Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Influence of 12-Week Concurrent Training on Exosome Cargo and Its Relationship with Cardiometabolic Health Parameters in Men with Obesity

Exosome release varies depending on the physiological state of the cell, so they could play a fundamental role in obesity, the biggest pandemic in today’s societies. The beneficial effects that physical activity has both on weight and cardiovascular parameters may be mediated by exosomes released in response to exercise. Thus, we aimed (I) to study the influence of a 12-week CT intervention on exosome cargo modifications in men with obesity and (II) to determine whether changes in exosomes after the intervention were related to changes in cardiometabolic health parameters in our cohorts. An experimental, controlled design was performed in twelve (nine with valid data) adult male obese patients (mean values: 41.6 years old, 97.6 kg and 32.4 kg/m2) who were randomly divided into a control group (n = 4) and a training group (n = 5), which completed 36 sessions of CT (concurrent training) for 12 weeks. Before and after the training period, cardiometabolic health parameters were evaluated and blood samples to measure exosomes and proteins were drawn. No changes were observed in the levels of any exosomal markers and proteins; however, associations of changes between CD81 and both fat mass and weight, Flot-1 and VO2max, HSP70 and both CRP and left ventricle diastolic diameter or CD14 and leptin were found (all p ≤ 0.05). Although the current CT was not able to clearly modify the exosome cargo, a certain medium to large clinical effect was manifested considering the nature of this study. Moreover, the associations found between the promoted changes in cardiometabolic parameters and exosome-carried proteins could indicate a relationship to be considered for future treatments in patients with obesity.
Applications and limitations of independent component analysis for facial and hand gesture surface electromyograms

: In the recent past, there has been an increasing trend to use bhnd source separation (BSS) or independent component analysis (ICA) algorithms for biomedical data. This paper reviews the concept of ICA and demonstrates its usefulness and limitations in the context of surface electromyograms (sEMG) related to hand movements and facial muscles. In the first experiment ICA has been used to separate the electrical activity from different hand gestures. The second part of the study considers separating electrical activity from facial muscles. In both instances the surface electromyogram has been used as an indicator of muscle activity. The theoretical analysis and experimental results demonstrate that ICA is suitable for identification of different hand gestures using sEMG signals. The results identify the unsuitabihty of ICA when a similar technique is used for facial muscles with respect to different vowel classifications.
Millimeter Wave SAR Imaging Denoising and Classification by Combining Image-to-Image Translation With ResNet

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging has recently attracted considerable attention due to its variety of applications in both military and civilian aspects. However, a SAR image scheme can be affected by various elements that can lead to poor image reconstruction performance, especially for the target recognition mission; for instance, the complex environment, irregular sampling intervals, sample scarcity, imaging parameters, etc. The rapid development of deep learning currently makes it a great solution to deal with the aforementioned problems. In this paper, we propose a SAR image model based on conditional generative adversarial networks (cGAN), which combines image-to-image translation (pix2pix) and residual networks (ResNet) in order to diminish the noise and artifacts on SAR images, increase their signal-to-clutter-noise ratio (SNCR) of the images, and improve the short-range target recognition rate. Unlike conventional cGAN, we employ a ResNet-based discriminator (RbD) to effectively improve the SAR image denoising ability of the model. On the other hand, another similar discriminator is simultaneously trained to classify 14 familiar metallic object types with high accuracy and avoid the over-fitting problem. This discriminator is built by replicating the RbD one, and then we replace the last layer with the standard softmax function to classify multiple objects based on class probability outputs. The experiment results in this paper illustrate that the proposed scheme achieves higher image denoising performance and SNCR enhancement than the other conventional approaches. Besides, the target recognition rate of the proposed scheme outperforms the other common classification models.
Impact of Quantisation on Consistency of DMPC in Street Traffic with Dynamic Priority Rules

Distributed systems typically require communication to steer the overall system to a reference or target state and keep it there. We consider an intersection scenario as a spacial set with vehicles as multi‐agents with individual initial and target conditions. Utilising a Distributed Model Predictive Control scheme (DMPC), in every time step each vehicle solves an finite horizon optimal control problem. The resulting optimal state trajectory is projected onto a quantisation of the spatial set and the quantised trajectories are broadcasted to the other vehicles to ensure collision avoidance. The quantisation is mainly motivated to reduce the necessary communication effort among the agents. Here, we introduce prediction coherence as difference of two predictions in two successive time steps. We numerically explore the idea to utilise prediction coherence to derive a lower bound for the communication requirements among the vehicles. (© 2017 Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
Interpreting ionisation-chamber measurements as a function of wiggler field at a synchrotron source

A comprehensive set of ionisation-chamber (IC) measurements have been collected with the primary white/pink x-ray beam at the Imaging and Medical Beamline (IMBL) of the Australian Synchrotron, as a function of the magnetic field in the superconducting multi-pole wiggler (SCMPW) insertion device. In addition to the standard in vacuo filters used for radiotherapy experiments at IMBL, six different ex vacuo filter sets, mounted on a rotation stage, were used to vary the x-ray beam quality. The ‘rotating-filter’ method introduced by Stevenson et al (2017 J. Synchrotron Radiat. 24 110–41) is then used to enable the SCMPW field to be determined for four nominal settings: 1.40, 2.00, 3.00 and 4.00 T. The ability to vary the SCMPW field at IMBL is a very powerful means of changing the intrinsic properties of the resulting x-ray beam in accord with the demands of a wide range of experimental studies in diverse areas. These include imaging/tomography, radiotherapy, dosimetry and high-energy diffraction. This makes a means of determining the wiggler field experimentally, most compelling. The analysis of the experimental results also provides a stringent test of the model developed to characterise the IMBL x-ray beam (Stevenson et al 2017 J. Synchrotron Radiat. 24 110–41). We will discuss both the utility/versatility and the deficiencies/limitations of this model. The model can be used to calculate, in addition to IC current, a variety of x-ray properties such as flux, beam quality, absorbed-dose rate and power density. In connection with the last of these properties, and by way of demonstration, key aspects associated with the front-end diamond filter will be provided.
Antibacterial Films of Silver Nanoparticles Embedded into Carboxymethylcellulose/Chitosan Multilayers on Nanoporous Silicon: A Layer-by-Layer Assembly Approach Comparing Dip and Spin Coating

The design and engineering of antibacterial materials are key for preventing bacterial adherence and proliferation in biomedical and household instruments. Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) and chitosan (CHI) are broad-spectrum antibacterial materials with different properties whose combined application is currently under optimization. This study proposes the formation of antibacterial films with AgNPs embedded in carboxymethylcellulose/chitosan multilayers by the layer-by-layer (LbL) method. The films were deposited onto nanoporous silicon (nPSi), an ideal platform for bioengineering applications due to its biocompatibility, biodegradability, and bioresorbability. We focused on two alternative multilayer deposition processes: cyclic dip coating (CDC) and cyclic spin coating (CSC). The physicochemical properties of the films were the subject of microscopic, microstructural, and surface–interface analyses. The antibacterial activity of each film was investigated against Escherichia coli (Gram-negative) and Staphylococcus aureus (Gram-positive) bacteria strains as model microorganisms. According to the findings, the CDC technique produced multilayer films with higher antibacterial activity for both bacteria compared to the CSC method. Bacteria adhesion inhibition was observed from only three cycles. The developed AgNPs–multilayer composite film offers advantageous antibacterial properties for biomedical applications.
Measurement of the Boltzmann constant by Johnson noise thermometry using a superconducting integrated circuit

We report on our measurement of the Boltzmann constant by Johnson noise thermometry (JNT) using an integrated quantum voltage noise source (IQVNS) that is fully implemented with superconducting integrated circuit technology. The IQVNS generates calculable pseudo white noise voltages to calibrate the JNT system. The thermal noise of a sensing resistor placed at the temperature of the triple point of water was measured precisely by the IQVNS-based JNT. We accumulated data of more than 429 200 s in total (over 6 d) and used the Akaike information criterion to estimate the fitting frequency range for the quadratic model to calculate the Boltzmann constant. Upon detailed evaluation of the uncertainty components, the experimentally obtained Boltzmann constant was k=1.3806436×10−23 J K−1 with a relative combined uncertainty of 10.22×10−6. The value of k is relatively −3.56×10−6 lower than the CODATA 2014 value (Mohr et al 2016 Rev. Mod. Phys. 88 035009).
Field demonstration of advanced autonomous navigation technique for a fully unmanned surface vehicle in complex coastal traffic areas

This study introduces an advanced autonomous navigation algorithm for unmanned surface vehicle (USV) operations in complex coastal traffic areas. To facilitate the undertaking of tests for innovative technologies, the Korean government has designated regulation‐free special zones, thereby enabling field tests for USV demonstrations without an onboard safety person on real manned‐ship navigation routes. To enable real‐world USV operation without onboard safety person, an existing autonomous navigation algorithm is extended to achieve sufficiently reliable and robust USV operation. Accordingly, berthing and unberthing algorithms are newly developed for unmanned operation, and enhanced situational awareness algorithms are applied to detect all types of obstacles, including small‐sized floating objects spread over a wide range, such as a fish farm. In particular, the Korean intelligent maritime transportation service, called e‐Navigation, is incorporated into the autonomous navigation algorithms to overcome the limitations of vehicle autonomy based on onboard sensors. To demonstrate the capability of fully unmanned operation in real marine traffic scenarios, long‐distance navigation (54 km on a single voyage) was conducted by running several missions, including navigation in complex fish farm areas, maritime surveys, collision avoidance, navigation on real traffic routes, and emergency response. The extended navigation algorithms and results of the field tests are presented and discussed in this paper.
Experimental Treatment with Edaravone in a Mouse Model of Spinocerebellar Ataxia 1

Edaravone is a mitochondrially targeted drug with a suggested capability to modify the course of diverse neurological diseases. Nevertheless, edaravone has not been tested yet in the context of spinocerebellar ataxia 1 (SCA1), an incurable neurodegenerative disease characterized mainly by cerebellar disorder, with a strong contribution of inflammation and mitochondrial dysfunction. This study aimed to address this gap, exploring the potential of edaravone to slow down SCA1 progression in a mouse knock-in SCA1 model. SCA1154Q/2Q and healthy SCA12Q/2Q mice were administered either edaravone or saline daily for more than 13 weeks. The functional impairments were assessed via a wide spectrum of behavioral assays reflecting motor and cognitive deficits and behavioral abnormalities. Moreover, we used high-resolution respirometry to explore mitochondrial function, and immunohistochemical and biochemical tools to assess the magnitude of neurodegeneration, inflammation, and neuroplasticity. Data were analyzed using (hierarchical) Bayesian regression models, combined with the methods of multivariate statistics. Our analysis pointed out various previously documented neurological and behavioral deficits of SCA1 mice. However, we did not detect any plausible therapeutic effect of edaravone on either behavioral dysfunctions or other disease hallmarks in SCA1 mice. Thus, our results did not provide support for the therapeutic potential of edaravone in SCA1.
Detecting Anomalous Networks of Opioid Prescribers and Dispensers in Prescription Drug Data

The opioid overdose epidemic represents a serious public health crisis, with fatality rates rising considerably over the past several years. To help address the abuse of prescription opioids, state governments collect data on dispensed prescriptions, yet the use of these data is typically limited to manual searches. In this paper, we propose a novel graph-based framework for detecting anomalous opioid prescribing patterns in state Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) data, which could aid governments in deterring opioid diversion and abuse. Specifically, we seek to identify connected networks of opioid prescribers and dispensers who engage in high-risk and possibly illicit activity. We develop and apply a novel extension of the Non-Parametric Heterogeneous Graph Scan (NPHGS) to two years of de-identified PDMP data from the state of Kansas, and find that NPHGS identifies subgraphs that are significantly more anomalous than those detected by other graph-based methods. NPHGS also reveals clusters of potentially illicit activity, which may strengthen state law enforcement and regulatory capabilities. Our paper is the first to demonstrate how prescription data can systematically identify anomalous opioid prescribers and dispensers, as well as illustrating the efficacy of a network-based approach. Additionally, our technical extensions to NPHGS offer both improved flexibility and graph density reduction, enabling the framework to be replicated across jurisdictions and extended to other problem domains.
Effect of Nighttime Exercise on Sleep Quality Among the General Population in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: A Cross-Sectional Study

Introduction Engaging in physical activity has been proven to have health benefits, with a positive impact on sleep quality. While the timing of exercise plays a significant role in determining its effect on sleep, nighttime exercise still needs to be explored, especially in Saudi Arabia. This study assessed the effect of nighttime exercise on sleep quality among the general population in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted on people performing physical exercises in the gym, training, and walking places using a self-administered questionnaire evaluating exercising behaviors and sleep quality. Comparisons were performed using the Chi-square test and ANOVA, and p<0.05 was considered for significance. Results We enrolled 385 participants, among whom 53.8% were male, and 47.2% were female. The mean age was 28.2±7.85 years, and mostly aged 25-29 years (24.7%), followed by 20-24 years old (21.3%). Most had university degrees (61.3%) and were also employed (60%). Of all participants, the majority were overweight and obese (61.3%). Most (n=225) participants practiced vigorous physical exercise, and the mean Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) global score was 7.37±3.49 points. Evening vigorous (r= 0.25, p=0.038) and moderate (r=0.30, p=0.025) physical exercise sessions lasting > 90 min had a significant positive correlation with poor sleep quality (high PSQL score). There was no statistically significant correlation between sleep quality and other variables (p>0.05). Conclusion This study found that participants had poor sleep quality, and lengthy, intense evening exercises had a negative effect on sleep. Incorporating regular exercise tailored to individual preferences and encouraging people to widen the time interval between exercise and bedtime could improve sleep quality.
Control Performance-Based Fault-Tolerant Control Strategy for Singular Systems

This paper is concerned with a control performance-based fault-tolerant control strategy for singular systems in presence of multiplicative faults. To be specific, the observer-based realization of Youla parameterization is first addressed for singular systems. Then the fault-tolerant margin for closed-loop systems is studied and further modified to bring forth the stability margin degradation, which serves as an indicator for the performance change caused by the faults in the closed-loop. Based on it, a control performance-based fault detection scheme is realized, aiming at detecting those faults that may affect the system stability. Controller reconstruction rule is given afterwards to ensure the system performance when fault occurs. A circuit system model is finally provided to illustrate the validness of the derived control scheme.
An Overview of Recent Development of the Gap-Waveguide Technology for mmWave and Sub-THz Applications

The millimeter-wave (mmWave) and sub-terahertz (sub-THz) bands have received much attention in recent years for wireless communication and high-resolution imaging radar applications. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of recent developments in the design and technical implementation of GW-based antenna systems and components. This paper begins by comparing the GW-transmission line to other widely used transmission lines for the mmWave and sub-THz bands. Furthermore, the basic operating principle and possible implementation technique of the GW-technology are briefly discussed. In addition, various antennas and passive components have been developed based on the GW-technology. Despite its advantages in controlling electromagnetic wave propagation, it is also widely used for the packaging of electronic components such as transceivers and power amplifiers. This article also provided an overview of the current manufacturing technologies that are commonly used for the fabrication of GW-components. Finally, the practical applications and industry interest in GW technology developments for mmWave and sub-THz applications have been scrutinized.
Mental Well-Being of Nursing Staff and Destructive Role of COVID-19 Fear and Perceived Stress

Health crises across the globe bring dramatic changes to the lives of individuals and organizations. These crises have some psychological effects on society. The COVID-19 pandemic also caused some serious problems for individual and organizational life. Globally, the COVID-19 situation precipitated various economic and psychological issues that are far-reaching and exceptional. Health crises are increasing following the occurrence of COVID-19 due to its psychological effects on individuals worldwide. The current study highlighted the impact of COVID-19 fear on mental well-being (MWB). Most studies have examined the MWB of nursing staff and related their MWB to psychological factors. Few studies have considered the health crisis factors that are important in terms of bringing about variation in the MWB of nursing staff. Nursing staff MWB is impacted by various health crises (including COVID-19) at the global level and it has been ignored by researchers. In this study, a list of 1940 healthcare units with 6758 nursing staff was obtained. A total of 822 nurses were selected with the help of random sampling. The collected data were analyzed using correlation analysis, SPSS (statistical package for social sciences) version 23, and SEM. Thus, in this study we examined the effect of a health crisis (i.e., COVID-19) fear on the MWB of nurses. Moreover, we also examined the extent to which perceived stress (PS) influences the link between COVID-19 fear and MWB. The study’s findings confirmed that COVID-19 fear shown negative effect on MWB, while PS mediated the link between COVID-19 fear and MWB.
Evaluation Thrombocytosis in CKD Stage V Patient on Hemodialysis Treatment : Case Report

Chronic kidney disease (CKD), also known as renal failure, primarily affects people with a history of hypertension and diabetes. In this medical condition, the rate of filtration or kidney function can decrease over the course of a month or a year. Several studies have found an increase in pro-inflammatory cytokines in patients with CKD. Platelet dysfunction and hyperreactivity have been linked to chronic inflammation. When the platelet count exceeds 450,000/l, thrombocytosis occurs. It is also referred to as thrombocythemia. Reactive thrombocytosis accounts for 80-90% of all thrombocytosis events, with inflammation being one of the most common causes. We report a 67-year-old man presenting to the hospital with fever and weakness. The patient had a history of CKD stage V and currently was rceiving hemodialysis treatment. Laboratory finding showed patient had thrombocytosis. Further examination is required to determine the cause of thrombocytosis in CKD patient.
Modelling and Calculation of Silicon Conduction Band Structure and Parameters with Arbitrary Uniaxial Stress

Using the k·p theory, the coupling effect between the Δ1 and Δ2’ bands on the energy band structure of different energy valleys is studied. The analytical model of the energy-dispersion relationship applicable to uniaxial stress for arbitrary crystal plane and orientation as well as different energy valleys is established. For typical crystal orientations, the main parameters of energy band structure such as band edge level, splitting energy, density-of-state (DOS) effective mass and conductivity effective mass are calculated. The calculated results are in good agreement with the data reported in related literature. Finally, the relationship between the DOS effective mass, conductivity effective mass and the change of stress and orientation of different crystal planes is given. The proposed model and calculation results can provide a theoretical reference for the design of nano-electronic devices and TCAD simulation.
Correlation of Evaporation Heat Transfer Inside 8.8 mm and 7.14 mm Horizontal Round Micro-Fin Tubes

ABSTRACT Experimental investigations of evaporation heat transfer of R22 and R410A inside a horizontal micro-fin copper tube have been conducted and are reported here. Six micro-fin tubes with inner diameter of 7.14 mm and three micro-fin tubes with inner diameter of 8.8 mm but with different geometric parameters, such as the apex angle, the helical angle, fin height, fin pitch, and starts were tested. The evaporation experiments were taken at a constant temperature of 6°C. Moreover, working conditions of the experiments varied with the mass flux ranging from 100 kg/(m2.s) to 400 kg/(m2.s). For the evaporation experiments of Tube 1 – Tube 6 with R22, the inlet and outlet vapor quality is set as 0.1 and 0.9, respectively. For the evaporation experiments of Tube 7 – Tube 9 with R410A, the inlet and outlet vapor quality is set as 0.2 and 0.9, respectively. The heat transfer coefficients and the changing trend of the heat transfer coefficients vary among these tubes. The influence of each geometric parameter on the heat transfer performance of the micro-fin tube has been analyzed and is reported. Besides, correlations of evaporation heat transfer inside 8.8 mm or less horizontal round micro-fin tubes were developed.