Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Simultaneous measurement of water flow velocity and solute transport in xylem and phloem of adult plants of Ricinus communis over a daily time course by nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometry

A new method for simultaneously quantifying rates of flow in xylem and phloem using the FLASH imaging capabilities of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometry was applied in this study. The method has a time resolution of up to 4 min (for the xylem) and was used to measure the velocity of flows in phloem and xylem for periods of several hours to days. For the first time, diurnal time course measurements of flow velocities and apparent volume flows in phloem and xylem in the hypocotyl of 40-d-old Ricinus communis L were obtained. Additional data on gas exchange and the chemical composition of leaves, xylem and phloem sap were used to assess the role of leaves as sinks for xylem sap and sources for phloem. The velocity in the phloem (0.250 ± 0.004 mm s -1 ) was constant over a full day and not notably affected by the light/dark cycle. Sucrose was loaded into the phloem and transported at night, owing to degradation of starch accumulated during the day. Concentrations of solutes in the phloem were generally less during the night than during the day but varied little within either the day or night. In contrast to the phloem, flow velocities in the xylem were about 1.6-fold higher in the light (0.401 ± 0.004 mm s -1 ) than in the dark (0.255 ± 0.003 mm s -1 ) and volume flow varied commensurately. Larger delays were observed in changes to xylem flow velocity with variation in light than in gas exchange. The relative rates of solute transport during day and night were estimated on the basis of relative flow and solute concentrations in xylem and phloem. In general, changes in relative flow rates were compensated for by changes in solute concentration during the daily light/dark cycle. However, the major solutes (K + , NO 3 - ) varied appreciably in relative concentrations. Hence the regulation of loading into transport systems seems to be more important to the overall process of solute transport than do changes in mass flow. Due to transport behaviour, the chemical composition of leaves varied during the day only with regard to starch and soluble carbohydrates.
Oncological outcomes of the TIME trial in esophageal cancer: is it the era of minimally invasive esophagectomy?

Esophageal cancer is one of the most common digestive tract cancers worldwide. Although multimodality therapy has been used in the treatment of esophageal cancer, there is still a poor prognosis (1). For decades, esophageal resection remains the mainstream of multimodality treatment for esophageal cancer, but traditional open esophagectomy (OE) is associated with high perioperative morbidity and mortality. The unstopping advances in surgical devices and techniques have contributed to the transition from OE approach to minimally invasive esophagectomy (MIE) approach, which has demonstrated advantages in reducing postoperative pulmonary complications and improving short-term quality-of-life (QoL) verified by some prospective trials (2,3). However, debate is ongoing as to whether MIE is equivalent to open resection regarding long-term oncologic outcomes. Although many retrospective studies reported equivalent or even superior long-term outcomes of MIE over OE (4-6), we could not ignore the fact that conclusion was underpowered due to the biases, such as selection of cases, surgeon’s experience and non-uniform surgical procedure. With the intent to solve the predicament, the long-term results of multiple prospective randomized clinical trials, including MIRO (7), TIME (2) and ROMIO (8) have been waiting all the time.
Dealing with highly contagious animal diseases under neoliberal governmentality in Mongolia

In Mongolia, since the collapse of communism in 1990, the government has implemented a centralized system of veterinary care inherited from the Communist period that suffers from inadequate infrastructures. Highly contagious diseases chronically re-emerge, undermining the country, its economy, and the way of life of its affected inhabitants. Since the early 2000s, the government has put in place a new surveillance system that relies on nomadic herders as ‘sentinels’. These herders combine popular perceptions and treatments of animal diseases with some veterinary practices and international standards of surveillance and control. But they sometimes refuse to cooperate with private veterinarians or report symptoms, out of a lack of trust in the system of financial compensation for culled herds, compensation that – if sufficient – would enable them to maintain a substantial herd and a nomadic way of life. This article argues that Mongolia constitutes a sort of laboratory to study a neoliberal governmentality toward animal diseases, where the capacities to manage diseases that spread across species (wild/domestic, animal/human) and political borders (regional, national, continental) are delegated to local actors (nomadic herders) who resort to compromises in order to address tensions with political leaders regarding how to control highly contagious animal diseases.
The problems of accuracy and robustness in geometric computation

Practical implementation of geometric operations remains error-prone, and the goal of implementing correct and robust systems for carrying out geometric computation remains elusive. The problem is variously characterized as a matter of achieving sufficient numerical precision, as a fundamental difficulty in dealing with interacting numeric and symbolic data, or as a problem of avoiding degenerate positions. The author examines these problems, surveys some of the approaches proposed, and assesses their potential for devising complete and efficient solutions. He restricts the analysis to objects with linear elements, since substantial problems already arise in this case. Three perturbation-free methods are considered: floating-point computation, limited-precision rational arithmetic, and purely symbolic representations. Some perturbation approaches are also examined, namely, representation and model, altering the symbolic data, and avoiding degeneracies. <<ETX>>
Late-life depression and risk of vascular dementia and Alzheimer's disease: systematic review and meta-analysis of community-based cohort studies

Background Late-life depression may increase the risk of incident dementia, in particular of Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia. Aims To conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the risk of incident all-cause dementia, Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia in individuals with late-life depression in population-based prospective studies. Method A total of 23 studies were included in the meta-analysis. We used the generic inverse variance method with a random-effects model to calculate the pooled risk of dementia, Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia in older adults with late-life depression. Results Late-life depression was associated with a significant risk of all-cause dementia (1.85, 95% CI 1.67-2.04, P< 0.001), Alzheimer's disease (1.65, 95% CI 1.42-1.92, P<0.001) and vascular dementia (2.52, 95% CI 1.77-3.59, P<0.001). Subgroup analysis, based on five studies, showed that the risk of vascular dementia was significantly higher than for Alzheimer's disease (P=0.03). Conclusions Late-life depression is associated with an increased risk for all-cause dementia, vascular dementia and Alzheimer's disease. The present results suggest that it will be valuable to design clinical trials to investigate the effect of late-life depression prevention on risk of dementia, in particular vascular dementia and Alzheimer's disease.
Everyday Design as a Design Resource

In the field of design, using artifacts in creative ways other than the ways envisioned by their designers has been regarded as merely a form of “use,” rather than a creative activity in its own right. This study reconceives everyday design as a process by which people create new uses for designed artifacts within given contexts. We enlisted four groups of professional designers into a practical design experiment. Two groups were provided with everyday design cases collected from a sharing application, Wikiuse, while the other two were provided with related design cases. The everyday design cases were found to encourage a design process that is strongly interaction-oriented. An “interaction-oriented process” is a design process that starts with recognition of non-intrusive, everyday actions inherent in everyday design cases, actions that are then incorporated into design solutions. Moreover, professional designers learn how such actions are achieved with everyday artifacts via everyday design cases, which consist of artifact–interaction pairs. Designers can thus reach a design solution by adopting interactions from everyday design cases. This process obviates the need for designers to represent the context of product use in their design processes, as professional designers who utilize everyday design cases are already heavily immersed in the actual context.
Urinary Clusterin Is Upregulated in Nephropathia Epidemica

Kidney insufficiency is a hallmark of nephropathia epidemica (NE). Little is known about the mechanisms of the NE kidney pathology, with current knowledge mainly based on findings in postmortem tissue. We have analyzed kidney damage biomarkers in urine collected from early- and late-phase NE using Bio-Plex kidney toxicity panels 1 and 2. To determine the disease specificity, kidney damage biomarkers were also analyzed in urine samples from patients diagnosed with gout, type 2 diabetes, systemic lupus erythematosus, and chronic kidney insufficiency. Analysis of 12 biomarkers suggests damage to the kidney proximal tubule at the onset of NE. Also, upregulation of biomarkers of inflammation and leukocyte chemotaxis were detected in NE urine. Furthermore, increased clusterin levels were found in early- and late-phase NE urine. Comparative analysis revealed that clusterin is a biomarker, upregulated in NE urine.
NETWRAP: An NDN Based Real Time Wireless Recharging Framework for Wireless Sensor Networks

A mobile vehicle equipped with wireless energy transmission technology can move around a wireless sensor network and recharge nodes over the air, leading to potentially perpetual operation if nodes can always be recharged before energy depletion. When to recharge which nodes, and in what order, critically impact the outcome. So far only a few works have studied this problem and relatively static recharging policies were proposed. However, dynamic changes such as unpredictable energy consumption variations in nodes, and practical issues like scalable and efficient gathering of energy information, are not yet addressed. In this paper, we propose NETWRAP, an NDN based Real Time Wireless Recharging Protocol for dynamic recharging in wireless sensor networks. We leverage concepts and mechanisms from NDN (Named Data Networking) to design a set of protocols that continuously gather and deliver energy information to the mobile vehicle, including unpredictable emergencies, in a scalable and efficient manner. We derive analytic results on energy neutral conditions that give rise to perpetual operation. We also discover that optimal recharging of multiple emergencies is an Orienteering problem with Knapsack approximation. Our extensive simulations demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed framework and validate the theoretical analysis.
Sagnac interferometer with polarization maintaining fiber for vector transversal loading measurement

In this paper, a Sagnac interferometer with polarization maintaining fiber (PMF) for vector transversal loading measurement has been proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The light propagated in different axes of the PMF has different velocity because of fiber birefringence, which results in phase difference, and thus interferometer pattern is produced. When the birefringence parameters are affected by transversal loading, the phase difference of the light propagating in different axes will change, and as a result of the interferometer pattern of the Sagnac loop shifts. When transversal loading with the opposite direction is applied on the sensing fiber, the interferometer pattern also shifts, but oppositely to longer or shorter wavelength, by monitoring which vector transversal loading measurement can be achieved. The sensing characteristics when transversal loading is applied in different angles have also been studied. The proposed measurement method has a simple structure, and is easy to implement, which shows a good application prospects in the sensing field.
Joint damage identification for a steel frame using compression sensing-based EMI signatures

An experimental study of damage identification for a three-layered steel frame is implemented. Damages are introduced by completely loosening bolts over several conditions on the structure and then the piezoelectric admittance signatures are obtained under various damage locations. EMI signatures are pre-processed using the theory of compression sensing and the compressed signatures still keep the original damage information invariable. Finally, the principal components of the compressed EMI signatures are obtained as the input parameters of BP neural network for quantitative damage identification. Research shows that the transmission bandwidth and storage space of the processed data are reduced greatly using the compression perception technique, and the present hybrid method can detect the damage locations quantitatively.
Using cellular graph embeddings in solving all pairs shortest paths problems

An algorithm for generating a succinct encoding of all-pairs shortest path information in an n-vertex directed planar G with O(n) edges is presented. The edges have real-valued costs, but the graph contains no negative cycles. The time complexity is given in terms of a topological embedding measure defined in the paper. The algorithm uses a decomposition of the graph into outerplanar subgraphs satisfying certain separator properties, and a linear-time algorithm is presented to find this decomposition. <<ETX>>
Liquid crystalline polymer nanocomposites reinforced with in-situ reduced graphene oxide.

In this work liquid-crystalline polymer (LCP) nanocomposites reinforced with in-situ reduced graphene oxide are investigated. Graphene oxide (GO) was first synthesized by the Hummers method, and the kinetics of its thermal reduc- tion was assessed. GO layers were then homogeneously dispersed in a thermotropic liquid crystalline polymer matrix (Vec- tran ® ), and an in-situ thermal reduction of GO into reduced graphene oxide (rGO) was performed. Even at low rGO amount, the resulting nanocomposites exhibited an enhancement of both the mechanical properties and the thermal stabil- ity. Improvements of the creep stability and of the thermo-mechanical behavior were also observed upon nanofiller incor- poration. Furthermore, in-situ thermal reduction of the insulating GO into the more electrically conductive rGO led to an important surface resistivity decrease in the nanofilled samples.
Skin and plasma carotenoid response to a provided intervention diet high in vegetables and fruit: uptake and depletion kinetics.

BACKGROUND Objective biomarkers are needed to assess adherence to vegetable and fruit intervention trials. Blood carotenoids are considered the best biomarker of vegetable and fruit intake, but collecting blood is invasive and the analyses are relatively expensive for population studies. Resonance Raman spectroscopy (RRS) is an innovative method for assessing carotenoids in skin noninvasively. OBJECTIVE Our objective was to compare blood carotenoid concentrations with skin carotenoid assessments by RRS during a controlled feeding intervention. DESIGN Twenty-nine participants consumed low-carotenoid diets (6 wk, phases 1 and 3), a provided diet containing 6-cup equivalents (1046 g/d) of vegetables and fruit (8 wk, phase 2), and usual diet (final 8 wk, phase 4). RESULTS At baseline, skin and plasma total carotenoid values were correlated (r = 0.61, P < 0.001). Skin and plasma carotenoid values decreased (P < 0.001) 36% and 30%, respectively, from baseline to the end of phase 1 and then increased (P < 0.001) by >200% at the end of phase 2. Plasma carotenoids returned to baseline concentrations by the middle of phase 3 and skin carotenoid concentrations by the middle of phase 4. Skin carotenoid status predicted plasma values by using a mixed linear model including all time points (r = 0.72, P < 0.001), which indicates that changes in skin carotenoid status closely follow changes in plasma across a broad range of intakes. At the individual level, skin carotenoids predicted plasma values (r = 0.70, P < 0.001) over all time points. CONCLUSION Skin carotenoid status assessed by resonance Raman spectroscopy is a noninvasive, objective biomarker of changes in vegetable and fruit intake.
Stochastic thermodynamics of resetting

Stochastic dynamics with random resetting leads to a non-equilibrium steady state. Here, we consider the thermodynamics of resetting by deriving the first and second law for resetting processes far from equilibrium. We identify the contributions to the entropy production of the system which arise due to resetting and show that they correspond to the rate with which information is either erased or created. Using Landauer's principle, we derive a bound on the amount of work that is required to maintain a resetting process. We discuss different regimes of resetting, including a Maxwell demon scenario where heat is extracted from a bath at constant temperature.
Vegetation Community Impacts on Soil Carbon, Nitrogen and Trace Gas Fluxes

Changes in C and N cycling were pronounced with mesquite (Prosopis spp.) N inputs into a previously N limited grassland or riparian area. Expansion of mesquite into semi-arid grasslands (Sporobolus spp.) increased soil C content and decreased C isotope values compared with soils of non-mesquite grasslands. Cool season litter (2.9% N) collection (October 2001 to March 2002) recovered 66 g mesquite C and 4.5 g mesquite N m. Measurement of surface litter present in the different riparian plant communities ranged from 750 g litter m (mesquite-sacaton), 598 g litter m (mesquite) to160 g litter m (annuals and forbs). An estimated 3 to 8 years of high quality plant litter remained on the soil surface under mesquite due to yearly inputs. Soil cores removed from the mesquite understory and incubated at constant moisture potentials determined CO2–C was linearly respired for up to 80 d indicating the litter remaining on the mesquite soil was highly labile, but the disconnect between high litter fall and low moisture conditions present in the ecosystem allowed the mesquite litter to accumulate. Changes in the chemistry of the mesquite soil, especially the N content, resulted in greater fluxes of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide compared to grass or sacaton soils, but no differences were found in carbon dioxide evolved from the three sites. Of interest was the finding that the semi-arid soils were a strong sink for atmospheric methane during the majority of the year.
An energy efficient backup scheme with low inrush current for nonvolatile SRAM in energy harvesting sensor nodes

In modern energy harvesting sensor nodes, nonvolatile SRAM (nvSRAM) has been widely investigated as a promising on-chip memory architecture because of its zero standby power, resilience to power failures, and fast read/write operations. However, conventional approaches transfer all data from SRAM into NVM during the backup process. Thus, large on-chip energy storage capacitors are normally required. In addition, high peak inrush current is generated instantaneously, which has a negative impact on energy efficiency and circuit reliability. To mitigate these problems, we propose a novel holistic backup flow, which consists of a partial backup process and a run-time pre-writeback scheme for nvSRAM based caches. A statistics based dead-block predictor is employed to achieve a fast and low power partial backup process. We also present an adaptive pre-writeback point allocation strategy to further reduce the backup load. Simulation results show that, with our proposed backup scheme, energy storage capacitance is reduced by 34% and inrush current is reduced by 54% on average compared to the conventional full backup scheme.
TASoMe: Validating a Framework to Generate Evidence About Health Outcomes from Social Media Use

Research surrounding social media's impact on patient-reported health outcomes continues to emerge. However, an ongoing challenge for researchers is generating valid and reliable evidence that draws upon rigorous frameworks. This manuscript details the development and refinement of a framework that defines criteria and methods for generating and evaluating evidence about social media use in chronic disease management; the Therapeutic Affordances of Social Media (TASoMe) framework. TASoMe was built through the considered combination of mixed research methods and data collection instruments. It represents a systematic methodology for conducting research that brings together the key concepts of: therapeutic affordances, patient-reported outcomes, and evidence-based practice to generate evidence about health outcomes from social media use. Its key building blocks include: the key research concepts, research methods, and stakeholders standing to benefit from outcomes. TASoMe contributes to the field of participatory health informatics by offering a stringent and reliable model for advancing research and practice. It has begun to be independently validated across a range of health conditions, and has the potential to be applied to a range of participatory health informatics technologies.
Answer Extraction, Semantic Clustering, and Extractive Summarization for Clinical Question Answering

This paper presents a hybrid approach to question answering in the clinical domain that combines techniques from summarization and information retrieval. We tackle a frequently-occurring class of questions that takes the form "What is the best drug treatment for X? " Starting from an initial set of MEDLINE citations, our system first identifies the drugs under study. Abstracts are then clustered using semantic classes from the UMLS ontology. Finally, a short extractive summary is generated for each abstract to populate the clusters. Two evaluations---a manual one focused on short answers and an automatic one focused on the supporting abstract---demonstrate that our system compares favorably to PubMed, the search system most widely used by physicians today.