Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison between biophysical analysis model and dimidiate pixel model for the estimation of forest canopy density

Abstract. Forest canopy density (FCD) is an essential factor in forest resources investigation and plays a vital role in forest resources management. To replace the traditional time-consuming and labor-intensive survey methods, it is of great importance to study how to select a suitable model at specific temporal and spatial scales for rapid and accurate estimation of FCD in large areas. To reduce workload and errors, we present an approach combing Landsat 5 TM data and biophysical analysis algorithms without considering thermal index (TI) information to model FCD in a temperate forest in Northern China. The scaled vegetation index (SVD) and scaled shadow index were used as variables for modeling and mapping FCD. The dimidiate pixel model based on the normalized difference vegetation index was also used to estimate FCD. We compared the forest management inventory data of 2012 with the FCD results from the biophysical analysis model and the dimidiate pixel model. The results showed that the biophysical analysis model (prediction precision P = 93.62 % , coefficient of determination R2 = 0.886, root mean square error RMSE = 0.057) has higher accuracy than the dimidiate pixel model (P = 89.92 % , R2 = 0.725, RMSE = 0.078) in estimating FCD. This study shows that the biophysical analysis model without TI information has better performance than the dimidiate pixel model, and can be used for monitoring large scale FCD.
Encoding of everyday objects in older adults: Episodic memory assessment in virtual reality

Introduction Age-related decline in episodic memory performance in otherwise healthy older adults is indisputably evident. Yet, it has been shown that under certain conditions episodic memory performance in healthy older adults’ barely deviates from those seen in young adults. Here we report on the quality of object encoding in an ecologically valid, virtual-reality based memory assessment in a sample of healthy older and younger adults with comparable memory performance. Methods We analyzed encoding by establishing both a serial and semantic clustering index and an object memory association network. Results As expected, semantic clustering was superior in older adults without need for additional allocation of executive resources whereas young adults tended more to rely on serial strategies. The association networks suggested a plethora of obvious but also less obvious memory organization principles, some of which indicated converging approaches between the groups as suggested by a subgraph analysis and some of which indicated diverging approaches as suggested by the respective network interconnectivity. A higher interconnectivity was observed in the older adults’ association networks. Discussion We interpreted this as a consequence of superior semantic memory organization (extent to which effective semantic strategies diverged within the group). In conclusion, these results might indicate a diminished need for compensatory cognitive effort in healthy older adults when encoding and recalling everyday objects under ecologically valid conditions. Due to an enhanced and multimodal encoding model, superior crystallized abilities might be sufficient to counteract an age-related decline in various other and specific cognitive domains. This approach might potentially elucidate age-related changes in memory performance in both healthy and pathological aging.
Tobit Bayesian Model Averaging and the Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment

We develop a fully Bayesian, computationally efficient framework for incorporating model uncertainty into Type II Tobit models and apply this to the investigation of the determinants of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). While direct evaluation of modelprobabilities is intractable in this setting, we show that by using conditional Bayes Factors, which nest model moves inside a Gibbs sampler, we are able to incorporate model uncertainty in a straight-forward fashion. We conclude with a study of global FDI flows between 1988-2000.
Impact of Molecular Testing Using Next-Generation Sequencing in the Clinical Management of Patients with Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer in a Public Healthcare Hospital

Simple Summary Precision medicine has revolutionized the treatment of advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Due to the discovery of novel predictive biomarkers, an exhaustive molecular characterization of the disease is required for adequate clinical management. In this research, we aim to evaluate the implementation of next-generation sequencing (NGS) in routine diagnostics under a quality management system. In a cohort of 350 patients, NGS studies were able to reveal a distinct molecular profile of the disease according to sex and smoking status, as well as co-occurring and mutually exclusive relationships between molecular alterations. In stage IV patients, targeted therapies were associated with longer progression-free and overall survival. NGS has expanded precision medicine in our center by increasing the percentage of patients with actionable molecular alterations. Our findings consolidate the use of NGS as a molecular diagnostic tool in the clinical routine of a public healthcare hospital. Abstract Next-generation sequencing (NGS) is a molecular approach able to provide a comprehensive molecular profile of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The broad spectrum of biomarker-guided therapies has positioned molecular diagnostic laboratories as a central component of patient clinical management. Here, we show the results of an UNE-EN ISO 15189:2022 NGS-accredited assay in a cohort of 350 patients. TP53 (51.0%), KRAS (26.6%) and EGFR (12.9%) were the most frequently mutated genes. Furthermore, we detected co-occurring and mutually exclusive alterations, as well as distinct molecular profiles according to sex and smoking habits. Actionable genetic alterations were significantly more frequent in female patients (80.5%, p < 0.001) and in never-smoker patients (87.7%, p < 0.001). When NGS was established as the main molecular testing strategy, 36.4% of patients received at least one line of targeted treatment. Among 200 patients with stage IV NSCLC, first-line treatment with targeted therapies was associated with a longer progression-free survival (PFS) (13.4 months (95% CI, 10.2–16.6) (p = 0.001)). Similarly, the overall survival (OS) of patients receiving at least one targeted drug was significantly longer (26.2 months (95% CI, 11.8–40.5) (p < 0.001)). Our results show that the implementation of NGS in the public healthcare system has provided a broader application of precision medicine.
DOPE/CHEMS-Based EGFR-Targeted Immunoliposomes for Docetaxel Delivery: Formulation Development, Physicochemical Characterization and Biological Evaluation on Prostate Cancer Cells

Docetaxel (DTX) is a non-selective antineoplastic agent with low solubility and a series of side effects. The technology of pH-sensitive and anti-epidermal growth factor receptor (anti-EGFR) immunoliposomes aims to increase the selective delivery of the drug in the acidic tumor environment to cells with EFGR overexpression. Thus, the study aimed to develop pH-sensitive liposomes based on DOPE (dioleoylphosphatidylethanolamine) and CHEMS (cholesteryl hemisuccinate), using a Box–Behnken factorial design. Furthermore, we aimed to conjugate the monoclonal antibody cetuximab onto liposomal surface, as well as to thoroughly characterize the nanosystems and evaluate them on prostate cancer cells. The liposomes prepared by hydration of the lipid film and optimized by the Box–Behnken factorial design showed a particle size of 107.2 ± 2.9 nm, a PDI of 0.213 ± 0.005, zeta potential of −21.9 ± 1.8 mV and an encapsulation efficiency of 88.65 ± 20.3%. Together, FTIR, DSC and DRX characterization demonstrated that the drug was properly encapsulated, with reduced drug crystallinity. Drug release was higher in acidic pH. The liposome conjugation with the anti-EGFR antibody cetuximab preserved the physicochemical characteristics and was successful. The liposome containing DTX reached an IC50 at a concentration of 65.74 nM in the PC3 cell line and 28.28 nM in the DU145 cell line. Immunoliposome, in turn, for PC3 cells reached an IC50 of 152.1 nM, and for the DU145 cell line, 12.60 nM, a considerable enhancement of cytotoxicity for the EGFR-positive cell line. Finally, the immunoliposome internalization was faster and greater than that of liposome in the DU145 cell line, with a higher EGFR overexpression. Thus, based on these results, it was possible to obtain a formulation with adequate characteristics of nanometric size, a high encapsulation of DTX and liposomes and particularly immunoliposomes containing DTX, which caused, as expected, a reduction in the viability of prostate cells, with high cellular internalization in EGFR overexpressing cells.
Radial profile control of a magnetically expanding plasma and its impact on a plasma thruster

Two RF loop antennas are wound around the source tube of an inductively coupled and magnetically expanding plasma. The magnetic field lines are convergent in the source and divergent downstream of the source tube. The RF antennas are independently powered by two RF generators, providing the change in the radial profile of the ion saturation current of a Langmuir probe. Peaks in the ion saturation currents are observed around the magnetic field lines intersecting the radial source wall at the RF antenna positions, implying the presence of the electrons created near the antennas and transported along the magnetic field lines. The results suggest that the radial profile of the magnetically expanding plasma can be controlled by superimposing the plasmas created by the two antennas. The impact of the radial profile on the thrust is preliminarily investigated by attaching only the solenoid to a pendulum thrust balance immersed in vacuum.
Fault-Tolerant Control of a Class of Nonlinear Multi-Agent Systems With Actuator Faults Based on K-Step Observers

This paper is a study of actuator fault estimation and the control of fault-tolerant controller consistency for Lipschitz nonlinear multi-agent systems having the impact of actuator faults and external disturbances. Firstly, a new approach to fault estimation is proposed for the system under study: k-step fault estimation method, which combines the methods of distributed observers and centralized observers to better describe the fault estimation information. Secondly, an output feedback fault-tolerant controller is designed to offset the influence of the faulty system based on the fault estimation information obtained. Thirdly, stability conditions for distributed observers and controllers are obtained by solving linear matrix inequalities Finally, the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method are illustrated by simulation examples.
Assessing the effectiveness of environmental sampling for surveillance of foot-and-mouth disease virus in a cattle herd

The survival of foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) in the environment provides an opportunity for indirect transmission, both within and between farms. However it also presents the possibility of surveillance and detection via environmental sampling. This study assesses the effectiveness of environmental sampling strategies in the event of an outbreak, using a previous model for transmission of FMDV in a cattle herd that had been parameterized using data from transmission experiments and outbreaks. We show that environmental sampling can be an effective means of detecting FMDV in a herd, but it requires multiple samples to be taken on multiple occasions. In addition, environmental sampling can potentially detect FMDV in a herd more quickly than clinical inspection. For example, taking 10 samples every 3 days results in a mean time to detection of 6 days, which is lower than the mean time to detection estimated for the 2001 UK epidemic (8 days). We also show how environmental sampling could be used in a herd considered to be at risk as an alternative to pre-emptive culling. However, because of the time taken for virus to accumulate at the start of an outbreak, a reasonable level of confidence (> 99%) that an at-risk herd is indeed free from infection is unlikely to be achieved in less than 1 week.
Quantitative Evaluation of Pentraxin-3 in Peri-Miniscrew Implant Crevicular Fluid in Patients Undergoing Orthodontic Treatment: A Prospective Study

Objective: To assess the levels of Pentraxin-3 (PTX3) in peri-miniscrew implant crevicular fluid (PMICF) before and after orthodontic force application Material and Methods: This study included 40 miniscrew implants (MSI) sites in 11 orthodontic patients with high arch discrepancy requiring first premolar extraction using maximum anchorage mechanics for the retraction of anterior teeth. After alignment, the en-masse anterior retraction was carried out using the MSI-supported direct anchorage method. PMICF was collected from the crevice of MSI using Periopaper strips 1. 2µl (Oraflow Inc. USA) after one hour, 24 hours, and three weeks of MSI insertion and after one hour, 24 hours, seven days, three weeks, and six weeks of the force application. Samples were quantitatively analyzed for PTX3 levels through enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Results: The trend in the change of PTX3 levels was evaluated using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. The mean concentration of PTX3 immediately after MSI insertion was 1.19 ng/ml, significantly higher than after 3 weeks after MSI insertion (0.72 ng/ml), which may correspond to the baseline. After loading, the mean PTX3 concentration increased significantly with the peak at 24 hrs (1.28 ng/ml), followed by a gradual decline till the completion of the study (0.5 ng/ml). Conclusion: After MSI insertion, a rise in PTX3 levels in PMICF suggests an underlying inflammatory process. The slow decline in PTX3 level and return to the baseline after loading suggests an adaptive bone response to the stimulus.
Nonlinear optical techniques for plasma diagnostics

The application of various nonlinear optical laser spectroscopic techniques to plasma diagnostics are reported. The techniques discussed in this paper are two-photon laser induced fluorescence spectroscopy, double-resonant four-wave mixing, coherent anti-Stokes Raman-scattering (CARS), and a combination of emission spectroscopy and CARS. They are applied to measurements of atomic hydrogen densities, molecular temperature, chemical composition, electric field distributions, and vibrational population distribution. The basic principles are described and important aspects of the methods are discussed in context with application to various kinds of discharges at low and elevated pressures.
Practices and Perceptions of Family-Centered Care: A Cross-Sectional Survey of Secondary School Athletic Trainers

Family-centered care (FCC) includes collaboration between families and healthcare providers, the creation of flexible policies, and the family taking an active role in the delivery of care. Secondary school athletic trainers provide care for underage patients in school-based health systems, making them responsible for maintaining communication with parents, guardians, and/or caregivers. This cross-sectional survey investigated the extent to which athletic trainers (n = 205) include aspects of FCC in their daily secondary school clinical practice (current practices = CP) and whether they believe that aspect of care is necessary for FCC to be provided in athletic training (perceived necessary = PN) in their everyday practice using the Family-Centered Care Questionnaire-Revised tool. The total mean score for the CP scale (mean = 26.83 ± 4.36) was significantly lower (p ≤ 0.01) than the PN scale (mean = 35.33 ± 4.17). All FCC subscales compared between CP and PN were significantly different (p ≤ 0.01), with each being of higher importance than CP in athletic training. Data analysis revealed four themes related to enhancing FCC in secondary schools: limited education and resources, staffing and space concerns, non-technical skills, and social determinants of health. Attention should be placed on developing resources and interventions for secondary school athletic trainers to collaboratively work with children and their support systems.
Phase Only Pupil Filter Design Using Zernike Polynomials

A pupil filter is a useful technique for modifying the light intensity distribution near the focus of an optical system to realize depth of field (DOF) extension and superresolution. In this paper, we proposed a new design of the phase only pupil filter by using Zernike polynomials. The effect of design parameters of the new filters on DOF extension and superresolution are discussed, such as defocus Strehl ratio (S.R.), superresolution factor (G) and relative first side lobe intensity (M). In comparison with the other two types of pupil filters, the proposed filter presents its advantages on controlling both the axial and radial light intensity distribution. Finally, defocused imaging simulations are carried out to further demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed pupil filter on DOF extension and superresolution in an optical imaging system.
An Improved DANN-based Mixed Gas Booster Station Fault Diagnosis Method

A by-product gas booster station plays an important role in the steel production process, however, due to environmental and other factors can occur jump machine failure, affecting the normal steel production. This study proposes a fault diagnosis method based on one improved domain adversarial neural network (IDANN) for the by-product gas booster station. The method considers the influence of hidden variable factors such as discharge gas pressure and resonance on fault identification and designs an improved domain-adaptive network structure. Assessing the impact of the implicit variable injection ratio on the recognition accuracy of the model, the inter-class distance is adopted to optimize the parameters of the injected implicit variable factor ratio to maximize the inter-class distance. To verify the effectiveness in this study, the operating data of a steel plant LDG booster station is selected for experiments and compared with deep neural networks (DNN) and other fault diagnosis methods. The experimental results show that the recognition rate of this paper can reach 95% for the jump machine faults and the method of this paper has good robustness and network generalization ability.
Robust Point Set Registration Based on Gaussian Mixture Clustering Method

Point set registration, which aims to seek correspondence between multiple point sets, is an important and key technique in image processing and point cloud processing. However, the current point set registration algorithms still have many shortcomings, such as the sensitivity to the initial position and high computation load. In this paper, a novel method is proposed to deal with this problem, called RPR-GMC. Different from the traditional point-to-point correspondence, the proposed algorithm uses the Gaussian mixture clustering method, and fits the Gaussian mixture probability distributions to the data point set through the maximum likelihood. The proposed algorithm improves the sensitivity to initial position and reduces the time complexity. Compare with current the most advanced methods, RPR-GMC shows better accuracy and lower computation load, especially in large-scale data.
Research on 3D bone registration and splicing method for anatomical repositioning

Current computer assisted orthopedic technology is not fast enough for anatomical repositioning splicing methods of 3D broken bone models, and at the same time the convergence speed of optimized positional parameters is slow and easy to fall into local solutions, a fracture alignment method based on a combination of coarse alignment and fine alignment is proposed. The coarse alignment is used to make the target fracture initially aligned to reduce the local optimization problems that may occur in the subsequent alignment process, and the fine alignment optimization strategy is introduced to improve the convergence speed while ensuring the correct alignment. The simulation results show that the time overhead for long straight bone section alignment is 0.008 s and the average error of translation parameters is 0.75 mm, which can meet the requirements of time efficiency and alignment accuracy in the clinical application environment.
Predictive Factors of Local Recurrence after Colorectal Cancer Liver Metastases Thermal Ablation

Background: Identify risk factors for local recurrence (LR) after radiofrequency (RFA) and microwave (MWA) thermoablations (TA) of colorectal cancer liver metastases (CCLM). Methods: Uni- (Pearson’s Chi2 test, Fisher’s exact test, Wilcoxon test) and multivariate analyses (LASSO logistic regressions) of every patient treated with MWA or RFA (percutaneously and surgically) from January 2015 to April 2021 in Centre Georges François Leclerc in Dijon, France. Results: Fifty-four patients were treated with TA for 177 CCLM (159 surgically, 18 percutaneously). LR rate was 17.5% of treated lesions. Univariate analyses by lesion showed factors associated with LR: sizes of the lesion (OR = 1.14), size of nearby vessel (OR = 1.27), treatment of a previous TA site LR (OR = 5.03), and non-ovoid TA site shape (OR = 4.25). Multivariate analyses showed that the size of the nearby vessel (OR = 1.17) and the lesion (OR = 1.09) remained significant risk factors of LR. Conclusions: The size of lesions to treat and vessel proximity are LR risk factors that need to be considered when making the decision of thermoablative treatments. TA of an LR on a previous TA site should be reserved to specific situations, as there is an important risk of another LR. An additional TA procedure can be discussed when TA site shape is non-ovoid on control imaging, given the risk of LR.
The rat, the light and the height : a model of free-willing movements of the rat in three-dimensional space

The rat, the light and the height: A model of free-willing movements of the rat in three-dimensional space Author: Anna-Karoliina Katainen Supervisors: Jarno Mikkonen, Markku Penttonen Master’s thesis in psychology University of Jyväskylä February 2013 29 pages ________________________________________________________________________________ Hippocampal place cells are specialized neurons that react to certain characters of given environment, serving as our key in remembering places and routes. Place cells, studied mainly with rats, have been on the focus of extensive academic interest for decades, but some aspects of place cell functioning have nevertheless remained ambiguous. The question concerning the sensitivity of place cells’ to three-dimensionality of space, especially whether the place cells encode the vertical dimension of given environment, has not yet got a convincing answer. This is partly because studies focusing on this question are relative few thus far, and partly because the research frames of these existing studies could be considered as too complicated. Also, what we think is not sufficiently acknowledged in previous place cell studies executed in 3D-environments are the aspects concerning rats’ locomotion in vertical dimension and motivational factors attached to it. The target of this study was to create a simple model for rats’ voluntary movements in three-dimensional space, without using invasive methods or physical punishment as stimulators of desired locomotion. In order to motivate the rats to explore the vertical dimension, we used moderate food deprivation; selectively positioned food rewards; and localized, selective light stimulus, which has not been utilized in place cell studies prior to this study. We propose that application of this kind of behavioral model in place cell studies would help to reveal the 3D-coding of hippocampal place cells more clearly.