Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The PG-SGA outperforms the NRS 2002 for nutritional risk screening in cancer patients: a retrospective study from China

Background and aims As a chronic wasting disease, cancer can lead to metabolic and physiological changes in patients, resulting in severe malnutrition. Therefore, accurate assessment of nutritional status and adoption of scientifically sound nutritional interventions are of great importance for patients with cancer. This study aimed to assess the necessity of implementing the Nutrition Risk Screening 2002 (NRS 2002) tool in conjunction with the Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA) in patients with cancer. Methods This retrospective study collected the clinical data of cancer patients from November 2011 to December 2018 in the Department of Oncology, Cancer Center, First Hospital of Jilin University. The NRS 2002 and the PG-SGA were used as screening tools for malnutrition. Clinical characteristics and laboratory results were detected. Anthropometric indices including hand-grip strength (HGS), visceral fat area (VFA), calf circumstance (CC), and appendicular skeletal muscle mass index (ASMI) were also collected. The diagnostic results from the NRS 2002 were compared to the malnutrition diagnosis using the PG-SGA. Results Of the 2,645 patients included in this retrospective study, the nutritional risk was found in 1763 (66.6%) patients based on the PG-SGA, and in 240 (9.1%) patients based on the NRS 2002, respectively. Among the 240 patients evaluated by the NRS 2002 for risk of malnutrition, 230 were also assessed by the PG-SGA as malnourished. There were no significant differences observed in the clinical characteristics and laboratory parameters between the two groups. Conclusion The PG-SGA is effective and had a higher positive rate in screening malnutrition for patients with cancer. The NRS 2002 is not necessary for patients who are to be assessed with the PG-SGA.
DIURNAL ACTIVITY PATTERNS OF BLACK-NECKED STILTS (HIMANTOPUS MEXICANUS) DURING THE NON-BREEDING SEASON IN THE EASTERN CARIBBEAN

Diurnal activity patterns of resident Black-necked Stilts ( Himantopus mexicanus ) were observed on Guana Island, British Virgin Islands, during October 2010. Stilts were principally engaged in foraging and idle behaviors. The amount of time engaged in particular behaviors was relatively constant throughout the day, except during mid-afternoon when idleness increased and foraging decreased, with a subsequent increase in foraging in the evening. We speculate that the increase in foraging activity was a result of changing prey activity. Los patrones de actividad diurna de individuos residentes de Himantopus mexicanus fueron observados en la isla de Guana, Islas Virgenes Britanicas, durante octubre de 2010. Los individuos estaban ocupados principalmente en conductas de forrajeo e inactivos. La cantidad de tiempo dedicado a conductas particulares fue relativamente constante a lo largo del dia, excepto a media tarde cuando se incremento el descanso y disminuyo el forrajeo con un subsecuente incremento de este ultimo al atardecer. Especulamos que este incremento en la actividad de forrajeo fue el resultado de un cambio en la actividad de las presas. Les rythmes d’activite diurne des Echasses d’Amerique ( Himantopus mexicanus ) sedentaires ont ete observes sur Guana Island, aux Iles Vierges britanniques, en octobre 2010. La recherche de nourriture et le repos constituaient les principaux comportements des echasses. La duree consacree a des comportements particuliers etait relativement constante au cours de la journee, sauf en milieu d’apres-midi ou les durees de repos augmentaient et celles de recherche de nourriture diminuaient, suivies par une nouvelle augmentation du temps consacre a la recherche de nourriture dans la soiree. L’augmentation de l’activite de recherche de nourriture pourrait etre le resultat de l’evolution des activites des proies.
Innovative and sustainable approaches to gold nanoparticle synthesis: beyond the Turkevich method

Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) have attracted considerable interest due to their unique physicochemical properties and potential applications in diverse fields such as optoelectronics and biomedicine. The conventional Turkevich method, while simple, has limitations in terms of nanoparticle size and shape control, scalability, and energy efficiency. Alternative synthesis methods include plant-mediated, microorganism-mediated, microwave-assisted, photochemical, and electrochemical approaches. Each of these methods has its own advantages, including eco-friendliness, scalability, speed, and precision. However, each method also presents its own challenges and requires process optimization to fully replace existing methods. This article reviews these synthesis methods for AuNPs with a focus on recent sustainable approaches. The potential for sustainable synthesis of AuNPs to serve various industries and applications lies in the collaborative efforts of researchers across different disciplines.
Intensive Statistical Exploration to Identify Osteoporosis Predisposing Factors and Optimizing Recognition Performance With Integrated GP Kernels

Osteoporosis, a common skeletal disorder, necessitates the identification of its risk factors to develop effective preventive measures. It is crucial to identify the underlying risk factors and their relationships with the response class attribute. Different machine learning (ML) algorithms and feature selection approaches are used to estimate the risk of osteoporosis. However, ML-based algorithms may struggle to detect risk factors as well as grading of osteoporosis due to different measurement scale of data and their probability distributional assumptions. Violation of these assumptions and results interpretation may be improper in the presence of heteroscedasticity, or unequal variance in data. In this study, we seek to overcome distribution assumption constraints and improve the interpretability of our results by using rigorous statistical approaches, ensuring a robust and trustworthy study of osteoporosis risk variables. The study dataset consists of 40 clinical, lifestyle, and genetic attributes, allowing for a comprehensive analysis of potential risk factors associated with osteoporosis. In the analysis, after confirming the normality assumption using Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk tests, independent t-test assess the factor ALT, FBG, HDL-C, LDL-C, FNT, TL, TLT, and URIC has a substantial impact on the risk of developing osteoporosis. The Mann-Whitney U test for the non-normal FN variable likewise showed a p-value of less than 0.05, indicating that this variable has a significant effect on the likelihood of developing osteoporosis. Based on the chi-square test p-values for the categorical factors, gender, calcium, calcitriol, bisphosphonate, calcitonin, COPD, CAD, and drinking have a severe significant risk of osteoporosis. For developing the predictive Gaussian Process (GPs) model, we proposed two customized integrated GP kernels into the analysis to enhance the modeling of complex relationships within the data. The proposed GP kernel model (modified kernel 2) outperforms the other individual kernels in this experiment and has the best accuracy score of 86.64% and AUC score of 86.63% on osteoporosis data. Moreover, a simulation study is also conducted to robustify the proposed model, the results are improved by different evaluation matrices ranging in accuracy from 0.60-11.41% and AUC from 0.50-11.60%.
Adalia decempunctata (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae), a Palaearctic species now established in North America

Abstract The Palaearctic ten-spotted lady beetle, Adalia decempunctata (Linnaeus), has been confirmed as established in North America, based on morphological characters and DNA barcodes. Its distribution currently appears limited to the Avalon Peninsula of the island of Newfoundland, Canada. Several characters, including the colour of the mesepimera, frons, labrum, antennal club, mouthparts, and legs, are reliable for discriminating among this species and the native, Holarctic two-spotted lady beetle, Adalia bipunctata (Linnaeus), in Newfoundland. An identification key to the two species is provided.
Unlocking the genetic code: Exploring the potential of DNA barcoding for biodiversity assessment

DNA barcoding is a crucial method for assessing and monitoring species diversity amidst escalating threats to global biodiversity. I explore DNA barcoding's potential as a robust and reliable tool for biodiversity assessment. It begins with a comprehensive review of existing literature, delving into the theoretical foundations, methodologies and applications of DNA barcoding. The suitability of various DNA regions, like the COI gene, as universal barcodes are extensively investigated. Additionally, the advantages and limitations of different DNA sequencing technologies and bioinformatics tools are evaluated within the context of DNA barcoding. To evaluate the efficacy of DNA barcoding, diverse ecosystems, including terrestrial, freshwater and marine habitats, are sampled. Extracted DNA from collected specimens undergoes amplification and sequencing of the target barcode region. Comparison of the obtained DNA sequences with reference databases allows for the identification and classification of the sampled organisms. Findings demonstrate that DNA barcoding accurately identifies species, even in cases where morphological identification proves challenging. Moreover, it sheds light on cryptic and endangered species, aiding conservation efforts. I also investigate patterns of genetic diversity and evolutionary relationships among different taxa through the analysis of genetic data. This research contributes to the growing knowledge on DNA barcoding and its applicability for biodiversity assessment. The advantages of this approach, such as speed, accuracy and cost-effectiveness, are highlighted, along with areas for improvement. By unlocking the genetic code, DNA barcoding enhances our understanding of biodiversity, supports conservation initiatives and informs evidence-based decision-making for the sustainable management of ecosystems.
Tethered compliance: Exploring the role of the smartphone in online civic engagement among low-income US young people through two pandemic-era case studies

This article considers the roles that smartphones play as young people living in low-income communities navigate everyday activities, including those of online civic engagement. Drawing on ethnographic data collected during the COVID-19 lockdown, we offer empirical and methodological support for Hartmann’s concept of mediated mobilism, highlighting smartphone-related frictions and tensions that emerge at the intersections of social and political mobilities and immobilities. Specifically, our data demonstrate that as smartphones kept young people on call for parents, caregivers, siblings and others who might need them to help negotiate the heightened demands that characterized family life during the pandemic, young people found themselves in situations that we term tethered compliance, torn between the desire to participate in online civic engagement and political mobilization and the need to fulfill various exigencies of family life that emerged as a result of physical and social immobilities. Whereas scholars previously argued that mobile media held promise for mitigating structural inequality and enhancing youth online civic engagement, our findings suggest that these technologies are instead adding a new layer to be managed.
Learning-Based Platooning Control of Automated Vehicles Under Constrained Bit Rate

Platooning control is a promising scheme to alleviate traffic congestion while maintaining the safety of road traffic. Vehicles' cooperation deeply depends on the capability of communication infrastructure suffering from bandwidth constraints. This paper focuses on the platooning control problem of a class of nonlinear automated vehicles under constrained bit rate. A neural network (NN)-based observer is constructed to estimate the vehicular state, where a coding-decoding scheme is presented to alleviate the communication burden and an NN with carefully designed tuning laws is adopted to approximate the unknown nonlinearity. By using the Lyapunov stability theory, a sufficient condition is received for realizing the required formation with the given constant inter-vehicle spacing. Based on this condition, the desired gains of NN-based observers and decoder-based controllers are accessible by resolving matrix inequalities insensitive to the number of vehicles. Furthermore, the upper bound of platoon tracking errors dependent on bit rate is analytically derived. Finally, an illustrative example shows the validity of the developed control scheme.
Blob-B-Gone: a lightweight framework for removing blob artifacts from 2D/3D MINFLUX single-particle tracking data

In this study, we introduce Blob-B-Gone, a lightweight framework to computationally differentiate and eventually remove dense isotropic localization accumulations (blobs) caused by artifactually immobilized particles in MINFLUX single-particle tracking (SPT) measurements. This approach uses purely geometrical features extracted from MINFLUX-detected single-particle trajectories, which are treated as point clouds of localizations. Employing k-means++ clustering, we perform single-shot separation of the feature space to rapidly extract blobs from the dataset without the need for training. We automatically annotate the resulting sub-sets and, finally, evaluate our results by means of principal component analysis (PCA), highlighting a clear separation in the feature space. We demonstrate our approach using two- and three-dimensional simulations of freely diffusing particles and blob artifacts based on parameters extracted from hand-labeled MINFLUX tracking data of fixed 23-nm bead samples and two-dimensional diffusing quantum dots on model lipid membranes. Applying Blob-B-Gone, we achieve a clear distinction between blob-like and other trajectories, represented in F1 scores of 0.998 (2D) and 1.0 (3D) as well as 0.995 (balanced) and 0.994 (imbalanced). This framework can be straightforwardly applied to similar situations, where discerning between blob and elongated time traces is desirable. Given a number of localizations sufficient to express geometric features, the method can operate on any generic point clouds presented to it, regardless of its origin.
Impact Analysis of Organizational Structure of Group Companies on Privacy Policies

Privacy issues within subsidiary companies can significantly impact the overall trust in a group of companies. Therefore, it is important to address privacy concerns and establish privacy governance across the entire group, including the parent and subsidiary companies. However, the assessment of the actual state of privacy governance within a group from an external perspective remains challenging. In this study, we have analyzed the publicly disclosed privacy policies of the parent and subsidiary companies within a group and compared the results to investigate the practical implementation of privacy governance. The similarity in legal compliance was examined based on the policies of 901 group companies and several influencing factors were identified, such as organizational structure and the number of companies within the group. Specifically, we observed a decrease in similarity with an increase in the number of companies and complexity of the organizational structure. Moreover, companies with lesser similarities belonged to industries handling personal information and having fewer employees.
AC resistivity sounding

DC resistivity sounding is a galvanic method, and the type of information obtained from application of th at method is determined by the behaviour of galvanic currents in the ground. This behaviour imposes inherent limitations on the scope for determination of earth parameters from the measurements. Among these limitations the equivalences of high-resistivity layers and low-resistivity layers are weil known. The high-resistivity equivalence, where neither the thickness nor the resistivity of a highly resistive layer embedded in better conducting surroundings may be determined but only the product of the two, is annoying in the context of many practical applications. In many cases highly resistive layers of dry sand and gravel are underlain by either wet and better conducting layers of sand and gravel or by low-resistivity c1ays. In these cases it becomes impossible to determine the amount of dry sand and gravel from DC resistivity soundings alone when prospecting for raw materiaIs, and in hydrogeological applications the depth to the water table is of ten undetermined. Furthermore, DC resistivity measurements do not all ow a determination of the anisotropy of the ground. Besides the galvanic method of DC resistivity sounding, there are a number of electromagnetic or inductive methods such as SLINGRAM and AMT (audiomagnetotelluric) with or without controlled source. The information gained from these methods is determined by the behaviour of induced currents in the ground and differs from the gal van ie information. Measurements with the inductive methods are strongly influenced by the presence of good conductors, while poor conductors are more or Iess invisible. The depth to a good conductor is usually accurately determined from inductive methods.
Productividad hasta el destete de vacas Criollo, Guzerat y sus cruzas recíprocas F1 Productivity through weaning of Criollo, Guzerat and F1 crossbred cows

Four hundred and sixty four (464) records from Guzerat (G), Criollo (C), Criollo x Guzerat (CG) and Guzerat x Criollo (GC) cows were used to estimate heterosis and to evaluate gestation length (LG), birth weight (PN) weaning weight (PA210), birth weight per cow exposed (BN) and weaning weight per cow exposed (BD). Data were collected in 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003. Analyses were carried out using linear models. Models for PN and PA210 included the fixed effects of season and year of birth, genotype of the cow (GEN), sex of calf (S), and calving number (NP). Fixed effects for LG were GEN, NP, and birth weight of calf as a covariate. Fixed effects for BN and BD were season and year of breeding, GEN, and NP. LG was different (P 0.05) were observed for BN. GC cows showed higher BD (P<0.07) than G or C cows (45 and 59 kg, respectively). Heterosis was significant (P<0.05) for PA210 and BD but non significant for LG, PN or BN. The use of GC cows could contribute to improve productivity through weaning in the tropical region of Nayarit, Mexico.
Incumbents Inertia in the Automotive Industry: Technological, Market, and Societal Drivers of Electric Vehicle Standardization

The arrival of electric vehicles to the mass market is hindered by lacking standardization of components and solutions. Standardization is especially important because of this technology's environmental and social impact. However, it is also particularly complex due to the interrelated technologies and actors concerned. Hence, in this article, we examine opportunities and challenges related to electric vehicle standardization, and derive a strategic framework based on these insights. We identify barriers related to automobile and mobility-as-a-service standardization committees, the struggles for dominant charging infrastructures of Tesla, BMW, and NIO, and the governmental regulation and incentives implemented in Norway, Germany, China, and the US. We find that a sequential shift of focus in standardization from engines to batteries to mobility adds complexity and continuity to the technology lifecycle. Depending on the standardization phase, firms are advised to collaborate, compete, or comply with standards. We also highlight inertia in this industry, which is a key component of established dominant designs. The struggle of incumbents with overcoming inertia leads to new dynamics and business opportunities in the final block of our outlook for this industry.
Stakeholders' views and opinions on existing guidelines on “How to Choose Mental Health Apps”

Background Mental health Applications (Mhealth Apps) can change how healthcare is delivered. However, very little is known about the efficacy of Mhealth Apps. Currently, only minimum guidance is available in Assessment and Evaluation Tools (AETs). Therefore, this project aims to understand AET developers' perspectives and end users' experiences and opinions on “how to choose a Mhealth App”. Objective The primary objectives were: (1) obtaining stakeholder's opinions and experiences of development and use of AETs for Mhealth Apps, their weaknesses and strengths, and barriers in their implementation of Mhealth Apps; (2) the experiences of App users, their analyzation and, obstacles in the use of apps; and (3) to quantify themes related to choosing a Mhealth App. Methods This qualitative study, used a sampling method to recruit six stakeholders (one App developer, two AET developers, an individual with lived experience of mental health illness, and two physicians) who were interviewed using a topic guide. These were examined by researchers (CT, WK, & FN) using thematic content analysis. Additionally, an anonymous online survey of 107 individuals was conducted. Findings Our analyses revealed six main themes: (a) needs and opportunities; (b) views on Mhealth apps; (c) views & opinions on AETs; (d) implementation barriers; (e) system of evaluation and; (f) future directions. The first key concept was, all stakeholders agreed that Apps could significantly impact mental health and that end-users were unaware of mental health AETs and Apps. Secondly, due to commercial interests, end-users reliability of App evaluations requires clear conflict-free guidelines. Thirdly, AETs should be evaluated and developed through a rigorous methodology. Finally, stakeholders shared insights into future developments for AETs and Mhealth Apps. Additionally, online survey respondents chose a “health professional” as their preferred source of guidance in selecting a Mhealth app (84%) and best suited to develop guidelines (70%). Conclusion The interviews and survey highlight the need for Mhealth Apps to be regulated and the importance of health professionals' engagement in the implementation process. Similarly, without well-defined roles for App evaluations within the health care system, it is unlikely that AETs will have wider spread use and impact without risk.