Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
US National Institutes of Health Prioritization of SARS-CoV-2 Variants

Since late 2020, SARS-CoV-2 variants have regularly emerged with competitive and phenotypic differences from previously circulating strains, sometimes with the potential to escape from immunity produced by prior exposure and infection. The Early Detection group is one of the constituent groups of the US National Institutes of Health National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases SARS-CoV-2 Assessment of Viral Evolution program. The group uses bioinformatic methods to monitor the emergence, spread, and potential phenotypic properties of emerging and circulating strains to identify the most relevant variants for experimental groups within the program to phenotypically characterize. Since April 2021, the group has prioritized variants monthly. Prioritization successes include rapidly identifying most major variants of SARS-CoV-2 and providing experimental groups within the National Institutes of Health program easy access to regularly updated information on the recent evolution and epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 that can be used to guide phenotypic investigations.
Mathematical aspects of thermoacoustics

This thesis addresses the mathematical aspects of thermoacoustics, a subfield within physical acoustics that comprises all effects in which heat conduction and entropy variations of the gaseous medium play a role. We focus specifically on the theoretical basis of two kinds of devices: the thermoacoustic prime mover, that uses heat to produce sound, and the thermoacoustic heat pump or refrigerator, that use sound to produce heating or cooling. Two kinds of geometry are considered. The first one is the so-called standing-wave geometry that consists of a closed straight tube (the resonator) with a porous medium (the stack) placed inside. The second one is the so-called traveling-wave geometry that consists of a resonator attached to a looped tube with a porous medium (regenerator) placed inside. The stack and the regenerator differ in the sense that the regenerator uses thinner pores to ensure perfect thermal contact. The stack or regenerator can in principle have any arbitrary shape, but are modeled as a collecting of long narrow arbitrarily shaped pores. If the purpose of the device is to generate cooling or heating, then usually a speaker is attached to the regenerator to generate the necessary sound. By means of a systematic approach based on small-parameter asymptotics and dimensional analysis, we have derived a general theory for the thermal and acoustic behavior in a pore. First a linear theory is derived, predicting the thermoacoustic behavior between two closely placed parallel plates. Then the theory is extended by considering arbitrarily shaped pores with the only restriction that the pore cross-sections vary slowly in longitudinal direction. Finally, the theory is completed by the inclusion of nonlinear second-order effects such as streaming, higher harmonics, and shock-waves. It is shown how the presence of any of these nonlinear phenomena (negatively) affects the performance of the device. The final step in the analysis is the linking of the sound field in the stack or regenerator to that of the main tube. For the standing-wave device this is rather straightforward, but for the traveling-wave device all sorts of complications arise due to the complicated geometry. A numerical optimization routine has been developed that chooses the right geometry to ensure that all variables match continuously across every interface and the right flow behavior is attained at the position of the regenerator. Doing so, we can predict the flow behavior throughout the device and validate it against experimental data. The numerical routine can be a valuable aid in the design of traveling-wave devices; by variation of the relevant problem parameters one can look for the optimal travelingwave geometry in terms of power output or efficiency.
Single‐cell RNA sequencing reveals new subtypes of lens superficial tissue in humans

Although the cell atlas of the human ocular anterior segment of the human eye was revealed by single‐nucleus RNA sequencing, whether subtypes of lens stem/progenitor cells exist among epithelial cells and the molecular characteristics of cell differentiation of the human lens remain unclear. Single‐cell RNA sequencing is a powerful tool to analyse the heterogeneity of tissues at the single cell level, leading to a better understanding of the processes of cell differentiation. By profiling 18,596 cells in human lens superficial tissue through single‐cell sequencing, we identified two subtypes of lens epithelial cells that specifically expressed C8orf4 and ADAMTSL4 with distinct spatial localization, a new type of fibre cells located directly adjacent to the epithelium, and a subpopulation of ADAMTSL4+ cells that might be lens epithelial stem/progenitor cells. We also found two trajectories of lens epithelial cell differentiation and changes of some important genes during differentiation.
A Smoothing Cohort Model in Age–Period–Cohort Analysis With Applications to Homicide Arrest Rates and Lung Cancer Mortality Rates

This article considers the effects of age, period, and cohort in social studies and chronic disease epidemiology through age–period–cohort (APC) analysis. These factors are linearly dependent; thus, the multiple classification model, a regression model that takes these factors as covariates in APC analysis, suffers from an identifiability problem with multiple estimators. A data set of homicide arrest rates is used to illustrate the problem. A smoothing cohort model is proposed that allows flexible structure of the effects for age, period, and cohort and avoids the identifiability problem. Results are provided for the consistency of estimation of model intercept and age effects as the number of periods goes to infinity under a mild bounded cohort condition. This also leads to consistent estimation for period and cohort effects. Analyses of homicide arrest rate and lung cancer mortality rate data demonstrate that the smoothing cohort model yields unique parameter estimation with sensible trend interpretation.
Investigation of Nd:YAG laser produced tin droplet plasma expansion

The present work reports an investigation of plasma expansion produced by Nd:YAG laser irradiating tin droplets. An intensified charged coupled device camera was used to record the plasma plume images, and the temporal evolution of the plasma plume was studied at various laser intensities. Our results demonstrate that the shape of the plasma plume develops from an approximate circle to an ellipse. The temporal evolutions of plasma boundary and plasma centroid were calculated by the secondary moment of plasma image intensity. The angle distributions of the plasma expanding velocity were obtained; the results show that the plasma expanding velocity decreases with increase of the angle to the incoming laser axis. In addition, the eccentricity of the plasma ellipse decreases with time. Meanwhile, we found that the centroid of plasma clusters moves toward the laser incoming direction during the expansion stage and the velocity of this motion is independent of laser intensity.
The current status of gene therapy in bladder cancer

ABSTRACT Introduction Gene therapy aims to alter the biological properties of cells through the therapeutic delivery of nucleotides to treat a disease. Although originally developed to treat genetic disorders, the majority of gene therapy development today is for the treatment of cancer, including bladder cancer. Areas covered Following a brief history and a discussion of the mechanisms of gene therapy, we will focus on the current and future gene therapy strategies for bladder cancer. We will review the most consequential clinical trials published in the field. Expert opinion Recent transformative breakthroughs in bladder cancer research have deeply characterized the major epigenetic and genetic alterations of bladder cancer and have radically transformed our view of tumor biology and generated new hypotheses for therapy. These advances provided the opportunity to begin to optimize strategies for effective gene therapy for bladder cancer. Clinical trials have shown promising results, especially in BCG-unresponsive non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC), where effective second-line therapy remains an unmet need for patients facing cystectomy. Efforts are underway to develop effective combination strategies targeting resistance mechanisms to gene therapy for NMIBC.
Comparing early life nutritional sources and human milk feeding practices: personalized and dynamic nutrition supports infant gut microbiome development and immune system maturation

ABSTRACT Exclusive breastfeeding is recommended for the first six months of life, but many infants receive pumped milk, formula, donor human milk, or other nutritional sources during this critical period. Substantive evidence shows early nutrition influences development of the microbiome and immune system, affecting lifelong health. However, the underlying mechanisms are unclear and the nuances of human milk feeding are rarely considered. This review synthesizes evidence from human studies and model systems to discuss the impact of different nutritional sources on co-development of the gut microbiome, antigen tolerance, and immunity. We highlight two key mechanisms: epigenetics and the so-called “weaning reaction”. Collectively, this evidence highlights i) the fundamental role of parents’ own milk, fed directly at the breast, as a dynamic and personalized nutrition source that drives developmental programming, and ii) the deficiencies of alternative nutritional sources and priority research areas for improving these alternatives when direct breastfeeding is not possible. Plain Language Summary Before they begin eating solid foods, infants may be fed a variety of nutritional sources such as breast milk (“parent’s own milk”, fed directly at the breast or pumped and fed from a bottle), commercial infant formula, or sterilized “donor human milk” from a certified milk bank. Early nutrition affects the infant’s gut microbiome (bacteria living in the intestinal tract), development of their immune system, and their health throughout life. However, it is unclear how different forms of early nutrition affect these important processes. Parent’s own milk contains compounds that support gut microbes and stimulate development of the infant immune system, changing over time to meet infant needs. For many of these compounds, donor human milk contains a lesser amount, and formula contains even less – or none at all. Some compounds are also affected by pumping and storing parents’ own milk. This review highlights how differences among these nutritional sources influence gene expression and gut development to shape the infant microbiome and immune system. Current evidence shows that parent’s own milk, fed at the breast, offers unique benefits that are not replicated by other forms of early nutrition. This review also outlines how early life nutrition research can help us understand human development and develop new ways to provide the best possible start to life for all infants.
Projection pursuit cluster model and its application

Projection pursuit cluster model has been widelly used in assessing water quality, selecting analogy basins, evaluating flood disasters, and other similar problems. Projection pursuit can find the main characteristics in low dimension space, and then a right result can be got according to the main characteristic.But the density window parameter R in the model is determined by trial and error method or experience lacking theoretical basis. Aiming at this point, based on describing in detailed model structure, initiating from models mathematical construction an empirical formula for calculating R is derived.The application results show that this method is reasonable, feasible in practice. It is a new way for solving multi? factor decision problems.
Emojis vs. facial expressions: An electrical neuroimaging study on perceptual recognition

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to investigate the neural underpinnings and the time course of emoji recognition through the recording of event-related potentials in 51 participants engaged in a categorization task involving an emotional word paradigm. Forty-eight happy, sad, surprised, disgusted, fearful, angry emojis, and as many facial expressions, were used as stimuli. Behavioral data showed that emojis were recognized faster and more accurately (92.7%) than facial expressions displaying the same emotions (87.35%). Participants were better at recognizing happy, disgusted, and sad emojis, and happy and angry faces. Fear was difficult to recognize in both faces and emojis. The N400 response was larger to incongruently primed emojis and faces, while the opposite was observed for the P300 component. However, both N400 and P300 were considerably later in response to faces than emojis. The emoji-related N170 component (150–190 ms) discriminated stimulus affective content, similar to face-related N170, but its neural generators did not include the face fusiform area but the occipital face area (OFA) for processing face details, and object-related areas. Both faces and emojis activated the limbic system and the orbitofrontal cortex supporting anthropomorphization. The schematic nature of emojis might determine an easier classification of their emotional content.
Rice tapetum differentiation is sensitive to downregulation of OsUCH3, a ubiquitin C‐terminal hydrolase

The tapetum is a special tissue within the stamen that supplies nutrients to support microspore differentiation. Many genes have been identified to function in tapetum differentiation (Astrand et al., 2021). Ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolase (UCH) is a type of cysteine protease involved in protein deubiquitination process (Mevissen and Komander, 2017) and plays roles in gonadal transformation and spermatogenesis in animals (Luo et al., 2009; Kwon et al,. 2004; Wang et al., 2006). OsUCH3 (Os02g43760) was highly expressed in early rice stamen cells (Chen et al., 2015), the OsUCH3 expression was first observed in all cells of anther primordium and then gradually concentrated into the germ cells and tapetum cells, and OsUCH3 protein exhibits stronger ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolase enzymatic activity (Wang et al., 2018). These data suggested that OsUCH3 is likely associated with stamen development. To explore whether OsUCH3 plays roles in rice stamen development, we constructed transgenic lines to down-regulate OsUCH3 expression through RNAi vector as described previously with primers (ccACTAGTATGGAGGATGCTCATTCC and TcGGAT CCCACAACTTTCGAAAGAGC) (Liu et al., 2005) (Figure 1a–g) and the OsUCH3-targeting CRISPR-Cas9 mutant lines (Figure 1h). CRISPR-Cas9 osuch3 mutant lines exhibited the same male-sterile phenotype as OsUCH3R. In observation of the overall morphology, there was no significant difference at vegetable development (Figure 1a). However, low seed setting rate was observed in the RNAi lines (Figure 1b) and CRISPR-Cas9 osuch3 mutant (Figure 1h). Alexander staining showed that OsUCH3R lines had abnormal pollen (Figure 1d) with the latter being indicated by the significant reduction in pollen grain number (Figure 1e, g). The RT-qPCR results revealed that OsUCH3 expression levels were significantly reduced in OsUCH3R transgenic rice (Figure 1f). To examine whether OsUCH3 affected stamen development, we pollinated OsUCH3R pistils with wild-type pollen grains, which rescued the sterility of OsUCH3R. The result suggested that the low seed setting rate resulted mainly from down-expression of OsUCH3 (Figure 1i). Morphological analysis revealed abnormal tapetum differentiation and locule collapse were observed in the OsUCH3R lines from stage 5 (S5) through 12 (S12) (Figure 1j). This observation suggested that the downregulation of OsUCH3 caused a defect in the tapetum differentiation and stamen development. In contrast to the degeneration of the tapetum that was observed in the WT from stages 7 (S7) to 9 (S9) (Figure 1k–m), the tapetum in the OsUCH3R lines was not properly degenerated during these stages (Figure 1n–p) as revealed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analysis. In addition, TEM observations revealed that the secondary cell walls of the endothecium cells were thinner in the OsUCH3R lines than in the wild type (Figure 1p, red arrowhead). We found green fluorescence in wild-type tapetal cells from stages 7 to 9 (Figure 1q-t) using the
Feature Selection via Immune Memory Clone

Focusing on the problem of dimension reduction in data mining and pattern recognition,a novel algorithm for feature selection was proposed based on antibody clonal selection and immune memory principle(ICMFS). The antibody population is used for global search,and the memory unit,which only reserves the best individuals,with embedded local search operations is designed for fine-tune search.Different fitness functions for the antibody population and the memory unit are used to improve search performance.The fitness of an individual is determined by evaluating the nearest neighbor classifier with leave-one-out cross-validation.Experiment results on several standard high-dimension datasets show that the proposed algorithm outperforms a conventional genetic algorithm and the classical sequential floating forward search algorithm in terms of classification accuracy and robustness.
The relative importance of key meteorological factors affecting numbers of mosquito vectors of dengue fever

Although single factors such as rainfall are known to affect the population dynamics of Aedes albopictus, the main vector of dengue fever in Eurasia, the synergistic effects of different meteorological factors are not fully understood. To address this topic, we used meteorological data and mosquito-vector association data including Breteau and ovitrap indices in key areas of dengue outbreaks in Guangdong Province, China, to formulate a five-stage mathematical model for Aedes albopictus population dynamics by integrating multiple meteorological factors. Unknown parameters were estimated using a genetic algorithm, and the results were analyzed by k-Shape clustering, random forest and grey correlation analysis. In addition, the population density of mosquitoes in 2022 was predicted and used for evaluating the effectiveness of the model. We found that there is spatiotemporal heterogeneity in the effects of temperature and rainfall and their distribution characteristics on the diapause period, the numbers of peaks in mosquito densities in summer and the annual total numbers of adult mosquitoes. Moreover, we identified the key meteorological indicators of the mosquito quantity at each stage and that rainfall (seasonal rainfall and annual total rainfall) was more important than the temperature distribution (seasonal average temperature and temperature index) and the uniformity of rainfall annual distribution (coefficient of variation) for most of the areas studied. The peak rainfall during the summer is the best indicator of mosquito population development. The results provide important theoretical support for the future design of mosquito vector control strategies and early warnings of mosquito-borne diseases.
Aberrant driving behaviors as mediators in the relationship between driving anger patterns and crashes among taxi drivers: An investigation in a complex cultural context

Abstract Objective Taxis have become an integrated component of Qatar’s urban transportation network due to their convenience, comfort, and flexibility. Qatar has seen an uptick in the demand for professional taxi drivers. Most Qatari taxi drivers come from developing countries with poor awareness of road safety; therefore, they regularly engage in aberrant driving behavior, leading to traffic violations and crashes. For taxi rides to be safer, it is essential to determine the association between driving aberration and road traffic crashes (RTCs), with an emphasis on the underlying factors that trigger these behaviors. Methods To this end, we collected the data from taxi drivers relying on standard questionnaires, namely the Driving Anger Scale (DAS) and the Driver Behavior Questionnaire (DBQ), together with the real crash data of the same taxi drivers obtained from the police department. We relied on factor analysis to identify the main factors of these tools and then structural equation modeling to predict their causal relationship with RTCs. Results The results indicated that the component of DAS, namely “illegal driving”, triggered all dimensions of aberrant driving behaviors, whereas hostile gestures had a positive correlation with lapses. In addition, the factor “error” was identified as a significant direct predictor, while the factor “illegal driving” was identified as a significant indirect predictor for RTCs. Regarding demographic characteristics, professional driving experience was found to be negatively associated with RTCs. Conclusion Driving aberration mediated the impact of driving anger on RTCs. The findings from this study could help road safety practitioners and researchers better understand these relations. In addition, these results could also be very helpful for driving instructors to train taxi drivers in a way to cope with provoking situations.
Mental Health Pandemic During the COVID-19 Outbreak: Social Media As a Window to Public Mental Health

Intensified preventive measures during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as lockdown and social distancing, heavily increased the perception of social isolation (i.e., a discrepancy between one's social needs and the provisions of the social environment) among young adults. Social isolation is closely associated with situational loneliness (i.e., loneliness emerging from environmental change), a risk factor for depressive symptoms. Prior research suggested vulnerable young adults are likely to seek support from an online social platform such as Reddit, a perceived comfortable environment for lonely individuals to seek mental health help through anonymous communication with a broad social network. Therefore, this study aims to identify and analyze depression-related dialogues on loneliness subreddits during the COVID-19 outbreak, with the implications on depression-related infoveillance during the pandemic. Our study utilized logistic regression and topic modeling to classify and examine depression-related discussions on loneliness subreddits before and during the pandemic. Our results showed significant increases in the volume of depression-related discussions (i.e., topics related to mental health, social interaction, family, and emotion) where challenges were reported during the pandemic. We also found a switch in dominant topics emerging from depression-related discussions on loneliness subreddits, from dating (prepandemic) to online interaction and community (pandemic), suggesting the increased expressions or need of online social support during the pandemic. The current findings suggest the potential of social media to serve as a window for monitoring public mental health. Our future study will clinically validate the current approach, which has implications for designing a surveillance system during the crisis.
Exploring the Role of Availability and Willingness to Pay Premium in Influencing Smart City Customers’ Purchase Intentions for Green Food Products

ABSTRACT This research aims to identify the predictors that influence young, educated customers’ intention to purchase green food products in India by utilizing the extended theory of planned behavior which includes elements such as environmental concern, perceived customer effectiveness, willingness to pay a premium, and product availability. A total of 337 customers from a smart city in India participated in this quantitative study and filled out a self-administered questionnaire. PLS-SEM and CFA were used to analyze the obtained data. The findings illustrates that attitude and perceived behavioral control influences purchase intentions, but subjective norms has no effect in the Indian context.