Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Changes in neighborhood walking are related to changes in perceptions of environmental attributes

Background: Several studies have found significant crosssectional associations of perceived environmental attributes with physical activity behaviors. Prospective relations with environmental factors have been examined for vigorous activity, but not for the moderate-intensity activities that environmental and policy initiatives are being designed to influence.Purpose: To examine prospective associations of changes in perceptions of local environmental attributes with changes in neighborhood walking.Methods: Baseline and 10-week follow-up telephone interviews with 512 adults (49% men). Results: Men who reported positive changes in aesthetics and convenience were twice as likely to increase their walking. Women who reported positive changes in convenience were more than twice as likely to have increased their walking. There were contrasting findings for men and women who reported traffic as less of a problem: Men were 61% less likely to have increased walking; however, women were 76% more likely to have done so.Conclusions: Further studies are needed to determine the possibly causal nature of such environment-behavior relations and to elucidate relevant gender differences. Such evidence will provide underpinnings for public health initiatives to increase participation in physical activity.
Use of a surrogate to evaluate the impact of tillage on the transport of steroid hormones from manure-amended agricultural fields

Beef feedlot manure distributed to row crop production areas is a potential surface water contaminant source of the steroid hormones commonly used in beef cattle production. This article reports on research conducted at the University of Nebraska Haskell Agricultural Laboratory near Concord, Nebraska, in July 2009. Manure, collected from beef feedlot pens, was stockpiled for ten months prior to application to a row crop field. Previous research identified that the detection frequency of steroid hormones in beef manure varies greatly. Thus, a surrogate (17 alpha-ethynylestradiol, EE2) was applied at a rate of 75 g per ha to ensure detectable concentrations in surface runoff samples. EE2 was applied directly to beef cattle manure and to bare soil. The EE2 and manure were either incorporated using a single disk treatment (T) or left on the soil surface in a no-till practice (NT). A rainfall simulation experiment was conducted 24 h after manure and EE2 incorporation using a factorial design consisting of tillage, manure, and EE2 treatments. Runoff samples were collected at 5 min intervals during a 30 min runoff period for each plot. Results indicated 96 percent less EE2 mass transport from disk tilled plots compared to no-till. The greatest loss of EE2 was 156 and 6 mg per ha from no-till and disked plots, respectively. Results of this study showed that a single-pass disk tillage treatment can limit the overland transport of steroid hormones from crop production areas.
Performance of Meloxicam Niosomal Gel Formulations for Transdermal Drug Delivery

Niosomes have been reported as a possible approach to improve low skin permeation shown by conventional vehicles. In this study, a noisome-based delivery system of meloxicam (MX) was developed and characterized for in vitro performance. Niosomes were prepared by reverse-phase evaporation method (REV) using different non ionic surfactants and cholesterol in different molar ratios (1:1, 2:1, 3:1,1: 2 and 1:3) and different drug loading (5, 10 and 15 mg). The used surfactants included Tweens (20, 40 and 80), Brij (35 and 58) and Myrj 52. The prepared systems were characterized for entrapment efficiency, and in-vitro release. Accordingly, selected systems were evaluated for vesicle size, and formulated into different hydrogel bases (sodium carboxymethyl cellulose, hydroxypropyl cellulose, and sodium alginate). Invitro drug release from the different formulations was studied over a period of 8 hr. Effect of formulation additives on drug release was also investigated. The antiinflammatory activity of the selected formulations was evaluated by the paw edema test. Results showed high encapsulation efficiency which ranged from about 81.93% to 99.23%. The highest entrapment efficiency was obtained with 1:1 surfactant: cholesterol ratio and 15 mg drug loading, so niosomes prepared by this ratio were selected for further studies. Particle size ranged from 4.047 to 12.334 μm for different niosomal systems. In vitro drug release from different gel formulations containing 0.3% MX was compared to that from the same formulations containing 0.3% niosomally entrapped drug. In all formulations the drug release was more sustained in case of niosomally entrapped drug. Incorporation of glycerol and propylene glycol as formulation additives into gel formulations markedly enhanced the drug release, but the release from gels containing niosomally entrapped drug was still delayed
ABCA3 missense mutations causing surfactant dysfunction disorders have distinct cellular phenotypes

Mutations in the ATP‐binding cassette subfamily A member 3 (ABCA3) gene are the most common monogenetic cause of surfactant dysfunction disorders in newborns and interstitial lung diseases in children and young adults. Although the effect of mutations resulting in truncated or incomplete proteins can be predicted, the consequences of missense variants cannot be as easily. Our aim was to investigate the intracellular handling and disturbance of the cellular surfactant system in a stable cell model with several different clinically relevant ABCA3 missense mutations. We found that the investigated missense mutations within the ABCA3 gene affect surfactant homeostasis in different ways: first by disrupting intracellular ABCA3 protein localization (c.643C > A, p.Q215K; c.2279T > G, p.M760R), second by impairing the lipid transport of ABCA3 protein (c.875A > T, p.E292V; c.4164G > C, p.K1388N), and third by yet undetermined mechanisms predisposing for the development of interstitial lung diseases despite correct localization and normal lipid transport of the variant ABCA3 protein (c.622C > T, p.R208W; c.863G > A, p.R288K; c.2891G > A, p.G964D). In conclusion, we classified cellular consequences of missense ABCA3 sequence variations leading to pulmonary disease of variable severity. The corresponding molecular pathomechanisms of such ABCA3 variants may specifically be addressed by targeted treatments.
Study of the Serum Metabolomic Profile in Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease: Research and Clinical Perspectives

In recent years, metabolomics has attracted great scientific attention. The metabolomics methodology might permit a view into transitional phases between healthy liver and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis. Metabolomics can help to analyze the metabolic alterations that play a main role in the progression of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis. Lipid, glucose, amino acid, and bile acid metabolism should be widely studied to understand the complex pathogenesis of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis. The discovery of new biomarkers would be important for diagnosis and staging of liver disease as well as for the assessment of efficacy of new drugs. Here, we review the metabolomics data regarding nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis. We analyzed the main studies regarding the application of metabolomics methodology in the complex context of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, trying to create a bridge from the basic to the clinical aspects.
Influence of the Modeling Depth and Voltage Level on the AC Losses in Parallel Conductors of a Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machine

Analysis of ac effects, such as skin and proximity effect as well as the circulating currents and corresponding losses are usually done by finite-element analysis, while mostly only a single slot is considered, neglecting the influence of neighboring phases on the flux density of the stator iron and thus the resulting slot leakage flux. As the simulation of single stranded finite element (FE) models is computationally very demanding and time consuming, this paper compares different levels of detail of two-dimensional FE models and investigates the impact of the modeling depth on the resulting copper loss to find a computation time optimized modeling setup. It is shown that the use of single slot models is sufficient in case of distributed windings. Moreover, the potential increase of ac losses is assessed for two machines that are identical except for the stator winding, so that one and the same machine is investigated at two different voltage levels, namely 400 and 800 V. The reference machine is a 160 kW nominal power and 9000 r/min maximum speed permanent magnet synchronous machine. Since the magnetic circuit has to remain constant, both designs share the same overall winding scheme and total number of strands within a slot but differ in the number of parallel and serial connected strands. Due to the increased bundle cross section of the lower voltage winding, it is more susceptible to ac effects and thus tends to increased winding losses.
Measuring sensor to cloud energy consumption

IoT devices must provide seamless connectivity while obeying stringent power and size constraints. Power consumption plays important factor to determine the status and connectivity of Sensor Node. This paper describes a series of simple experiments which measure the energy consumption of two IoT Sensor Nodes transmitting data to the cloud. The experiments will be used to compare the best solution between wire and wireless for IoT Sensor Nodes implementation. The experimental result shows that wireless connection consume more power compared to wire connection. Apart from comparison of two methods, the goal of this paper is also to develop a solid experimental basis, thus setting a better foundation for future research on IoT Sensor Nodes.
On Security Research Towards Future Mobile Network Generations

Over the last decades, numerous security and privacy issues in all three active mobile network generations have been revealed that threaten users as well as network providers. In view of the newest generation (5G) currently under development, we now have the unique opportunity to identify research directions for the next generation based on existing security and privacy issues as well as already proposed defenses. This paper aims to unify security knowledge on mobile phone networks into a comprehensive overview and to derive pressing open research questions. To achieve this systematically, we develop a methodology that categorizes known attacks by their aim, proposed defenses, underlying causes, and root causes. Further, we assess the impact and the efficacy of each attack and defense. We then apply this methodology to existing literature on attacks and defenses in all three network generations. By doing so, we identify ten causes and four root causes for attacks. Mapping the attacks to proposed defenses and suggestions for the 5G specification enables us to uncover open research questions and challenges for the development of next-generation mobile networks. The problems of unsecured pre-authentication traffic and jamming attacks exist across all three mobile generations. They should be addressed in the future, in particular to wipe out the class of downgrade attacks and, thereby, strengthen the users’ privacy. Further advances are needed in the areas of inter-operator protocols as well as secure baseband implementations. Additionally, mitigations against denial-of-service attacks by smart protocol design represent an open research question.
CO 2 increases 14 C primary production in an Arctic plankton community

Responses to ocean acidification in plankton com- munities were studied during a CO2-enrichment experiment in the Arctic Ocean, accomplished from June to July 2010 in Kongsfjorden, Svalbard (78 56 0 2 00 N, 11 53 0 6 00 E). Enclosed in 9 mesocosms (volume: 43.9-47.6 m 3 ), plankton was ex- posed to CO2 concentrations, ranging from glacial to pro- jected mid-next-century levels. Fertilization with inorganic nutrients at day 13 of the experiment supported the accumu- lation of phytoplankton biomass, as indicated by two periods of high chl a concentration. This study tested for CO2 sensitivities in primary produc- tion (PP) of particulate organic carbon (PPPOC) and of dis- solved organic carbon (PPDOC). Therefore, 14 C-bottle incu- bations (24 h) of mesocosm samples were performed at 1 m depth receiving about 60 % of incoming radiation. PP for all mesocosms averaged 8.06± 3.64 µmol C L 1 d 1 and was slightly higher than in the outside fjord system. Compari- son between mesocosms revealed significantly higher PP POC at elevated compared to low pCO2 after nutrient addition. PPDOC was significantly higher in CO 2-enriched mesocosms before as well as after nutrient addition, suggesting that CO 2 had a direct influence on DOC production. DOC concentra- tions inside the mesocosms increased before nutrient addi- tion and more in high CO2 mesocosms. After addition of nutrients, however, further DOC accumulation was negligi- ble and not significantly different between treatments, indi- cating rapid utilization of freshly produced DOC. Bacterial biomass production (BP) was coupled to PP in all treatments, indicating that 3.5 ± 1.9 % of PP or 21.6± 12.5 % of PPDOC provided on average sufficient carbon for synthesis of bacte- rial biomass. During the later course of the bloom, the re- sponse of 14 C-based PP rates to CO2 enrichment differed from net community production (NCP) rates that were also determined during this mesocosm campaign. We conclude that the enhanced release of labile DOC during autotrophic production at high CO2 exceedingly stimulated activities of heterotrophic microorganisms. As a consequence, increased PP induced less NCP, as suggested earlier for carbon-limited microbial systems in the Arctic.
An Improved Approach to Traceability Recovery Based on Word Embeddings

Software traceability recovery, which reconstructs links between software artifacts, has become more and more vital to maintaining a software life cycle with the increase of software scale and complexity of software architecture. However, existing approaches mainly rely on information retrieval (IR) techniques. These methods are not very efficient at complex software artifacts which are mixed with multilingual texts, code snippets and proper nouns. Moreover, it is hard to predict new traceability links with existing approaches when requirements are changed or software functions are added, since these methods have not made the most of the final ranked lists. In this paper, we propose a novel approach WELR, based on word embeddings and learning to rank to recover traceability links. We use word embeddings to calculate semantic similarities between software artifacts and bring in query expansion and a weighting strategy during calculation. Different from other work, we leverage learning to rank to build prediction models for traceability links. We conducted experiments on five public datasets and took account of traceability links among different kinds of software artifacts. The results show that our method outperforms the state-of-the-art method that works under the same conditions.
P2Y12 receptor is expressed on human microglia under physiological conditions throughout development and is sensitive to neuroinflammatory diseases

Microglia are resident immune cells in the central nervous system (CNS), which are essential for immune defence and critically contribute to neuronal functions during homeostasis. Until now, little is known about microglia biology in humans in part due to the lack of microglia‐specific markers. We therefore investigated the expression of the purinergic receptor P2Y12 in human brain tissue. Compared to classical markers used to identify microglia such as Iba1, CD68 or MHCII, we found that P2Y12 is expressed on parenchymal microglia but is absent from perivascular or meningeal macrophages. We further demonstrate that P2Y12 expression is stable throughout human brain development, including fetal phases, and quantification of P2 Y12+ microglia revealed that the density of human microglia is constant throughout lifetime. In contrast, CD68 expression increases during aging in cerebellar but not in cortical microglia, indicating regional heterogeneity. CNS pathologies such as Alzheimer's disease or multiple sclerosis—but not schizophrenia—result in decreased P2Y12 immunoreactivity in plaque‐ or lesion‐associated myeloid cells, whereas Iba1 expression remains detectable. Our results suggest that P2Y12 is a useful marker for the identification of human microglia throughout the lifespan. Moreover, P2Y12 expression might help to discriminate activated microglia and infiltrating myeloid cells from quiescent microglia in the human CNS. GLIA 2017;65:375–387
Factors affecting perceptual thresholds in epiretinal prostheses.

PURPOSE The goal was to evaluate how perceptual thresholds are related to electrode impedance, electrode size, the distance of electrodes from the retinal surface, and retinal thickness in six subjects blind as a result of retinitis pigmentosa, who received epiretinal prostheses implanted monocularly as part of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved clinical trial. METHODS The implant consisted of an extraocular unit containing electronics for wireless data, power recovery, and generation of stimulus current, and an intraocular unit containing 16 platinum stimulating electrodes (260- or 520-microm diameter) arranged in a 4 x 4 pattern. The electrode array was held onto the retina by a small tack. Stimulation was controlled by a computer-based external system that allowed independent control over each electrode. Perceptual thresholds (the current necessary to see a percept on 79% of trials) and impedance were measured for each electrode on a biweekly basis. The distance of electrodes from the retinal surface and retinal thickness were measured by optical coherence tomography on a less regular basis. RESULTS Stimulation thresholds for detecting phosphenes correlated with the distance of the electrodes from the retinal surface, but not with electrode size, electrode impedance, or retinal thickness. CONCLUSIONS Maintaining close proximity between the electrode array and the retinal surface is critical in developing a successful retinal implant. With the development of chronic electrode arrays that are stable and flush on the retinal surface, it is likely that the influence of other factors such as electrode size, retinal degeneration, and subject age will become more apparent. (ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00279500.).
THE EFFECT OF HEAT TREATMENT ON SOME PROPERTIES AND COLOUR IN EUCALYPTUS (Eucalyptus camaldulensis DEHN.) WOOD

Heat treatment is often applied to some wood species to improve dimensional stability. This study evaluated the effect of heat treatment on some physical and mechanical properties and colour of Eucalyptus wood ( Eucalyptus camaldulensis Dehn.), which has industrially high usage potential and large plantations in Turkey. Wood specimens from Tarsus, Turkey were subjected to heat treatment in varying temperatures and durations. After the heat treatment, hardness, swelling, ovendry density, and colour change of the wood specimens were tested in comparison with untreated specimens. The results showed that density, swelling, and hardness decreased with increasing treatment temperature and durations while heat treatment made the colour of the wood specimens darker.
Stress profile characteristics and mechanical behaviour of chemically strengthened lithium magnesium aluminosilicate glasses

Preparation des verres du systeme Li 2 O-MgO-Al 2 O 3 -SiO 2 par echange d'ions dans du nitrate de sodium. Determination des profils de contrainte par la technique de la lumiere diffuse. Controle des proprietes mecaniques par une methode de flexure biaxiale. Etude des variations des profils de contrainte, de la resistance mecanique et du comportement a la rupture en fonction de la composition du verre et des conditions d'echanges d'ions
Evaluation of an Australian Alcohol Media Literacy Program.

OBJECTIVE A 10-lesson alcohol media literacy program was developed, underpinned by the message interpretation processing model, inoculation theory, and constructivist learning theory, and was tailored to be culturally relevant to the Australian context. This program aimed to increase students' media deconstruction skills and reduce intent to drink alcohol. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the program in achieving these goals through a short-term quasi-experimental trial. METHOD Elementary schools were assigned to either the intervention group (83 students) or a wait-list control group (82 students). Student questionnaires were administered at three time points (baseline, after the intervention group completed the program, and after the wait-list control group completed the program) to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention. RESULTS The intervention and wait-list control groups reported significantly higher media deconstruction skills as a result of the intervention. Both groups reported significantly lower social norms, whereas the wait-list control group reported significantly lower positive alcohol expectancies. There were no significant changes to self-efficacy to refuse alcohol, preference for alcohol-branded merchandise, and understanding of persuasive intent as a result of the intervention. CONCLUSIONS To date, the majority of alcohol media literacy studies have been conducted in the United States and have focused on deconstructing television and print-based ads. This evaluation provides evidence that an alcohol media literacy program that was developed for a specific cultural context, and that incorporates a broad range of multimodal advertisements, can have a positive impact on beliefs and attitudes that are known predictors/precursors of drinking behaviors.
ReTUXE: A framework for user's emotional evaluation based on psychophysiological measures

There is an increase of use of psychophysiological sensors to measure user's emotions. However, the evaluation after the user experience (not in real-time) can not represent her/his emotion, as these sensors can do. The purpose of this article is to present a framework to evaluate the hedonic user experience in real time, considering the user's emotion using psychophysiological measures. The proposed approach can be used by HCI professionals and intelligent systems, interested by information generated to "understand" the user experience and make decisions based on this information.
Ultrafuzziness Optimization Based on Type II Fuzzy Sets for Image Thresholding

Image thresholding is one of the processing techniques to provide high quality preprocessed image. Image vagueness and bad illumination are common obstacles yielding in a poor image thresholding output. By assuming image as fuzzy sets, several different fuzzy thresholding techniques have been proposed to remove these obstacles during threshold selection. In this paper, we proposed an algorithm for thresholding image using ultrafuzziness optimization to decrease uncertainty in fuzzy system by common fuzzy sets like type II fuzzy sets. Optimization was conducted by involving ultrafuzziness measurement for background and object fuzzy sets separately. Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed image thresholding method had good performances for images with high vagueness, low level contrast, and grayscale ambiguity.