Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Cost of Shoreline Protection: A Comparison of Approaches in Coastal New England and the Mid-Atlantic

Abstract Shoreline hardening is a method of coastal hazard protection that is often implemented by government agencies and individual property owners. As awareness of the potential negative effects of shoreline hardening has increased, natural and nature-based approaches have gained in popularity. Most research related to shoreline protection has focused on understanding the environmental and ecological effects. However, for hybrid, nature-based approaches, in particular, there is limited information available to compare their monetary costs. To fill this gap, this study used information collected from public shoreline protection projects within the New England and Mid-Atlantic areas to estimate the costs of these measures based on the materials used, such as vegetation, sand, and/or stone. This approach allows for a detailed measurement of potential project inputs and provides needed cost information on the types of materials local governments and other stakeholders may use in their shoreline protection approaches. Results suggest that approaches that use natural materials tend to cost less than those that use more traditional, engineered materials, and nature-based approaches tend to cost somewhere in-between. Specifically, projects can be divided into four subgroups based on their average per-unit costs: (A) walls (mean: $5,628, se: $680) or stone at exposed sites (mean: $4,943, se: $725); (B) sand for beach nourishment (mean: $3,094, se: $397) or stone at low exposure sites ($3,014, se: $379); (C) stone and vegetation at low exposure sites (mean: $1,626, se: $217), stone and sand for other purposes at low exposure sites (mean: $1,411, se: $173), or sand for other purposes (mean: $1,384, se: $151); and (D) stone and sand for other purposes at low exposure sites (mean: $1,411, se: $173), sand for other purposes (mean: $1,384, se: $151), vegetation (mean: $1,300, se: $159), or vegetation and sand for other purposes (mean: $1,285, se: $172). Finally, monitoring and maintenance costs are often not accounted for, which may negatively affect the long-term success of shoreline protection efforts. Coupled with information on environmental and ecological effects of these different approaches, this information will allow for more informed decisions on how coastal and inland communities can best adapt to coastal risks.
A Health-Impact Assessment of an Ergonomic Measure to Reduce the Risk of Work-Related Lower Back Pain, Lumbosacral Radicular Syndrome and Knee Osteoarthritis among Floor Layers in The Netherlands

Sand–cement-bound screed floor layers are at risk of work-related lower back pain, lumbosacral radicular syndrome and knee osteoarthritis, given their working technique of levelling screed with their trunk bent while mainly supported by their hands and knees. To reduce the physical demands of bending of the trunk and kneeling, a manually movable screed-levelling machine was developed for floor layers in the Netherlands. The aim of this paper is to estimate the potential health gains of working with a manually movable screed-levelling machine on the risk of lower back pain (LBP), lumbosacral radicular syndrome (LRS) and knee osteoarthritis (KOA) compared to traditional working techniques. This potential health gain was assessed using the epidemiological population estimates of the Population Attributable Fraction (PAF) and the Potential Impact Fraction (PIF), combined with work-related risk estimates for these three disorders from systematic reviews. The percentage of workers exceeding these risk estimates was based on worksite observations among 28 floor layers. For LBP, 16/18 workers were at risk when using traditional working techniques, with a PAF = 38%, and for those using a manually movable screed-levelling machine, this was 6/10 with a PIF = 13%. For LRS, these data were 16/18 with a PAF = 55% and 14/18 with a PIF = 18%, and for KOA, 8/10 with a PAF = 35% and 2/10 with a PIF = 26%. A manually movable screed-levelling machine might have a significant impact on the prevention of LBP, LRS and KOA among floor layers in the Netherlands, and health-impact assessments are a feasible approach for assessing health gains in an efficient way.
Packaging and Uncoating of CRISPR/Cas Ribonucleoproteins for Efficient Gene Editing with Viral and Non-Viral Extracellular Nanoparticles

Rapid progress in gene editing based on clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/CRISPR-associated protein (CRISPR/Cas) has revolutionized functional genomic studies and genetic disease correction. While numerous gene editing applications have been easily adapted by experimental science, the clinical utility of CRISPR/Cas remains very limited due to difficulty in delivery to primary cells and possible off-target effects. The use of CRISPR in the form of a ribonucleoprotein (RNP) complex substantially reduces the time of DNA exposure to the effector nuclease and minimizes its off-target activity. The traditional electroporation and lipofection methods lack the cell-type specificity of RNP delivery, can be toxic for cells, and are less efficient when compared to nanoparticle transporters. This review focuses on CRISPR/Cas RNP packaging and delivery using retro/lentiviral particles and exosomes. First, we briefly describe the natural stages of viral and exosomal particle formation, release and entry into the target cells. This helps us understand the mechanisms of CRISPR/Cas RNP packaging and uncoating utilized by the current delivery systems, which we discuss afterward. Much attention is given to the exosomes released during viral particle production that can be passively loaded with RNPs as well as the mechanisms necessary for particle fusion, RNP release, and transportation inside the target cells. Collectively, together with specific packaging mechanisms, all these factors can substantially influence the editing efficiency of the system. Finally, we discuss ways to improve CRISPR/Cas RNP delivery using extracellular nanoparticles.
Optical and infrared photometry of late-type stars in the Pleiades

On a obtenu une nouvelle photometrie optique pour 130 etoiles dans les Pleiades plus faibles que V∼10 mag, ainsi qu'une nouvelle photometrie infrarouge pour 35 d'entre elles. L'analyse des donnees optiques indique que la frequence binaire photometrique pour des etoiles des types avances dans l'amas est de 26%. Les resultats presentes montrent que la frequence binaire est presque independante de la masse de l'etoile principale pour 0,4
Indoor Radon Concentration Levels in Healthcare Settings: The Results of an Environmental Monitoring in a Large Italian University Hospital

The aim of the study is to determine the radon concentrations in the University Hospital of Bari, Apulia Region, Southern Italy. The monitoring took place from 2017 to 2018 for a total of 402 days and included 3492 premises. Radon environmental sampling was performed with passive dosimeters of the CR-39 type. The highest mean concentration was found in basement rooms (118.9 Bq/m3), followed by ground-floor rooms (88.2 Bq/m3), first-floor rooms (78.1 Bq/m3), second-floor rooms (66.7 Bq/m3), and third-floor rooms (68.9 Bq/m3). An average radon concentration lower than the WHO recommended level of 100 Bq/m3 was detected in 73.5% of monitored environments, while only 0.9% exceeded the reference level of 300 Bq/m3 set by the national law (Legislative Decree 101/2020). The frequency of environments in which radon concentrations exceed 300 Bq/m3 is significantly higher in the basement (p-value < 0.001). As for a previous preliminary investigation in the same hospital conducted on a much smaller number of premises (n = 401), most of the monitored environments had radon concentrations lower than the reference levels set by the new national law, and the risk to the healthcare workers’ health derived from occupational exposure to radon could be considered acceptable.
Influence of electrode width on high-speed performance of traveling-wave electroabsorption modulators

InP/InGaAs traveling-wave electro-absorption modulators for 1.55 /spl mu/m were fabricated with on-chip integrated termination resistors. The influence of the electrode width on their microwave properties and modulation bandwidth is measured and analyzed. Reduction of microwave losses and velocity mismatch can be demonstrated for wider electrodes, offering the potential for modulation bandwidth >100 GHz.
Wireless Real-Time Data Acquisition System for Aerodynamic Characterization of a Wind Turbine

Context: Wind energy sources utilize renewable, free, and environmentally friendly resources, so there are projects focused on the design of wind turbines to increase their efficiency. Simulations using computational fluid dynamics techniques allow designs to be analyzed. which, are then validated through experimentation and wind tunnel measurements. Method: Data acquisition is performed by using Wind Sensor Rev.P sensors to measure wind velocity, and MMA7361 accelerometer to measure the vibrations generated by the wind in the turbine. Additionally, an ESP32 is required to process and transmit the data via Bluetooth, thus facilitating the installation of the real-time monitoring module inside the wind tunnel. Results: A monitoring module with a sampling rate of 5 ms was obtained, thus allowing real-time data acquisition, with a resolution of 12 bits for good data capturing accuracy and a transmission rate of approximately 74000 bps. An application capable of plotting 3D acceleration and 2D wind speed signals was also created. Conclusions: The device developed serves as a support for future wind turbine design projects since it is wireless, its installation is simple, it facilitates data collection inside a wind tunnel, and it allows visualizing the turbine’s behavior in real time by means of a graphic interface.
High Gain Fan-Beam Pattern Antenna Based on the Utilization of Diffracted Fields From Dielectric Slabs Edges for IoT and Sensing Applications

A high gain, low-cost antenna structure is designed for a smart car parking system. The antenna uses Printed Ridge Gap Waveguide (PRGW) technology, which is fully shielded, and suppresses any parasitic radiation from the feed, and minimizes back-lobe radiation. The proposed antenna uses a single MSL feed point, which eliminates the need for any complex feeding network design, and allows the antenna to be integrated easily with PCB transceiver circuitry. A novel technique for the design procedure is proposed, the technique provides a generalization of using either electric or magnetic excitations with dielectric or magnetic rectangular slabs. A unique physical insight accompanied with a thorough analysis of the propagation mechanism is provided. The technique has a significant impact on reducing the complexity of the feeding network. The realized structure is compact, low profile, and low cost. The beam pattern of the antenna is a Fan-Beam (Elliptical) pattern which is well suited for various sensing and Internet of Things (IoT) applications.
Tumor infiltrating lymphocytes as an endpoint in cancer vaccine trials

Checkpoint inhibitors have invigorated cancer immunotherapy research, including cancer vaccination. Classic early phase trial design and endpoints used in developing chemotherapy are not suited for evaluating all forms of cancer treatment. Peripheral T cell response dynamics have demonstrated inconsistency in assessing the efficacy of cancer vaccination. Tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), reflect the local tumor microenvironment and may prove a superior endpoint in cancer vaccination trials. Cancer vaccines may also promote success in combination immunotherapy treatment of weakly immunogenic tumors. This review explores the impact of TILs as an endpoint for cancer vaccination in multiple malignancies, summarizes the current literature regarding TILs analysis, and discusses the challenges of providing validity and a standardized implementation of this approach.
MotoPrint: Reconfigurable Vibration Motor Fingerprint via Homologous Signals Learning

Device fingerprints can satisfy the high-security requirement of modern mobile applications (e.g., mobile payments) by guaranteeing the operation is performed on a trusted device. However, existing works on device fingerprints are weak to leakage, which leads to an irreversible failure of the device fingerprint authentication system after suffering from fingerprint theft attacks. The vulnerability drives us to propose a reconfigurable device fingerprint, i.e., MotoPrint, that can recover the system after suffering from such attacks. MotoPrint stems from the motor vibration that can represent in both signals of the accelerometer and the gyroscope (i.e., they are homologous motion signals). Therefore, we designed a two-path feature extracting network and a sensor-independent training strategy to eliminate sensor noise that can decline authentication performance. In addition, MotoPrint has a complete reconfiguration mechanism to cope with fingerprint leakage, which brings the damaged authentication system back to health. The evaluation of 80 stand-alone vibration motors and 20 in-built ones shows that MotoPrint can achieve high authentication accuracy of 98.5%. Meanwhile, we also demonstrate the reconfigured MotoPrint, which can also effectively indicate the device's uniqueness with over 98% accuracy, is independent of MotoPrints under other stimulating codes.
A Combination of Cluster Analysis and Kappa Statistic for the Evaluation of Climate Model Results

Abstract The authors present a combination of different statistical methods for the validation of climate simulation data with respect to observational data of the same spatial and temporal coverage. It is assumed that simulated data and observed data are both given as time series at locations such as grid cells or station locations. The aim of this approach is to quantify the agreement between the two spatial structures of observed and simulated data. These spatial structures consist of the spatial distributions of clusters (obtained from a cluster analysis) that contain climatologically similar locations. If the spatial distribution of clusters were identical for the observed and the simulated data, the simulation would describe the spatial structure of the observations perfectly. Differences from this ideal situation can be objectively quantified using the κ statistic. If the simulation data have shortcomings, the different κ variants can be used to diagnose where these are located. The method is demon.
Fairness-Aware Distributed Energy Coordination for Voltage Regulation in Power Distribution Systems

The accelerating deployment of solar photovoltaics into low-voltage distribution networks can cause reverse power flow and overvoltage problems. However, if coordinated properly, the real and reactive power flexibility of these resources enables distribution operators to manage their networks more efficiently. Existing literature is rich in droop-based control (Volt-Watt and Volt-VAr) and optimization-based distributed energy coordination for four-quadrant control of photovoltaics to prevent overvoltage issues. While optimal coordination can effectively mitigate overvoltage, it treats resources at sensitive parts of the grid unfairly. To address this concern, we propose a distributed optimal power flow formulation that incorporates fairness in curtailing photovoltaic generation and utilizes the reactive power capability of smart inverters. Fair curtailment of photovoltaic systems is studied with aggregation at each of two layers in a distribution network: 1) area-level fairness and 2) feeder-level fairness to demonstrate the flexibility of the proposed approach in resource aggregation. To explore the trade-off, the fairness-aware control actions are compared against the performance of a centralized controller that aims to maximize the aggregate PV generation without incorporating fairness. Simulation results show that introducing area-level fairness increased curtailment by 1.11 percentage points, and feeder-level fairness increased curtailment by 4.7 percentage points compared to a fairness-agnostic control.
The luminosity distribution of globular clusters in three giant Virgo ellipticals

The present CCD photometry in B for globular clusters around three of Virgo's 'normal' ellipticals (NGCs 4365, 4472, and 4649) defines the luminosity distribution of the clusters and indicates that the globular clusters in giant ellipticals follow similar luminosity distributions. A fitting of the composite Virgo globular cluster luminosity function to the Galaxy's cluster distribution yields a Virgo distance modulus estimate of 31.5 + or {minus} 0.25. Evidence, in the form of a flattening of the radial density distribution, is noted in each galaxy for a core radius in the cluster system. 81 refs.
Classification on manifolds

SUMAN KUMAR SEN: Classification on Manifolds (Under the direction of Dr. James S. Marron) This dissertation studies classification on smooth manifolds and the behavior of High Dimensional Low Sample Size (HDLSS) data as the dimension increases. In modern image analysis, statistical shape analysis plays an important role in understanding several diseases. One of the ways to represent three dimensional shapes is the medial representation, the parameters of which lie on a smooth manifold, and not in the usual d-dimensional Euclidean space. Existing classification methods like Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Distance Weighted Discrimination (DWD) do not naturally handle data lying on manifolds. We present a general framework of classification for data lying on manifolds and then extend SVM and DWD as special cases. The approach adopted here is to find control points on the manifold which represent the different classes of data and then define the classifier as a function of the distances (geodesic distances on the manifold) of individual points from the control points. Next, using a deterministic behavior of Euclidean HDLSS data, we show that the generalized version of SVM behaves asymptotically like the Mean Difference method as the dimension increases. Lastly, we consider the manifold (S), and show that under some conditions, data lying on such a manifold has a deterministic geometric structure similar to Euclidean HDLSS data, as the dimension (number of components d in (S)) increases. Then we show that the generalized version of SVM behaves like the Geodesic Mean Difference (extension of the Mean Difference method to manifold data) under the deterministic geometric structure.
The reverse engagement gap: gender differences in external engagement among UK academics

ABSTRACT Examining academics ‘engagement with non-academics in industry, public agencies and charities, this paper examines gender gaps between men and women. Using a large-scale survey of UK academics, we find that although there is difference between women and men in the commercial areas of engagement, with men being more active in this domain than their women colleagues of a similar age and experience and of the same rank, discipline, and university, this pattern is reversed for academic engagement with the third sector, with women more likely to engage with charities, regardless of career stage and research field. We explore the gendered nature of academic engagement, and discuss policy implications arising from it.
Case report: Cerebrotendinous xanthomatosis with a novel mutation in the CYP27A1 gene mimicking behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia

Background Cerebrotendinous xanthomatosis (CTX) is a rare autosomal recessive lipid storage disease caused by a mutation in the CYP27A1 gene. Due to the disruption of bile acid synthesis leading to cholesterol and cholestanol accumulation, CTX manifests as premature cataracts, chronic diarrhea, and intellectual disability in childhood and adolescence. This report presents a case of CTX with an unusual phenotype of behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) in middle age. Case presentation A 60-year-old woman presented with behavioral and personality changes. She showed disinhibition, such as hoarding and becoming aggressive over trifles; compulsive behavior, such as closing doors; apathy; and dietary change. The patient showed a progressive cognitive decline and relatively sparing memory and visuospatial function. She had hyperlipidemia but no family history of neurodegenerative disorders. Initial fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) images showed a high signal in the periventricular area, and brain spectroscopy showed hypoperfusion in the frontal and temporal lobes, mimicking bvFTD. However, on physical examination, xanthomas were found on both the dorsum of the hands and the Achilles tendons. Hyperactive deep tendon reflexes in the bilateral biceps, brachioradialis, and knee and positive Chaddock signs on both sides were observed. Four years later, FLAIR images showed symmetrical high signals in the bilateral dentate nuclei of the cerebellum. Her serum cholestanol (12.4 mg/L; normal value ≤6.0) and 7α,12α-dihydroxycholest-4-en-3-one (0.485 nmol/mL; normal value ≤0.100) levels were elevated. A novel likely pathogenic variant (c.1001T>A, p.Met334Lys) and a known pathogenic variant (c.1420C>T, p.Arg474Trp) of the CYP27A1 gene were found in trans-location. The patient was diagnosed with CTX and prescribed chenodeoxycholic acid (750 mg/day). Conclusions This report discusses the case of a middle-aged CTX patient with an unusual phenotype of bvFTD. A novel likely pathogenic variant (c.1001T>A, p.Met334Lys) was identified in the CYP27A1 gene. Early diagnosis is important because supplying chenodeoxycholic acid can prevent CTX progression.
Big Data Analytics to Reduce Preventable Hospitalizations—Using Real-World Data to Predict Ambulatory Care-Sensitive Conditions

The purpose of this study was to develop a prediction model to identify individuals and populations with a high risk of being hospitalized due to an ambulatory care-sensitive condition who might benefit from preventative actions or tailored treatment options to avoid subsequent hospital admission. A rate of 4.8% of all individuals observed had an ambulatory care-sensitive hospitalization in 2019 and 6389.3 hospital cases per 100,000 individuals could be observed. Based on real-world claims data, the predictive performance was compared between a machine learning model (Random Forest) and a statistical logistic regression model. One result was that both models achieve a generally comparable performance with c-values above 0.75, whereas the Random Forest model reached slightly higher c-values. The prediction models developed in this study reached c-values comparable to existing study results of prediction models for (avoidable) hospitalization from the literature. The prediction models were designed in such a way that they can support integrated care or public and population health interventions with little effort with an additional risk assessment tool in the case of availability of claims data. For the regions analyzed, the logistic regression revealed that switching to a higher age class or to a higher level of long-term care and unit from prior hospitalizations (all-cause and due to an ambulatory care-sensitive condition) increases the odds of having an ambulatory care-sensitive hospitalization in the upcoming year. This is also true for patients with prior diagnoses from the diagnosis groups of maternal disorders related to pregnancy, mental disorders due to alcohol/opioids, alcoholic liver disease and certain diseases of the circulatory system. Further model refinement activities and the integration of additional data, such as behavioral, social or environmental data would improve both model performance and the individual risk scores. The implementation of risk scores identifying populations potentially benefitting from public health and population health activities would be the next step to enable an evaluation of whether ambulatory care-sensitive hospitalizations can be prevented.