Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Contribution of Forests and Trees to Sustainable Diets

With the growing demands from a population expected to reach 9 billion people by 2050, it is unclear how our current global food system will meet future food needs. Ensuring that all people have access to adequate and nutritious food produced in an environmentally and socio-culturally sustainable manner is one of the greatest challenges of our time. “Sustainable diets” have been proposed as a multidimensional framework to address the need for nutritious and adequate food in the context of the many challenges facing the world today: reducing poverty and hunger, improving environmental health, enhancing human well-being and health, and strengthening local food networks, sustainable livelihoods and cultural heritage. This paper examines the contribution of forests and trees to sustainable diets, covering among others, nutritional, cultural, environmental and provisioning aspects. The literature reviewed highlight major opportunities to strengthen the contribution of forest and tree foods to sustainable diets. However, several constraints need to be removed. They relate to: cultural aspects, sustainable use of non-wood forest products, organization of forest food provisioning, limited knowledge of forest food composition, challenges in adapting management of forests and trees to account for forest foods, and in integrating forest biodiversity into complex landscapes managed for multiple benefits. Finally, the paper identifies research gaps and makes recommendations to enhance the contribution of forest foods to sustainable diets through increased awareness and better integration of information and knowledge on nutritious forest foods into national nutrition strategies and programs.
Costs of Anesthesia

he practice of anesthesia faces many of the conflicting demands for better technology, lower T costs, improved outcome, and tighter control found in our current health care environment. The providers of anesthesia must make decisions amid demands from surgical patients, hospitals, purveyors of technology, and nonpatient payers. These anesthesia providers, in addition to being expensive themselves, order preoperative tests, control operating and recovery room usage, and consume large amounts of hospital supplies and services. Expenditures controlled by anesthesia providers represent 3-5% of the total health care costs of the United States. (Anesthesia provider charges approximate $9 billion per year. Roizen estimates $11.7 billion for preoperative tests [personal communication]. Anesthesia supply and facility charges are unknown. Total health care costs are approximately $800 billion [ll.) The market for surgery and anesthesia does not follow conventional supply/ demand and cost/quality equilibrium laws (2). This is known as market failure, a situation that calls for special strategies for controlling costs and assessing tradeoffs. Investigating and understanding these strategies in the anesthesia market may produce strategies for other health care markets, such as intensive care medicine, which operate under similar conditions of market failure and consume large amounts of health care dollars (3). Anesthesiology is a facility-based service integral to quality health care, without which most surgery and much intensive care would not be possible (4). Approximately 26 million surgical procedures are performed in the United States each year. The contribution to, and control of, large dollar expenditures in this market by anesthesia providers, as well as insurance companies and other payer groups, requires their inclusion in studies of delivering and paying for quality health care. Analyzing the costs and cost determinants, as well as the risks, benefits, and effectiveness of
A Deep Convolutional Neural Network Based Virtual Elderly Companion Agent

This study presents a Virtual Elderly Companion Agent that based on speech spectrograms and deep convolutional neural networks. The system can dynamically detect and analyze the user's emotion from the dialogue and give appropriate positive feedback. The proposed system architecture is divided into two parts. The client side supports Android operating system; the server side is implemented in python, and applied GoogleLeNet and AlexNet for emotion recognition. The system supports natural language speech input, and then analyzes the converted speech spectrogram to provide appropriate feedback.
Molecular Determinants of Virulence and Stability of a Reporter-Expressing H5N1 Influenza A Virus

ABSTRACT We previously reported that an H5N1 virus carrying the Venus reporter gene, which was inserted into the NS gene segment from the A/Puerto Rico/8/1934(H1N1) virus (Venus-H5N1 virus), became more lethal to mice, and the reporter gene was stably maintained after mouse adaptation compared with the wild-type Venus-H5N1 (WT-Venus-H5N1) virus. However, the basis for this difference in virulence and Venus stability was unclear. Here, we investigated the molecular determinants behind this virulence and reporter stability by comparing WT-Venus-H5N1 virus with a mouse-adapted Venus-H5N1 (MA-Venus-H5N1) virus. To determine the genetic basis for these differences, we used reverse genetics to generate a series of reassortants of these two viruses. We found that reassortants with PB2 from MA-Venus-H5N1 (MA-PB2), MA-PA, or MA-NS expressed Venus more stably than did WT-Venus-H5N1 virus. We also found that a single mutation in PB2 (V25A) or in PA (R443K) increased the virulence of the WT-Venus-H5N1 virus in mice and that the presence of both of these mutations substantially enhanced the pathogenicity of the virus. Our results suggest roles for PB2 and PA in the stable maintenance of a foreign protein as an NS1 fusion protein in influenza A virus. IMPORTANCE The ability to visualize influenza viruses has far-reaching benefits in influenza virus research. Previously, we reported that an H5N1 virus bearing the Venus reporter gene became more pathogenic to mice and that its reporter gene was more highly expressed and more stably maintained after mouse adaptation. Here, we investigated the molecular determinants behind this enhanced virulence and reporter stability. We found that mutations in PB2 (V25A) and PA (R443K) play crucial roles in the stable maintenance of a foreign protein as an NS1 fusion protein in influenza A virus and in the virulence of influenza virus in mice. Our findings further our knowledge of the pathogenicity of influenza virus in mammals and will help advance influenza virus-related live-imaging studies in vitro and in vivo.
Funktionale Berechnung in einem uniform nebenläufigen Kalkül mit logischen Variablen

Liegt nicht vor. The thesis is written in German, but will be translated soon. English title: Functional Computation in a Uniformly Concurrent Calculus with Logic Variables. We present the delta-calculus, a model of uniformly concurrent computation. It integrates eager and lazy functional computation and describes the intended complexity behavior in both cases. We call concurrent computation uniformly concurrent, if result, termination and complexity are independent from the computation order. We establish theses properties for the delta-calculus by proving its uniform confluence. The delta-calculus extends to models of concurrent computation providing for consumable resources and indeterminism. Such are the gamma-calculus, a foundation of concurrent computation with constraints, and the pi-calculus, a successor of CCS based on channel communication. The delta-calculus is a relational calculus with procedural abstraction and application. It provides for communication over logic variables and for suspension on their instantiation. Both mechanisms come naturally with parallel composition and declaration. We embed the eager and the lazy lamda-calculus into the delta-calculus. Using explicit references we guarantee that functional arguments are evaluated at most once. Explicit references are a special form of logic variables. These are needed too for representing lazy functional control. We prove the adequacy of the embedding of the eager lamda-calculus with respect to termination and complexity. We conjecture that the embedding of the lazy lamda preserves termination and improves complexity.
Properties of Poly(Lactic Acid) Filled with Hydrophobic Cellulose/SiO2 Composites

Hydrophobic cellulose/SiO2 composites were prepared. Resultant hydrophobic cellulose/SiO2 composites were melt mixed with PLA using a twin-screw extruder to obtain 10 wt% masterbatch. Again, 10 wt% masterbatch was melt mixed with virgin PLA, resulting in PLA containing hydrophobic cellulose/SiO2 at various contents (1 wt%, 3 wt%, and 5 wt%) using a twin-screw extruder (barrel zone temperature: 150/160/170/180/190°C (die zone)). Injection-molded samples were prepared for mechanical properties evaluation. Results showed that poor mechanical properties found at low percent loadings were associated with a significant depolymerization of masterbatch composition due to twice thermal treatments. Note that 10 wt% masterbatch was subjected to injection molding straight away in a one-step process. Results showed that 10 wt% hydrophobic cellulose/SiO2/PLA composites exhibited mechanical properties equivalent to neat PLA. Importantly, the addition of hydrophobic cellulose/SiO2 at high percent loading could favor landfill degradation of PLA via water absorption ability of cellulose. It was expected that enzymatic hydrolysis of cellulose resulted in the formation of lactic acid and silicic acid which consequently catalyzed the hydrolytic degradation (acid hydrolysis) of PLA. The hydrolytic degradation produced carboxylic acid end group which further accelerated the degradation rate.
Coffee-Ring-Free Ultrasonic Spray Coating Single-Emission Layers for White Organic Light-Emitting Devices and Their Energy-Transfer Mechanism

Ultrasonic spray coating (USC) process is an alternative for low-cost solution-processed white organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs). However, complicated flow behaviors in the thick liquid layer, especially in multicomponent solution, result in the existence of ripples (coffee rings) in organic films. The ripples keep the USC process from being generally recognized as an efficient solution process for white OLEDs. Therefore, a slope method is proposed to avoid the emergence of ripples during the USC process. In the method, just like centrifugal force in a spin-coating process, gravity is used to remove redundant solution so that the remaining liquid layer can stay uniform under the control of substrate surface forces. Based on this, uniform organic films consisting of multiple components are obtained, and they are used as emitting layers to realize efficient white OLEDs. The white OLEDs based on the USC binary doping and ternary doping single-emission layer exhibit excellent electroluminescent performan.
An injecting method of physical damping to haptic interfaces based on FPGA

In this paper, an injecting method of physical damping to haptic interfaces is proposed. For injecting adjustable physical damping, time-domain passivity controller is implemented in hardware level with FPGA. Noise free velocity signal can be estimated with T-method. Instead of force command from the virtual environment, directly measured current signal with Hall sensor is used for calculating more accurate energy flow. The entire time-domain passivity control scheme is implemented with several different control routines inside FPGA, and through this hardware implementation, noisy behavior of the conventional software based time-domain passivity controller can be significantly removed.
Structure of a Human Astrovirus Capsid-Antibody Complex and Mechanistic Insights into Virus Neutralization

ABSTRACT Human astroviruses (HAstVs) are a leading cause of viral diarrhea in young children, the immunocompromised, and the elderly. There are no vaccines or antiviral therapies against HAstV disease. Several lines of evidence point to the presence of protective antibodies in healthy adults as a mechanism governing protection against reinfection by HAstV. However, development of anti-HAstV therapies is hampered by the gap in knowledge of protective antibody epitopes on the HAstV capsid surface. Here, we report the structure of the HAstV capsid spike domain bound to the neutralizing monoclonal antibody PL-2. The antibody uses all six complementarity-determining regions to bind to a quaternary epitope on each side of the dimeric capsid spike. We provide evidence that the HAstV capsid spike is a receptor-binding domain and that the antibody neutralizes HAstV by blocking virus attachment to cells. We identify patches of conserved amino acids that overlap the antibody epitope and may comprise a receptor-binding site. Our studies provide a foundation for the development of therapies to prevent and treat HAstV diarrheal disease. IMPORTANCE Human astroviruses (HAstVs) infect nearly every person in the world during childhood and cause diarrhea, vomiting, and fever. Despite the prevalence of this virus, little is known about how antibodies in healthy adults protect them against reinfection. Here, we determined the crystal structure of a complex of the HAstV capsid protein and a virus-neutralizing antibody. We show that the antibody binds to the outermost spike domain of the capsid, and we provide evidence that the antibody blocks virus attachment to human cells. Importantly, our findings suggest that a subunit-based vaccine focusing the immune system on the HAstV capsid spike domain could be effective in protecting children against HAstV disease.
Deliberate self harm (and attempted suicide).

Introduction The lifetime prevalence of deliberate self-harm is about 3% to 5% of the population in Europe and the USA, and has been increasing. Familial, biological, and psychosocial factors may contribute. Risks are higher in women and young adults, people who are socially isolated or deprived, and people with psychiatric or personality disorders.
Industrial perspective of gastroretentive drug delivery systems: Physicochemical, biopharmaceutical, technological and regulatory consideration

Introduction: Gastroretentive drug delivery systems (GRDDS) can overcome drawbacks associated with oral drug delivery, by defeating natural physiological principles. Various gastroretentive technologies have been developed in the past, but few of them achieved success on the market. Areas covered: This review is focused on the key concepts required to make a high-quality drug product available in a timely and economical manner. Expert opinion: Pharmacotherapy of various disease states can be amended by drug repurposing through GRDDS. Assessment of the effect of the fed and fasted condition on product performance should be necessary during initial development phases. Dual working technology would be a possible way to overcome drawbacks associated with different GRDDS. Before development of a drug product, the principles of scale up and process validation must be considered to improve the quality and market availability of GRDDS. Knowledge of all regulatory aspects will help to deliver a product to the market within a reasonable timeframe and in a cost-effective manner.
Differentiation between short and long TCP flows: predictability of the response time

Internet measurements show that a small number of large TCP flows are responsible for the largest amount of data transferred, whereas most of the TCP sessions are made up of few packets. Several authors have invoked this property to suggest the use of scheduling algorithms, which favor short jobs, such as LAS (least attained service), to differentiate between short and long TCP flows. We propose a packet level stateless, threshold based scheduling mechanism for TCP flows, RuN2C. We describe an implementation of this mechanism, which has the advantage of being TCP compatible and progressively deployable. We compare the behavior of RuN2C with LAS based mechanisms through analytical models and simulations. As an analytical model, we use a two level priority processor sharing PS + PS. In the PS + PS system, a connection is classified as high or low priority depending on the amount of service it has obtained. We show that PS + PS reduces the mean response time in comparison with standard processor sharing when the hazard rate of the file size distribution is decreasing. By simulations we study the impact of RuN2C on extreme values of response times and the mean number of connections in the system. Both simulations and analytical results show that RuN2C has a very beneficial effect on the delay of short flows, while treating large flows as the current TCP implementation does. In contrast, we find that LAS based mechanisms can lead to pathological behavior in extreme cases.
Noncommutative two-dimensional gravities

We give formulations of noncommutative two-dimensional gravities in terms of noncommutative gauge theories. We survey their classical solutions and show that solutions of the corresponding commutative theories continue to be solutions in the noncommutative theories as well. We argue that the existence of ‘twisted’ diffeomorphisms, recently introduced in Aschieri et al (2005 Class. Quantum Grav. 22 3511), is crucial for this conclusion.
REALIZED NON-LINEAR STOCHASTIC VOLATILITY MODELS WITH ASYMMETRIC EFFECTS AND GENERALIZED STUDENT'S T -DISTRIBUTIONS

This study proposes a class of realized non-linear stochastic volatility models with asymmetric effects and generalized Student’s t-error distributions by applying three families of power transformation—exponential, modulus, and Yeo-Johnson—to lagged log volatility. The proposed class encompasses a raw version of the realized stochastic volatility model. In the Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm, an efficient Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) method is developed to update the latent log volatility and transformation parameter, whereas the other parameters that could not be sampled directly are updated by an efficient Riemann manifold HMC method. Empirical studies on daily returns and four realized volatility estimators of the Tokyo Stock Price Index (TOPIX) over 4-year and 8-year periods demonstrate statistical evidence supporting the incorporation of skew distribution into the error density in the returns and the use of power transformations of lagged log volatility.
Cation Disorder In Cu2ZnSnS4 Thin Films: Effect On Solar Cell Performances

High (300 °C) and low (160 °C) temperature post deposition annealing treatments are performed on Cu2ZnSnS4 (CZTS) thin film solar cells to modify the order degree of the CZTS absorber and investigate its effect on the device performances. Large and reversible changes of solar cell parameters are observed, with photovoltaic conversion efficiencies varying from about 4% in the case of more ordered materials, up to nearly 8% after the disordering treatment. Both spectrophotometry and photoluminescence reveal that the ordered materials are characterized by a higher bandgap and a lower deep defect density, whereas the absorption tails and the red shift of the luminescence peak compared to the bandgap are found to be independent of the ordering level. Coherently with the bandgap variation, solar cells in the ordered state are characterized by a lower short circuit current density and a higher open circuit voltage. Ordered devices are found to be limited by low fill factor values, often associated with anomalous “S-shaped” light J–V curves revealing a blocking behavior. A mechanism based on the increase of a blocking barrier at the CZTS/MoS2 back interface induced by a change in the valence band offset is proposed to explain the lower performances of the ordered devices.
A more efficient search strategy for aging genes based on connectivity

MOTIVATION Many aging genes have been found from unbiased screens in model organisms. Genetic interventions promoting longevity are usually quantitative, while in many other biological fields (e.g. development) null mutations alone have been very informative. Therefore, in the case of aging the task is larger and the need for a more efficient genetic search strategy is especially strong. RESULTS The topology of genetic and metabolic networks is organized according to a scale-free distribution, in which hubs with large numbers of links are present. We have developed a computational model of aging genes as the hubs of biological networks. The computational model shows that, after generalized damage, the function of a network with scale-free topology can be significantly restored by a limited intervention on the hubs. Analyses of data on aging genes and biological networks support the applicability of the model to biological aging. The model also might explain several of the properties of aging genes, including the high degree of conservation across different species. The model suggests that aging genes tend to have a higher number of connections and therefore supports a strategy, based on connectivity, for prioritizing what might otherwise be a random search for aging genes.
International Conference on Knowledge Based and Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems , KES 2017 , 6-8 September 2017 , Marseille , France Robust human action recognition system using Laban Movement Analysis

Recognizing human actions from video sequences is an active research area in computer vision. This paper describes an effective approach to generate compact and informative representations for action recognition. We design a new action feature descriptor inspired from Laban Movement Analysis method. An efficient preprocessing step based on view invariant human motion is presented. Our descriptor is applied in four known machine learning methods, Random Decision Forest, Multi-Layer Perceptron and Multi-class Support Vector Machines (One-Against-One and One-Against-All). Our proposed approach has been evaluated on two challenging benchmarks of action recognition, Microsoft Research Cambridge-12 (MSRC-12) and MSR-Action3D. We follow the same experimental settings to make a direct comparison between the four classifiers and to show the robustness of our descriptor vector. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach outperforms the state-of-the-art methods. 2017 he uthors. Published by Elsevier B. i i ilit t ti l.
Online motion planning using incremental construction of medial axis

This paper deals with the online path planning of mobile robots. We first suggest a systematic method to incrementally construct the Medial Axis of the workspace. This is done by using sensor information for land-marking the nodes of medial axis, which will guide the robot to explore the unknown environment thoroughly. Next, this approach is implemented in an online motion planning algorithm. This method can be generalized to higher spaces, and uses only the line of sight information of sonar sensors. It is much simpler than HGVG method, and is complete. The simulations showed good results for different environments.
Properties of New Orthogonal Graph Theoretical Invariants in Structure-Property Correlations

A recently proposed procedure for orthogonalization of graph theoretical invariants, based on Galois theory, is applied to the elucidation of structure−property relations. The properties of the new procedure are described on a correlation of the boiling points versus the new orthogonal graph theoretical invariants for the series of heptane isomers. The differences of this orthogonalization procedure with that of Randic's are clearly stated.