Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nano Methotrexate versus Methotrexate in Targeting Rheumatoid Arthritis

Nanomedicine has emerged as an important approach for targeting RA medication. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a widespread autoimmune disorder marked by multiple inflamed joints. Gold nanoparticles (GNPs) have been demonstrated as efficacious nanocarriers due to their unique characteristics and the relative simplicity of their synthesis in varied sizes; moreover, they have the capability to alleviate several inflammatory markers. The current objective was to combine methotrexate (MTX) with GNPs to overcome MTX restrictions. GNPs were fabricated by a chemical reduction technique, utilizing sodium citrate and tween 20. The MTX-GNPs formulations were characterized in vitro by % entrapment efficiency (%EE), particle size, polydispersity index (PDI) zeta potential, and % release. The MTX-GNPs formulation was administrated as an intra-articular solution, and additionally, incorporated into a Carbopol gel to investigate its anti-arthritic effectiveness and bioavailability in vivo. The results indicated that a %EE of 87.53 ± 1.10%, and a particle size of 60.62 ± 2.41 nm with a PDI of 0.31 ± 0.03, and a zeta potential of −27.80 ± 0.36 mV were optimal. The in vitro release of MTX from the MTX-GNPs formulation demonstrated that the MTX-GNPs formulation’s release was 34.91 ± 1.96% and considerably (p < 0.05) lower than that of free MTX, showing a significant difference in dissolution patterns (p < 0.05). In vivo, MTX-GNPs formulations inhibited IL-6 by 36.52%, ACCP (63.25 %), COMP (28.16%), and RANKL (63.67%), as well as elevated IL-10 by 190.18%. Transdermal MTX-GNPs decreased IL-6 by 22.52%, ACCP (56.63%), COMP (52.64%), and RANKL (79.5%), as well as increased IL-10 by 168.37%. Histological investigation supported these recent findings. Conclusions: Marked improvements in MTX anti-arthritic effects are seen when it is conjugated to GNPs.
Magnetic Properties of Cobalt-Ion-Implanted SiO2 Thin Films

The physical properties of magnetic-ion-implanted nanoparticle systems depend on the preparation and processing conditions, and this fact may be utilized to design a material system with desired properties. For this purpose, the magnetic properties of various Co implanted SiO2 thin films were systematically studied. SiO2 thin films were grown on Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si (100) substrates by using thermal evaporation, and Co ions of different energies (40 and 100 keV) and doses (1, 3, 7, 10, 13 × 10 ion/cm) were implanted into the films. Magnetization, ferromagnetic resonance (FMR), and scanning electron microscope (SEM) measurements for the films were carried out either as-prepared or after annealing at 600 ◦C. While 40 keV Co ions were spread under the surface of the films and the internal field did not change significantly with dose, 100 keV ions went deeper into the films, and their internal field changed with dose. Post-annealing further induced Co nanoparticles with different shapes and sizes in the films. In general, magnetization measurements showed that the freezing temperature of the films shifted to higher temperatures with increasing dose. FMR absorption spectra were recorded as a function of magnetic field at room temperature and the effective magnetization was calculated from the FMR data. We found that the effective magnetization increased with dose while the magnetic anisotropy decreased with dose.
High speed deposition of high‐quality ferrite films from aqueous solution at low temperatures (≤90 °C)

We have plated polycrystalline CoxFe3−xO4 (x=0 and 0.43) films on PET and glass substrates at 80–90 °C in an aqueous solution by new three methods: (1) spraying, (2) spin coating, and (3) thin liquid‐film methods. The reaction solution is (1) sprayed, (2) spin coated, and (3) flowed through a gap between the substrate and a glass plate, respectively, making a thin (5–400 μm) coating of the solution on the substrate. Since the solution flows off, the composition of the solution on the substrate does not significantly change during the plating, and the ferrite particles formed in the solution are washed away. This improves the film quality compared to previous methods. We have further improved the film quality by introducing CH3COO− buffer ions into the solution, and also by filtering the solution. By the thin liquid‐film method, we have obtained maximum deposition rates of ∼160 and ∼300 A/min by the spraying and the thin liquid‐film methods, respectively. The films of Fe3O4 and CoxFe3–xO4 (x=0.43) plated b.
Optimized plasmonic nanoparticle distributions for solar spectrum harvesting

The large optical cross sections of metallic nanoparticles at wavelengths corresponding to their plasmon resonance make them highly attractive for harvesting solar energy for a variety of applications. Here the authors determine ideal distributions of spherical metallic nanoparticles, both nanospheres and nanoshells, that match the AM 1.5 solar spectrum in a mixed component, submonolayer geometry. Both absorbing and scattering distributions are determined and their properties compared to conventional broad spectrum absorbing and scattering media.
Millimeter-wave two-dimensional imaging optical system for interferometer of the GAMMA 10 tandem mirror

A millimeter-wave optical system for plasma diagnostics for measuring the two-dimensional distribution of electron density in the Tsukuba GAMMA 10 tandem mirror has been developed. Two-dimensional images of plasma density of a cross-sectional area of 83 mm×67 mm in the machine axis direction were successfully measured with the optical system. The position at which the present imaging system is installed corresponds to the plug region, and the plasma radius is relatively narrow (less than 100 mm). Information about the density in the area is valuable in the study of confining-potential formation. This optical system was developed for a millimeter-wave phase-imaging interferometer and was designed with the ray tracing method to reduce aberration. It was evaluated experimentally by measuring images of point sources and phase images of dielectric targets. The receiving optical system from the plasma to detector array was designed with a spatial resolution of 28.7 mm and a magnification of 0.30. Ray tracing in.
Femtosecond laser assisted growth of ZnO nanowires

Crystalline ZnO nanowires were grown by the pulsed laser deposition (PLD) approach using a femtosecond laser as the ablation source. As determined by electron microscopy, the femtosecond PLD grown ZnO nanowires showed good crystalline characteristics and reasonably uniform diameters, which can be attributed to the homogeneity of femtosecond laser produced precursor vapor in which micron sized particulates are minimal. Photoluminescence spectroscopy measurements indicated a low threshold for lasing at room temperature. In addition, we examined the influence of oxygen partial pressure during the PLD growth process on the morphology and photoluminescence property of ZnO nanowires.
The Impact of an Electronic Portal on Patient Encounters in Primary Care: Interrupted Time-Series Analysis

Background Electronic patient portals are online applications that allow patients access to their own health information, a form of asynchronous virtual care. The long-term impact of portals on the use of traditional primary care services is unclear, but it is an important question at this juncture, when portals are being incorporated into many primary care practices. Objective We sought to investigate how an electronic patient portal affected the use of traditional, synchronous primary care services over a much longer time period than any existing studies and to assess the impact of portal messaging on clinicians’ workload. Methods We conducted a propensity-score–matched, open-cohort, interrupted time-series evaluation of a primary care portal from its implementation in 2010. We extracted information from the electronic medical record regarding age, sex, education, income, family health team enrollment, diagnoses at index date, and number of medications prescribed in the previous year. We also extracted the annual number of encounters for up to 8 years before and after the index date and provider time spent on secure messaging through the portal. Results A total of 7247 eligible portal patients and 7647 eligible potential controls were identified, with 3696 patients matched one to one. We found that portal registration was associated with an increase in the number of certain traditional encounters over the time period surrounding portal registration. Following the index year, there was a significant jump in annual number of visits to physicians in the portal arm (0.42 more visits/year vs control, P<.001) but not for visits to nurse practitioners and physician assistants. The annual number of calls to the practice triage nurses also showed a greater increase in the portal arm compared to the control arm after the index year (an additional 0.10 calls, P=.006). The average provider time spent on portal-related work was 5.7 minutes per patient per year. Conclusions We found that portal registration was associated with a subsequent increase in the number of some traditional encounters and an increase in clerical workload for providers. Portals have enormous potential to truly engage patients as partners in their own health care, but their impact on use of traditional health care services and clerical burden must also be considered when they are incorporated into primary care.
Single-shot holography using high-order harmonics

This work demonstrates single-shot holography with ultrashort XUV pulses. The pulses are generated by high-harmonic generation in an Ar gas cell and focused to produce a strongly divergent reference beam suitable for in-line holography of micrometer size objects. The achieved intensity of the high-order harmonics in the XUV regime is sufficient for single-shot holography with good signal-to-noise ratio. A numerical algorithm is applied to reconstruct real images from the recorded holograms, which also includes an iterative process to reduce the twin-image blurring. Holograms and reconstructed images of microscope tips are presented and a description of the algorithm is given.
Comparing Backward Walking Performance in Parkinson’s Disease with and without Freezing of Gait—A Systematic Review

Introduction: Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by motor symptoms and gait impairments. Among them, freezing of gait (FOG) is one of the most disabling manifestations. Backward walking (BW) is an activity of daily life that individuals with PD might find difficult and could cause falls. Recent studies have reported that gait impairments in PD were more pronounced in BW, particularly in people presenting FOG. However, to the best of our knowledge, no systematic review has synthetized the literature which compared BW performance in PD patients with and without FOG. Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the differences in BW performance between PD patients with FOG and PD patients without FOG. Methods: Two databases, PubMed and Web of Science, were systematically searched to identify studies comparing BW performance in PD patients with and without FOG. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) tool was used to assess the quality of the studies included. Results: Seven studies with 431 PD patients (179 PD with FOG and 252 PD without FOG) met the inclusion criteria and were included in this review. Among them, 5 studies reported walking speed, 3 studies step length, stride length and lower limb range of motion, 2 studies functional ambulation profile, toe clearance height, swing, and stance percent and 1 study reported the decomposition index and stepping coordination. Compared to PD patients without FOG, PD patients with FOG showed slower walking speed and reduced step length in 3 studies, shorter stride length, lower functional ambulation profile and decreased ankle range of motion in 2 studies, and smaller swing percent, higher stance percent, worse stepping coordination, greater decomposition between movements, and lower toe clearance height in one study. Conclusion: Despite the small number of included studies, the findings of this review suggested that PD patients with FOG have worse gait performance during the BW task than PD without FOG.
IDENTIFICATION OF NONRESPONSE MECHANISMS FOR TWO-WAY CONTINGENCY TABLES

In this paper, we use decomposable graphical models to describe the mechanisms of nonresponse in contingency tables classified by two binary variables, and we discuss identification of parameters in these models. For an unidentifiable model, we introduce covariates which are always observed such that this model becomes identifiable. We also give conditions for identifiability of odds ratios. These results are useful not only for data analysis but also for study design.
Point‑of‑care ultrasound for the diagnosis of liver abscess in a patient with HIV in the emergency department: A case report

A liver abscess is an entity that is rarely observed in the emergency department; therefore, it requires timely diagnosis by the clinicians who support this service. The early diagnosis of a liver abscess is challenging as variable and non-specific symptoms are present; furthermore, symptoms may differ in patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. To date, reports on the presentation of diagnostic ultrasound with point-of-care ultrasonography (PoCUS) are limited. The present case report study describes a patient diagnosed with HIV and the presence of a liver abscess confirmed by PoCUS performed in an emergency department. The patient presented with abdominal pain upon palpation in the right hypochondrium and in the thoracoabdominal area, which became more severe with inspiration. PoCUS revealed a hypodense intrahepatic image observed between segments VII and VI, with internal echoes suggestive of a liver abscess. Moreover, it was decided to perform tomography-guided percutaneous drainage of the liver abscess. Antibiotic treatment with ampicillin/sulbactam and IV metronidazole was also commenced. The patient presented clinical improvement and was discharged on the third day.
The evolution of chromospheric activity of cool giant and subgiant stars

IUE spectra for a large sample of cool subgiant stars are examined, and evidence is found that subgiants in the mass range 1.2-1.6 solar masses undergo a sudden decline in UV transition region emission near B - V = 0.6, which corresponds to spectral type G0 IV. The decline in UV emission coincides with a sharp decrease in stellar rotation rates, and it is suggested that this decay in activity and rotation marks a transformation from acoustic heating in the early F stars to magnetic dynamo-driven activity in the cooler stars, resulting in a strong rotational braking action by stellar wind. For more massive giant stars, there is a similar transformation in the nature of chromospheric activity near B - V = 0.7, or spectral type G0 III, from acoustic heating in the F-type giants to a solarlike dynamo mechanism in the cooler giants. No sign of an abrupt drop in activity near spectral type G5 III at the location of Gray's proposed rotational boundary line is seen. 102 refs.
U.S. wilderness in the 21st century: A scoping review of wilderness visitor use management research from 2000 to 2020

Abstract Now over twenty years into the 21st century, it is suggested that we are entering a new era of wilderness visitor use management (VUM). Yet, we lack a recent review of the literature assessing the latest research trends to advance wilderness VUM in a meaningful way. Accordingly, this research serves as both a review of the last twenty years of U.S. wilderness VUM research and a launching point into the next era. Our assessment adds to several previous benchmarks that demonstrate the progress of wilderness VUM research. This review evaluates trends in methodologies and themes of inquiry specific to VUM research in federally-designated wilderness over the past twenty years. The findings inform our discussion on emergent wilderness values and relevancy, approaches and settings of research, the evolving aspects of VUM in the wilderness, and the need for the synthesis of research across the National Wilderness Preservation System.
High-mobility enhancement-mode 4H-SiC lateral field-effect transistors utilizing atomic layer deposited Al2O3 gate dielectric

Lateral metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) have been fabricated on 4H-SiC utilizing deposited dielectrics and gate-last processing. The bilayer dielectric consists of thin nitrided SiO2 covered by 25 nm of Al2O3 deposited using atomic layer deposition. Field-effect mobility and threshold voltage (VT) vary with SiC nitric oxide (NO) anneal temperature. Peak mobility of 106 cm2/V⋅s was obtained with corresponding VT of 0.8 V. The peak mobility decreases to 61 cm2/V⋅s with a lower temperature NO anneal, while the VT increased to 1.4 V. Thus with proper gate engineering, high-mobility normally off MOSFET devices can be obtained, leading to higher-performance gate-controlled power devices.
Challenges to social work professionalism during the COVID-19 pandemic: a qualitative analysis of child protective workers’ perspectives

ABSTRACT The pandemic of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has affected millions of children and families worldwide, disrupting their daily lives and impacting the ability of Child Protective Services (CPS) to respond to children in need. This small-scale study involving 23 child protective workers from local governments in different regions of Estonia used in-depth, semi-structured interviews to explore child protection work with children in need during the COVID −19 pandemic. Issues resulting from the pandemic that could cause detriment to children was identified. For some children, the COVID-19 crisis has eliminated the possibility of any investigation due to social distancing, which led to information deficit, regardless of the character or level of apparent risk to the child. Children’s rights to protection and continuity of care have been threatened, as urgently needed services and other CPS protective measures have been hindered or postponed due to lockdown. Examples of some services that continued online were provided. Furthermore, COVID-19 pandemic created new expectations and roles for CPS, questioning the fundamental goals of child protection work. Nevertheless, child protective workers have demonstrated creativity in finding ways to reach children in need during the pandemic, for example by setting up a crisis hotline, a crisis home.
Land Cover Classification With Gaussian Processes Using Spatio-Spectro-Temporal Features

In this article, we propose an approach based on Gaussian processes (GPs) for large-scale land cover pixel-based classification with Sentinel-2 satellite image time series (SITS). We used a sparse approximation of the posterior combined with variational inference to learn the GP’s parameters. We applied stochastic gradient descent and GPU computing to optimize our GP models on massive datasets. The proposed GP model can be trained with hundreds of thousands of samples, compared to a few thousands for traditional GP methods. Moreover, we included the spatial information by adding the geographic coordinates into the GP’s covariance function to efficiently exploit the spatio-spectro-temporal structure of the SITS. We ran experiments with Sentinel-2 SITS of the full year 2018 over an area of 200000 km2 (about 2 billion pixels) in the south of France, which is representative of an operational setting. Adding the spatial information significantly improved the results in terms of classification accuracy. With spatial information, GP models have an overall accuracy of 79.8. They are more than three points above random forest (the method used for current operational systems) and more than one point above a multilayer perceptron. Compared to a transformer-based model (which provides state-of-the-art results in the literature, but is not applied in operational systems), GP models are only one point below.
Data Instrumentation From IoT Network Traffic as Support for Security Management

The Internet of Things revolutionizes human life by inaugurating scenarios such as smart homes. However, IoT devices contain much sensitive information about users and devices from a security and privacy perspective. Through traffic-based attacks, adversaries map changes in traffic rates to a particular in-home user’s actions. An efficient IoT data instrumentation may protect users against traffic-based attacks by giving valuable information to adaptive network security solutions. Nonetheless, no work performs data instrumentation or uses feature exploration to reveal relevant features to assist network security management. Thus, this article introduces IoTReGuard, an IoT Method to Reveal and Guard IoT Network Traffic Features. IoTReguard aims to explore network traffic features to reveal the most relevant ones and hide them to protect users’ privacy. By IoT network feature exploration and data instrumentation, IoTReGuard provides valuable information on network traffic features to mask critical features. Results showed that IoTReGuard reduced from 70% to 20% of F1-Score on identifying the IoT devices, improving user privacy.
A Componential Model of Human Interaction with Graphs. IV: Holistic and Analytical Perception of Star Graphs

Multivariate graphs, such as star graphs, are increasingly popular displays for complex data sets. One advantage claimed for these graphs is that users can engage perceive the data holistically. This experiment used star graphs to examine whether subjects' performance improved when they had an object cue as part of the stars in a task that involved selecting an outlier from a display of four stars. The outlier star differed only on one of five legs with the position of the differing leg varying systematically. Individual subject's response times (RT's) showed two patterns: sensitivity to the position of the different leg (suggesting an analytical strategy) and insensitivity to position (suggesting a holistic strategy). The object cue improved performance for the “holistic perceivers”, but not for the “analytical perceivers”. The research suggests that an object cue can help some, but not all users of a multivariate graph and that assessing users' perceptual processing strategy can be important in evaluating the effectiveness of display design features.
The Frequency Range Applicable to Pitch Identification Based upon the Auto-Correlation Function Model

Abstract Pitch identification experiments were conducted to determine the upper boundary of the frequency range within which the autocorrelation function (ACF) model described by Ando (see Reference [16]) is applicable to the phenomenon of the missing fundamental of a complex tone. Pitch-matching tests were conducted using: (1) complex tones consisting of 2 f , 3 f , and 4 f (where f denotes the fundamental frequencies of 0·5, 1·0, 1·2, 1·6, 2·0, or 3·0 kHz) and (2) complex tones consisting of 2 f and 3 f . These tests showed that, for both kinds of complex tones, the ACF model can account for the perception of pitch when the fundamental frequency is below 1200 Hz.