We found significant correlations between the BDI, FF, and HAMA scores and severity of RA, as assessed with the DAS28-4, clinical and disease activity indices, the number of tender and swollen joints, and patient and evaluator global assessment scores. Partial least squares analysis showed that 69.7% of the variance in this common core underpinning psychopathology and RA symptoms was explained by immune–inflammatory pathways, rheumatoid factor, anti-citrullinated protein antibodies, CD17, and mu-opioid receptor levels. We constructed a new endophenotype class comprising patients with very high immune–inflammatory markers, CD17, RA, affective and CF-like symptoms, and tobacco use disorder. We extracted a reliable and replicable latent vector (pathway phenotype) from immune data, psychopathology, and RA-severity scales. Depression, anxiety, and CFS-like symptoms due to RA are manifestations of the phenome of RA and are mediated by the effects of the same immune–inflammatory, autoimmune, and other pathways that underpin the pathophysiology of RA.
Analysis of the Financing Options for Pro-Ecological Projects

The implementation of pro-ecological projects, including those in the field of renewable energy sources, should bring the desired effects, not only environmental or social, but also economic and financial. Although the latter should not prejudge the implementation of such projects, investors, who are primarily enterprises, need information on whether financing the project from specific, available sources is effective and when the incurred financial expenses will pay off. The publication presents a model that reflects the procedure in the analysis of financing opportunities for pro-ecological projects, aimed at maximizing their financial effects, with a consideration of specific risk factors and limitations. The result of the application of this model is information that supports making rational decisions about the implementation of a specific pro-ecological project. The model was positively verified within a case study concerning the purchase and assembly of a photovoltaic installation by a medium-sized company in Poland.