Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Carrier–Tumor Cell Membrane Interactions for Optimized Delivery of a Promising Drug, 4(RS)-4-F4t-Neuroprostane

Nanomedicines engineered to deliver molecules with therapeutic potentials, overcoming drawbacks such as poor solubility, toxicity or a short half-life, are targeted towards their cellular destination either passively or through various elements of cell membranes. The differences in the physicochemical properties of the cell membrane between tumor and nontumor cells have been reported, but they are not systematically used for drug delivery purposes. Thus, in this study, a new approach based on a match between the liposome compositions, i.e., membrane fluidity, to selectively interact with the targeted cell membrane was used. Lipid-based carriers of two different fluidities were designed and used to deliver 4(RS)-4-F4t-Neuroprostane (F4t-NeuroP), a potential antitumor molecule derived from docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Based on its hydrophobic character, F4t-NeuroP was added to the lipid mixture prior to liposome formation, a protocol that yielded over 80% encapsulation efficiency in both rigid and fluid liposomes. The presence of the active molecule did not modify the liposome size but increased the liposome negative charge and the liposome membrane fluidity, which suggested that the active molecule was accommodated in the lipid membrane. F4t-NeuroP integration in liposomes with a fluid character allowed for the selective targeting of the metastatic prostate cell line PC-3 vs. fibroblast controls. A significant decrease in viability (40%) was observed for the PC-3 cancer line in the presence of F4t-NeuroP fluid liposomes, whereas rigid F4t-NeuroP liposomes did not alter the PC-3 cell viability. These findings demonstrate that liposomes encapsulating F4t-NeuroP or other related molecules may be an interesting model of drug carriers based on membrane fluidity.
Dietary patterns: a literature review of the methodological characteristics of the main steps of the multivariate analyzes Padrões alimentares estimados por técnicas multivariadas: uma revisão da literatura sobre os procedimentos adotados nas etapas analíticas

Objective: To describe the solutions adopted in the multiple steps of the use of multivariate techniques to obtain a dietary pattern (DP) concerning: the objective of the studies, the selection of the method for measuring food intake, the criteria for grouping the foods, the number of food groups used, the number of DP obtained, and the nomenclature criteria. Methods: The articles were selected from MEDLINE and Lilacs scientific databases using the following keywords: "dietary patterns" versus "factor analysis"; "principal components analysis"; "cluster analysis" and "reduced regression rank. " The initial search resulted in 1,752 articles. After inclusion and exclusion criteria, 189 publications were selected. Results: The following aspects were relevant among the studies: the prevalence of the principal component analysis (PCA); the prevalence of the use of 4 to 5 DPs in the studies of association with health outcomes; the use of 30 or more food groups from the food frequency questionnaire (FFQ); the prevalence of studies that associated DPs with health outcomes and socioeconomic factors; and the heterogeneity of criteria used throughout the analytical stages of the multivariate techniques. Conclusion: The heterogeneity between the publications concentrates on the criteria for food grouping, the nomenclature, and the number of dietary patterns calculated, which varied depending on the number of food groups present in these analyses. To understand, apply, and explore in full, the multivariate techniques has become necessary in order to improve the reliability of the results and, consequently, to improve the relationships with health outcomes and socioeconomic factors.
Quick diagnostic approach for HIV/STDs among migrants: results from a monocentric Italian cohort.

INTRODUCTION Migration has a direct influence on sexual health. Differences both in sexual networks and the risk of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) between racial or ethnic minorities and the native population have been described in the literature. METHODOLOGY We collected data on medical history, physical examination, and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/STDs tests. Screenings were proposed basing on Centers for Disease Control (CDC) 2018 guidelines on STDs. Patients underwent peer-to-peer counselling before screening. RESULTS We included data of 391 patients (both outpatients and migrants living in facility centers). The median age was 30 (range 24-38) years, and the majority were male (198/391; 50.6%). Among them, 389 (99.4%) were counselled, and 371 (94.8%) accepted the screening. We found 155 (41.7%) HBsAg/Anti-HBc positive tests, 4 (1%) HIV positive screenings, 1 (0.2%) hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, 47 (12%) genital/perianal warts, 29 (2.3%) cases of syphilis, and 13 (3.3%) molluscum contagiosum. CONCLUSIONS Migrants have high-risk sexual behavior. Despite this, they may have a low perception of risk and healthcare needs. An approach based on quick tests was demonstrated to be useful in increasing the screening acceptance. However, the retainment in care was low, as in previous studies. Access to HIV/STDs screening and treatment should be implemented. The development of specific retainment in care pathways is still needed to reduce the lack of follow-up.
Wing Aerodynamic Optimization in the Presence of Interacting Canard at Subsonic and Supersonic Speeds

Effort is made to minimize the drag subject to lift constraint. The wing and canard interacting planform is considered to study the effect of canard presence towards optimization of wing. The aerodynamic efficiency of optimized wing is worked out for off-design values of angles of attack and compared with the wing alone case. Subsonic and supersonic flow conditions are handled through panel methods. Results are presented for wing alone and canard-wing combination for subsonic and supersonic flows. Substantial drag reduction is seen possible for subsonic Mach numbers. The off-design aerodynamic efficiency of canard-wing combination is seen to be superior as compared to wing alone case. The program is executed on a 2.4 GHz laptop using gfortran compiler that is built in the fedora operating system. Fedora12 double precision 64 bit is used for this work. Alternatively, Ubuntu operating system can also be utilized. Fedora and Ubuntu both are Linux based.
Time reversal imaging of the 2015 Illapel tsunami source

Studies of the 2015 Illapel earthquake show large variance in the east‐west location of the principal slip, and it is also controversial if there is significant slip near the trench. In this study, we derive the initial water elevation from tsunami waves based on the time reversal imaging technique. This approach does not make assumptions on the fault geometry required by finite‐fault inversions. We adopt 4 out of total 24 stations based on their azimuthal coverage in the time reversal analysis. Additionally, we introduce a correction that scales the wave amplitude at each station by the epicentral distance to account for the 2‐D spreading effects. The results show a focused region of water elevation with a maximum height of 2.0 m located approximately 30 km from the trench. By comparison to the initial deformation predicted by several finite‐fault models, our results indicate minimum slip distribution near the trench.
First principles investigation of halide based Rb2NaGaZ6 (Z = Br, I) double perovskites for energy harvesting applications

Extensive investigations have been conducted on the thermoelectric and optoelectronic characteristics of double perovskite compounds using the full potential linearized augmented plane wave (FP-LAPW) approach. Here we investigated Rb2NaGaZ6 (Z = Br, I) to explore its band structure, and electronic, optical and transport properties. Born's stability criteria have confirmed the mechanical stability of these compounds. Analysis of the elastic properties reveals their ductile nature, as indicated by a Poisson coefficient (υ) greater than 0.26 and a Pugh ratio exceeding 1.75 for Rb2NaGaZ6 (Z = Br, I). Computation of the bandgap values shows that both compositions possess a direct bandgap nature, with respective values of 2.90 eV and 1.25 eV. This suggests that substituting Br with I brings the band edges closer together, resulting in a decrease in the bandgap value. The optical properties are assessed based on the absorption coefficient, reflectivity, and dielectric constants. The thermoelectric properties, including thermal and electrical conductivities, power factor (PF), and figure of merit (ZT), are determined using the BoltzTrap code. The ZT values indicate that both compositions exhibit promising potential for various transportation applications.
MicroCFI: Microarchitecture-Level Control-Flow Restrictions for Spectre Mitigation

Spectre attack exploits the vulnerability in speculative execution, an optimization technique for modern superscalar processors. Among the attack variants, Spectre-BTB and Spectre-RSB are the most threatening because they allow adversaries to execute arbitrary code in the transient execution context. However, there are few mitigation techniques for these Spectre variants due to the high degree of implementation difficulty. In this paper, we propose MicroCFI, a hardware/software co-design approach to mitigate Spectre-BTB and Spectre-RSB. The main idea of MicroCFI is to enforce control-flow integrity (CFI) in microarchitectural level of a program’s execution. Specifically, MicroCFI strictly limits possible forward and backward indirect branch targets predicted by BTB and RSB by imposing CFI properties on all potential targets. As indirect branches only have destinations to valid targets that satisfy these properties, MicroCFI significantly reduces the chance of arbitrary code execution in Spectre attacks. We implemented a prototype of MicroCFI using an LLVM compiler and performed an evaluation on MARSSx86, a simulator for x86 microarchitectures. The security evaluation shows that MicroCFI reduces the number of available Spectre gadgets by more than 90%, significantly increasing the complexity of the attack. The performance evaluation using the SPEC CPU 2017 benchmarks shows that MicroCFI introduces negligible performance overhead.
Enhancing Patient Care With the “David and Wendy” Approach: The Effectiveness of Ward Round Documentation Proformas

Background Surgical ward round documentation, essential for high-quality patient care, is often completed poorly. The advent of electronic medical records offers an opportunity to introduce proformas, aiding junior staff in completing notes both timely and accurately. We aimed to assess whether the introduction of a proforma would improve the quality and speed of ward round documentation. Methods We completed a prospective cohort analysis of ward round documentation at a single institution. Analysis was conducted on the documentation of a single surgical team over a 10-week period, comprising five weeks of baseline data collection followed by five weeks with implementation of a proforma. This proforma was based on the "David & Wendy" acronym, encompassing diet, activity, vital signs, investigations/IV therapy, drains/lines, wound assessment, examination findings, nursing concerns, drugs/deep vein thrombosis (DVT) prophylaxis, and barriers to discharge. Results A total of 711 ward round notes were analyzed, 349 with proforma and 362 without. Statistically significant improvements were observed in the documentation of diet, activity, investigations/IV therapy, drains/lines, wound assessment, nursing concerns, drugs/DVT prophylaxis, and barriers to discharge (p < 0.05) with proforma use. No significant difference was noted in the documentation of vital signs or examination findings. The time taken to finalize ward round notes was significantly reduced with the proforma (M = 31.28 vs. 60.05 minutes, p < 0.001). Conclusion The introduction of the David & Wendy proforma significantly improved the speed and quality of documentation for key surgical ward round information during our study.
Dust Under the Radar: Rethinking How to Evaluate the Impacts of Dust Events on Air Quality in the United States

Dust is an important and complex constituent of the atmospheric system, having significant impacts on the environment, climate, air quality, and human health. Although dust events are common across many regions of the United States, their impacts are not often prioritized in air quality mitigation strategies. We argue that there are at least three factors that result in underestimation of the social and environmental impact of dust events, making them receive less attention. These include (a) sparse monitoring stations with irregular spatial distribution in dust‐influenced regions, (b) inconsistency with dust sampling methods, and (c) sampling frequency and schedules, which can lead to missed dust events or underestimation of dust particle concentrations. Without addressing these three factors, it is challenging to characterize and understand the full air quality impacts of dust events in the United States. This paper highlights the need for additional monitoring to measure these events so that we can more fully evaluate and understand their impacts, as they are predicted to increase with climate change.
Structural basis for subversion of host cell actin cytoskeleton during Salmonella infection

Secreted bacterial type III secretion system (T3SS) proteins are essential for successful infection by many human pathogens. Both T3SS translocator SipC and effector SipA are critical for Salmonella infection by subversion of the host cell cytoskeleton, but the precise molecular interplay between them remains unknown. Here, using cryo–electron microscopy, we show that SipA binds along the F-actin grooves with a unique binding pattern. SipA stabilizes F-actin through charged interface residues and appears to prevent inorganic phosphate release through closure of the “back door” of adenosine 5′-triphosphate pocket. We also show that SipC enhances the binding of SipA to F-actin, thus demonstrating that a sequential presence of T3SS proteins in host cells is associated with a sequence of infection events—starting with actin nucleation, filament growth, and stabilization. Together, our data explain the coordinated interplay of a precisely tuned and highly effective mechanism during Salmonella infection and provide a blueprint for interfering with Salmonella effectors acting on actin.
Multi-domain feature joint optimization based on multi-view learning for improving the EEG decoding

Background Brain-computer interface (BCI) systems based on motor imagery (MI) have been widely used in neurorehabilitation. Feature extraction applied by the common spatial pattern (CSP) is very popular in MI classification. The effectiveness of CSP is highly affected by the frequency band and time window of electroencephalogram (EEG) segments and channels selected. Objective In this study, the multi-domain feature joint optimization (MDFJO) based on the multi-view learning method is proposed, which aims to select the discriminative features enhancing the classification performance. Method The channel patterns are divided using the Fisher discriminant criterion (FDC). Furthermore, the raw EEG is intercepted for multiple sub-bands and time interval signals. The high-dimensional features are constructed by extracting features from CSP on each EEG segment. Specifically, the multi-view learning method is used to select the optimal features, and the proposed feature sparsification strategy on the time level is proposed to further refine the optimal features. Results Two public EEG datasets are employed to validate the proposed MDFJO method. The average classification accuracy of the MDFJO in Data 1 and Data 2 is 88.29 and 87.21%, respectively. The classification result of MDFJO was significantly better than MSO (p < 0.05), FBCSP32 (p < 0.01), and other competing methods (p < 0.001). Conclusion Compared with the CSP, sparse filter band common spatial pattern (SFBCSP), and filter bank common spatial pattern (FBCSP) methods with channel numbers 16, 32 and all channels as well as MSO, the MDFJO significantly improves the test accuracy. The feature sparsification strategy proposed in this article can effectively enhance classification accuracy. The proposed method could improve the practicability and effectiveness of the BCI system.
A Bayesian approach for CT reconstruction with defect detection for subsea pipelines

Subsea pipelines can be inspected via 2D cross-sectional x-ray computed tomography (CT). Traditional reconstruction methods produce an image of the pipe’s interior that can be post-processed for detection of possible defects. In this paper we propose a novel Bayesian CT reconstruction method with built-in defect detection. We decompose the reconstruction into a sum of two images; one containing the overall pipe structure, and one containing defects, and infer the images simultaneously in a Gibbs scheme. Our method requires that prior information about the two images is very distinct, i.e. the first image should contain the large-scale and layered pipe structure, and the second image should contain small, coherent defects. We demonstrate our methodology with numerical experiments using synthetic and real CT data from scans of subsea pipes in cases with full and limited data. Experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in various data settings, with reconstruction quality comparable to existing techniques, while also providing defect detection with uncertainty quantification.
Innovation in Adaptive Leadership Management Model through the Development of Digital Mindset in Activator School Programs

This research aims to design measurement instruments of digital mindset and adaptive leadershiphip, and also design of adaptive leadershiphip management model through the development of digital mindset in activator school program. The samples are 296 teachers of activator high school taken using proportional random sampling. Measurement of adaptive leadershiphip is carried out through the distribution of questionnaire instruments prepared based on 5 (five) dimensions of adaptive leadershiphip, including: 1) Emotional intelligence, 2) Organizational justice, 3) Development, 4) Character, and 5) Problem solving. Meanwhile, digital mindset measurement is carried out through the distribution of questionnaire instruments prepared based on 7 (seven) dimensions of digital mindset, namely: 1) Abundance mindset, 2) Growth mindset, 3) Agile approach, 4) Comfort with ambiguity,5) Explorer’s mind, 6) Collaborative approach, and 7) Embracing diversity. The results of the design of the digital mindset and adaptive leadershiphip measurement instrument for activator high school teachers in DKI Jakarta have proven to be valid and reliable, so that this instrument can be used to measure the digital mindset of all activator high school teachers in the DKI Jakarta. The results of the design of the adaptive leadershiphip management model through the development of the digital mindset of activator high school teachers in DKI Jakarta can be seen in detail in Figure 12, namely the structural model of the influence of digital mindset towards adaptive leadershiphip, where of the 7 (seven) digital mindset dimensions, only 4 (four) dimensions that show a significant influence on adaptive leadershiphip, namely dimensions: abundance mindset, growth mindset, explorer mindset, and embracing diversity.
Using Cover Crop Mixtures to Reduce Nitrate Leaching and Supply Nitrogen to Corn: Models to Inform Adaptive Management

Agriculture faces two great sustainability challenges: the ability to provide nutrition for a growing world population and the ability to increase ecosystem services that maintain clean air, clean water, and other benefits to humanity. Planting cover crops is one management practice that can contribute towards realizing the goal of increasing ecosystem services. However, to provide multiple ecosystem services and to manage tradeoffs between services, cover crops will need to be intensively managed. This dissertation develops models and tools that can support the adaptive management of cover crops to reduce nitrate (NO3 ) leaching and supply nitrogen (N) to a subsequent corn crop through N mineralized from decomposing residues. Models were developed from a wide range of cover crop experiments carried out over 14 site years that included 39 different treatments of cover crop mixtures and monocultures composed from 18 different species of grasses, brassicas, and legumes. A model for potential NO3 leaching under cover crop mixtures indicated that increasing total non-legume biomass N content (sum of fall and spring N contents) of a cover crop reduced leaching at a rate of -0.91 kg NO3 -N kg -1 biomass N, up to a threshold of 51 kg N ha -1 total non-legume biomass N, above which increasing non-legume biomass N had no further effect. In a model for relative corn yield following cover crop mixtures, relative yield was negatively related to fall and spring cover crop biomass carbon to nitrogen (C:N) ratios and positively related to soil carbon (C) concentration. In another model, the response of unfertilized corn yields to a previous cover crop, relative to fallow conditions, increased with cover crop biomass N content and a decreasing biomass C:N ratio, with regression models that were
The Composition and Antimicrobial Activity of the Essential Oil of Teucrium Stocksianum Subsp. Stocksianum Leaf from Oman

The essential oil of Teucrium stocksianum Boiss. subsp. stocksianum leaf grown in Oman was analyzed by GC-MS. Forty seven components amounting to 76.1% of the total oil were identified. The major constituents were α-cadinol (7.6%), β-selinene (6.4%), trans-verbenol (5.9%), caryophyllene oxide (5.7%), α-phellandren-8-ol (5.0%), verbenone (5.0%) and δ-cadinene (5.1%). The antimicrobial activity of the oil was tested against a panel of seventeen bacterial and six fungal strains by the disc diffusion method. The oil inhibited the growth of all test organisms at various levels; however, it showed significant inhibitory activity against Staphylococcus and Streptococcus species, as well as yeasts. The minimal inhibitory concentrations (MIC) were also determined.