Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Genome-Wide Analysis of the Glutathione S-Transferase (GST) Genes and Functional Identification of MdGSTU12 Reveals the Involvement in the Regulation of Anthocyanin Accumulation in Apple

Anthocyanins have essential biological functions, affecting the development of horticultural production. They are synthesized in the cytoplasm through flavonoid metabolic pathways and finally transported into vacuoles for storage. Plant glutathione S-transferases (GSTs) are multifunctional enzymes involved in anthocyanin transportation. In this study, we identified 38 GSTs from the apple (Malus domestica) genome (HFTH1 Whole Genome v1.0) based on the sequence similarity with the GST family proteins of Arabidopsis. These MdGST genes could be grouped into nine chief subclasses: U, F, L, Z, T, GHR, EF1Bγ, TCHQD, and DHAR. The structures, motifs, three-dimensional models, and chromosomal distribution of MdGST genes were further analyzed. Elements which are responsive for some hormones and stress, and others that involve genes related to flavonoid biosynthesis were forecast in the promoter of MdGST. In addition, we identified 32 orthologous gene pairs between apple and Arabidopsis. These genes indicated that numerous apple and Arabidopsis counterparts appeared to be derived from a common ancestor. Amongst the 38 MdGST genes, MdGSTU12 was considerably correlated with anthocyanin variation in terms of extracting expression profiles from reported. Finally, further functional identification in apple transgenic calli and subcellular localization confirmed that MdGSTU12 was of great significance in anthocyanin accumulation in apple.
Electrochemical and Fluorescent Properties of Crown Ether Functionalized Graphene Quantum Dots for Potassium and Sodium Ions Detection

The concentration of sodium and potassium ions in biological fluids, such as blood, urine and sweat, is indicative of several basic body function conditions. Therefore, the development of simple methods able to detect these alkaline ions is of outmost importance. In this study, we explored the electrochemical and optical properties of graphene quantum dots (GQDs) combined with the selective chelating ability of the crown ethers 15-crown-5 and 18-crown-6, with the final aim to propose novel composites for the effective detection of these ions. The results obtained comparing the performances of the single GQDs and crown ethers with those of the GQDs-15-crown-5 and GQDs-18-crown-6 composites, have demonstrated the superior properties of these latter. Electrochemical investigation showed that the GQDs based composites can be exploited for the potentiometric detection of Na+ and K+ ions, but selectivity still remains a concern. The nanocomposites showed the characteristic fluorescence emissions of GQDs and crown ethers. The GQDs-18-crown-6 composite exhibited ratiometric fluorescence emission behavior with the variation of K+ concentration, demonstrating its promising properties for the development of a selective fluorescent method for potassium determination.
Kinetic Modelling of Oxalic Acid Production from Cassava Whey by Aspergillus niger

The transition from eco-harmful chemical processes to bio-based production of organics has been challenged by the complex nature of fermentation processes. The growth kinetics and modelling of oxalic acid production from cassava whey by Aspergillus niger (MW188538) was studied in a batch fermentation system. The production kinetics of the fermentation study was fitted into the Monod, Leudeking-Piret and Andrews kinetic models. The oxalic acid, reducing sugar, cell dry weights were determined according to the experimental design. The results showed that the production of oxalic acid was associated with A. niger with significant R2 value of 0.96 and growth rate of 0.065 biomass/day using the cassava whey as a sole carbon source. The substrate consumption rate of 14.28 and 11.16 mg/g/day with an R2 value of 0.94 and 0.96 suggest there was a healthy utilization of the Cassava whey and yeast extract as described by the Leudeking-Piret and Monod models.
Implementation of Microwave Active Nulling

Abstract : We have fabricated a universal test equipment capable of measuring the phase and amplitude of the reflection wave from a coax-cable cavity resonator. Frequency-agile materials, such as ferroelectric and ferrite samples were included with the resonator so that the resonant frequency of the resonator can be tuned by applying either a bias electric voltage or a bias magnetic field Sensitive electric and magnetic tuning have been obtained, and the measurement results compared nicely with calculations. In order to enhance the sensitivity of electronic tuning resonance mechanisms have been incorporated with the reflector performance such as the structural resonance and the ferrimagnetic resonance.
Is the Mediterranean Diet Pattern Associated with Weight Related Health Complications in Adults? A Cross-Sectional Study of Australian Health Survey

We hypothesized that unhealthy dietary pattern would be associated with weight related complications among overweight. We analysed data from the Australian Health Survey conducted from 2011 to 2013. A total of 5055 adults with at least overweight (body mass index ≥25 kg/m2) were analysed. We used logistic regression to assess the association between unhealthy dietary pattern, defined by low adherence to Mediterranean Diet Score (MDS), and weight related complications, defined by the Edmonton Obesity Staging System (EOSS). We repeated the logistic regression models by age and socio-economic disadvantage strata in sensitivity analyses. We also repeated the main analysis on a propensity score matched dataset (n = 3364). Complications by EOSS ≥2 was present in 3036 (60.1%) participants. There was no statistically significant association between unhealthy dietary pattern and weight related complication (odds ratio 0.98 (95%confidence interval: 0.85, 1.12)). The null association remained the same after repeating the analysis on three age and five socio-economic indexes for areas strata. The finding persisted after the analysis was repeated on a propensity score matched dataset. We found no evidence to support the hypothesis that unhealthy dietary pattern was associated with weight related complications in this cross-sectional study of the Australian population with overweight or obesity.
Scintillation effects and the optimal sequence of deformable mirrors in multi-conjugate adaptive optics

Abstract. Multi-conjugate adaptive optics (MCAO) uses two or more deformable mirrors (DMs) at conjugate altitudes approximately matched to the atmospheric turbulence layers to increase the corrected field of view. An important unresolved problem for MCAO is determining the optimal sequence of the DMs. Theoretical considerations and numerical studies suggest that ordering the DMs from lowest to highest altitude reduces the effects of scintillation, whereas on-sky experiments report that the best performance is attained with the ground-layer DM placed last. Using analytical calculations and numerical experiments with Fresnel propagation of Kolmogorov turbulence, we demonstrate that the scintillation results from spatial frequencies higher than the spatial sampling of high-altitude DMs are able to correct. Hence, the effect of scintillation is not impacted by MCAO correction regardless of the sequence of the DMs. Using end-to-end numerical simulations, we find that the dynamic misregistration between the DMs and the wavefront sensors is minimized by placing the ground-layer DM last, leading to increased loop stability and lower wavefront errors. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we recommend that the DMs be sequenced from highest to lowest altitude.
Supervised portfolios

We propose an asset allocation strategy that engineers optimal weights before feeding them to a supervised learning algorithm. In contrast to the traditional approaches, the machine is able to learn risk measures, preferences, and constraints beyond simple expected returns, within a flexible, forward-looking, and non-linear framework. Our empirical analysis illustrates that predicting the optimal weights directly instead of the traditional two-step approach leads to more stable portfolios with statistically better risk-adjusted performance measures.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Maritime Patrol: Human Factors Issues

Abstract : This review of literature outlines the human factors issues associated with the operation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). In particular, consideration is given to how these issues might be relevant to the acquisition of highly autonomous, high altitude long endurance (HALE) UAVs for maritime patrol and response operations. In a highly automated UAV system, optimal mission performance will require the roles of the operator and the automated system to be complementary. Thus factors that may inhibit cooperation between the two are addressed and suggestions are made for the mitigation of potential problems. The discussion then turns to the design of the human-machine interface (HMI), providing information on established. HMI design principles and issues relating to the separation of the operator from the aircraft. The final section covers the air traffic management procedures for the hand-over of control during flight, data link delays and their impact on team dynamics, the selection of crew members, and the delineation of roles for UAV crews.
Social Perception of the Influence of Public Policies on the Residential Rental and Holiday Tourism Rental Markets

This work assesses the influence of generic public housing policies in Spain and specific public policies relating to vacation rental housing on residential rental costs in recent years from the perspective of people linked to residential housing rental and vacation rental housing. We used partial least squares structural equation modelling on the data obtained in a survey of 413 individuals with direct links to the fields of tourism and real estate. The results obtained by the model confirm the influence of the growth in holiday tourist housing and the implementation of public housing policies on rises in residential rent. These conclusions can inform public policy measures in the general area of housing and, specifically, in the area of holiday homes, toward reducing the impacts of certain factors on access to housing in the province of Málaga. The main contribution of this work is the direct collection of the opinions of people related to residential and tourist housing on the Costa del Sol.
A Data Augmentation Method for War Trauma Using the War Trauma Severity Score and Deep Neural Networks

The demand for large-scale analysis and research of data on trauma from modern warfare is increasing day by day, but the amount of existing data is not sufficient to meet such demand. In this study, an integrated modeling approach incorporating a war trauma severity scoring algorithm (WTSS) and deep neural networks (DNN) is proposed. First, the proposed WTSS, which uses multiple non-linear regression based on the characteristics of war trauma data and the medical evaluation by an expert panel, performed a standardized assessment of an injury and predicts its trauma consequences. Second, to generate virtual injury, based on the probability of occurrence, the injured parts, injury types, and complications were randomly sampled and combined, and then WTSS was used to assess the consequences of the virtual injury. Third, to evaluate the accuracy of the predicted injury consequences, we built a DNN classifier and then trained it with the generated data and tested it with real data. Finally, we used the Delphi method to filter out unreasonable injuries and improve data rationality. The experimental results verified that the proposed approach surpassed the traditional artificial generation methods, achieved a prediction accuracy of 84.43%, and realized large-scale and credible war trauma data augmentation.
An analysis to increase the productivity of a surface mounting line

Aros Electronics is a company that develops and produces printed circuit assemblies from printed circuit boards. Recently Aros has made a large investment in a new surface mounting line. To maximize usage of their investment, it is important to analyze and improve the manual work around the machine, in order to make sure that the productivity is high. This master thesis report aims to analyze and give suggestions to improve the productivity, at a surface mounting line, at Aros Electronics. Most of the gathered data came from a work sampling study of the operators at the line, and from machine logs. Besides the gathered data, observations were also done during the sampling. The data was then analyzed to find the major losses in the system, which were the changeovers, machine stoppages and the breaks. By connecting the observations with the analysis, it was possible to determine that the lack of standardization, was the largest reason to the losses. To increase the standardization of the changeovers, a division of the work tasks and standardized worksheets were created; in addition, a SMED analysis was done, together these changes reduced the theoretic changeover by 91 %. A work division was created for the manual work besides the changeovers as well, in order to reduce the machine stoppages; however, the impact these changes can only me measured if they are implemented. Therefore no quantified data is available for the improvements of the machine stoppages. By rearranging the breaks, it should be possible to remove their impact completely. By combining the improvement from the changeover and the breaks a theoretical production increase of 84 % was reached.
After-hours work-related technology use and individuals' deviance: the role of other-initiated versus self-initiated interruptions

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of after-hours work-related technology use on interpersonal, organizational and nonwork deviance through work–family conflict (WFC) by focusing on the moderating role of other- and self-initiated interruptions.Design/methodology/approachThe online survey included 318 valid samples from employees working in different organizations in the Anhui provinces of the People's Republic of China. The authors applied Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) process macros for testing mediation and moderated mediation analysis while conducting path analytic procedures and bootstrapping analysis.FindingsThis study found that after-hours work-related technology use is positively associated with interpersonal, organizational and nonwork deviance through WFC. This positive relationship strengthens in the presence of other-initiated interruptions compared with self-initiated interruptions. The results show that as compared to self-initiated interruptions, other-initiated interruptions strengthen the relationship between after-hours work-related technology use and its outcomes in the forms of WFC and deviance.Originality/valueAfter-hours work-related technology use is a ubiquitous phenomenon and got significant scholarly attention. However, its effect on WFC and individual deviant behaviors has never been studied. Moreover, the moderated-mediation role of self-initiated and other-initiated interruptions presents a unique and important development in the context of after-hours work-related technology use and deviant behavior.
Development of Various Leishmania (Sauroleishmania) tarentolae Strains in Three Phlebotomus Species

Leishmania (Sauroleishmania) tarentolae is transmitted by reptile-biting sand flies of the genus Sergentomyia, but the role of Phlebotomus sand flies in circulation of this parasite is unknown. Here, we compared the development of L. (S.) tarentolae strains in three Phlebotomus species: P. papatasi, P. sergenti, and P. perniciosus. Laboratory-bred sand flies were membrane-fed on blood with parasite suspension and dissected on days 1 and 7 post blood meal. Parasites were measured on Giemsa-stained gut smears and five morphological forms were distinguished. In all parasite-vector combinations, promastigotes were found in Malpighian tubules, often in high numbers, which suggests that this tissue is a typical location for L. (S.) tarentolae development in sand flies. All three studied strains colonized the hindgut, but also migrated anteriorly to both parts of the midgut and colonized the stomodeal valve. Significant differences were demonstrated between sand fly species: highest infection rates, high parasite loads, and the most frequent anterior migration with colonization of the stomodeal valve were found in P. perniciosus, while all these parameters were lowest in P. sergenti. In conclusion, the peripylarian type of development was demonstrated for three L. (S.) tarentolae strains in three Phlebotomus sand flies. We suggest paying more attention to Phlebotomus species, particularly P. perniciosus and P. papatasi, as potential secondary vectors of Sauroleishmania.
American Courtroom Discourse: Psycholinguistic Aspect

--- Since the twentieth century, information has become a particularly powerful tool of influence in all realms of human activities. The sender of the speech seeks to influence their recipients by all available means, both lingual and non-lingual. For this reason, we have placed special emphasis on psychological phenomena that help the speech author to succeed in court. One of such seminal psychological phenomena is transgression. Notwithstanding a thorough study of this issue, we have not come across any studies of courtroom discourse dealing with this phenomenon. While exploring the texts of the prosecutors` and defense attorneys` speeches we applied contextual and linguo-stylistic analyses as well as intent and discourse analysis methods. Based on such findings, transgression in courtroom discourse is used simultaneously to erase bounds, on the one hand, and to create hype and epatage, on the other. It is created with the help of lexical means mostly which can be either invective directly or become invective in the context.
Learning-Aided Beam Prediction in mmWave MU-MIMO Systems for High-Speed Railway

The problem of beam alignment and tracking in high mobility scenarios such as high-speed railway(HSR) becomes extremely challenging, since large overhead cost and significant time delay are introduced for fast time-varying channel estimation. To tackle this challenge, we propose a learning-aided beam prediction scheme for HSR networks, which predicts the beam directions and the channel amplitudes within a period of future time with fine time granularity, using a group of observations. Concretely, we transform the problem of high-dimensional beam prediction into a two-stage task, i.e., a low-dimensional parameter estimation and a cascaded hybrid beamforming operation. In the first stage, the location and speed of a certain terminal are estimated by maximum likelihood criterion, and a data-driven data fusion module is designed to improve the final estimation accuracy and robustness. Then, the probable future beam directions and channel amplitudes are predicted, based on the HSR scenario priors including deterministic trajectory, motion model, and channel model. Furthermore, we incorporate a learnable non-linear mapping module into the overall beam prediction to allow non-linear tracks. Both of the proposed learnable modules are model-based and have a good interpretability. Compared to the existing beam management scheme, the proposed beam prediction has (near) zero overhead cost and time delay. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.
A sensorless induction machine drive - An implementation study

This Master’s thesis describes a DSP implementation of the Statically Compensated Voltage Model (SCVM) algorithm for sensorless induction machine control. The algorithm is aimed to be implemented in a 16-bit fixed-point processor. In general, low speed operation with voltage model based control systems is problematic, especially when in generator mode. In generator mode with the load at nominal torque, the implemented design fails already at 7.5 Hz. With a lower load, 2 Nm or 54 % of nominal, the drive is able brake it to almost zero, but the speed accuracy is low. On the other hand, if the motor operates in motor mode, low speed is less problematic. Experiments show that this implementation can handle variations in stator resistance from -37 % up to +60 % with stable low speed operation and variations of at least ±60 % at nominal speed. Stable operation for all speeds is possible even during an increase of rotor resistance by 60 %, but the speed accuracy will be reduced by approximatly 2 %. The rotor resistance may decrease by 58 % at low speed and by 53 % at nominal speed before the drive destabilizes. The total leakage inductance can vary at least ±30 % without noticeably affecting the system. The thesis project is conducted in association with Aros electronics AB.
Nanoparticle optical notch filters

Developing novel light blocking products involves the design of a nanoparticle optical notch filter, working on the principle of localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR). These light blocking products can be used in many applications. One such application is to naturally reduce migraine headaches and light sensitivity. Melanopsin ganglion cells present in the retina of the human eye, connect to the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN-the body's clock) in the brain, where they participate in the entrainment of the circadian rhythms. As the Melanopsin ganglion cells are involved in triggering the migraine headaches in photophobic patients, it is necessary to block the part of visible spectrum that activates these cells. It is observed from the action potential spectrum of the ganglion cells that they absorb light ranging from 450-500nm (blue-green part) of the visible spectrum with a \max (peak sensitivity) of around 480nm (blue line). Currently prescribed for migraine patients is the FL-41 coating, which blocks a broad range of wavelengths, including wavelengths associated with melanopsin absorption. The nanoparticle optical notch filter is designed to block light only at 480nm, hence offering an effective prescription for the treatment of migraine headaches.
Human Papillomavirus Oral Infection: Review of Methodological Aspects and Epidemiology

Oral infection by Human Papillomavirus (HPV) has recently gained great attention because of its involvement in the development of a subset of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. The role of specific Alpha-HPVs in this regard has been well established, whereas the contribution of other genera is under investigation. Despite their traditional classification as “cutaneous” types, Beta and Gamma HPVs are frequently detected in oral samples. Due to the lack of a standardized protocol, a large variety of methodologies have been used for oral sample collection, DNA extraction, HPV detection and genotyping. Laboratory procedures influence the evaluation of oral HPV prevalence, which largely varies also according to the population characteristics, e.g., age, gender, sexual behavior, Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) status. Nevertheless, oral infection by Beta and Gamma HPVs seems to be even more common than Alpha-HPVs. The latter is 5–7% in the general population, and increases up to 30% approximately in HIV-infected men who have sex with men. Despite major advances in the evaluation of oral HPV prevalence, its natural history is still little understood, especially for Beta and Gamma HPVs. The latest technologies, such as Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), can be exploited to gain new insights into oral HPV, and to improve the identification of novel HPV types.