Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Microwave photonic frequency generation and conversion unit design for Ka-band satellite payloads

A key challenge for HTS (high throughput satellite) providers is the provision of higher capacities whilst operating within a challenging mass-power-volume envelope. As payload requirements become more demanding, there is a move toward Ka-band, with even higher frequencies being used for Q/V-band feeder links. In order to satisfy the demand for reconfigurability and higher operating frequencies, there has been increased activity in microwave photonic (MWP) payload design. Two of the key functionalities that have been identified in microwave photonic payload design are the frequency generation unit (FGU) and frequency conversion unit (FCU). In this paper, we describe a proof-of-concept MWP FGU-FCU unit, which is configured as a breadboard demonstrator. The FGU is based on an X-band dual-loop optoelectronic oscillator, which provides a low phase noise microwave modulated LO to the following FCU stage. This unit is based on the application of electro-optic mixing in a Mach-Zehnder modulator. Incoming high frequency Ka-band signals (27.5-29.5 GHz) are applied to the RF drive of the EOM and are down-converted to a lower band (19.7-20.2 GHz) through subsequent photo-detection in the Optical-to-Electrical conversion (O/E) block. An optical amplifier (OA) is placed in the photonic link to compensate the opto-electronic conversion losses at the optical domain of the income signals. Hence the EOM, OA and O/E chain comprises the frequency conversion unit (FCU). We also outline potential paths to a fully integrated combined MWP FGU-FCU.
Photonics-based ultra-low phase noise X-band microwave generation

Mode-locked lasers, and in particular solid-state femtosecond lasers, are oscillators with a unique physics capable to exhibit extremely low-phase noise of the emitted pulse train. Here we report ultra-low phase noise microwave generation with a self-referenced, fully-stabilized mode-locked femtosecond laser. The system involves a 395-MHz repetition rate 1560nm laser which is self-referenced and whose repetition rate is locked to a cavity-stabilized continuous-wave laser. The selfreferencing is achieved with a f-3f nonlinear interferometer realized in a silicon nitride highly-nonlinear waveguide. Prior to optical-to-electrical conversion for X-band microwave generation, the 395-MHz repetition rate of the mode-locked laser pulse train is multiplied in a fiber interleaver to 3.16 GHz. A high-power handling photodiode converts the optical pulse train to an electrical frequency comb with 3.16 GHz frequency spacing. Finally, the 9.5-GHz harmonics is bandpassfiltered and phase noise measurements have shown a record-low phase noise floor of -175 dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset frequency.
Fabrication of plasmonic nanoslit aperture platform for biomolecule analysis

We fabricated the various nano-aperture plasmonic platforms on pyramid and on the flat membranes. The nano-apertures such as circular nanopore and nanoslit pores were fabricated. Optical characteristics were found to be dependent upon the aperture size and the sample thickness. The enhanced optical emission spectra with decreased aperture sizes have been observed due to spp-mediated emission at ~ 500 nm. In addition, the broad emission spectra in the visible and infrared region from the nanoslit array are obtained. The fabricated Au nano-aperture platform with a few nano-meter openings can be utilized as a single-molecule sensor.
Free-space local nonseparability dynamics of parabolic vector modes

It is well known that entanglement is invariant to local unitary transformations, this implies the degree of entanglement or non-separability remains constant during free-space propagation, which is true for both quantum and classically-entangled modes. Here we demonstrate an exception to this rule using a carefully engineered vectorial light field, and study its non-separability dynamics upon free-space propagation. We show that the local non-separability between the spatial and polarisation degrees of freedom dramatically decays to zero, while preserving the purity of the state and hence the global non-separability. We show this by numerical simulations and corroborate it experimentally. Our results evince novel properties of classically-entangled modes, point to the need for new measures of non-separability for such vectorial fields, while paving the way to novel applications for customised structured light.
Recent advances on fiber-based laser and Lidar systems for future space-borne monitoring of greenhouse gas

We report on recent advances at ONERA on fiber-based laser and lidar systems, in the perspective of future space-borne monitoring of greenhouse gas, especially CO2 and CH4. We first present an advancement status of research activities on high-peak-power single-frequency fiber lasers at 2.05 μm and 1.58 μm for CO2 monitoring, and at 1.64 μm for CH4, as well as perspectives for future amplification and frequency-stabilization of these lasers. The second parts deals with activities led on electro-optic dual comb spectroscopy (EO-DCS), which could be a potential future alternative technique to conventional space-borne IPDA lidars (Integrated Path Differential Absorption). We report on an EO-DCS experiment performed in pulsed regime, using an Er-Yb-doped amplifier delivering up to 92 μJ, 2μs pulses at 10 kHz repetition rate. An absorption line of HCN is sampled simultaneously by a 13-teeth frequency comb, and its transmission is measured with a good agreement with respect to the expectation.
Two-dimensional Stroke Gesture Recognition

The expansion of touch-sensitive technologies, ranging from smartwatches to wall screens, triggered a wider use of gesture-based user interfaces and encouraged researchers to invent recognizers that are fast and accurate for end-users while being simple enough for practitioners. Since the pioneering work on two-dimensional (2D) stroke gesture recognition based on feature extraction and classification, numerous approaches and techniques have been introduced to classify uni- and multi-stroke gestures, satisfying various properties of articulation-, rotation-, scale-, and translation-invariance. As the domain abounds in different recognizers, it becomes difficult for the practitioner to choose the right recognizer, depending on the application and for the researcher to understand the state-of-the-art. To address these needs, a targeted literature review identified 16 significant 2D stroke gesture recognizers that were submitted to a descriptive analysis discussing their algorithm, performance, and properties, and a comparative analysis discussing their similarities and differences. Finally, some opportunities for expanding 2D stroke gesture recognition are drawn from these analyses.
Temporal Relation Extraction in Clinical Texts

Unstructured data in electronic health records, represented by clinical texts, are a vast source of healthcare information because they describe a patient's journey, including clinical findings, procedures, and information about the continuity of care. The publication of several studies on temporal relation extraction from clinical texts during the last decade and the realization of multiple shared tasks highlight the importance of this research theme. Therefore, we propose a review of temporal relation extraction in clinical texts. We analyzed 105 articles and verified that relations between events and document creation time, a coarse temporality type, were addressed with traditional machine learning–based models with few recent initiatives to push the state-of-the-art with deep learning–based models. For temporal relations between entities (event and temporal expressions) in the document, factors such as dataset imbalance because of candidate pair generation and task complexity directly affect the system's performance. The state-of-the-art resides on attention-based models, with contextualized word representations being fine-tuned for temporal relation extraction. However, further experiments and advances in the research topic are required until real-time clinical domain applications are released. Furthermore, most of the publications mainly reside on the same dataset, hindering the need for new annotation projects that provide datasets for different medical specialties, clinical text types, and even languages.
Internet islands: first class networked communities in isolated regions

For disconnected communities, the associated cost of backhaul network infrastructure is seen as one of the most significant challenges of accessing connectivity services. To help mitigate this challenge, we propose the Internet Island Architecture. The Architecture provides room for a large class of so-called ``sharing economy'' applications such as temporary labour, dating service, market services and transport services supported by local connectivity alone. We show the feasibility of the system and discuss the advantages of the proposed architecture
Semantic Information Retrieval on Medical Texts

The explosive growth and widespread accessibility of medical information on the Internet have led to a surge of research activity in a wide range of scientific communities including health informatics and information retrieval (IR). One of the common concerns of this research, across these disciplines, is how to design either clinical decision support systems or medical search engines capable of providing adequate support for both novices (e.g., patients and their next-of-kin) and experts (e.g., physicians, clinicians) tackling complex tasks (e.g., search for diagnosis, search for a treatment). However, despite the significant multi-disciplinary research advances, current medical search systems exhibit low levels of performance. This survey provides an overview of the state of the art in the disciplines of IR and health informatics, and bridging these disciplines shows how semantic search techniques can facilitate medical IR. First,we will give a broad picture of semantic search and medical IR and then highlight the major scientific challenges. Second, focusing on the semantic gap challenge, we will discuss representative state-of-the-art work related to feature-based as well as semantic-based representation and matching models that support medical search systems. In addition to seminal works, we will present recent works that rely on research advancements in deep learning. Third, we make a thorough cross-model analysis and provide some findings and lessons learned. Finally, we discuss some open issues and possible promising directions for future research trends.
Comparison of the Active Sitting Test and Head-Up Tilt Test for Diagnosis of Postural Tachycardia Syndrome in Children and Adolescents

Objectives: We aimed to compare the hemodynamic responses to the active sitting test with the passive head-up tilt test (HUTT) in children and adolescents with postural tachycardia syndrome (POTS). We hypothesized that sitting tachycardia was also present in POTS patients during sitting. Materials and methods: We tested 30 POTS patients and 31 control subjects (mean age = 12 years, range = 9–16 years) who underwent both active sitting test and HUTT successively. We measured the heart rate (HR) and blood pressure (BP) during each test. Results: For both POTS patients and control subjects, the HUTT produced significantly larger HR and BP increases from 3 to 10 min of postural change than did the sitting test. Moreover, POTS patients with excessive orthostatic tachycardia during the HUTT also had significantly larger increases in HR at all test intervals during the sitting test than did the control subjects. A maximum increase in HR ≥ 22 bpm within 10 min of the sitting test was likely suggested to predict orthostatic tachycardia, yielding a sensitivity and specificity of 83.3 and 83.9%, respectively. Only six of 30 POTS patients (20%) reached the 40-bpm criterion during the sitting test, and no one complained of sitting intolerance symptoms. Conclusions: We have shown that POTS patients also have sitting tachycardia when changing from a supine position to a sitting position. We believe that the active sitting test is a reasonable alternative maneuver in assessing POTS in population groups that cannot tolerate the standing test or HUTT.
Biocontrol Ability and Mechanism of a Broad-Spectrum Antifungal Strain Bacillus safensis sp. QN1NO-4 Against Strawberry Anthracnose Caused by Colletotrichum fragariae

Strawberry is a very popular fruit with a special taste, color, and nutritional value. Anthracnose caused by Colletotrichum fragariae severely limits fruit shelf life during post-harvest storage. Use of traditional chemical fungicides leads to serious environment pollution and threatens food safety. Biocontrol is considered as a promising strategy to manage the post-harvest fruit diseases. Here, strain QN1NO-4 isolated from noni (Morinda citrifolia L.) fruit exhibited a high antifungal activity against C. fragariae. Based on its physicochemical profiles and phylogenetic tree of the 16S rRNA sequence, strain QN1NO-4 belonged to the genus Bacillus. The average nucleotide identity (ANI) calculated by comparing two standard strain genomes was below 95–96%, suggesting that the strain might be a novel species of the genus Bacillus and named as Bacillus safensis sp. QN1NO-4. Its extract effectively reduced the incidence of strawberry anthracnose of harvested fruit. Fruit weight and TSS contents were also maintained significantly. The antifungal mechanism assays indicated that the extract of the test antagonist inhibited mycelial growth and spore germination of C. fragariae in vitro. Cells of strain QN1NO-4 demonstrated the cytoplasmic heterogeneity, disappeared organelles, and ruptured ultrastructure. Notably, the strain extract also had a broad-spectrum antifungal activity. Compared with the whole genome of strain QN1NO-4, several functional gene clusters involved in the biosynthesis of active secondary metabolites were observed. Fifteen compounds were identified by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Hence, the fruit endophyte B. safensis sp. QN1NO-4 is a potential bio-agent identified for the management of post-harvest disease of strawberry fruit.
Effectiveness of Medical Treatment of Cushing’s Disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Objective The objective of this systematic review was to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of pasireotide, cabergoline, ketoconazole, levoketoconazole, metyrapone, osilodrostat, and temozolomide for the treatment of Cushing’s disease (CD). Methods The primary outcomes were the proportion of CD control, adverse events (AE), and reduction of urinary free cortisol. Search strategies were applied to Embase, Medline, and CENTRAL. Independent reviewers assessed the study eligibility, extracted data, and evaluated risk of bias. Standardized mean difference was calculated with 95% confidence interval (CI) for continuous data (i.e., pre- and post-intervention). Random meta-analyses for the proportion of CD control and AE were conducted. Results Twenty-nine controlled and non-controlled studies were included. No study with temozolomide and levoketoconazole and one study with osilodrostat fulfilled the inclusion criteria. The meta-analyses of proportion of CD control was 35% for cabergoline (95% CI: 27–43%, six studies, 141 participants), 44% for pasireotide (95% CI: 25–35%, eight studies, 522 participants), 41% for ketoconazole (95% CI: 36–46%, six studies, 450 participants), 66% for metyrapone (95% CI: 46–87%, four studies, 66 participants), and of 66.4% for osilodrostat (95% CI: 57.9, 74.3, 97 participants, one study). One study compared two different treatments (cabergoline vs. ketoconazole), and no statistical difference was observed in CD control (RR: 0.53, 95% CI: 0.15 to 1.87, 14 participants, very low certainty of evidence). The most frequent AE associated with pasireotide was hyperglycemia, dizziness and nausea with cabergoline and metyrapone, and elevated transaminases with ketoconazole. Conclusion The superiority of one drug over another could not be determined due to lack of controlled studies, but the proportion of disease control identified in our meta-analysis may support clinical decision. New therapeutic options should be investigated due to the limited efficacy and tolerability of the currently available medical treatment for patients with Cushing’s disease. Systematic Review Registration https://www.crd. york.ac. uk/prospero/display_record. php? ID=CRD42020205567, identifier CRD42020205567.
From the Editor

EDITOR,-In a thorough investigation, Haga et al were unable to demonstrate the presence of measles virus RNA in intestinal specimens from patients with inflammatory bowel disease (Gut 1996; 38: 211-5). Although they developed an exquisitely sensitive technique, there remains a fundamental flaw in their methodology. They described intestinal tissue postoperative resection times ranging from 20 to 90 minutes. Such prolonged ischaemic times would have reduced the sensitivity of their assay considerably, as substantial RNA degradation would have occurred. MacPherson et al reported a significantly lower yield of RNA in surgical intestinal specimens with ischaemic times of45 minutes to 1 hour 45 minutes compared with biopsy specimens frozen within 15 seconds. ' Further degradation can also occur during prolonged storage at -70°C. The assay may be sufficiently sensitive to detect one viral genome, but low copy number RNA species are likely to have been lost on the way. This could be tested by attempting to amplify an intestinal RNA species present in much lower copy numbers than 1-actin from their extracted intestinal RNA samples. The authors must apply their technique to freshly resected intestinal tissue before they can conclude that nested RT-PCR fails to detect measles, mumps or rubella viral genomes. M S H SMITH Department of Gastroenterology, North Staffordshire Hospital, Newcastle Road, Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire ST4 6QG
Treatment of real benzene dye intermediates wastewater by the Fenton method: characteristics and multi-response optimization

Benzene dye intermediates (BDI) wastewater has caused major environmental concern due to its potential carcinogenic, teratogenic, and mutagenic effects. Treatability reports dealing with the advanced chemical oxidation of BDI are limited. In this work, the Fenton method was applied to treat the real BDI wastewater to provide a deep insight into single as well as combinative effects of the main process variables influencing the treatment performance. First, we evaluated the effects of the reaction time, initial pH, initial [H2O2] concentration, and initial [Fe2+] concentration on the Fenton oxidation efficiency of real BDI wastewater. Furthermore, based on the Box–Behnken response surface methodology (RSM), an empirical mathematical model between response values, namely the chemical oxygen demand (COD), total organic carbon (TOC), color removal efficiency, sludge iron mass ration (SIMR), and influence factors were established to evaluate the interaction effects and optimize the experimental conditions. All of the proposed models were adequate with an R2 range from 0.9561 to 0.9880. In addition, three of these factors had different effects on four studied response values. By overlaying the responses, the optimum conditions were obtained at an initial pH of 4.13, an initial [H2O2] concentration of 1.0 M, and an initial [Fe2+] concentration of 0.36 M. Verification experiments were conducted at the optimum conditions, which led to a COD removal efficiency of 85.29%, a TOC removal efficiency of 75.23%, a color removal efficiency of 99.99%, and a SIMR response of 0.39, respectively, and the results were in good agreement with the values predicted by the model. In addition, the BOD5/COD ratio was observed to increase from 0.08 to 0.49, indicating an improvement in biodegradability.
The effects of designing conversational commerce chatbots with expertise cues

Drawing upon the computers-are-social-actors (CASA) paradigm, this study examined the effects of designing conversational commerce chatbots with expertise cues. Accordingly, these cues were operationalized through designation of chatbots as product-specific advisers, dialogues containing expertise-cued labels and social descriptors (e.g., "I am your personal expert adviser for sportswear! "), gender of chatbots, and appearance styles of chatbots. A within-subject laboratory experiment was conducted in which university undergraduates (n=71) viewed two videos displaying mock user-chatbot interactions — one featured the experimental condition (chatbots with expertise cues) while the other featured the control condition (chatbot without expertise cues). Compared against the control, the experimental condition elevated perceived source expertise of chatbots, platform trust ability and trust integrity, and purchase intention through the conversational commerce platform. The expertise cues effects on purchase intention was mediated by platform trust ability. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed through the lens of CASA and source credibility model in this paper.
On the Issue of Assessing the Possible Vulnerability of Users' Personal Data in Social Networks

The article is devoted to the study of the issues of assessing the possible vulnerability of users' personal data in social networks. The object of the study is social networks. The subject of the study is the algorithms for determining the user's personal data in social networks. The purpose of the work is to improve the quality of detection of hidden personal data of the user in social networks. Quality indicators are the time spent by the algorithm at all stages of the analysis, the resource intensity, and the accuracy of determining personal data.Based on the results of the study, a method for determining the user's personal data in social networks based on their social interactions is proposed, which significantly exceeds the accuracy and speed of determining personal data and requires a smaller training sample. The following results were obtained: • a method for determining the user's social circles was developed, taking into account the specifics of the average size and strength of communication in modern social circles; • a method for determining the informativeness of the social circle has been developed; • a method for determining the user's personal data has been developed and tested, the method has been tested on the age of the user; • the developed method is compared with the existing ones.
Increasing the Reliability of Computer Network Protection System by Analyzing its Controllability Models

One of the main tasks in organizing the protection of computer networks from cyber attacks is to ensure the management of the protection system. Management includes obtaining information about the state of the protection system, analyzing the information received, developing and executing a solution, as well as implementing control actions on all network protective components. The paper discusses possible variants of models of the control system for the computer network protection system in the context of cyber attacks. Depending on the peculiarities for functioning of the control system of the computer network protection system, one or another controllability function can be selected. The parameters of the model should be determined in advance, so that the model adequately describes the activities of the control system of this class in solving problems in conditions of cyber attacks. The indicator for the effectiveness of the control system of the protection system is substantiated - the probability of an error-free and timely decision-making in time, which determines the cyber resilience of the network as a whole. The adequacy of the developed models has been experimentally confirmed.