Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Presence of a privacy divider increases proximity in pair-housed rhesus monkeys

Use of a privacy panel in the home cage of female pair-housed rhesus monkeys has been reported to increase time spent in close proximity and time spent in affiliative behaviours. In the current study we measured these behaviours in more diverse populations; including male-male and male-female pairs of monkeys actively participating in cognitive experiments. We observed twenty-five pairs of rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) both with and without the presence of a privacy divider. Monkeys spent significantly more time in the same half of the pair-cage when the divider was in place. A significant increase in affiliative behaviour was not observed. The effects of privacy dividers previously reported for female monkeys partially extend to male pairs and mixed sex pairs under conditions typical of an active research setting.
Simulation and Experimental Verification of Die Quenching Deformation of Aviation Carburized Face Gear

The tooth width and length of face gear limit control the strength of face gear, and heat treatments are often used to improve the hardness and strength of face gear. However, heat treatments will often cause additional deformations, which will affect the dimensional accuracy of the face gear. In this paper, to effectively control the deformation and ensure the accuracy of the face gear, the finite element method was used to establish the calculation model of the face gear die quenching method, and thus, the influence of die on the gear quenching deformation was analyzed. Next, the accuracy of the calculation model was verified by the pressure quenching experiment. The results demonstrated that the inconsistent phase transformation between the surface and the center of the face gear was the key factor affecting the deformation due to the influence of the carbon content. Compared with die-less quenching, the inner hole-die can effectively limit the radial shrinkage deformation of the face gear. With the increase of the upper-die pressure, the axial and radial deformations of the face gear gradually became stable. In the actual production, the load of dies should be reasonably selected based on the gear accuracy requirements.
Voltage Stability Constrained Operation Optimization: An Ensemble Sparse Oblique Regression Tree Method

Voltage stability remains a main challenge for high renewable penetrated power systems. In future power systems, the dispatch needs to consider the voltage stability margin. However, considering static and transient voltage stability is challenging because a complex relationship exists between voltage stability and operation state variables. This paper proposes an ensemble sparse oblique regression tree method for voltage stability constrained operation optimization. First, we train multiple oblique regression trees on voltage stability simulation datasets. The trained trees are then grouped into ensemble using a boosting method to extract accurate and understandable voltage stability rules. Finally, the rules are embedded as mixed-integer linear programming constraints in a linear optimal power flow model. Validation on the IEEE-14 case shows the interpretability and efficiency of the proposed algorithm. Case studies on the Qinghai power grid and IEEE-118 further show that the proposed strategy can effectively improve the voltage stability margin of optimized operation states.
Watermarked cardiac CT image segmentation using deformable models and the Hermite transform

Medical image watermarking is an open area for research and is a solution for the protection of copyright and intellectual property. One of the main challenges of this problem is that the marked images should not differ perceptually from the original images allowing a correct diagnosis and authentication. Furthermore, we also aim at obtaining watermarked images with very little numerical distortion so that computer vision tasks such as segmentation of important anatomical structures do not be impaired or affected. We propose a preliminary watermarking application in cardiac CT images based on a perceptive approach that includes a brightness model to generate a perceptive mask and identify the image regions where the watermark detection becomes a difficult task for the human eye. We propose a normalization scheme of the image in order to improve robustness against geometric attacks. We follow a spread spectrum technique to insert an alphanumeric code, such as patient’s information, within the watermark. The watermark scheme is based on the Hermite transform as a bio-inspired image representation model. In order to evaluate the numerical integrity of the image data after watermarking, we perform a segmentation task based on deformable models. The segmentation technique is based on a vector-value level sets method such that, given a curve in a specific image, and subject to some constraints, the curve can evolve in order to detect objects. In order to stimulate the curve evolution we introduce simultaneously some image features like the gray level and the steered Hermite coefficients as texture descriptors. Segmentation performance was assessed by means of the Dice index and the Hausdorff distance. We tested different mark sizes and different insertion schemes on images that were later segmented either automatic or manual by physicians.
Analytical approach to the helium-atom ground state using correlated wavefunctions

A realistic three-parameter correlated wavefunction is used to construct an exact analytical expression for the expectation value of the helium-atom Hamiltonian expressed in the interparticle coordinates. The parameters determined variationally are found to satisfy the orbital and correlation cusp conditions to a fair degree of accuracy and yield a value for the ground-state energy which is in good agreement with the exact result.
A Changing Stock–Bond Correlation: Drivers and Implications

The relationship between stock and bond returns is a fundamental determinant of risk in traditional portfolios. For the first two decades of the 21st century, the stock–bond correlation was consistently negative and investors were largely able to rely on their bond investments for protection when equities sold off. But this was not the case in the previous century, and macroeconomic changes—such as higher inflation uncertainty—could lead to a reappearance of the positive stock–bond correlation of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. This would have broad implications for investors, either increasing portfolio risk or forcing allocation changes likely to reduce expected returns. This article analyzes the implications for investors of a change in this “golden parameter” and presents a simple macroeconomic model to help understand its drivers, supported by international empirical evidence. Finally, it explores the role of alternatives in making up the potential diversification deficit in a positive stock–bond correlation world.
Analyzing the Effectiveness of mHealth to Manage Diabetes Mellitus Among Adults Over 50: A Systematic Literature Review

Purpose A total of 537 million suffered from diabetes mellitus in 2021, and the aging of the population will not abate this number in the future. Diabetes predisposes people to ailments and doubles the risk of COVID-19 mortality. mHealth has shown promise to help manage diabetes. The aim of this review is to objectively analyze research from the last 2.5 years to assess effectiveness where mHealth has been used as an intervention to help manage diabetes in older patients. We also analyzed patient satisfaction, quality, and barriers to adoption of mHealth to manage diabetes. Patients and Methods No human subjects were involved in this review. We queried four research databases for mHealth to manage diabetes in older adults. We conducted the review based on the Kruse Protocol for writing as systematic review and we reported our findings in accordance with PRISMA (2020). Results Thirty research articles from 11 countries were analyzed. Five interventions of mHealth were identified. Of these mHealth Short Message service (SMS) helped change behavior and encouraged self-care. mHealth SMS coupled with telemedicine for coaching showed positive effects on weight loss, BMI, diet, exercise, HbA1C, disease awareness, blood pressure, cholesterol, medication adherence, and foot care. Conclusion mHealth SMS coupled with telemedicine for coaching shows the greatest promise for educating, changing behavior, and realizing positive outcomes across a broad spectrum of health factors. The largest drawback is the cost of acquiring equipment and training users.
Dose-Related Regulatory Effect of Raspberry Polyphenolic Extract on Cecal Microbiota Activity, Lipid Metabolism and Inflammation in Rats Fed a Diet Rich in Saturated Fats

The amount of berry polyphenols required to exert health-promoting effects seems to be difficult to achieve by fresh fruit ingestion, so polyphenol-rich extracts could be considered a dietary alternative. In the present study, laboratory rats were fed high-fat diets supplemented with 0.1 or 0.3% raspberry polyphenols from pomace, with the former dose reflecting the amount of polyphenols consumed with a glass of fresh raspberries. It was hypothesized that beneficial changes in blood and hepatic tissue related to lipid metabolism would accompany both treatments, but the health-promoting effect would be more noticeable with the higher dose of extract. This hypothesis was confirmed, and the high dose of raspberry polyphenols was better than the low dose extract in terms of decreased epididymal white adipose tissue weight, hepatic triglyceride content, PPARγ and SREBP-1c expression in the liver, and plasma IL-6 concentration, as well as increased acetic acid concentration in the cecal digesta. These effects might be partially associated with the enhanced content of ellagitannin and anthocyanin metabolites found in the blood plasma of rats administered the high dose of the extract. The results showed that this extract could be considered a dietary vehicle to provide an amount of raspberry polyphenols that could promote health.
Confocal fluorescence microscopy of leaf cells: an application of Bayesian image analysis

Confocal fluorescence microscopy is a recent and important imaging tool for visualizing three‐dimensional specimens without the need for physical sectioning, so that changes in living cells can be studied over time. The application of interest here is a study of the changes in the stomatal guard cells of plant leaves during their opening and closing response sequences. Quantitative estimates of the size and shape of these cells rely on accurate classification (or segmentation) of the images into areas which are parts of cells and areas which are background. This segmentation is complicated in confocal microscopy because the images appear to be ‘smudged’ or ‘dirty’; this degradation is due largely to diffraction and attenuation of the recorded signal caused by the specimen itself. Correcting for this degradation is difficult without knowing the specimen‐dependent parameters involved in the degradation process. A fully Bayesian approach is proposed for tackling this problem of blind deconvolution, i.e. of concurrently estimating the degradation parameters while segmenting two‐dimensional sections. The end‐products are interval estimates of size and shape which acknowledge some of the uncertainty involved in the segmentation. The results are promising, generating credible intervals which are sufficiently narrow to be useful in practice.
Sterilization of PLA after Fused Filament Fabrication 3D Printing: Evaluation on Inherent Sterility and the Impossibility of Autoclavation

Three-dimensional printing, especially fused filament fabrication (FFF), offers great possibilities in (bio-)medical applications, but a major downside is the difficulty in sterilizing the produced parts. This study evaluates the questions of whether autoclaving is a possible solution for FFF-printed parts and if the printer itself could be seen as an inherent sterilization method. In a first step, an investigation was performed on the deformation of cylindrically shaped test parts after running them through the autoclaving process. Furthermore, the inherent sterility possibilities of the printing process itself were evaluated using culture medium sterility tests. It could be shown that, depending on the needed accuracy, parts down to a diameter of 5–10 mm can still be sterilized using autoclaving, while finer parts suffer from major deformations. For these, inherent sterilization of the printer itself is an option. During the printing process, over a certain contact time, heat at a higher level than that used in autoclaving is applied to the printed parts. The contact time, depending on the printing parameters, is calculated using the established formula. The results show that for stronger parts, autoclaving offers a cheap and good option for sterilization after FFF-printing. However, the inherent sterility possibilities of the printer itself can be considered, especially when printing with small layer heights for finer parts.
Capacitance measurements of junction formation and structure in polymer light-emitting electrochemical cells

We present capacitance–voltage and current–voltage measurements of polymer light-emitting electrochemical cells and compare these results with steady state device model calculations. The capacitance–voltage characteristic is used to assess the formation and structure of the electrochemical junction in the device. The cell capacitance and current both increase sharply above a threshold voltage as the bias is increased. The threshold voltage for the rapid increase in capacitance is lower than that for the increase in current, indicating that the electrochemical junction begins to form prior to significant current flow. The electrochemical junction width, estimated from the capacitance measurements, is about 15 nm at a current density of 0.1 A/cm2. The steady state device model calculations are in reasonable agreement with these observations.
Sub-Pixel Mapping of Spectral Imagery Based on Deviation Information Measurement

Sub-pixel mapping (SPM) technology can analyze mixed pixels in spectral image and realize the transformation from abundance images to a fine sub-pixel classification image. Since the SPM belongs to an ill-posed issue, deviation information (DI) inevitably is in optimal abundance images. Due to simple structure and good robustness, most SPM approaches are according to the spatial dependence assumption; namely, the closer the spatial distance is, the more likely the subpixels belong to the same class. However, the existing SPM methods based on spatial dependence assumption cannot accurately measure the DI, which affects the accuracy of the final mapping result. To address this problem, the SPM based on DI measurement (DIM) is proposed in this work. The DIM uses a dual-scale spatial attraction model (DSAM) to process the coarse abundance images to obtain predicted abundance images. The fine prior images captured at different times from the same field of view are used to measure the deviation abundance images with the DI using a geographically weighted regression (GWR) model. The predicted abundance images and deviation abundance images are fused to derive optimal abundance images. Based on the proportion information on sub-pixels being classes in the optimal abundance images, the class labels are assigned to sub-pixels by label allocation method, yielding the final mapping result. The proposed DIM method is tested on National Land-cover Dataset, Rome Dataset, and Bastrop Fires dataset. The experimental results verify that the proposed DIM achieves the best performance with the overall accuracy of 97.26%, 88.15%, and 99.80% in the three experimental results.
3 d resonant photoemission spectra at the Ce L 3 edge of CeRh 3

We have measured the $3d$ resonant x-ray photoemission spectra of the mixed-valent intermetalic compound ${\mathrm{CeRh}}_{3}$ at the Ce ${L}_{3}$ ${(2p}_{3/2}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}5d)$ edge. An impurity Anderson model with $4f\ensuremath{-}5d$ Coulomb interaction is employed to analyze theoretically these spectra. Full multiplet coupling effects including the $2p\ensuremath{-}3d5d$ Auger decay process are taken into account. Good agreement with experimental and calculated spectra is obtained. The existence of the ${4f}^{2}$ component hidden in the ${L}_{3}$ white line and the importance of the $4f\ensuremath{-}5d$ Coulomb interaction in the final state of ${L}_{3}$ absorption are confirmed.
Managers’ displays of busyness predict employees’ job engagement, burnout and turnover intentions (Las muestras de laboriosidad de los superiores predicen el compromiso laboral, el agotamiento y las intenciones de rotación del personal)

ABSTRACT Although past research has examined the personal impact of experiencing time scarcity, little is known about how signalling a lack of time affects other people’s experiences. In the present research, we examine how managers’ displays of busyness — behaviours that convey time scarcity to others — affect employees’ job-related outcomes. Managers who frequently displayed busyness in the workplace had employees who perceived lower organizational support, which predicted lower job engagement, greater job burnout and intentions to leave the organization (Study 1). Even managers’ occasional displays of busyness negatively affected employees’ job-related experiences (Study 2). Furthermore, employees with managers who frequently displayed busyness reported worse job-related outcomes when the workplace was described as functional (vs. dysfunctional) (Study 3). Together, these findings suggest that frequent and even occasional displays of managers’ busyness predict lower employee engagement, greater job burnout and desire to leave the organization, especially in highly functional work environments.
Differences in adherence to using removable cast walker treatment during daytime and nighttime weight-bearing activities in people with diabetes-related foot ulcers

Aims: Patients’ adherence to using knee-high offloading treatment is critical to effective healing of diabetes-related foot ulcers (DFUs). Previous studies have found that patients generally have low adherence to using removable knee-high offloading treatments, yet no study has investigated whether their adherence differs during daytime and nighttime. This study aimed to investigate the levels and factors associated with adherence to using knee-high removable cast walker (RCW) treatment during daytime and nighttime weight-bearing activities in people with DFUs. Methods: This was a secondary analysis of data collected from a multi-centre cross-sectional study investigating adherence to using knee-high RCWs among 57 participants with DFUs. All participants had multiple socio-demographic, physiological and psychosocial factors collected, before having their adherence to using RCWs during weight-bearing activity monitored over a 1-week period using the dual activity monitor method. Adherence data were categorised into daytime (06:00–18:00) and nighttime (18:00–06:00) periods and calculated separately. Multiple linear regression was used to identify factors associated with daytime and nighttime adherence. Results: Mean adherence to using RCW during weight-bearing activities in people with DFUs was higher during daytime compared with nighttime [39.9% (SD = 18.9) versus 20.4% (SD = 16.7), p < 0.001]. Factors independently associated with lower adherence during daytime were being male, longer diabetes duration, not having peripheral artery disease (PAD), and higher perceived RCW heaviness. Factors associated with lower adherence during nighttime were higher mean daytime steps, not having retinopathy and having dyslipidaemia. Conclusions: Adherence to using RCWs during weight-bearing activities reduced significantly at nighttime compared with daytime among people with DFUs, and this was associated with different factors. Interventions to improve adherence, in research and clinical practice, should incorporate methods to target daytime or nighttime adherence specifically.
Examining Challenges in Complying with the Principles of Sustainability for the Design of Urban Bridges in Ethiopia

Existential issues obstruct the practice of incorporating sustainability concepts, which is the holistic consideration of urban bridge design factors. Bridge infrastructure is considered a connecting structure for separated highways and railways. The case for ensuring the safe mobility of people and goods across obstacles from one urban corner to another is viewed as an essential component of transportation infrastructure. The design and provision of urban bridges to attain sustainability are associated with tremendous challenges because of a lack of awareness and existential issues and obstacles. The problem in the practice of urban bridge design in Ethiopia is indicated as being “traditional” in delivery, with a lack of accommodation for many essential components of sustainable design. Therefore, a change in thinking is needed to address sustainability. The question of how designers could make design practice sustainable is complicated by multiple challenges. In this research, we used a survey questionnaire to collect the opinions of design professionals. Principal component analysis was employed to explore the major gaps in sustainable urban bridge design practice. A lack of sustainable design impact; sustainability awareness; design codes, practices, and standards that consider sustainability criteria; working guiding protocols and frameworks; and support for sustainability practice were identified as major challenges. Addressing the design problem requires a mechanism to consider the challenges through the defined participation of the designer, client, and public during rule setting, monitoring, and evaluation. Sustainability rating tools must also be deployed to evaluate and quantify the performance of urban bridges.
Measurements of directional properties of reverberant sound fields in rooms using a spherical microphone array

The directional variation of sound at a point has been studied in three rooms, using a measurement system described previously [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 112, 1980–1991 (2002)]. The system uses a pair of 32-element spherical microphone arrays to obtain directional impulse responses in each of 60 steering directions, with an angular resolution of 28°, covering all directions in the whole solid angle. Together, the array measurements span the frequency range from 300 to 3300 Hz. The angular distribution of incident sound energy is visualized on a three-dimensional plot, and quantified by computing the directional diffusion and the directional peak-to-average level difference (“anisotropy index”) of the sound field. The small-to-medium-sized rooms had reverberation times of 360, 400, and 600 ms. Measurements were made for several source and receiver locations in each, and were analyzed over several time ranges (full decay time of room, late time decay, 2-ms windows throughout the decay). All measured sound fields .
Resonant oscillations in shallow water with small mean-square disturbances

The ordinary differential equation $\epsilon^2 \ddot{y} + \epsilon^2 \delta \dot{y} = y^2 - \cos t - 1 - c$ which represents forced water waves on shallow water near resonance is considered when the dispersion ε and the constant c are small. Asymptotic and numerical methods are used to show that solutions which are bounded for all finite t can exist only if $c > - 2^{-\frac{2}{3}}\epsilon^{\frac{4}{3}}\times 1.4664 \ldots $.