Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optimization of immunotherapeutic relevant ABD-derived affinity proteins for prolonged serum half-life

The market for protein-based drugs, or the so-called biopharmaceuticals, is a multi-billion-dollar industry today. In the development of protein-based drugs it is common to use monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) due to their ability to bind to its target with high specificity. However, therapeutical development of mAbs is limited by its long and expensive production in mammalian expression system. An alternative to mAbs are the so-called alternative scaffolds which are small proteins that can be produced in bacteria at lower costs. Although a drawback with the latter proteins is their short serum half-life. A small scaffold protein, ABD-Derived Affinity ProTein (ADAPT) of approximate 7 kDa was earlier engineered to obtain bispecific affinity, to Human Serum Albumin (HSA), to extend its half-life, as well as to the pro-inflammatory cytokine, Interleukin 17c (IL17c). Unfortunately, it was shown that the simultaneous binding was not efficient enough for its desired purpose. The aim with this project was therefore to investigate if the previous mentioned binder could be optimized by multimerization and/or manipulation of the HSA binding site for an efficient half-life extension. By generating ten new designs of the ADAPT variants, it was observed that the new variants had stable alpha helical structures and an improved or similar melting temperature as the original variant. The evaluation of the target binding displayed an improved affinity to the target, IL17c, for two of the dimeric versions as well as for the trimer and a comparable affinity for two of the monomers with a manipulated HSA binding site. The interaction to HSA was comparable to the original ADAPT for all binders except from the monomers with impaired HSA binding and the dimer with two impaired HSA binding sites. The evaluation of the simultaneous binding showed that it was favored by dimerization when a distance between the two molecule and their binding surfaces was added. Moreover, it could also be seen that the order of binding events had an impact on the simultaneous binding.
A viewpoint on folklore education: providing students freedom and empowerment

Oral folklore tradition is a unique phenomenon in West Borneo. This study aims to gain the lecturer's perspectives and reflection toward its implementation as a project-based activity for encouraging university students to transform local folklore into texts in English. It combines Finnegan's instructional procedure, and Gordon's synectic model and the creative state, which has been defined as creative instruction. Multiple observations and an in-depth interview with the folklore lecturer were conducted for this qualitative investigation. The lecturer is recognized as being exceptionally representative of this study employing purposive sampling under lived experience study because of his proficiency and enthusiasm. Having this creative instruction under supervision makes it clear that there is more room for the student's imagination and creativity to grow throughout this project-based activity. It gives them freedom to freely pursue their interests. Without excluding the possibilities of use in areas where there is still local folklore, this creative instruction is specifically suited for regions that are still rich in oral tradition. Further research is essential, nevertheless, as this study does not go into great detail on the perspectives and involvement among various students, the diversity of cultures and geographies, or the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI).
Target-Free Stereo Camera-GNSS/IMU Self-Calibration Based on Iterative Refinement

Camera and global navigation satellite system (GNSS)/inertial measurement unit (IMU) are widely used in autonomous vehicles and robots due to their lightweight and low cost, in these cases, an accurate extrinsic calibration is essential for sensor fusion. Traditionally, specific vehicle movements or scenarios with known fiducial markers are required for the sophisticated calibration process, however, the former is difficult to eliminate the impact of drift made by the techniques used to estimate the motion of each sensor, and the latter is poorly automated and needs specialist human expertise. To tackle the above problems, this article proposes a target-free stereo camera-GNSS/IMU self-calibration method based on iterative refinement. The initial calibration parameters are calculated with relative pose constraints derived from visual odometry. To eliminate the impact of visual odometry drift, parameters are further refined by iteratively using paired relative pose constraints and absolute pose constraints, which are derived from scan-global map matching. Quantitative calibration results on simulated data show the robustness and accuracy of this approach with root mean squared errors (RMSEs) of ${10}^{-{3}}$ deg and ${10}^{-{3}}$ m for rotation and translation, respectively. Further experiments in the real world confirm the superiority of our method in natural environments.
Student-Centred Learning in Higher Education: Exploring Indonesian English Language Lecturers’ Perception

This study explores the perception of Indonesian English language lecturers in implementing Student-Centred Learning (SCL) in Indonesian higher education. One-way teaching method still occurs and needs to be shifted to two-way interactive teaching method or active learning to develop student engagement in learning activities, and SCL is considered as one of the approaches to develop student engagement. The focus of this study is more on the perception of three English language lecturers towards SCL implementation. This is to consider that their roles are essential in delivering the materials as their responsibility is to facilitate and to drive the learning activity, especially in teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Indonesian higher education. This research adopted qualitative study by conducting in-depth semi-structured interviews as the method for a small number of English language lecturer participants, and grounded theory was used as the analytical method enabling the presentation of lecturer perception from their context. Findings revealed that the three lecturers had an adequate understanding of the concept of SCL, and they thought implementing SCL is useful and valuable to develop students’ engagement with learning activities and to improve lecturers’ teaching practice even though there are still some challenges that need to be considered. The findings also showed how the participants encountered the challenges and the personal strategies that they saw as effective to be applied. This study suggests it is worth reconsidering the possibilities of valuable English language lecturers’ perception towards SCL implementation in Indonesian higher education.
Increased fiber density of the fornix in patients with chronic tinnitus revealed by diffusion-weighted MRI

Up to 45% of the elderly population suffer from chronic tinnitus - the phantom perception of sound that is often perceived as ringing, whistling, or hissing “in the ear” without external stimulation. Previous research investigated white matter changes in tinnitus patients using diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DWI) to assess measures such as fractional anisotropy (a measure of microstructural integrity of fiber tracts) or mean diffusivity (a measure for general water diffusion). However, findings overlap only minimally and are sometimes even contradictory. We here present the first study encompassing higher diffusion data that allow to focus on changes in tissue microstructure, such as number of axons (fiber density) and macroscopic alterations, including axon diameter, and a combination of both. In order to deal with the crossing-fibers problem, we applied a fixel-based analysis using a constrained spherical deconvolution signal modeling approach. We investigated differences between tinnitus patients and control participants as well as how cognitive abilities and tinnitus distress are related to changes in white matter morphology in chronic tinnitus. For that aim, 20 tinnitus patients and 20 control participants, matched in age, sex and whether they had hearing loss or not, underwent DWI, audiometric and cognitive assessments, and filled in questionnaires targeting anxiety and depression. Our results showed increased fiber density in the fornix in tinnitus patients compared to control participants. The observed changes might, reflect compensatory structural alterations related to the processing of negative emotions or maladaptive changes related to the reinforced learning of the chronic tinnitus sensation. Due to the low sample size, the study should be seen as a pilot study that motivates further research to investigate underlying white matter morphology alterations in tinnitus.
UR Scholarship Repository UR Scholarship Repository

This paper considers the appearance of almost difference sets in non-abelian groups. While numerous construction methods for these structures are known in abelian groups, little is known about ADSs in the case where the group elements do not commute. This paper presents a construction method for combining abelian difference sets into nonabelian almost difference sets, while also showing that at least one known almost difference set construction can be generalized to the nonabelian case.
Detecção e estimativa de área queimada entre o limite do Parque Estadual de Vila Velha – PR e sua zona de amortecimento mediante sensoriamento remoto

A Ciencia Geografica possui dentre seus objetivos de estudo a compreensao e analise dos fenomenos naturais e antropicos do espaco geografico. As queimadas inadequadas acarretam consequencias negativas ao meio ambiente. Por meio de imagens de satelite e possivel monitorar focos de incendio e quantificar areas queimadas. Este trabalho tem por objetivo identificar foco de incendio do dia 28 de outubro de 2011 por meio da imagem Landsat TM 5, analisar o comportamanento espectral da queimada e estimar sua area localizada entre o Parque Estadual de Vila Velha - PR e sua zona de amortecimento. Por meio das seis bandas espectrais, analisou-se mediante os niveis digitais e composicoes coloridas o comportamento da fumaca e a area queimada na imagem. A partir do resultado dos processamentos digitais estimou-se a queimada que apresentou uma area de aproximadamente 43,605 hectares na cena analisada. Palavras-chave: Queimadas; Geoprocessamento; Processamentos Digital de Imagens.
NAISTSOCRR at the NTCIR-17 MedNLP-SC Radiology Report Subtask

This paper describes how we tackled the Medical Natural Language Processing for Radiology Report TNM staging (RR-TNM) Subtask as participants of NTCIR17. The RR-TNM Subtask is a MedNLP-SC original task to classify radiology reports under multiple criteria. We introduced three different methods based on pre-trained language models (PLMs), including a medical-specific model. No-tably, our combination approach, utilizing JMedRoBERTa (manbyo-wordpiece) for label T, Tohoku-BERT-v3 for label N, and UTH-BERT for label M, achieved an accuracy of 0.3704 on the test data. This performance was the highest among all participants, emphasizing the effectiveness of our strategy.
Paternal and maternal lineages in Cabo Verde archipelago population

the paternal and maternal lineages of cabo Verde archipelago were characterized using 22 Y-single nucleotide Polymorphisms (snPs) and Y-minimal haplotype (stRs) for paternal lineage and the two hypervariable segments (HVI and HVII) of the mtDnA control region for maternal lineage. A high variability of haplotype and haplogroup composition was found in the studied population. A total of 13 haplogroups was found with Y-snPs and 24 haplogroups with HVI and HVII mtDnA. using Y-stR minimal haplotype information, genetic distances were obtained between cabo Verde and european/African populations. While almost all mitochondrial lineages were of sub-saharan origin (95%), the Y-chromosome lineages reveal a high diverse composition, with more than 57% of Y lineages of european ancestry.
Accepted Manuscript a Continuous Dependence Result for Ultra-parabolic Equations in Option Pricing a Continuous Dependence Result for Ultra-parabolic Equations in Option Pricing

A continuous dependence result for ultra-parabolic equations in option pricing, This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. Abstract We prove continuous dependence results for solution to the Cauchy problem related to degenerate parabolic equations arising in the valuation of financial derivatives. These results are crucial in some standard calibration procedure for recent stochastic volatility and interest rates models.
Enhanced Privacy in Optical Image Restoration: A Federated Deep Memory-Integrated Neural Network Approach

In the realm of remote sensing images, restoration and privacy preservation stand as dual challenges. While the intricate characteristics of these images render conventional restoration methods inadequate, concerns regarding data privacy pose a signiﬁcant barrier to their optimal utilization. Addressing this multifaceted challenge, this study synergizes the Deep Memory Connected Network (DMCN) with federated learning, enabling data-driven model improvements without direct access to the raw image data. This federated approach, while bolstering data privacy, introduces inherent noise into the learning process. To counteract this, techniques such as Gaussian image denoising were employed, ensuring restoration quality. Notably, the federated DMCN exhibited commendable performance, showcasing only a marginal accuracy degradation in the face of noise. Downsampling Units, integral to DMCN, further contributed by reducing computational overheads. Comprehensive evaluations on remote sensing datasets underscore the promise of this federated approach, balancing data privacy with restoration ﬁdelity, and charting a viable path for future applications.
Measurements of Higgs boson production and couplings in the four-lepton channel in pp collisions at center-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

The final ATLAS Run 1 measurements of Higgs boson production and couplings in the decay channel $H\to ZZ^{*}\to\ell^+\ell^-\ell^{'+}\ell^{'-}$, where $\ell,\ell^{'}=e$ or $\mu$, are presented. These measurements were performed using $pp$ collision data corresponding to integrated luminosities of 4.5 fb$^{-1}$ and 20.3 fb$^{-1}$ at center-of-mass energies of 7 TeV and 8 TeV, respectively, recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The $H\to ZZ^{*}\to 4\ell$ signal is observed with a significance of 8.1 standard deviations, with an expectation of 6.2 standard deviations, at $m_{H}$ = 125.36 GeV, the combined ATLAS measurement of the Higgs boson mass from the $H\to \gamma\gamma$ and $H\to ZZ^{*}\to 4\ell$ channels. The production rate relative to the Standard Model expectation, the signal strength, is measured in four different production categories in the $H\to ZZ^{*}\to 4\ell$ channel. The measured signal strength, at this mass, and with all categories combined, is 1.44 $^{+0.40}_{-0.33}$. The signal strength for Higgs boson production in gluon fusion or in association with $t\bar{t}$ or $b\bar{b}$ pairs is found to be 1.7 $^{+0.5}_{-0.4}$, while the signal strength for vector-boson fusion combined with $WH/ZH$ associated production is found to be 0.3 $^{+1.6}_{-0.9}$.
The Voice in the Machine: Building Computers That Understand Speech

Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey famously featured HAL, a computer with the ability to hold lengthy conversations with his fellow space travelers. More than forty years later, we have advanced computer technology that Kubrick never imagined, but we do not have computers that talk and understand speech as HAL did. Is it a failure of our technology that we have not gotten much further than an automated voice that tells us to "say or press 1"? Or is there something fundamental in human language and speech that we do not yet understand deeply enough to be able to replicate in a computer? In The Voice in the Machine, Roberto Pieraccini examines six decades of work in science and technology to develop computers that can interact with humans using speech and the industry that has arisen around the quest for these technologies. He shows that although the computers today that understand speech may not have HAL's capacity for conversation, they have capabilities that make them usable in many applications today and are on a fast track of improvement and innovation. Pieraccini describes the evolution of speech recognition and speech understanding processes from waveform methods to artificial intelligence approaches to statistical learning and modeling of human speech based on a rigorous mathematical model--specifically, Hidden Markov Models (HMM). He details the development of dialog systems, the ability to produce speech, and the process of bringing talking machines to the market. Finally, he asks a question that only the future can answer: will we end up with HAL-like computers or something completely unexpected?
Neuroimaging Techniques Meta-Analysis on the Influence of Alzheimer Disease: A Systematic Review and Prevalence of Brain Microbleeds in

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The literature on the prevalence of Alzheimer disease–associated cerebral microbleeds assessed with MR imaging shows considerable heterogeneity in terms of imaging techniques and parameters. Our aim was to perform a meta-analysis of the role of imaging techniques, including image acquisition, ﬁeld strength and scanner type, and clinical and demographic factors on the reported prevalence of microbleeds in Alzheimer disease. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The prevalence of microbleeds was examined with respect to a priori–selected moderating variables via meta-analytic tools of literature reports. RESULTS: Fourteen unique studies providing 15 microbleed prevalence rates met the selection criteria for inclusion. The aggregate prevalence of microbleeds was 24% (95% CI, 19%–28%). Scan (SWI (cid:2) 40%, gradient echo (cid:2) 18%, EPI (cid:2) 19%) and ﬁeld strength (slope (cid:2) 0.39; standard error (cid:2) 15, P (cid:3) . 01) inﬂuenced the prevalence of microbleeds. The associations between microbleeds and age, sex, and global cognitive status were not signiﬁcant. After updating the literature, the aggregate prevalence remained in the 95% CI range. CONCLUSIONS: Imaging technique and ﬁeld strength are strongly associated with the prevalence of microbleeds over the global aggregate. Standardized imaging protocols for identiﬁcation of microbleeds are recommended to minimize confounds. ABBREVIATIONS
Transfer Learning for Functional Mean Estimation: Phase Transition and Adaptive Algorithms

This paper studies transfer learning for estimating the mean of random functions based on discretely sampled data, where, in addition to observations from the target distribution, auxiliary samples from similar but distinct source distributions are available. The paper considers both common and independent designs and establishes the minimax rates of convergence for both designs. The results reveal an interesting phase transition phenomenon under the two designs and demonstrate the benefits of utilizing the source samples in the low sampling frequency regime. For practical applications, this paper proposes novel data-driven adaptive algorithms that attain the optimal rates of convergence within a logarithmic factor simultaneously over a large collection of parameter spaces. The theoretical findings are complemented by a simulation study that further supports the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms
ScholarWorks@UARK ScholarWorks@UARK

The purpose of this thesis is to explore an experiment developed for validating the usage of a gaseous solution of water and propylene glycol for cold gas propulsion. The experiment involves a “Time of Flight” method of calculating the speed of sound in the gas and the corresponding specific heat ratio using a copper tube, two MEMS microphones, a piezoelectric speaker, and data-acquisition hardware. The experiment was calibrated using the known thermodynamic properties of air. The accuracy of the experiment was found to be within 0.6% for calculations of the speed of sound in air and within 1.0% of the specific heat ratio of air. This experiment can be used to determine the specific heat ratio of any gas placed inside the tube, which will allow for the usability of the gas as a cold gas propellant to be verified.
Adaptability of Blueberry Species to Various Soil Types: I. Growth and Initial Fruiting

Bulk A horizon samples of 4 soils, with or without the addition of peatmoss, and 5 blueberry crosses were used in a study of the adaptability of blueberries to upland soil conditions under 3 fertilization regimes and trickle irrigation in outdoor pots. Blueberry progenies ranged from essentially pure highbush (Vaccinium corymbosum L.) to interspecific hybrids containing varying amounts of evergreen (V. darrowi Camp), lowbush (V. augustifolium Aiton), black highbush (V. atrococcum Heller), and rabbiteye (V. ashei Reade) blueberry germplasm. Blueberry growth, as measured by plant volume, initially was greatest on Manor clay loam, a Piedmont soil high in clay (30%), but by the 2nd growing season, growth was superior on Berryland soil. Various fertilizer sources affected small differences in growth. Generally those progenies that contained less highbush (V. corymbosum) parentage produced more vigorous growth. Depth of rooting and estimated root distribution were affected significantly by soil, but the addition of peatmoss had no consistent effect. Berryland sand and Manor loam soils, which represent extremes in clay content, both produced the deepest root systems. Fruiting and fruit characteristic data from the 2nd growing season indicated a significant effect of peatmoss on the Pope and Galestown soils, which resulted in lowered total fruit acidity. The Berryland soil produced fruit with the lowest total acidity. Blueberry plant growth over the first 2 seasons indicates that soil type can have pronounced effects on plant growth and rooting. These growth differences were due to soil characteristics other than particle size distribution, with fertilizer source having minimal effects on growth.
Optimizing Resistance Training Technique to Maximize Muscle Hypertrophy: A Narrative Review

Regimented resistance training (RT) has been shown to promote increases in muscle size. When engaging in RT, practitioners often emphasize the importance of appropriate exercise technique, especially when trying to maximize training adaptations (e.g., hypertrophy). This narrative review aims to synthesize existing evidence on what constitutes proper RT exercise technique for maximizing muscle hypertrophy, focusing on variables such as exercise-specific kinematics, contraction type, repetition tempo, and range of motion (ROM). We recommend that when trying to maximize hypertrophy, one should employ a ROM that emphasizes training at long muscle lengths while also employing a repetition tempo between 2 and 8 s. More research is needed to determine whether manipulating the duration of either the eccentric or concentric phase further enhances hypertrophy. Guidelines for body positioning and movement patterns are generally based on implied theory from applied anatomy and biomechanics. However, existing research on the impact of manipulating these aspects of exercise technique and their effect on hypertrophy is limited; it is therefore suggested that universal exercise-specific kinematic guidelines are followed and adopted in accordance with the above recommendations. Future research should investigate the impact of stricter versus more lenient exercise technique variations on hypertrophy.