Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A GAN-Based Multi-Sensor Data Augmentation Technique for CNC Machine Tool Wear Prediction

The prediction of CNC machine tool wear is limited due to the scarcity of data in industry. A sufficient amount of experimental and real-live factory data is missing to train accurate supervised machine learning prediction models. Considering that collecting a large amount of data in real industrial environments can be a great challenge, this paper investigates the applicability of data augmentation techniques for generating synthetic data. Our paper focuses on a multi-sensor approach for the classification of tool wear states in the milling process. Multi-sensor data fusion is performed in the frequency domain. Extracted features are then used for tool wear classification. In order to increase the amount of training data, a generative adversarial network (GAN) is designed for data augmentation purposes. An early stopping strategy is designed to improve the effectiveness of the proposed GAN. The experimental results show that the proposed GAN helps to significantly improve the performance of tool wear classification models. With the inclusion of GAN, the number of required real-environment industrial data can be reduced. The research shows promising results to supplement experimental data by GAN-based synthetic data for predicting tool wear.
Child and youth mental health and wellbeing before and after returning to in-person learning in secondary schools in the context of COVID-19

Background As children reintegrate with in-person classroom learning after COVID-19, health and education institutions should remain mindful of students’ mental health. There is a paucity of data on changes in students’ mental health before, during and after their return to in-person classroom learning. Methods We collected and analyzed data on self-reported wellbeing, general mental health, perceived stress, and help-seeking attitudes from grade 7–12 students in a Catholic school division in Canada (n = 258 at baseline; n = 132 at follow-up). Outcomes were compared according to demographic differences such as gender, grade level, experience accessing mental health services, and presence of support staff between baseline and follow-up. Effects of time points and each demographic variable on each outcome and on the prediction of students’ mental health were also analyzed. Results No significant differences were apparent for outcomes between baseline and follow-up. However, specific subgroups: junior high students, male students, students who had not accessed mental health services, and students who had access to support-staff had better outcomes than their counterparts. From baseline to follow-up, male students reported mental health decline [Mean = 11.79, SD = 6.14; Mean = 16.29, SD = 7.47, F(1, 333) = 8.36, p < 0.01]; students who had not accessed mental health services demonstrated greater stress [Mean = 20.89, SD = 4.09; Mean = 22.28, SD = 2.24, F(1, 352) = 6.20, p < 0.05]; students who did not specify a binary gender reported improved general mental health [Mean = 19.87, SD = 5.89; Mean = 13.00, SD = 7.40, F(1, 333) = 8.70, p < 0.01], and students who did not have access to support-staff improved help-seeking attitudes [Mean = 22.32, SD = 4.62; Mean = 24.76, SD = 4.81; F(1, 346) = 5.80, p < 0.05]. At each time point, students indicated parents, guardians, and close friends as their most-preferred help-seeking sources. High stress predicted lower wellbeing at baseline, but higher wellbeing at follow-up. Conclusion Students presented stable mental health. Subgroups with decreased mental health may benefit from extra mental health support through building capacity among teachers and health care professionals to support students following public health emergencies.
Discovery of new Schistosoma mansoni aspartyl protease inhibitors by structure-based virtual screening

BACKGROUND Schistosomiasis is a neglected tropical disease caused by trematodes of the genus Schistosoma, with a limited treatment, mainly based on the use of praziquantel (PZQ). Currently, several aspartic proteases genes have already been identified within the genome of Schistosoma species. At least one enzyme encoded from this gene family (SmAP), named SmCD1, has been validated for the development of schistosomicidal drugs, since it has a key role in haemoglobin digestion by worms. OBJECTIVE In this work, we integrated a structure-based virtual screening campaign, enzymatic assays and adult worms ex vivo experiments aiming to discover the first classes of SmCD1 inhibitors. METHODS Initially, the 3D-structures of SmCD1, SmCD2 and SmCD3 were generated using homology modelling approach. Using these models, we prioritised 50 compounds from 20,000 compounds from ChemBridge database for further testing in adult worm aqueous extract (AWAE) and recombinant SmCD1 using enzymatic assays. FINDINGS Seven compounds were confirmed as hits and among them, two compounds representing new chemical scaffolds, named 5 and 19, had IC50 values against SmCD1 close to 100 μM while presenting binding efficiency indexes comparable to or even higher than pepstatin, a classical tight-binding peptide inhibitor of aspartyl proteases. Upon activity comparison against mammalian enzymes, compound 50 was selective and the most potent against the AWAE aspartic protease activity (IC50 = 77.7 μM). Combination of computational and experimental results indicate that compound 50 is a selective inhibitor of SmCD2. Compounds 5, 19 and 50 tested at low concentrations (10 uM) were neither cytotoxic against WSS-1 cells (48 h) nor could kill adult worms ex-vivo, although compounds 5 and 50 presented a slight decrease on female worms motility on late incubations times (48 or 72 h). MAIN CONCLUSION Overall, the inhibitors identified in this work represent promising hits for further hit-to-lead optimisation.
Evaluation of Polyclonal Antiserum Against Secretory Aspartyl Proteinase of Candida albicans as a Potential Serodiagnostic Tool for Invasive Candidiasis

Objective: Candida albicans ( C. albicans ) is an important agent of human Candidiasis. It expresses different virulence factors to evade host immunity and facilitate tissue invasion, including secretory aspartyl proteinases (Saps) secretion. For early and quick detection of systemic candidiasis, serological tests can be used instead of traditional blood cultures. This study aims to develop a polyvalent antiserum against (Sap) secreted by C. albicans and test its ability to be used as a diagnostic method in systemic Candida infections. Materials and Methods: Candida was obtained from clinical samples, and its different species were specifically characterized, and followed by C. albicans extracellular protease purification. Antiserum against purified (Sap1) was prepared by immunizing two rabbits with 10 µg of purified (Sap1) protein followed by three booster doses (once/week). Prepared anti (Sap1) antibodies were tested for the detection of (Sap1) in Candida species extracts by western blotting technique in addition to constructing indirect ELISA using prepared anti (Sap1) antiserum. Results: Among the tested species, C. albicans showed the highest extracellular proteases activity (18.6-fold with 2142 U/mg specific activity and 39% recovery). Polyclonal anti (Sap1) antiserum showed maximum ELISA titer and strong reactivity with many pathogenic Candida strains protein bands. Prepared antiserum had a greater binding capacity to pathogenic than non-pathogenic Candida strains and reacted strongly with pathogenic Candida strains even at low dilution. Conclusion: Our findings suggested that the prepared anti (Sap1) antiserum showed high productivity in detecting pathogenic Candida and could be used in serodiagnosis of invasive candidiasis.
Illumination-Aware Hallucination-Based Domain Adaptation for Thermal Pedestrian Detection

Thermal imagery is emerging as a viable candidate for 24-7, all-weather pedestrian detection owning to thermal sensors’ robust performance for pedestrian detection under different weather and illumination conditions. Despite the promising results obtained from combining visible (RGB) and thermal cameras in multi-spectral fusion techniques, the complex synchronization requirements, including alignment and calibration of sensors, impede their deployment in real-world scenarios. In this paper, we introduce a novel approach for domain adaptation to enhance the performance of pedestrian detection based solely on thermal images. Our proposed approach involves several stages. Firstly, we use both thermal and visible images as input during the training phase. Secondly, we leverage a thermal-to-visible hallucination network to generate feature maps that are similar to those generated by the visible branch. Finally, we design a transformer-based multi-modal fusion module to integrate the hallucinated visible and thermal information more effectively. The thermal-to-visible hallucination network acts as domain adaptation, allowing us to obtain pseudo-visual and thermal features using solely thermal input. Based on the experimental results, it is observed the mean average precision (mAP) increases by 4.72% and the miss rate decreases by 7.56% on the KAIST dataset when compared to the baseline model.
Structural and temporal variation in the genetic diversity of a European collection of spring two-row barley cultivars and utility for association mapping of quantitative traits

J. Flavell* Abstract Two hundred sixteen barley ( Hordeum vulgare L.) cultivars were selected to represent the diversity and history of European spring two-row barley breeding and to search for alleles controlling agronomic traits by association genetics. The germplasm was genotyped with 7864 gene-based single nucleotide polymorphism markers and corresponding field trial trait data relating to growth and straw strength were obtained at multiple European sites. Analysis of the marker data by statistical population genetics approaches revealed two important trends in the genetic diversity of European two-row spring barley, namely, i) directional selection for approximately 14% of total genetic variation of the population in the last approximately 50 yr and ii) highly uneven genomic distribution of genetic diversity. Association analysis of the phenotypic and genotypic data identified multiple loci affecting the traits investigated, some of which co-map with selected regions. Collectively, these data show that the genetic makeup of European two-row spring barley is evolving under breeder selection, with signs of extinction of diversity in some genomic regions, suggesting that “breeding the best with the best” is leading towards fixation of some breeder targets. Nevertheless, modern germplasm also retains many regions of high diversity, suggesting that site-specific genetic approaches for allele identification and crop improvement such as association genetics are likely to
Measuring pedestrian volume by land use mix: Presenting a new entropy-based index by weighting walking generation units

This study proposes an alternative to the conventional entropy-based land use mix index, which is generally used to measure the diversity of land use. Pedestrian volume was selected as the dependent variable as it represents the vitality of districts, which many recent urban studies now consider important. The study investigates an entropy-based weighted land use mix index, which is weighted by different land use types. For the index, different areas are needed to generate a unit of pedestrian volume, whose measure is m2/person/day. The study demonstrates that this alternative is more effective than the existing conventionally used entropy-based land use mix index for explaining pedestrian volume. The research confirms that the conventionally used entropy-based land use mix index can have a positive or negative impact depending on the land use characteristics of the survey points because the conventionally used entropy-based land use mix index has a non-linear relationship with pedestrian volume. By analysing 9727 surveyed locations of pedestrian volume in Seoul, Korea, the study demonstrates that the weighted land use mix index, rather than the conventionally used entropy-based land use mix index, can improve the explanatory power of the estimation model for the relationship between pedestrian volume and built environments, showing consistent results throughout the empirical analysis. In future built-environment studies, the utility of the weighted land use mix index is expected to improve if studies include how to find the accurate weighting of the land use in estimating the pedestrian volume.
To and from the university: employability discourses and narratives of PhD graduates from the social sciences and humanities in Denmark

ABSTRACT For several years, Danish and other European countries have had political objectives for promoting higher education and research. As a result of this, there has been an increased supply of PhD graduates in all disciplines. From a socio-economic point of view, investment in the development of a highly educated work force is considered necessary to ensure competitiveness in the global knowledge economy. It is assumed that PhD graduates are requested outside of academia and that they will contribute to the dissemination of knowledge and skills outside of academia. However, within the social sciences and humanities, most PhD raduates are employed within academia and employment in other branches appears less frequent. This has led to an increased research interest in the strategies and competences of these PhD graduates vis-à-vis the structures of the labour market. The focus tends to be more on individualist perspectives of employability than on structuralist perspectives of social background and knowledge discourses, which constitute the focus of this article. Our focus is on analysing narratives of PhD graduates from the social sciences and humanities as to which career strategies they follow and how they apply competences and refer to knowledge acquired through their PhD. Based on data from universities in Denmark, we have analysed the implications of the policy discourses of employability and transferability and how they result in different knowledge discourses.
EVALUATION THE RISK LEVEL OF FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO MATERIAL WASTAGE GENERATION IN CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS

The waste generation in construction takes place because of many factors. Every factor has various grade of risk which may affect the performance of the project. This is substantial to locate for efficient management of waste. This study is carried out to define and locate the level of risk of different factors participate to the generation of waste in the implementation phase. A total of 28 factors were identified and inspected through a survey. This survey utilized Delphi technique with two rounds. The first round was directed to locate the level of risk associated with each factor while the second round concentrated on supporting the outcome of the first round. Eighteen experts contributed to the survey at the first round, while 15 experts contributed to the second round. The analysis revealed the most important factors are clientâs changes, mistakes by workers causing rework, and errors during ordering of materials. Further analysis showed that there more than half of the factors included in the survey have significant level of risk. Analysis for risk level in the first round of Delphi indicated three factors have âMost Significantâ risk level, five factors have âHigh Significantâ risk level, and seven factors have âSignificantâ risk level. The other 13 factors included in the study showed they are âNot Significantâ. The Delphi round two showed that 10 factors are with âHighâ consensus, 13 factors with âFairâ consensus, 3 factors with âLowâ consensus, and 2 factors only with âNoâ consensus.
Multicommodity Flow Reliability for Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks

—This paper considers energy harvesting wireless sensor networks (EH-WSN) with multiple sinks supporting concurrent applications. Each application is associated with a set of sensor nodes that generate and send traffic to the associated application sink. Each node can relay any application traffic toward the application sink. In addition, each node uses an energy management unit to control the amount of traffic the node can relay based on its available energy. With the nodes’ energy levels fluctuations, it is essential to quantify the network's ability to fulfill the different applications’ quality of information and service requirements. Therefore, a novel multicommodity flow reliability problem (called MultiFlowRel ) is formalized to estimate the likelihood that at least a certain amount of each application traffic is delivered to the associated application sink. The proposed problem is proven to be #P-hard, and an iterative bounding framework is proposed for deriving lower bounds on the exact reliability solutions. The proposed framework compute’s exact reliability solutions if allowed a sufficient number of iterations. Numerical results show the effectiveness of using the proposed solution to obtain good lower reliability bounds and exact solutions in reasonable running times. Furthermore, the results show examples of the use of the proposed framework in solving some interesting network design problems (e.g. optimal sink locations and appropriate transmission parameters).
Stability of switched systems with multiple equilibria: A mixed stable-unstable subsystem case

This paper studies the stability of switched systems that are composed of a mixture of stable and unstable modes with multiple equilibria. The main results of this paper include some sufficient conditions concerning set convergence of switched nonlinear systems. We show that under suitable dwell-time and leave-time switching laws, trajectories converge to an initial set and then stay in a convergent set. Based on these conditions, Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) conditions are derived that allow for numerical validation of the practical stability of switched affine systems, which include those with all unstable modes. Two examples are provided to verify the theoretical results.
Seasonal climate summary southern hemisphere (autumn 2008): a return to neutral ENSO conditions in the tropical Pacific

This summary reviews southern hemisphere climate patterns acting around Australia and the southern hemisphere for the austral autumn 2008 (March to May). Particular attention is given to the Australasian and Pacific regions. The main sources of information used for this summary were analyses prepared by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research (CAWCR) and the Climate Diagnostic Bulletin prepared by the U.S. Climate Prediction Center (CPC). This article begins with discussion at the largest spatial scales of climate variability and ends with a more detailed analysis of the Australian region. Indian and Pacific Ocean climate
Peripheral Blood Serum NMR Metabolomics Is a Powerful Tool to Discriminate Benign and Malignant Ovarian Tumors

Ovarian cancer is the major cause of death from gynecological cancer and the third most common gynecological malignancy worldwide. Despite a slight improvement in the overall survival of ovarian carcinoma patients in recent decades, the cure rate has not improved. This is mainly due to late diagnosis and resistance to therapy. It is therefore urgent to develop effective methods for early detection and prognosis. We hypothesized that, besides being able to distinguish serum samples of patients with ovarian cancer from those of patients with benign ovarian tumors, 1H-NMR metabolomics analysis might be able to predict the malignant potential of tumors. For this, serum 1H-NMR metabolomics analyses were performed, including patients with malignant, benign and borderline ovarian tumors. The serum metabolic profiles were analyzed by multivariate statistical analysis, including principal component analysis (PCA) and orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) methods. A metabolic profile associated with ovarian malignant tumors was defined, in which lactate, 3-hydroxybutyrate and acetone were increased and acetate, histidine, valine and methanol were decreased. Our data support the use of 1H-NMR metabolomics analysis as a screening method for ovarian cancer detection and might be useful for predicting the malignant potential of borderline tumors.
Variation de la saisonnalité paléogène en Asie Centrale : apport d'une géochimie haute résolution sur des coquilles d'huîtres

Le climat asiatique est aujourd'hui caracterise par une forte dualite entre un climat de moussons au Sud-Est et un climat aride en Asie centrale. Ces climats sont tous les deux definis par une saisonnalite marquee, que ce soit en terme de precipitations pour le premier ou de temperatures pour le second. Si l'intensification des moussons asiatiques au Neogene, liee a l'influence du soulevement final du plateau tibetain sur les climats asiatiques, semble faire consensus dans la communaute scientifique, la caracterisation des climats paleogenes est encore peu etablie. Ainsi la question de savoir quand cette dualite climatique s'est installee en Asie reste encore ouverte. Au Paleogene, les reliefs lies a la collision entre les plaques indienne et eurasiatique etaient encore naissant et la distribution entre les terres et les mers tres differente de l'actuelle. Notablement, une vaste mer epicontinentale et peu profonde (la Proto-Paratethys) s'etendait a travers l'Europe et l'Asie Centrale. A la fin du Paleogene, la Proto-Parathetys se retire de l'Asie Centrale, et les hautes topographies asiatiques se mettent en place. Dans ce contexte geodynamique, cette these cherche a caracteriser les fluctuations a haute frequence du climat en Asie Centrale afin de comprendre l'evolution de la saisonnalite au cours du Paleogene, et plus precisement pendant la periode de l'Eocene (-55 a -34 Ma). Pour cela une approche originale utilisant une methode geochimique multi- proxy sur des coquilles d'huitres a ete etablie. Grâce a l'apport de l'analyse incrementielle de marqueurs elementaires et isotopiques sur les coquilles nous accedons aux variations saisonnieres de la temperature et de la salinite de l'eau de mer. Ceci nous permet de mieux cerner les bilans hydriques et thermiques a l'echelle de l'annee et ainsi de caracteriser le climat d'Asie Centrale a tres haute resolution. Combinant cette approche geochimique avec une etude sedimentologique et une etude numerique a plus grande echelle, cette these cherche a mieux etablir les causes de l'evolution du climat regional au cours du Paleogene.