Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Enhancement of the Functional Properties of Mead Aged with Oak (Quercus) Chips at Different Toasting Levels

Consumers increasingly prefer and seek functional beverages, which, given their characteristics, provide important bioactive compounds that help prevent and treat chronic diseases. Mead is a traditional fermented alcoholic beverage made from honey solution. The aging process of mead with oak chips is innovative and bestows functional characteristics to this beverage. Thus, in this study, we sought to develop and characterize a novel functional beverage by combining the health benefits of honey with the traditional aging process of alcoholic beverages in wood. Phenolic compounds, flavonoids, and antioxidant capacity were analyzed in mead using oak chips at different toasting levels and aged for 360 days. LC-ESI-QTOF-MS/MS was used to analyze the chemical profile of different meads. Over time, the aging process with oak chips showed a higher total phenolic and flavonoid content and antioxidant capacity. Eighteen compounds belonging to the classes of organic acids, phenolic acids, flavonoids, and tannins were identified in meads after 360 days. Our findings revealed that the addition of oak chips during aging contributed to p-coumaric, ellagic, abscisic, and chlorogenic acids, and naringenin, vanillin, and tiliroside significantly impacted the functional quality of mead.
Adaptive iterative learning control for continuous systems with non‐repetitive uncertainties and unknown state delays

This paper is devoted to tracking control of nonlinear multiple‐input multiple‐output systems subject to unknown state delays and non‐repetitive uncertainties. An adaptive iterative learning control scheme is proposed by integrating a P‐type feedback term, an iterative updating term and an additional compensation term. Among these terms, the first one is to alleviate the ill effect caused by non‐repetitive uncertainties and the third one is utilized to handle the unwell learned part. The composite energy function methodology is employed to elaborate the bounded convergence of the tracking error. The validity of the proposed method is compared with existing results via simulation studies.
Local excitation of surface plasmon polaritons at discontinuities of a metal film: Theoretical analysis and optical near-field measurements

Nonresonant excitation of surface plasmon polaritons at discontinuities of a gold film is numerically studied and experimentally observed with scanning near-field optical microscopy. It is shown that surface polaritons can be effectively launched at the edges of a metal film illuminated at an angle of incidence greater than the resonant angle of surface polariton excitation. The electromagnetic near-field distribution over a thin metal film exhibits significantly different features under resonant and nonresonant excitations due to different surface polariton excitation mechanisms. In the latter case the field distribution is determined by the interference of the excitation light and surface polaritons launched on air-metal and glass-metal interfaces. In the former case the interference of surface polariton modes excited on different interfaces of a metal film is dominating. The modulation depths of the respective interference patterns correspond to the efficiency of the intensity conversion of the excitation light at the metal discontinuities into surface polaritons of the order of 0.1-0.01 depending on an angle of incidence.
Mice Placental ECM Components May Provide A Three-Dimensional Placental Microenvironment

Bioethical limitations impair deeper studies in human placental physiology, then most studies use human term placentas or murine models. To overcome these challenges, new models have been proposed to mimetize the placental three-dimensional microenvironment. The placental extracellular matrix plays an essential role in several processes, being a part of the establishment of materno-fetal interaction. Regarding these aspects, this study aimed to investigate term mice placental ECM components, highlighting its collagenous and non-collagenous content, and proposing a potential three-dimensional model to mimetize the placental microenvironment. For that, 18.5-day-old mice placenta, both control and decellularized (n = 3 per group) were analyzed on Orbitrap Fusion Lumos spectrometer (ThermoScientific) and LFQ intensity generated on MaxQuant software. Proteomic analysis identified 2317 proteins. Using ECM and cell junction-related ontologies, 118 (5.1%) proteins were filtered. Control and decellularized conditions had no significant differential expression on 76 (64.4%) ECM and cell junction-related proteins. Enriched ontologies in the cellular component domain were related to cell junction, collagen and lipoprotein particles, biological process domain, cell adhesion, vasculature, proteolysis, ECM organization, and molecular function. Enriched pathways were clustered in cell adhesion and invasion, and labyrinthine vasculature regulation. These preserved ECM proteins are responsible for tissue stiffness and could support cell anchoring, modeling a three-dimensional structure that may allow placental microenvironment reconstruction.
Theory of mode locking of a laser diode with a multiple-quantum-well structure

The multiple-quantum-well structure exhibits both a fast and a slow saturation. The theory of mode locking with such a saturable absorber is investigated, and it is found that the fast component contributes substantially to the formation of short pulses. The presence of the fast-absorber component removes the requirement for gain depletion for the stabilization of the pulse against growth of noise following the pulse for pulses shorter than 1.5 psec. However, the buildup of short pulses from longer ones still calls for gain depletion. We also investigate the conditions for self-starting and stability against relaxation oscillations to arrive at criteria for the construction of short resonator structures.
Optical design for SiTian project

The SiTian project is mainly aimed at a photometric survey of the 10,000 square degrees sky within 30 min in three bands. The telescopes for the SiTian array must have a super-wide field-of-view (FOV). For the optical system discussed in this paper, we have investigated four types of wide-field telescope optics: Cassegrain with correctors, three-mirror anastigmatic, prime focus, and modified Schmidt types. Weighing up the pros and cons, the catadioptric system, transformed from a modified Schmidt telescope, was adapted for the prototype of the SiTian array. The optics of the SiTian array is a 1 m/1.27 m modified Schmidt optical system, with an aperture of 1 m, an FOV of 7°(25 square degrees), and a focal ratio of 2.06, and is capable of imaging from 400 to 1000 nm. The image scale is 1 arcsec per 10 µm, and the optimal optical performance is 2 arcsec (80% of the encircled energy diameter less than 20 µm), which is suitable for the photometric survey.
Level Set-based Topological Shape Optimization of Nonlinear Heat Conduction Problems

A level set-based topological shape optimization method is developed for nonlinear heat conduction problems. While minimizing the objective function of instantaneous thermal compliance and satisfying the constraint of allowable volume, solution of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation leads the initial boundary to an optimal one according to the normal velocity field determined from the descent direction of the Lagrangian. To overcome the convergence difficulty in nonlinear problems resulting from introduction of an approximate boundary, an actual boundary is identified by tracking the level set functions and remeshing using Delaunay triangulation. The velocity field outside the actual domain is determined through a velocity extension scheme.
Army ant males lose seasonality at a site on the equator

Army ants are keystone predators in the tropics and subtropics. During reproduction, males fly between colonies to mate with unmated, wingless queens. The males of most species are attracted to lights, and thus their presence and the timing of reproduction can be monitored using light traps. Previous studies examined the seasonality of army ant male reproduction and its relationship to climate factors at individual sites, but less is known about variation among sites. We examined army ant male flight seasonality at three sites: (1) La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica, a site with weak temperature seasonality and moderate rainfall and day length seasonality, (2) Yasuní National Park, Ecuador, a site with no temperature or day length seasonality and very weak rainfall seasonality, and (3) the state of Paraná in southern Brazil, a site with very strong temperature, rainfall, and day length seasonality. Army ants showed strong seasonality at the La Selva and Paraná sites, and very weak to no seasonality at the Yasuní site. At La Selva and Paraná, flight times varied among species, but were very predictable from year to year, which suggests day length or temperature as predictable cues rather than rainfall. Lack of seasonal cues near the equator may be a challenge for army ant species that need to synchronize colony reproduction, and thus may have conservation implications for minimum population sizes needed to ensure stable populations.
Growth hormone 1 and insulin 2 gene polymorphism in Egyptian chickens

The genetic polymorphism of two genes related to growth production in four chicken breeds (Dokki 4, Inshas, El-Salam and Mandarah) were studied. PCR-RFLP and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) analysis were studied in the two genes namely GH1 and insulin 2. Blood samples were collected randomly from 84 chickens, DNA was extracted and genotypes for two genes were detected using PCR-RFLP analysis. The locus GH1 (467 bp) showed two genotypes (GG, AG) in four chicken breeds due to the presence of two Msp1 restriction sites (C^CGG) in intron1. The sequence analysis revealed two substitutions (C/T) in Dokki 4 and Inshas breeds, G/A substitution in Dokki 4 and Mandarah breeds and insertion of T nucleotide in four chicken breeds. In insulin 2 gene (371 bp), two genotypes (TT, TC) were recorded in four chicken breeds due to presence of one restriction site in intron1. The nucleotide substitutions (A/G) and (T/C) were observed in all Egyptian chicken breeds except Inshas breed and A/ T transversion was observed in all breeds. The sequences of detected SNPs were submitted to GenBank database with the accession numbers MG906782â€“MG906789 in GH1 gene and the accession numbers MG906790â€“MG906791 in insulin 2 gene. In conclusion, the presence of certain polymorphisms could increase the phenotypic variety and will be supportive in selection and breeding programs.
Training RNN-T with CTC Loss in Automatic Speech Recognition

The end-to-end model for automatic speech recognition (ASR) has recently gained significant interest in the research community. Standard RNN-T loss causes an unreasonable alignment of output and labels, such as the model outputting a sequence of labels at a single time frame and a single label can only be emitted by a single frame. We apply the CTC loss function to RNN-T model to address these problems. On the assumption that the output sequence is no longer than the input sequence we propose an improved forward-backward algorithm to calculate the loss. Experimental results for speech recognition are provided on the AISHELL-1 speech corpus. The results show that TCL converges faster without causing gradient explosion compared with RNN-T.TCL achieves a 9.5% character error rate on a test set of AISHELL-1 Chinese speech corpus, outperforming both the base-line RNN-T reported by Z. Tian etc. and standard CTC achieve11.82% and 10.8% respectively. RNN-T with CTC loss achieves a 19.63% relative reduction in character error rate compared with the standard RNN-T and a 12.04% relative reduction in character error rate compared with standard CTC on the test set.
Clustering representations of group overlap

A distinction is made between implicit and explicit group overlap in sociological data, and literature is briefly reviewed in terms of this distinction. The conclusion is drawn that for implicit overlap, the method of data analysis should use continuous input, while yielding output in a discrete form of (possibly overlapping) subsets. Such a method of clustering (ADCLUS) is presented briefly and is applied to the communication structure of a biomedical area of specialization.
Ultrasound and photoacoustic imaging to monitor mesenchymal stem cells labeled with gold nanoparticles

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are versatile in many tissue engineering applications and have the potential to be used for cellular therapies because they can differentiate into many cell types. Specifically, the use of MSCs for the treatment of ischemic disease is promising because MSCs can express characteristics of vascular cells. MSCs can promote vascular growth at the site of injury after delivery using a PEGylated fibrin gel. In order to quantitatively assess in vivo delivery and differentiation of MSCs, a non-invasive and high-resolution imaging technique is required. In this study, the combined ultrasound and photoacoustic imaging was demonstrated to monitor MSCs labeled with citrate-stabilized gold nanoparticles (Au NPs). It was observed that uptake of nanoparticles did not have a significant effect on cell viability and proliferation over a two-week period. Four different cell concentrations of either the non-labeled MSCs or the Au NP labeled MSCs were embedded in the tissue mimicking gelatin phantom. The ultrasound and photoacoustic signals were acquired and quantitatively analyzed to assess sensitivity and accuracy of the developed imaging approach. Furthermore, based on the results, the feasibility of in vivo ultrasound and photoacoustic imaging of MSCs was discussed.
A thermo-optical analysis method for a space optical remote sensor optostructural system

The space thermal environment is one of the important factors that affect the image quality of a space optical remote sensor (SORS), so discussing the relationship between image quality and the temperature field of a SORS is necessary for thermal control to improve image quality. In this paper, a new thermo-optical analysis method is proposed for the optostructural system of a SORS. Thermal-elastic distortions of all components of an optostructural system, resulting from temperature field changes, cause dimensional instability of the system. This instability is described in terms of changes of position (translations along and rotations around coordinate axes), equation parameters, and roughness of optical surfaces. Then, the theory of homogeneous coordinate transformations and linear fitting of revolving conicoid surfaces are applied to processing of data from finite-element analysis to obtain all the thermally induced dimensional instabilities. Finally, these instabilities were incorporated in optical models (e.g., Zemax) to calculate the thermally induced degradation of image quality (modulation transfer function, wavefront error, etc.). The results of thermo-optical tests suggest that this method is effective.
Comparative Effectiveness and Safety of Seizure Prophylaxis Among Adults After Acute Ischemic Stroke

Background: Older adults occasionally receive seizure prophylaxis in an acute ischemic stroke (AIS) setting, despite safety concerns. There are no trial data available about the net impact of early seizure prophylaxis on post-AIS survival. Methods: Using a stroke registry (American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines) individually linked to electronic health records, we examined the effect of initiating seizure prophylaxis (ie, epilepsy-specific antiseizure drugs) within 7 days of an AIS admission versus not initiating in patients ≥65 years admitted for a new, nonsevere AIS (National Institutes of Health Stroke Severity score ≤20) between 2014 and 2021 with no recorded use of epilepsy-specific antiseizure drugs in the previous 3 months. We addressed confounding by using inverse-probability weights. We performed standardization accounting for pertinent clinical and health care factors (eg, National Institutes of Health Stroke Severity scale, prescription counts, seizure-like events). Results: The study sample included 151 patients who received antiseizure drugs and 3020 who did not. The crude 30-day mortality risks were 219 deaths per 1000 patients among epilepsy-specific antiseizure drugs initiators and 120 deaths per 1000 among noninitiators. After standardization, the estimated mortality was 251 (95% CI, 190–307) deaths per 1000 among initiators and 120 (95% CI, 86–144) deaths per 1000 among noninitiators, corresponding to a risk difference of 131 (95% CI, 65–200) excess deaths per 1000 patients. In the prespecified subgroup analyses, the risk difference was 52 (95% CI, 11–72) among patients with minor AIS and 138 (95% CI, 52–222) among moderate-to-severe AIS patients. Similarly, the risk differences were 86 (95% CI, 18–118) and 157 (95% CI, 57–219) among patients aged 65 to 74 years and ≥75 years, respectively. Conclusions: There was a higher risk of 30-day mortality associated with initiating versus not initiating seizure prophylaxis within 7 days post-AIS. This study does not support the role of seizure prophylaxis in reducing 30-day poststroke mortality.
Serving Whom? An Exploration of Cultural Taxation Themes in Latinx Graduate Students

Cultural taxation refers to the extra responsibilities (e.g., increased service expectations, serving as unofficial diversity consultants) placed on members of marginalized racial groups within academia. However, the extant literature on cultural taxation does not clearly indicate the extent to which that research applies to graduate students as members of academia who often fulfill similar tasks and roles as faculty. Furthermore, the academic context of a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) is particularly relevant to this line of work as this designation, while projecting an image that an institution is inclusive, is not directly representative of the institution’s commitment to equitable practices. The goal of the present research is to identify how Latinx graduate students are potentially taxed and whether their experiences of cultural taxation are analogous to the taxation that faculty experience. Transcripts from 20 interviews with Latinx students at an HSI were analyzed via qualitative thematic analysis to identify potential themes of this sample’s experiences with cultural taxation. Findings suggest that Latinx graduate students’ cultural taxation converge in some ways with faculty patterns, but with key exceptions. Major themes from students’ responses include a sense of increased distance and lack of support from one’s home department, as well as difficulties integrating diversity and inclusion work cleanly into their graduate careers. These findings supplement existing cultural taxation literature by highlighting the experiences of an underrecognized population within academia and presenting initial findings for taxations imposed on this group. Keywords: cultural taxation, graduate students, Latinx students, identity taxation, thematic analysis
Predicting dementia from spontaneous speech using large language models

Language impairment is an important biomarker of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Artificial intelligence (AI), particularly natural language processing (NLP), has recently been increasingly used for early prediction of AD through speech. Yet, relatively few studies exist on using large language models, especially GPT-3, to aid in the early diagnosis of dementia. In this work, we show for the first time that GPT-3 can be utilized to predict dementia from spontaneous speech. Specifically, we leverage the vast semantic knowledge encoded in the GPT-3 model to generate text embedding, a vector representation of the transcribed text from speech, that captures the semantic meaning of the input. We demonstrate that the text embedding can be reliably used to (1) distinguish individuals with AD from healthy controls, and (2) infer the subject’s cognitive testing score, both solely based on speech data. We further show that text embedding considerably outperforms the conventional acoustic feature-based approach and even performs competitively with prevailing fine-tuned models. Together, our results suggest that GPT-3 based text embedding is a viable approach for AD assessment directly from speech and has the potential to improve early diagnosis of dementia.
The Incidence, Survival, and HPV Impact of Second Primary Cancer following Primary Oropharyngeal Squamous Cell Carcinoma: A 20-Year Retrospective and Population-Based Study

Second primary cancer (SPC) is the second most common cause of death among patients diagnosed with head and neck cancer. This study examined the risk of SPC following oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC) and the impact of human papillomavirus (HPV) on survival following SPC. The study was a population-based, retrospective study including all patients diagnosed with OPSCC in eastern Denmark from 2000–2020 who received curative intended treatment. The incidence rate ratio (IRR), age-adjusted incidence rates (AAIR), and hazard ratios (HR) were calculated. A total of 2584 patients with primary OPSCC were included (median follow-up time: 3.1 years), with 317 patients (12.3%) diagnosed with SPC. The risk of SPC was approximately five times the occurrence of cancer in the general population (IRR: 4.96). The median time to SPC after a primary OPSCC was 2.0 years (interquartile range (IQR) = 0.6–4.2 years). HPV-positive (HPV+) patients had a significantly longer median time to SPC, and a significant better survival compared to HPV-negative (HPV-) patients. SPC was most frequently found in lungs, head, and neck (LHN) for HPV- OPSCC patients and lungs followed by gender-specific (prostate, ovaries, or endometrium) for HPV+ OPSCC. There was a significant difference between the two groups when distributed between “within” or “outside” LHN. Patients with SPC outside LHN had a significant better overall survival. This knowledge should be considered during post-treatment surveillance and might guide targeted imaging.
Runge–Kutta integrators yield optimal regularization schemes

Asymptotic regularization (also called Showalter's method) is a theoretically appealing regularization scheme for an ill-posed problem Tx = y, T acting between Hilbert spaces. Here, Tx = y is stably solved by evaluating the solution of the evolution equation u′(t) = T*(y − Tu(t)), u(0) = 0, at a properly chosen finite time. For a numerical realization, however, we have to apply an integrator to the ODE. Fortunately all properties of asymptotic regularization carry over to its numerical realization: Runge–Kutta integrators yield optimal regularization schemes when stopped by the discrepancy principle. In this way a common analysis is obtained for such different regularization schemes as, for instance, the Landweber iteration and the iterated Tikhonov–Phillips method which are generated by the explicit and implicit Euler integrators, respectively. Furthermore it turns out that inconsistent Runge–Kutta schemes, which are useless for solving ODEs, lead to optimal regularizations as well which can even be more efficient than regularizations from consistent Runge–Kutta integrators. The presented computational examples illustrate the theoretical findings and demonstrate that implicit schemes outperform the explicit ones.