Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Temperature and Precipitation More Than Tree Cover Affect the Distribution Patterns of Epiphytic Mosses within the Orthotrichaceae Family in China and Adjacent Areas

Epiphytes, including vascular and non-vascular, constitute a large part of global plant biodiversity. Distribution of obligatory epiphytic bryophytes results from climate and local habitat conditions. The most important epiphytic bryophytes and at the same time poorly investigated and taxonomically problematic ones belong to the family Orthotrichaceae. Epiphytic mosses are also ideal organisms for species modelling, because of having no roots, they are highly dependent on external environmental conditions. For this purpose, we used the ecological niche modelling approach to define their potential distribution in China and adjacent areas and explore factors that shape this distribution. We used 617 occurrence records of 23 species from six genera within the Orthotrichaceae family. Our results suggest that the distribution of members of the Orthotrichaceae family is predominantly affected by bioclimatic variables, especially bio10 (mean temperature of the warmest quarter), bio15 (precipitation seasonality), bio18 (precipitation of the warmest quarter), bio19 (precipitation of the coldest quarter), bio9 (mean temperature of the driest quarter), and bio2 (mean diurnal range). However, the distribution of particular genera is ruled by a different set of those variables. The distribution of two genera (Leratia and Ulota) is also highly influenced by land cover (especially mixed/other trees), whereas human footprint shows a moderate contribution to models of three genera (Lewinskya, Orthotrichum, Nyholmiella). Based on the occupied climatic niche and distribution patterns, representatives of the studied family are divided into two groups. The ‘western-montane group‘ is characterised by lower temperatures and lower precipitation whereas the ‘eastern-lowland’ group‘ by more humid and warmer conditions.
Multiple Pulse Amperometry—An Antifouling Approach for Nitrite Determination Using Carbon Fiber Microelectrodes

Nitrite is a ubiquitous pollutant in modern society. Developing new strategies for its determination is very important, and electroanalytical methods present outstanding performance on this task. However, the use of bare electrodes is not recommended because of their predisposition to poisoning and passivation. We herein report a procedure to overcome these limitations on carbon fiber microelectrodes through pulsed amperometry. A three-pulse amperometry approach was used to reduce the current decay from 47% (after 20 min under constant potential) to virtually 0%. Repeatability and reproducibility were found to have an RSD lower than 0.5% and 7%, respectively. Tap water and synthetic inorganic saliva samples were fortified with nitrite, and the results obtained with the proposed sensor were in good agreement with the amount added.
Stress Estimation Using Biometric and Activity Indicators to Improve QoL of the Elderly

It is essential to estimate the stress state of the elderly to improve their QoL. Stress states change every day and hour, depending on the activities performed and the duration/intensity. However, most existing studies estimate stress states using only biometric information or specific activities (e.g., sleep duration, exercise duration/amount, etc.) as explanatory variables and do not consider all daily living activities. It is necessary to link various daily living activities and biometric information in order to estimate the stress state more accurately. Specifically, we construct a stress estimation model using machine learning with the answers to a stress status questionnaire obtained every morning and evening as the ground truth and the biometric data during each of the performed activities and the new proposed indicator including biological and activity perspectives as the features. We used the following methods: Baseline Method 1, in which the RRI variance and Lorenz plot area for 4 h after waking and 24 h before the questionnaire were used as features; Baseline Method 2, in which sleep time was added as a feature to Baseline Method 1; the proposed method, in which the Lorenz plot area per activity and total time per activity were added. We compared the results with the proposed method, which added the new indicators as the features. The results of the evaluation experiments using the one-month data collected from five elderly households showed that the proposed method had an average estimation accuracy of 59%, 7% better than Baseline Method 1 (52%) and 4% better than Baseline Method 2 (55%).
Involvement of Target of Rapamycin (TOR) Signaling in the Regulation of Crosstalk between Ribosomal Protein Small Subunit 6 Kinase-1 (RPS6K-1) and Ribosomal Proteins

The target of rapamycin (TOR) protein phosphorylates its downstream effector p70kDa ribosomal protein S6 kinases (S6K1) for ribosome biogenesis and translation initiation in eukaryotes. However, the molecular mechanism of TOR-S6K1-ribosomal protein (RP) signaling is not well understood in plants. In the present study, we report the transcriptional upregulation of ribosomal protein large and small subunit (RPL and RPS) genes in the previously established TOR overexpressing transgenic lines of rice (in Oryza sativa ssp. indica, variety BPT-5204, TR-2.24 and TR-15.1) and of Arabidopsis thaliana (in Col 0 ecotype, ATR-1.4.27 and ATR-3.7.32). The mRNA levels of RP genes from this study were compared with those previously available in transcriptomic datasets on the expression of RPs in relation to TOR inhibitor and in the TOR-RNAi lines of Arabidopsis thaliana. We further analyzed TOR activity, i.e., S6K1 phosphorylation in SALK lines of Arabidopsis with mutation in rpl6, rpl18, rpl23, rpl24 and rps28C, where the rpl18 mutant showed inactivation of S6K1 phosphorylation. We also predicted similar putative Ser/Thr phosphorylation sites for ribosomal S6 kinases (RSKs) in the RPs of Oryza sativa ssp. indica and Arabidopsis thaliana. The findings of this study indicate that the TOR pathway is possibly interlinked in a cyclic manner via the phosphorylation of S6K1 as a modulatory step for the regulation of RP function to switch ‘on’/‘off’ the translational regulation for balanced plant growth.
Relation of remanence and coercivity of Nd,(Dy)‐Fe,(Co)‐B sintered permanent magnets to crystallite orientation

For sintered permanent magnets based on Nd2Fe14B having magnetically oriented crystallites, a simple method of measuring the degree of alignment by x‐ray diffraction is described, using the inverse pole figure technique. The results are related to a distribution function for the easy axis which is a direct measure of remanence. The fraction of the ideal [001] texture component in both Nd‐Fe‐B and Nd,Dy‐Fe,Co‐B magnets is enhanced by doping with oxygen, resulting in a measurable increase in remanence and improved loop squareness. The observed increase of the intrinsic coercivity iHc with better crystallite orientation is also discussed.
Real-time dense stereo system with rectification for autonomous navigation and mapping

The overall goal of the research project reported here is to create a novel system that can combine input from multiple passive sensors at different viewpoints (such as uninhabited aerial vehicles) into a single integrated three-dimensional (3D) view of a scene. This form of intelligent data processing, known as Volume Registration, can further exploit the available information to enable improved surveillance, reconnaissance and situational awareness, and thus offers substantial potential benefit to military applications. This paper focuses on the case of multiple sensors onboard UAVs operating at mid-altitude, and describes two complementary techniques that have been investigated in parallel to address this challenge. The first of these is depth from disparity, which allows a real-time per-pixel estimation of the distance of scene objects from the camera; the second is shape from silhouette, which back-projects a segmented version of the image onto a 3D block of voxels and 'carves' a 3D model over multiple frames. The main steps of each algorithm are outlined, along with appropriate results, in order to demonstrate how they could form a useful part of a practical Volume Registration system. A number of possible extensions and improvements to the system architecture are also discussed to improve the accuracy and efficiency of these techniques, and their applicability to the more complex low-altitude case is discussed.
Assessment of Oxidative Stress Indices and Total Phenolics Concentrations in Obese Adult Women—The Effect of Training with Supplemental Oxygen: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Background: The aim of this study was to determine the effect of using an oxygen-enriched breathing mixture during controlled physical training on blood oxidative stress parameters and total phenolics (TP) concentrations in obese adult women. Methods: A prospective randomized controlled trial study included 60 women aged 19–68 with BMIs greater than 30 kg/m2. Patients were randomly assigned to the study group (n = 30), which received additional intervention in supplementing the breathing mixture with oxygen at the flow of 6 L/min during training sessions, and the control group (n = 30). At the beginning and at the end of the study, anthropometric assessments (height and weight and BMI) and blood tests (CRP, FRAP, TBARS, TP, BAC, and La) were performed. For each patient, an individual endurance training plan was established on a cycloergometer, including 12 training units, based on a cardiopulmonary exercise test (CPET). Results: A decrease in blood TBARS concentration was observed in each study group. For the control group, the change was more remarkable, and the difference between the groups was significant at (p < 0.05; ES: 0.583). Training with the oxygen breathing mixture increased blood concentrations of TP, while a decrease in TP in blood was observed in the group without oxygen supplementation during physical training. The difference in the responses between the groups was significant at (p < 0.05; ES: 0.657) Conclusions: Increasing the concentration of oxygen in the respiratory mixture under conditions of increased exercise was shown to be safe because it did not exacerbate oxidative stress in the obese group.
A Safety-Aware Location Privacy-Preserving IoV Scheme with Road Congestion-Estimation in Mobile Edge Computing

By leveraging the conventional Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs), the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) paradigm has attracted the attention of different research and development bodies. However, IoV deployment is still at stake as many security and privacy issues are looming; location tracking using overheard safety messages is a good example of such issues. In the context of location privacy, many schemes have been deployed to mitigate the adversary’s exploiting abilities. The most appealing schemes are those using the silent period feature, since they provide an acceptable level of privacy. Unfortunately, the cost of silent periods in most schemes is the trade-off between privacy and safety, as these schemes do not consider the timing of silent periods from the perspective of safety. In this paper, and by exploiting the nature of public transport and role vehicles (overseers), we propose a novel location privacy scheme, called OVR, that uses the silent period feature by letting the overseers ensure safety and allowing other vehicles to enter into silence mode, thus enhancing their location privacy. This scheme is inspired by the well-known war strategy “Give up a Pawn to Save a Chariot”. Additionally, the scheme does support road congestion estimation in real time by enabling the estimation locally on their On-Board Units that act as mobile edge servers and deliver these data to a static edge server that is implemented at the cell tower or road-side unit level, which boosts the connectivity and reduces network latencies. When OVR is compared with other schemes in urban and highway models, the overall results show its beneficial use.
Positional Distribution of Fatty Acids in Processed Chinook Salmon Roe Lipids Determined by 13C Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (NMR)

Recently, there has been great interest in the lipidomic of marine lipids and their potential health benefits. Processing of seafood products can potentially modify the characteristics and composition of lipids. The present study investigated the effect of processing methods (salting and fermentation) on the positional distribution of fatty acids of Chinook salmon roe using 13C nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR). The NMR analysis provided information on the carbonyl atom, double bond/olefinic, glycerol backbone, aliphatic group, and chain ending methyl group regions. The obtained data showed that docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) is the main fatty acid esterified at the sn-2 position of the triacylglycerides (TAGs), while other fatty acids, such as eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and stearidonic acid (SDA), were randomly distributed or preferentially esterified at the sn-1 and sn-3 positions. Fermentation of salmon roe was found to enrich the level of DHA at the sn-2 position of the TAG. The processing of roe by both salt drying and fermentation did not appear to affect the proportion of EPA at the sn-2 position. This present study demonstrated that fish roe processing can enhance the proportion of DHA at the sn-2 position and potentially improve its bioavailability.
Multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) as compliant electrodes for dielectric elastomer actuators

A stacked dielectric elastomer actuator (DEA) consists of multiple layers of elastomeric dielectrics interleaved with compliant electrodes. It is capable of taking a tensile load if only the interleaving compliant electrodes provide a good bonding and enough elasticity. However, the stacked configuration of DEA was found to produce less actuation strain as compared to a single-layer configuration of pre-stretched membrane. It is believed the binder for compliant electrodes has a significant influence on the actuation strain. Yet, there has yet systematic study on the effect of binder. In this paper, we will study the effects of binder, solvent, and surface fictionalization on the compliant electrodes using the conductive filler of Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotube (MWCNT). Two types of binders are used, namely a soft silicone rubber (Mold Max 10T) and a soft silicone gel (Sylgard 527 gel). The present experiments show that the actuators using binders in the compliant electrodes produce a much lower areal strain as compared to the ones without binders in them. It is found that introducing a binder in the electrodes decreases the conductivity. The MWCNT compliant electrode with binder remains conductive (<1TΩ) up to a strain of 300%, whereas the one without binder remains conductive up to a strain of 800%. Changing the type of binder to a softer and less-viscous one increases the percolation ratio for MWCNT-COOH filler from 5% to 15% but this does not significantly increase the actuation strain. In addition, this study investigates the effect of MWCNT functionalization on the dielectric elastomeric actuation. The compliant electrodes using the MWCNT functionalized with (-COOH) group was also found to have a lower electrical conductivity and areal actuation strain, in comparison to the ones using the pristine MWCNT filler. In addition to binder, solvent for dispersing MWCNT-COOH was found to affect the actuation strain even though the solvent is eventually removed by evaporation from the MWCNT-COOH electrode. The actuators with MWCNT-COOHs electrodes, prepared from the solvent dispersion, produce a low actuation strain even though these electrodes have good conductivity and these solvents do not degrade the physical properties of the dielectric layer. This finding on the solvent effect has yet been clearly understood.
QANet - Quality Assurance Network for Microscopy Cell Segmentation

Tools and methods for automatic image segmentation are rapidly developing, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. While these methods are designed to be as general as possible, there are no guarantees for their performance on new data. The choice between methods is usually based on benchmark performance whereas the data in the benchmark can be significantly different than that of the user. We introduce a novel Deep Learning method which, given an image and a proposed corresponding segmentation, estimates the Intersection over Union measure (IoU) with respect to the unknown ground truth. We refer to this method as a Quality Assurance Network - QANet. The QANet is designed to give the user an estimate of the segmentation quality on the users own, private, data without the need for human inspection or labelling. It is based on the RibCage Network architecture, originally proposed %on \cite{arbelle2017SAN} as a discriminator in an adversarial network framework. Promising IoU prediction results are demonstrated based on the Cell Segmentation Benchmark. % \cite{Ulman17} The code is freely available at: TBD
IoT-Based Systems for Soil Nutrients Assessment in Horticulture

Soil nutrients assessment has great importance in horticulture. Implementation of an information system for horticulture faces many challenges: (i) great spatial variability within farms (e.g., hilly topography); (ii) different soil properties (e.g., different water holding capacity, different content in sand, sit, clay, and soil organic matter, different pH, and different permeability) for different cultivated plants; (iii) different soil nutrient uptake by different cultivated plants; (iv) small size of monoculture; and (v) great variety of farm components, agroecological zone, and socio-economic factors. Advances in information and communication technologies enable creation of low cost, efficient information systems that would improve resources management and increase productivity and sustainability of horticultural farms. We present an information system based on different sensing capability, Internet of Things, and mobile application for horticultural farms. An overview on different techniques and technologies for soil fertility evaluation is also presented. The results obtained in a botanical garden that simulates the diversity of environment and plant diversity of a horticultural farm are discussed considering the challenges identified in the literature and field research. The study provides a theoretical basis and technical support for the development of technologies that enable horticultural farmers to improve resources management.
Cardioprotective Effect of Centaurea castriferrei Borbás & Waisb Extract against Doxorubicin-Induced Cardiotoxicity in H9c2 Cells

Doxorubicin (DOX) is one of the most used chemotherapeutic agents in the treatment of various types of cancer. However, a continual problem that is associated with its application in therapeutic regimens is the development of dose-dependent cardiotoxicity. The progression of this process is associated with a range of different mechanisms, but especially with the high level of oxidative stress. The aim of the study was to evaluate the effects of the water and methanol–water extracts from the plant Centaurea castriferrei (CAS) obtained by the ultrasound-assisted extraction method on the DOX-induced cardiotoxicity in the rat embryonic cardiomyocyte cell line H9c2. The H9c2 cells were treated for 48 h with the DOX and water or methanol–water extracts, or a combination (DOX + CAS H2O/CAS MeOH). The MTT assay, cell cycle analysis, and apoptosis detection revealed that both the tested extracts significantly abolished the cytotoxic effect caused by DOX. Moreover, the detection of oxidative stress by the CellROX reagent, the evaluation of the number of AP sites, and the expressions of the genes related to the oxidative stress defense showed substantial reductions in the oxidative stress levels in the H9c2 cells treated with the combination of DOX and CAS H2O/CAS MeOH compared with the DOX administered alone. The tested extracts did not affect the cytotoxic effect of DOX on the MCF-7 breast cancer cell line. The obtained results constitute the basis for further research in the context of the application of C. castriferrei extracts as adjuvants in the therapy regiments of cancer patients treated with DOX.
Formulation, Optimization and Evaluation of Cytarabine-Loaded Iron Oxide Nanoparticles: From In Vitro to In Vivo Evaluation of Anticancer Activity

Innovative drug delivery systems based on iron oxide nanoparticles (INPs) has generated a lot of interest worldwide and have prime biomedical benefits in anticancer therapy. There are still issues reported regarding the stability, absorption, and toxicity of iron oxide nanoparticles (INPs) when administered due to its rapid surface oxidation and agglomeration with blood proteins. To solve this problem, we have synthesized trehalose-coated stabilized iron oxide nanoparticles (TINPs) by a co-precipitation technique. The surface coating of INPs with trehalose helps to improve the stability, prevents protein binding, and increase absorption uptake inside the body. Developed TINPs was then loaded with anticancer drug cytarabine by chemical crosslinking encapsulation method using suitable solvent. Engineered cytarabine-loaded trehalose-coated stabilized iron oxide nanoparticles (CY-TINPs) were optimized for particle size, zeta potential (−13.03 mV), and solid-state characterization such as differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), and transmission electron microscope (TEM) studies. The particle size of 50 nm was achieved for developed CY-TINPs. The developed CY-TINPs was further evaluated for in vitro cell line investigations which confirmed potential cytotoxic activity. Developed CY-TINPs show remarkable enhancement in in vivo pharmacokinetic parameters Cmax as 425.26 ± 2.11 and AUC0–72 as 11,546.64 ± 139.82 as compared to pure drug. Compared to traditional drug delivery, the CY-TINPs formulation can effectively delay release, improve bioavailability, and boost cytotoxic activity against tumors.
Performance Analysis of Multihop Full-Duplex NOMA Systems with Imperfect Interference Cancellation and Near-Field Path-Loss

Outage probability (OP) and potential throughput (PT) of multihop full-duplex (FD) nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA) systems are addressed in the present paper. More precisely, two metrics are derived in the closed-form expressions under the impact of both imperfect successive interference cancellation (SIC) and imperfect self-interference cancellation. Moreover, to model short transmission distance from the transmit and receive antennae at relays, the near-field path-loss is taken into consideration. Additionally, the impact of the total transmit power on the performance of these metrics is rigorously derived. Furthermore, the mathematical framework of the baseline systems is provided too. Computer-based simulations via the Monte Carlo method are given to verify the accuracy of the proposed framework, confirm our findings, and highlight the benefits of the proposed systems compared with the baseline one.