Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Void Detection Behind Shield Tunnel Segments Using Ground Penetrating Radar: A Laboratory Experiment

As a recognized non-destructive testing (NDT) method, ground penetrating radar (GPR) has been applied for void detection in shield tunnel. However, due to the complex structures of shield segment with double-layer rebar meshes inside, the GPR responses of voids behind shield segment are still not clear. This paper presents a series of laboratory experiments to analyze and characterize the radar responses of voids based on a platform which is composed of two 1:1 scale shield segment. Results preliminarily show that the low-frequency radar signals from the near-segment voids are less obvious than the high-frequency signals. For the voids which are far away from the segment, the radar reflections appear as multi hyperbolas.
Application of Elastic Wave CT in Geotechnical Investigation of Suning Square

Elastic wave CT technology, also known as elastic wave tomography technology. It is on the premise of not destroying the internal structure of the rock and soil medium in the test area, according to the basic principle that elastic waves propagate at different speeds in different rock and soil media, the travel time and wave velocity of the elastic wave in the rock and soil between two points are obtained through the experiment, and through a special inversion method, a large amount of elastic wave velocity information is used to obtain the distribution law and the elastic wave velocity chromatogram of the medium in the test area, in this way, the lithology, structural development and velocity parameters of the rock-soil medium in the test area can be inferred. This article briefly introduces the basic theory of elastic wave CT, including Radon transform and inverse transform, forward ray tracing method and inversion iterative image reconstruction technology. Then combined with the engineering survey example of the Suning Plaza project, it briefly introduced the field work method, data parameter collection, geological interpretation and result analysis. The analysis shows that the results of the three-dimensional velocity map obtained by the elastic wave CT method are intuitive, the test accuracy is high, and the development state, size and location of the karst in the survey area can be clearly seen. It can describe the spatial distribution characteristics of karst in detail, has outstanding advantages in karst exploration, and has good application prospects.
Spatial Form Cognition of Historical Streets in Hongcun Village through a Space Syntax Approach

This study explores the relationship between spatial form and inner vitality, and discusses the impact of three morphological variables on spatial vitality and spatial cognition of residents and tourists. The purpose of this study is to investigate the internal relationship between spatial morphological characteristics, spatial vitality, and people’s spatial cognition. In China, the over-commercialization of tourism has led to changes in the historical spaces of many traditional villages, and the problems of homogenization and commercialization have become increasingly obvious. To address this, this study will use a combination of space syntax and cognitive imagery to understand the historical street space. Space syntax theory quantifies the division of spatial scales and studies the relationship between spatial form and human behavior. The concept of cognitive imagery reproduces the user’s spatial cognition through imagery, and explores the relationship between spatial elements and cognition. Combining these two theories can provide a better understanding of the laws of spatial form and behavioral cognition. This study investigates the historical streets in Hongcun village, a World Cultural Heritage Site located in China. The research sample consists of 51 tourists who have been traveled to Hongcun, and 49 villagers who still reside in the study area. Spatial analysis was performed using DepthmapX software. The results show that there is a positive correlation between the degree of integration, intelligibility, and optionality of traditional street space, the vitality of the space, and people’s cognition. However, residents and tourists have different perceptions of the same traditional street space due to their different identities and awareness. When formulating protection and utilization plans, the needs of residents and tourists should be considered comprehensively to achieve a reasonable allocation of village spaces. The study’s results provide a reference for policymakers to better understand the relationship between the spatial form and inner vitality of traditional villages.
Accelerating Indonesia Sustainable Infrastructure Development through ESG Initiatives in PPP Ecosystem

The Government of Indonesia committed to implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to end poverty, inequality, and mitigate climate change. The submission of an Enhanced Nationally Defined Contribution (ENDC) to UNFCC strengthens Indonesia’s commitment in a low-carbon and climate-resilient economy development. The Minister of Finance has launched an ESG Framework to mainstreaming ESG through government support and facilities on infrastructure financing, in which IIGF (Indonesia Infrastructure Guarantee Fund) has a significant role in providing sovereign guarantee for Public-Private Partnership (PPP). Qualitative approach was used to examine the benefit of ESG and additional value of IIGF’s ESG integrated guarantee to support the acceleration of the Indonesia’s sustainable infrastructure development. This paper concludes that in addition to de-risking instrument, the guarantee will bring additional value in ensuring a fair ESG risk allocation, project structuring and long-term risk management and monitoring. This will allow privates to access green and sustainable financing. The challenges mainly on capacity building and alignment of policy and standards among stakeholders. However, IIGF has opportunity to link with stakeholders and build collaboration to fill gaps and connecting to suitable market. This paper, however, report initial findings of the ongoing comprehensive studies as part of IIGF ESG initiative roadmap.
Correlation of signal feature importance and process parameters in water jet-guided laser cutting

Laser-based cutting can deliver high accuracy and speed during the process. However, there are still some technical challenges to be solved. First, the process itself requires precise focusing of the laser beam. When using continuous wave (CW)- or pulses in the μs- to ns-range for efficient materials removal, not only the targeted material volume is heated, but also the surrounding material due to heat diffusion. This decreases the quality of the cut. Coupling the light into a water-jet solves both issues: It ensures the delivery of focused light to the target surface, while cooling the affected material during processing. This work proposes a real-time monitoring system of the cutting process by exploiting unique physical phenomena related to the process. The water jet allows both the propagation of laser light towards the target while keeping it focused and the back-propagation of process light through the focusing system. This can be captured using suitable sensors, and saved using a data acquisition system. The acquired data can be used for process characterization using signal processing. In this work we demonstrate the direct correlation between different process parameters and statistical signal features. We show that reducing the signal to a few statistical features both in time and frequency by feature extraction does not reduce the information content, but instead makes it more robust to mis-classification while decreasing the classification time. It also opens up a wide range of future applications not only to process data, but also to control the process more precise.
Application of Non-negative Matrix Factorization in Processing Self-potential Signals Caused by Geo-microbe

Microorganisms play a significant role in the evolutionary process of the Earth and are closely related to the modification and evolution of the Earth’s surface circles at different spatial and temporal scales. Given geological microbiology in the self-potential signal data can be represented with non-negative matrix, which makes use of non-negative matrix factorization method to deal with the data become possible. This paper introduces the basic principle of non-negative matrix factorization method, based on non-negative matrix factorization method is discussed to isolate the self-potential signal data in geological microbes may and effect. By separating two natural potential signals containing noise with blind sources, the separation effect is good and the non-negative matrix factorization method is found to be an effective method for extracting their self-potential signal data. Although this numerical simulation is the self-potential signal is introduced in the work of geological microbiology, but this method also has reference significance for other signal data processing, can also be used to other geophysical data processing, the implementation of the research on environmental protection, to improve the cognitive complex biological geological process of shallow earth environment has important significance.
SEAD: an augmented reference panel with 22,134 haplotypes boosts the rare variants imputation and GWAS analysis in Asian population

Here, we present the South and East Asian Reference Database (SEAD) reference panel (https://imputationserver.westlake.edu.cn/), which comprises whole genome sequencing data from 11,067 individuals across 17 countries in Asia. The SEAD panel, which excludes singleton variants, consists of 22,134 haplotypes and 80,367,720 variants. Firstly, we assessed the concordance rate in global populations using HGDP datasets, notably, the SEAD panel showed advantage in East Asia, Central and South Asia, and Oceania populations. When imputing the disease-associated variants of Asian population, the SEAD panel displayed a distinct preponderance in imputing low-frequency and rare variants. In imputation of Chinese population, the SEAD panel imputed a larger number of well-imputed sites across all minor allele frequency (MAF) bins. Additionally, the SEAD panel exhibited higher imputation accuracy for shared sites in all MAF bins. Finally, we applied the augmented SEAD panel to conduct a discovery and replication genome-wide association study (GWAS) for hip and femoral neck (FN) bone mineral density (BMD) traits within the 5,369 Westlake BioBank for Chinese (WBBC) samples. The single-variant test suggests that rare variants near SNTG1 gene are associated with hip BMD (rs60103302, MAF=0.0091, P=4.79x10-8). The spatial clustering analysis also suggests the association of this gene (Pslide_window=1.08x10-8, Pgene_centric=4.72x10-8). The gene and variants achieved a suggestive level for FN BMD. This gene was not reported previously, and the preliminary experiment demonstrated that the identified rare variant can upregulate the SNTG1 expression, which in turn inhibits the proliferation and differentiation of preosteoblast.
Comparison of Adjuvant Clindamycin vs Linezolid for Severe Invasive Group A Streptococcus Skin and Soft Tissue Infections

Abstract Background Linezolid may be an option for severe group A Streptococcus (GAS) infections based on its potent in vitro activity and antitoxin effects, but clinical data supporting its use over clindamycin are limited. This study evaluated treatment outcomes in patients with severe GAS skin and soft tissue infections who received either linezolid or clindamycin. Methods This retrospective single-center cohort study examined patients with GAS isolated from blood and/or tissue cultures with invasive soft tissue infection or necrotizing fasciitis who underwent surgical debridement and received linezolid or clindamycin for at least 48 hours. The primary outcome was percentage change in Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score from baseline through 72 hours of hospitalization. Results After adjustment for time to first surgical intervention among patients with a baseline SOFA score >0 (n = 23 per group), there was no difference in reduction of SOFA score over the first 72 hours in patients receiving clindamycin vs linezolid. In the entire cohort (n = 26, clindamycin; n = 29, linezolid), there was no difference in inpatient mortality (2% vs 1%) or any secondary outcomes, including duration of vasopressor therapy, intensive care unit length of stay, and antibiotic-associated adverse drug events. Conclusions There was no difference in reduction of critical illness as measured by SOFA score between baseline and 72 hours among patients treated with clindamycin vs linezolid. Given its more favorable side effect profile, linezolid may be a viable option for the treatment of serious GAS infections and should be further studied.
Smoothing via Adaptive Shrinkage (smash): denoising Poisson and heteroskedastic Gaussian signals

We describe the idea of "Adaptive Shrinkage" (ASH), a general purpose Empirical Bayes (EB) method for shrinkage estimation, and demonstrate its application to several signal denoising problems. The ASH method takes as input a set of estimates and their corresponding standard errors, and outputs shrinkage estimates of the underlying quantities ("effects"). Compared with existing EB shrinkage methods, a key feature of ASH is its use of a flexible family of "unimodal" distributions to model the distribution of the effects. The approach is not only flexible and self-tuning, but also computationally convenient because it results in a convex optimization problem that can be solved quickly and reliably. Here we demonstrate the effectiveness and convenience of ASH by applying it to several signal denoising applications, including smoothing of Poisson and heteroskedastic Gaussian data. In both cases ASH consistently produces estimates that are as accurate -- and often more accurate -- than other shrinkage methods, including both simple thresholding rules and purpose-built EB procedures. We illustrate the potential for Poisson smoothing to provide an alternative to "peak finding" algorithms for sequencing assays such as Chromatin Immunoprecipitation (ChIP-Seq). The methods are implemented in an R package, "smashr" (SMoothing by Adaptive SHrinkage in R), available from this http URL
Navigating Towards Digital Tectonic Tools

The computer holds a great potential to break down the barriers between architecture and the technical aspects relating to architecture, thus supporting innovative architecture with an inner correspondence between form and technique. While the differing values in architecture and technique can seem like opposites, the term tectonics deals with creating a meaningful relationship between the two. The aim of this paper is to investigate what a digital tectonic tool could be and what relationship with technology it should represent. An understanding of this relationship can help us not only to understand the conflicts in architecture and the building industry but also bring us further into a discussion of how architecture can use digital tools. The investigation is carried out firstly by approaching the subject theoretically through the term tectonics and by setting up a model of the values a tectonic tool should encompass. Secondly the ability and validity of the model are shown by applying it to a case study of Jørn Utzon’s work on Minor Hall in Sydney Opera House for the sake of exemplification the technical field focused on in this paper is room acoustics. Thirdly the relationship between the model of tectonics and the case will be compared and lastly a discussion about the characteristics of a tectonic tool and its implications on digital tectonic tools will be carried out.
Exploring ethnicity, socio-economic status and the distribution of airborne emissions in Sydney, Australia

Racism and the ways in which it operates are important areas of research in ethnically diverse societies, such as Australia. While much attention has been given to the outcomes of systemic racism in Australian health and criminal justice systems, minimal attention has been given to systemic racism operating through exposure to environmental hazards. This research area, known as ‘environmental racism’, has received substantial attention in the US and elsewhere. Using 2011 Census data and 2011/12 National Pollutant Inventory data, this study aimed to address this paucity of research by investigating the correlations between ethnicity and exposure to airborne emissions in Greater Sydney. The influence of other population variables, particularly socioeconomic status, on correlations between ethnicity and exposure to pollution was also examined. Furthermore, the influence of varying scale, population estimation methods and pollution measures were investigated. The study found that the ethnic majority (Anglo-European/‘white’ Australians) are least likely to live in areas with exposure to airborne emissions. By contrast, ethnic minority migrants are most likely to live in areas exposed to high levels of airborne emissions. These findings are partly a result of the relationships between ethnicity and socio-economic status, but this is subject to the scale and population estimation methods adopted. The study demonstrates the presence of racial hierarchies in Greater Sydney operating through racially differential exposure to airborne emissions. Furthermore, this study makes an important methodological contribution by demonstrating the importance of accounting for the influence of scale and population estimates in future environmental racism studies.
Biodegradable polymeric insulin microneedles – a design and materials perspective review

Abstract Microneedle (MN) delivery devices are more accepted by people than regular traditional needle injections (e.g. vaccination) due to their simplicity and adaptability. Thus, patients of chronic diseases like diabetes look for alternative pain-free treatment regimens circumventing regular subcutaneous injections. Insulin microneedles (INS-MNs) are a thoughtfully researched topic (1) to overcome needle phobia in patients, (2) for controlled delivery of the peptide, (3) decreasing the frequency of drug administration, (4) to ease the drug administration procedure, and (5) thus increasing patient adherence to the treatment dosage regimes. MNs physically disrupt the hard outer skin layer to create minuscule pores for insulin (INS) to pass through the dermal capillaries into the systemic circulation. Biodegradable polymeric MNs are of greater significance for INS and vaccine delivery than silicon, metal, glass, or non-biodegradable polymeric MNs due to their ease of fabrication, mass production, cost-effectiveness, and bioerodability. In recent years, INS-MNs have been researched to deliver INS through the transdermal implants, buccal mucosa, stomach wall, intestinal mucosal layers, and colonic mucosa apart from the usual transdermal delivery. This review focuses on the design characteristics and the applications of biodegradable/dissolvable polymeric INS-MNs in transdermal, intra-oral, gastrointestinal (GI), and implantable delivery. The prospective approaches to formulate safe, controlled-release INS-MNs were highlighted. Biodegradable/dissolvable polymers, their significance, their impact on MN morphology, and INS release characteristics were outlined. The developments in biodegradable polymeric INS-MN technology were briefly discussed. Bio-erodible polymer selection, MN fabrication and evaluation factors, and other design aspects were elaborated.
Increasing Hospital at Home Enrollment Through Decentralization With Agile Science

ABSTRACT The use of hospital at home (HaH) programs are rapidly increasing due to virtual capabilities, hospital capacities, and patient preferences. In 2020, a large hospital system instituted a multistate HaH program with a single command center. It is not known whether decentralizing command centers to local hospital sites increases patient enrollment in HaH programs. This article outlines how the Agile Implementation Process was applied to rapidly decentralize patient enrollment to a local hospital site and reports pre–post data on the number of patient enrollments per month, staff satisfaction, and qualitative quotes describing how the Agile Implementation process supported interprofessional staff engagement. In brief, 235 patients were included from the local site (pre: n = 105, post: n = 130) with a mean age of 70 years (SD 2.73), 55% male, and primarily Caucasian (99%). Postdecentralization, staff satisfaction increased by 63% (4.4–7.2) and the mean number of patients enrolled per month significantly increased from 15 to 22 (p = .01). An approximate 10% decrease in patient satisfaction was observed preintervention to postintervention (98.2–88.2%). In summary, the Agile Implementation quality improvement approach successfully decentralized patient enrollment to local hospital sites, increased patient enrollment, and staff satisfaction through staff engagement. Level of Evidence: 4, Descriptive quality improvement project.
Contribution of HSP90 Cleavage to the Cytotoxic Effect of Suberoylanilide Hydroxamic Acid In Vivo and the Involvement of TXNIP in HSP90 Cleavage

Heat shock protein (HSP) 90 is expressed in most living organisms, and several client proteins of HSP90 are necessary for cancer cell survival and growth. Previously, we found that HSP90 was cleaved by histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors and proteasome inhibitors, and the cleavage of HSP90 contributes to their cytotoxicity in K562 leukemia cells. In this study, we first established mouse xenograft models with K562 cells expressing the wild-type or cleavage-resistant mutant HSP90β and found that the suppression of tumor growth by the HDAC inhibitor suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid (SAHA) was interrupted by the mutation inhibiting the HSP90 cleavage in vivo. Next, we investigated the possible function of thioredoxin interacting protein (TXNIP) in the HSP90 cleavage induced by SAHA. TXNIP is a negative regulator for thioredoxin, an antioxidant protein. SAHA transcriptionally induced the expression of TXNIP in K562 cells. HSP90 cleavage was induced by SAHA also in the thymocytes of normal mice and suppressed by an anti-oxidant and pan-caspase inhibitor. When the thymocytes from the TXNIP knockout mice and their wild-type littermate control mice were treated with SAHA, the HSP90 cleavage was detected in the thymocytes of the littermate controls but suppressed in those of the TXNIP knockout mice suggesting the requirement of TXNIP for HSP90 cleavage. We additionally found that HSP90 cleavage was induced by actinomycin D, β-mercaptoethanol, and p38 MAPK inhibitor PD169316 suggesting its prevalence. Taken together, we suggest that HSP90 cleavage occurs also in vivo and contributes to the anti-cancer activity of various drugs in a TXNIP-dependent manner.