Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prognostic value of right ventricular global longitudinal strain in patients with immunoglobulin light-chain cardiac amyloidosis

Abstract Aims Left ventricular (LV) global longitudinal strain (GLS) (LV-GLS) is a strong and independent predictor of outcomes in patients with immunoglobulin light-chain (AL) cardiac amyloidosis. This study was performed to investigate whether right ventricular (RV) GLS (RV-GLS) provides prognostic information in patients with AL amyloidosis. Methods and results Among 74 patients who were diagnosed with AL cardiac amyloidosis at Kumamoto University Hospital from December 2005 to December 2022, 65 patients who had enough information for two-dimensional speckle tracking imaging and did not receive chemotherapy before the diagnosis of cardiac amyloidosis were retrospectively analysed. During a median follow-up of 359 days, 29 deaths occurred. In two-dimensional echocardiographic findings, LV-GLS, left atrium reservoir strain (LASr), and RV-GLS were significantly lower in the all-cause death group than in the survival group (LV-GLS: 8.9 ± 4.2 vs. 11.7 ± 3.9, P < 0.01; LASr: 9.06 ± 7.28 vs. 14.09 ± 8.32, P < 0.05; RV-GLS: 12.0 ± 5.1 vs. 16.8 ± 4.0, P < 0.01). Multivariable Cox proportional hazard analysis showed RV-GLS was significantly and independently associated with all-cause death in patients with AL cardiac amyloidosis (hazard ratio 0.85; 95% confidence interval, 0.77–0.94; P < 0.01). Receiver operating characteristic analysis showed that the area under the curve of RV-GLS for all-cause death was 0.774 and that the best cut-off value of RV-GLS was 14.5% (sensitivity, 75%; specificity, 72%). In the Kaplan–Meier analysis, patients with AL cardiac amyloidosis who had low RV-GLS (<14.5%) had a significantly higher probability of all-cause death (P < 0.01). Conclusion RV-GLS has prognostic value in patients with AL cardiac amyloidosis and provides greater prognostic power than LV-GLS and LASr.
Bayes credibility intervals for reliability of series systems with very reliable components

An asymptotic expansion for the posterior Cdf of the reliability of series systems with very reliable components is obtained. This result allows us not only to calculate the Cdf easily but to estimate the magnitude of error when the infinite series expansion is truncated. Numerical results show that the asymptotic expansion converges very rapidly. Consequently, the computation of Bayes credibility intervals based on the truncated expansion is efficient and accurate. >
In-Network Caching for ICN-Based IoT (ICN-IoT): A Comprehensive Survey

The Internet of Things (IoT) has already emerged as one of the most popular directions in today’s information and communication technology (ICT) domain. With its advancement over different application areas, such as smart home, smart healthcare, industry 4.0, etc., a huge amount of data has been generated by billions of IoT devices, which aggravates the shortcomings of the network layer (IP)-based networks, such as limited expressiveness of IP addressing, inefficient support for mobility, and in-network caching. Building IoT on top of information-centric networking (ICN) is believed to be a promising solution to tackle the above challenge, especially the in-network caching of ICN can significantly benefit IoT in terms of reducing data and saving IoT devices’ energy. However, caching IoT data is more challenging than caching traditional Internet content, e.g., video, because IoT data are usually valid within a certain period of time, and IoT devices are typically constrained with battery. Hence, in this survey, we first review the current implementation proposals of ICN-based IoT (ICN-IoT). Next, we present the conventional caching decision policies and replacement policies which could be adopted to mitigate the aforementioned challenges, e.g., reducing IoT traffic, saving energy, and reducing data retrieval latency. Further, since leveraging machine learning (ML) techniques have the potential to further improve the caching efficiency by dealing with uncertainties, e.g., predicting unknown information, adaptively interacting with the environment, we also demonstrate the recently proposed ML-based caching schemes for ICN-IoT. In addition, we outline the open research issues and point out the future opportunities of caching in ICN-IoT.
Sustainable Tourism in Protected Areas—The Case of the Vršac Mountains Outstanding Natural Landscape, Vojvodina Province (Northern Serbia)

The sustainable development of tourism in protected areas and the planning of its development is extremely important for mountain regions. The local population and tourists have a very important role in this process. Therefore, surveys of the local population and visitor satisfaction represent the basis of this research. The Vršac Mountains Outstanding Natural Landscape (ONL) could represent a significant destination for sustainable tourism. This mountainous area is characterized by a favorable geographical position, a diversity of natural and social factors, rare flora and fauna, and the rich ethno-social heritage of the local population. It is in a very favorable geographical position, and the proximity of the big cities Serbia and Romania, as well as many other factors, are important for tourism development in this area. A quantitative methodology was used for the purposes of this paper during our research. The purpose of this research was to investigate the influence of tourism development on the satisfaction of residents and visitors of the ONL by applying a survey technique, with the help of a questionnaire as a research instrument. A total of 1419 respondents were surveyed (789 residents and 630 visitors). The research results show that the ecological and socio-cultural dimensions of sustainability have the greatest importance for the respondents, and that these two dimensions of sustainability have the greatest impact on sustainable tourism in this protected area. Our main research hypothesis, which states that sustainable tourism has a positive impact on the satisfaction of residents and visitors, is fully confirmed. These data could be significant for tourism planning and the management of protected areas.
An Evaluation of Culturally Responsive Practices in Special Education Program for Preservice Educators.

Meeting the needs of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds is a serious concern that schoolsare facing. This article describes an evaluation of embedding culturally and linguistically diverse evidence-basedpractices in a master’s program for teacher candidates seeking endorsement in special education. Acooperative-agreement was developed between one urban university and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office ofSpecial Education Programs (OSEP) to focus on infusing culturally and linguistically diverse evidence-based practicesin a teacher preparation program. This study employed a mixed-method approach to describe the methodology,instrumentation, and progress made towards program improvements related to culturally diverse practices arediscussed. Results suggest that while more opportunities for improvements to the program structure and programevaluation data collection are necessary, candidates are showing some evidence of improving skills related toculturally and linguistically diverse evidence-based practices. Although preliminary, the project methods of programrevision provide helpful information for other programs on program revision and provide insight on the evaluation ofprogram updates and interventions.
The Influence of Sustainability on Identities and Seafood Consumption: Implications for Food Systems Education for Generation Z

Seafood is a vital source of nutrition yet many consumers in the United States have been exposed to competing discourse about the industry’s environmental impacts, influencing consumption habits. Generation Z, a generational cohort whose members value the sustainability of their purchasing decisions, may have unique opinions regarding sustainable seafood given their sustainability values. This qualitative study explored Generation Z undergraduate students’ experiences with seafood and how they perceive the role of seafood in feeding people while sustaining the future natural environment. Data were collected using 11 focus groups in undergraduate classrooms. Researchers conducted an emergent thematic analysis and sufficient interrater reliability was established. Themes identified based on participants’ experience with seafood included geographic location, experience fishing or with fishermen, and seafood and family, implying place attachment and family identity were intertwined with consumption behaviors. Themes identified based on participants’ perception of seafood’s role in feeding people included sustainability, regulations, limited seafood consumption, and limited knowledge, implying Generation Z’s emerging status as the sustainability generation. Results indicate educators should focus on how sustainability can be emphasized in the classroom with clear actions undergraduate Generation Z students can take to improve sustainability.
The Critical Thinking Process: A Holistic View to Promote Critical Problem-Solving in Health Profession Education

Context: Critical thinking (CT) has been recognized as a key learning outcome in health profession education (HPE). A holistic, well-defined process for initiating CT is essential to promote critical problem-solving in HPE students. Various perceptions of CT have emerged from different paradigms and disciplines. Integration of this variability into the CT process could be beneficial for medical educators to develop CT in learners. This study aimed to outline the CT process in view of the multiple conceptualizations of CT. Evidence Acquisition: In this narrative review, SID, Google Scholar, and PubMed databases were searched. After studying 35 selected articles, the CT process was formulated based on the multiple conceptualizations of CT. Results: Multiple perceptions of CT, emerged from disciplines and paradigms, should be incorporated into the CT process to achieve strong CT. In view of this multiplicity, not only the CT skills but also its dispositions are of key importance in the CT process. Furthermore, the essential role of the context in which the CT takes place, one’s own creativity, metacognition over the thinking process, social construction of meaning, caring to others, and seeking problems through challenging the systems should be considered. Conclusions: We outlined the CT process, grounded from multiple conceptualizations of CT, and advocated for the use of it by HPE students to promote critical problem-solving in facing complex challenges during their professional careers.
Dominance of tunneling current and band filling in InGaN/AlGaN double heterostructure blue light‐emitting diodes

Measurement of the room temperature forward bias current‐voltage behavior of InGaN/AlGaN double heterostructure blue light‐emitting diodes demonstrates a significant departure from the usual Is exp(qV/ nkT) behavior where n is the ideality factor which varies between 1 and 2. The observed current‐voltage behavior at room temperature may be represented as I=2.7×10−11 exp(5.7V) which suggests a tunneling mechanism. Measurement of the electroluminescence for currents from 0.5 to 100 mA demonstrates that the emission peak shifts to higher energy while increasing in intensity. The shifting peak spectra is due to band filling, a process which results from the injection of holes via tunneling into an empty acceptor impurity band and vacant valence band tails. At currents near 100 mA, a non‐shifting band‐to‐band emission approaches the intensity of the shifting peak spectra. The active layer of these diodes is codoped with both the donor Si and the acceptor Zn.
Subjective Sleep Quality as it Relates to Cognitive and Physical Function in Spinal Muscular Atrophy Patients

Sleep quality and its association with cognition has been widely studied in some neurodegenerative diseases, but less is known about this association in spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). In adult SMA (n = 21) patients and age-matched controls (n = 23), we assessed subjectively measured sleep quality and daytime somnolence. Cognition was assessed with a multi-domain neuropsychological battery. Further, we investigated the association between clinical functional scores and sleep questionnaire scores. Among SMA patients, better motor and limb function was associated with better subjective sleep quality (p’s< 0.05). Clinicians should consider sleep quality in patient care and future studies are needed to better understand these relationships.
The Richness of Sarcocystis Species in the Common Gull (Larus canus) and Black-Headed Gull (Larus ridibundus) from Lithuania

The common gull (Larus canus) and the black-headed gull (Larus ridibundus) are common waterbird species in Lithuania. Until now, the composition of Sarcocystis species in these birds was unknown. The current study aimed to identify Sarcocystis spp. by the morphological examination of sarcocysts found in the muscle tissues and by DNA sequence analysis. Between 2011 and 2019, the leg muscles of 42 common gulls and 63 black-headed gulls were tested for Sarcocystis spp. Based on the methylene blue staining of squashed muscle samples, sarcocysts were detected in six common gulls (14.3%) and in six black-headed gulls (9.5%). Under a light microscope, one type of microcyst was observed. Sarcocysts were thread-like (2860–8250 × 40–180 μm) and had a smooth and thin (0.8–1.4 μm) cyst wall, while bradyzoites were banana-shaped and 5.0–9.2 × 1.3–2.4 μm in size. The sequencing of complete ITS1 showed the presence of S. columbae, S. halieti and S. wobeseri in the common gull and S. columbae and S. halieti in the black-headed gull. The highest intraspecific genetic variability was established for S. halieti, which is characterized by a wide host range. This species is considered to be pathogenic, therefore further histopathological examination of the various organs of gulls is needed.
A STABILIZED EQUAL-ORDER FINITE VOLUME METHOD FOR THE STOKES EQUATIONS

We construct a new stabilized finite volume method on rectangular grids for the Stokes equations. The lowest equal-order conforming finite element pair (piecewise bilinear velocities and pressures) and piecewise constant test spaces for both the velocity and pressure are employed in this method. We show the stability of this method and prove first optimal rate of convergence for the velocity in the H 1 norm and the pressure in the L 2 norm. In addition, a second order optimal error estimate for the velocity in the L 2 norm is derived. Numerical experiments illustrating the theoretical results are included.
TwinGAN: Twin Generative Adversarial Network for Chinese Landscape Painting Style Transfer

Recently, style transfers have received considerable attention. However, most of these studies were suitable for Western paintings. In this paper, a deep learning method is proposed to imitate multiple styles of Chinese landscape paintings. Twin generative adversarial network style transfer was proposed based on the characteristics of Chinese landscape ink paintings. SketchGAN and renderGAN were performed using generative models based on generative adversarial networks. The SketchGAN involves determining the structure and simplifying the content of an input image. RenderGAN involves transferring the results of sketchGAN into the final stylized image. Moreover, a loss function was designed to maintain the shape of the input content image. Finally, the proposed TwinGAN was successfully used to imitate five styles of Chinese landscape ink paintings. This study also provided ablation studies and comparisons with previous works. The experimental results show that our algorithm synthesizes Chinese landscape stylized paintings that are higher in quality than those produced by previous algorithms.
Directional fluorescence emission from a compact plasmonic‐diamond hybrid nanostructure

Ultracompact directional optical nanoantennas are rapidly gaining popularity yet still challenging tasks to construct at the nanoscale. Here, we experimentally demonstrate unidirectional emission from a fluorescent nanodiamond coupled with a single gold nanorod. Different configurations of the assembled hybrid nanostructures were realized via step‐by‐step atomic force microscope nanomanipulation. The emission patterns can be controlled by adjusting the configurations, i.e., the gold nanorod orientation and separation with respect to the nanodiamond. Numerical simulation results reveal that the unidirectional emission can be ascribed to the interference between the electromagnetic fields produced by the dipole‐like source and the out‐of‐phase dipole induced in the gold nanorod. The proposed hybrid nanostructures remarkably exhibit highly unidirectional emission even when the emitter is positioned up to 50 nm away from the nanorod antenna and present a broad working spectral bandwidth of ∼200 nm. The distinct features of this hybrid structure suggest potential applications for novel nanoscale light sources, sensing, and quantum information.
Comparison of Planetary Boundary Layer Model Winds with Dropsonde Observations in Tropical Cyclones

Abstract The values of surface winds simulated by the University of Washington (UW) two-layer similarity planetary boundary layer (PBL) model are compared with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Hurricane Research Division global positioning system dropsonde observations and the surface wind analyses of a numerical weather prediction model. These three wind products compare fairly well at moderate wind speeds, away from the center of the storms where the coarse resolution of the numerical model is not a major factor. In the very high wind regime, the UW PBL model winds match the dropsonde observations fairly well, which is consistent with the unique characteristic of the PBL model being able to account for the nonlinear effects of organized large eddies. These eddies transport momentum and heat fluxes more efficiently than the smaller-scale, local turbulence can, leading to simulations of higher winds with mesoscale variability.
A Case Report of Early-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease Using 18F-FDG PET and 18F-FBB PET

We describe a 40-year-old female patient who presented with sleep disturbance, intermittent headache, and gradual subjective cognitive decline. 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) showed mild FDG hypometabolism in bilateral parietal and temporal lobes. However, 18F-florbetaben (FBB) amyloid PET revealed diffuse amyloid retention in the lateral temporal cortex, frontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus, parietal cortex, and cerebellum. This finding supports the clinical significance of amyloid imaging in diagnostic work-up of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease (EOAD).
A GPU-Accelerated Framework for Path-Based Timing Analysis

As a key routine in static timing analysis (STA), path-based analysis (PBA) plays a very important role in refining the critical path report by reducing excessive slack pessimism. PBA is also well known for its long execution time, which makes it a hot topic for parallel computing in the STA community. However, nearly all of the parallel PBA algorithms are restricted to CPU architectures, which greatly limits their scalability. To achieve a new performance milestone on PBA, we must leverage the high throughput computing in the graphics processing unit (GPU). Therefore, in this work, we propose a new GPU-accelerated PBA framework which contains compact data structures and highly efficient kernels. By integrating with GPU-accelerated preprocessing steps, our framework can also effectively handle extensive critical path constraints. Besides, we highlight many optimization techniques that can overcome the execution bottleneck and further boost the performance. In experiments, we demonstrate <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$543\times$ </tex-math></inline-formula> speed-up compared to the state-of-the-art PBA algorithm on the design with 1.6 million gates, which outperforms <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$25\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula>–<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$45\times$ </tex-math></inline-formula> over the state-of-the-art parallel PBA algorithm on 40 CPU cores. A fully optimized framework can achieve <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$3\times$ </tex-math></inline-formula>–<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$5\times$ </tex-math></inline-formula> speed-up on top of that.
Genomic and Phenotypic Udder Evaluation for Dairy Cattle Selection: A Review

Simple Summary Genomic and phenotypic selection criteria have been crucial in dairy cattle during the last decade. Udder health and milk production are important factors affecting productivity in dairy cattle. Furthermore, genomic and phenotypic selection are essential tools for increasing milk supply for human consumption, decreasing the use of antimicrobial products, improving animal health and welfare, and developing efficient dairy cattle production systems. The main aim of the present review is to explore the current advances, novel strategies, and future challenges in genomic and phenotypic udder evaluation traits for dairy cattle selection. Thus, the present review will explain the importance of genomic and phenotypic characterization of udder traits related to dairy cattle’s health, production, and longevity. This review will encompass a comprehensive overview of the criteria for genomic and phenotypic udder evaluation and highlight potential future perspectives. Abstract The traditional point of view regarding dairy cattle selection has been challenged by recent genomic studies indicating that livestock productivity prediction can be redefined based on the evaluation of genomic and phenotypic data. Several studies that included different genomic-derived traits only indicated that interactions among them or even with conventional phenotypic evaluation criteria require further elucidation. Unfortunately, certain genomic and phenotypic-derived traits have been shown to be secondary factors influencing dairy production. Thus, these factors, as well as evaluation criteria, need to be defined. Owing to the variety of genomic and phenotypic udder-derived traits which may affect the modern dairy cow functionality and conformation, a definition of currently important traits in the broad sense is indicated. This is essential for cattle productivity and dairy sustainability. The main objective of the present review is to elucidate the possible relationships among genomic and phenotypic udder evaluation characteristics to define the most relevant traits related to selection for function and conformation in dairy cattle. This review aims to examine the potential impact of various udder-related evaluation criteria on dairy cattle productivity and explore how to mitigate the adverse effects of compromised udder conformation and functionality. Specifically, we will consider the implications for udder health, welfare, longevity, and production-derived traits. Subsequently, we will address several concerns covering the application of genomic and phenotypic evaluation criteria with emphasis on udder-related traits in dairy cattle selection as well as its evolution from origins to the present and future prospects.