Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Super-Paramagnetic Nanoparticles with Spinel Structure: A Review of Synthesis and Biomedical Applications

The study of ceramic materials has attracted the attention of many researchers due to the possibility of their use in nanotechnology. The spinel ferrites form a large group of materials with a broad range of applications. Some examples include electronic devices such as high-frequency transformer cores, antenna rods, induction-tuners, among many others. However, when the ferritic materials display superparamagnetic behavior, their potential for biological applications like drug delivery, hyperthermia, resonance magnetic imaging and magnetic separation, become amazingly high. Therefore, the superparamagnetism is a characteristic strongly desired for spinel ferrites. Since this phenomenon is size-dependent, the methodologies to synthesize these materials has emerged as a crucial step in order to obtain the desired properties. In this regarding, several synthetic processes have been developed. For example, co-precipitation is a fast and cheap method to synthesize superparamagnetic spinel ferrites. However, methodologies involving microwave, ultrasound or polymers frequently result in these kind of materials. Therefore, this review brings a brief historic introduction about spinel ferrites as well as essential concepts to understand their structure and magnetic properties. In addition to this, recent advances in synthesis and applications of the superparamagnetic spinel ferrites are mentioned. Contents of Paper
Triage Accuracy at a Multiple Casualty Incident Disaster Drill: The Emergency Medical Service, Fire Department of New York City Experience

We sought to evaluate the accuracy and speed for the triage of multiple patients during a disaster drill by Emergency Medical Service (EMS) personnel. During a disaster drill (train collision with blast injury and chemical release), the accuracy and speed of triage of 130 patient-actors by the Fire Department of New York City (FDNY) EMS personnel was evaluated using the Simple Triage and Rapid Treatment (START) triage system. All EMS personnel had been previously trained in START, but refresher training was not administered before the drill. Overall triage accuracy was 78%. In patients that had additional changes in their status during the triage process (injects), 62% were retriaged appropriately. Because of security and decontamination procedures, triage at the triage/treatment area began 40 minutes after the drill commenced. It took 2 hours and 38 minutes to completely clear the scene of all patients. On average, the time from the start of triage to transport was 1 hour and 2 minutes. Despite the fact that triage is a skill practiced by every EMS system in the country on a daily basis, few studies regarding triage accuracy are available. Limited data suggest that the triage accuracy rates using different triage strategy algorithms are approximately 45% to 55%. During this drill, FDNY-EMS triage accuracy using the START system exceeded these expectations. This study provides insight as to the triage experience of a large urban EMS system operating at a disaster drill.
How Much Effort is Necessary for Blind Users to Read Web-based Mathematical Formulae?: A comparison using task models with different screen readers

Providing access to mathematical content on websites for blind users who use screen readers has been an important challenge for accessibility in Human-Computer Interaction. Further to limitations in reading content in languages such as Brazilian Portuguese, there are many issues related to the effort demanded from blind users to navigate within mathematical formulae when solving problems to reach for specific information. In this paper, we performed estimations of the effort required by blind users to navigate within mathematical formulae using task models with GOMS (Goals, Operators, Methods, and Selection rules) and KLM (Keystroke-Level Model). We analyzed task models for different mathematical formulae using available navigation resources in the screen readers JAWS (Job Access With Speech), ChromeVox and NVDA (NonVisual Desktop Access), considering the optimal paths that could be used by experienced blind users. The results showed that JAWS currently provides more detailed navigation resources that allow for faster and more precise navigation than ChromeVox and NVDA. However, we observed that there are important issues regarding the complexity of the interactions required to use those navigation resources. This could be very challenging for blind users when performing mathematical problem solving tasks, which are cognitively-demanding themselves. The investigation of new enhanced interaction approaches for within-formulae navigation in screen readers is very important to make mathematical learning and problem solving on the Web easier for blind users.
Synthesis and photoluminescence properties of vertically aligned ZnO nanorod–nanowall junction arrays on a ZnO-coated silicon substrate

Arrays of vertically well-aligned ZnO nanorod–nanowall junctions have been synthesized on an undoped ZnO-coated silicon substrate by a carbothermal reduction and vapour phase transport method. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) show that the nanostructures are well-oriented with the c-axis perpendicular to the substrate. The room temperature photoluminescence (PL) spectrum of the as-prepared ZnO nanostructure reveals a dominant near-band-edge (NBE) emission peak and a weak deep level (DL) emission, which demonstrates its good optical properties. Temperature-dependent PL spectra show that both the intensity of NBE and DL emissions increased with decreasing temperature. The NBE emission at 3.27 eV is identified to originate from the radiative free exciton recombination. The possible growth mechanism of ZnO nanorod–nanowall junctions is also proposed.
Can we steal your vocal identity from the Internet?: Initial investigation of cloning Obama's voice using GAN, WaveNet and low-quality found data

Thanks to the growing availability of spoofing databases and rapid advances in using them, systems for detecting voice spoofing attacks are becoming more and more capable, and error rates close to zero are being reached for the ASVspoof2015 database. However, speech synthesis and voice conversion paradigms that are not considered in the ASVspoof2015 database are appearing. Such examples include direct waveform modelling and generative adversarial networks. We also need to investigate the feasibility of training spoofing systems using only low-quality found data. For that purpose, we developed a generative adversarial network-based speech enhancement system that improves the quality of speech data found in publicly available sources. Using the enhanced data, we trained state-of-the-art text-to-speech and voice conversion models and evaluated them in terms of perceptual speech quality and speaker similarity. The results show that the enhancement models significantly improved the SNR of low-quality degraded data found in publicly available sources and that they significantly improved the perceptual cleanliness of the source speech without significantly degrading the naturalness of the voice. However, the results also show limitations when generating speech with the low-quality found data.
Capecitabine/cisplatin versus 5-fluorouracil/cisplatin as first-line therapy in patients with advanced gastric cancer: a randomised phase III noninferiority trial.

BACKGROUND To compare capecitabine/cisplatin with 5-fluorouracil/cisplatin as first-line treatment for advanced gastric cancer (AGC). PATIENTS AND METHODS In this randomised, open-label, phase III study, patients received cisplatin (80 mg/m(2) i.v. day 1) plus oral capecitabine (1000 mg/m(2) b.i. d. , days 1-14) (XP) or 5-FU (800 mg/m(2)/day by continuous infusion, days 1-5) (FP) every 3 weeks. The primary end point was to confirm noninferiority of XP versus FP for progression-free survival (PFS). RESULTS A total of 316 patients were randomised to XP (n = 160) or FP (n = 156). In the per-protocol population, median PFS for XP (n = 139) versus FP (n = 137) was 5.6 versus 5.0 months. The primary end point was met with an unadjusted hazard ratio (HR) of 0.81 [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.63-1.04, P < 0.001 versus noninferiority margin of 1.25]. Median overall survival was 10.5 versus 9.3 months for XP versus FP (unadjusted HR = 0.85, 95% CI 0.64-1.13, P = 0.008 versus noninferiority margin of 1.25). The most common treatment-related grade 3/4 adverse events in XP versus FP patients were as follows: neutropenia (16% versus 19%), vomiting (7% versus 8%), and stomatitis (2% versus 6%). CONCLUSIONS XP showed significant noninferiority for PFS versus FP in the first-line treatment of AGC. XP can be considered an effective alternative to FP.
Effects of Chinese herbal medicine and cold exposure on plasma glucose, leucine and energy metabolism in sheep

An experiment was carried out to assess the feeding effect of Chinese herbal medicine on N balance, ruminal fermentation characteristics, kinetics of plasma glucose, leucine and energy metabolism in sheep kept at thermoneutral environment (23°C) or exposed to cold (2-4°C). Four sheep were subjected to either mixed hay (MH-diet) or hay supplemented with 2% of a traditional nourishing Chinese herbal medicine mixture (Astragalus root, Angelica root and Atractylodes rhizome; CHM-diet) over two 23-day periods using a crossover design. Cold exposure was conducted for 5 days. The isotope dilution of [U-13 C]glucose with open circuit calorimetry was used to determine the turnover and oxidation rates of plasma glucose and metabolic heat production. The rate of plasma leucine turnover was measured with an isotope dilution method using [1-13 C]leucine. N intake was higher, N excretion through faeces was lower and N digestibility was higher for the CHM-diet than the MH-diet. Rumen pH was lower, concentration of rumen NH3 was higher, concentrations of rumen total VFA and acetate tended to be higher and propionate was higher for the CHM-diet compared with the MH-diet. Turnover rate of plasma glucose was higher for the CHM-diet than the MH-diet and increased during cold exposure. Oxidation rate of plasma glucose did not differ between diets and also between environments. Turnover rate of plasma leucine was higher for the CHM-diet compared with the MH-diet but remained similar between environments. Heat production was greater for the CHM-diet than the MH-diet and increased during cold exposure. No significant diet × environment interaction was detected. The present results demonstrated that plasma glucose and energy metabolism were enhanced by both Chinese herbal medicine and cold exposure; plasma leucine metabolism was enhanced by Chinese herbal medicine but with lack of change in response to cold exposure in sheep under the conditions of the current experiment.
Vividness control of KI with variations in visual stimulus patterns

We develop a new rehabilitation device that combines the effects of two illusions: the kinesthetic illusion (KI) and the rubber hand illusion (RHI). We investigate whether KI can be reinforced with RHI where the former is caused by applying the oscillator's vibration to the flexor carpi radialis muscle (FCR) of a right hand. RHI is caused by showing moving images of a right hand overlapped on the subject's hand through a display pad. The illusion's vividness is induced in the right hand was represented by the left hand and measured by a rotary encoder, which can measure the joint angle of the flexion and the extension motion of the right wrist. We conducted experiments that quantitatively compared the KI strength that was reinforced by the visual stimulus with the pure KI strength, where the enhanced KI strength was about 1.4 to 1.5 times stronger than the unenhanced KI.
Efficient parallelization for big data collaborative recommendation decisions

This paper proposes a novel Sentiment-Based Probabilistic Tensor Analysis technique {senti-PTF} to address the information overload problem through information filtering. The proposed framework first applies a Natural Language Processing (NLP) technique to perform sentiment analysis taking advantage of the huge sums of textual data generated in from the social media are predominantly left untouched. Although some current studies do employ review texts, many of them do not consider how sentiments in reviews influence recommendation algorithm for prediction. Existing works concentrate only on rating matrix which are often sparse. There is therefore this big data text analytics gap whose modeling is computationally expensive. Probabilistic Tensor Factorization (PTF) is a standard technique for such large scale processing. From our experiments, our novel machine learning sentiment-based probabilistic tensor analysis (senti-PTF) is computationally less expensive, scalable and addresses the scalability problem and cold-start problems, for optimal recommendation decision making as shown from our error detection evaluation metrics.
Metal-Polymer-Metal Laminates for Lightweight Application

In the last decade, wide research was carried out on developing light-weight materials with improved mechanical properties, for instance comparable specific stiffness and strength, improved isolation, superior vibration and sound damping properties. To satisfy the increasing demands, Metal-Polymer-Metal Laminates have been numerously developed. Here, a short background of composites structures is presented.
Model predictive instantaneous power control for a sensorless induction motor drive

This paper presents an innovative model predictive instantaneous power control (MP IPC) technique for an induction motor (IM) drive. The proposed control approach is designed as a preference control solution to the classic techniques such as field oriented control (FOC) and direct torque control (DTC). The proposed MP IPC has a simple implementation procedure, in addition to the absence of the PI current controllers and pulse width modulation (PWM), which are usually used in such classic techniques. An effective sensorless approach based on model reference adaptive system (MRAS) observer is used for the purpose of speed estimation, which depends on regulating the error between the measured and estimated values of instantaneous reactive power. A dSpace 1104 control board is used to implement experimentally the control procedure. Obtained results affirm the feasibility of proposed method in achieving decoupled control of the instantaneous active and reactive powers of IM drive, and consequently decoupled control of torque and flux values is achieved.
Achievable Secrecy Rates for Relay-Eavesdropper Channel Based on the Application of Noisy Network Coding

In this paper, we consider the design of a new secure transmission scheme for a four-node relay-eavesdropper channel, where user cooperation is used to facilitate secure communications. The key idea of the proposed achievable scheme is to apply the compression relaying concept of noisy network coding (NNC) to the secrecy communication scenario. But different from the original non-secrecy NNC, the compression rate at the relay is adaptively chosen according to the eavesdropping channel. Particularly, helping interference information is injected into the compression codebook at the relay by simply enlarging the compression rate, which is to effectively suppress the eavesdropping channel. Closed-form expressions of the secrecy rates achieved by the proposed NNC-based secure scheme are characterized for both the discrete memoryless and Gaussian relay-eavesdropper channels, where the optimal compression rate and the optimal transmit power at the relay are also determined. The proposed secure scheme can be viewed as a general framework, which naturally combines the NNC compression relaying scheme with the interference-assisted scheme. Analytical and numerical results demonstrate that the proposed secure scheme offers constant performance gains over typical existing cooperative secure schemes.
Probing the toxicity of nanoparticles: a unified in silico machine learning model based on perturbation theory

Abstract Nanoparticles (NPs) are part of our daily life, having a wide range of applications in engineering, physics, chemistry, and biomedicine. However, there are serious concerns regarding the harmful effects that NPs can cause to the different biological systems and their ecosystems. Toxicity testing is an essential step for assessing the potential risks of the NPs, but the experimental assays are often very expensive and usually too slow to flag the number of NPs that may cause adverse effects. In silico models centered on quantitative structure–activity/toxicity relationships (QSAR/QSTR) are alternative tools that have become valuable supports to risk assessment, rationalizing the search for safer NPs. In this work, we develop a unified QSTR-perturbation model based on artificial neural networks, aimed at simultaneously predicting general toxicity profiles of NPs under diverse experimental conditions. The model is derived from 54,371 NP-NP pair cases generated by applying the perturbation theory to a set of 260 unique NPs, and showed an accuracy higher than 97% in both training and validation sets. Physicochemical interpretation of the different descriptors in the model are additionally provided. The QSTR-perturbation model is then employed to predict the toxic effects of several NPs not included in the original dataset. The theoretical results obtained for this independent set are strongly consistent with the experimental evidence found in the literature, suggesting that the present QSTR-perturbation model can be viewed as a promising and reliable computational tool for probing the toxicity of NPs.
A Novel Tool for Automatic GUI Layout Testing

As mobile apps are expected to run in many different screen sizes, the need to validate the correct positioning and rendering of graphical user interface (GUI) elements in such screens is increasing. In this paper, we first focus on identifying typical layout errors in modern GUIs and categorising them. Then, we implement a tool called Layout Bug Hunter (LBH) to automatically identify if a GUI layout is rendered correctly in different screen sizes. The tool is evaluated on mobile apps and is compared to state-of-the-art layout-testing tools. Results show that LBH can identify all the typical layout errors we categorise, and LBH is more accurate than a layout-testing tool based on image diffing algorithms. In addition, LBH does not require writing layout test scripts manually. LBH is currently implemented on only one mobile app development platform, but it is designed to be portable and extensible. With only limited effort, LBH can be extended to other mobile and web development platforms for layout testing.
Underlying role of mitochondrial mutagenesis in the pathogenesis of a disease and current approaches for translational research

Mitochondrial diseases have been extensively investigated over the last three decades, but many questions regarding their underlying aetiologies remain unanswered. Mitochondrial dysfunction is not only responsible for a range of neurological and myopathy diseases but also considered pivotal in a broader spectrum of common diseases such as epilepsy, autism and bipolar disorder. These disorders are a challenge to diagnose and treat, as their aetiology might be multifactorial. In this review, the focus is placed on potential mechanisms capable of introducing defects in mitochondria resulting in disease. Special attention is given to the influence of xenobiotics on mitochondria; environmental factors inducing mutations or epigenetic changes in the mitochondrial genome can alter its expression and impair the whole cell's functionality. Specifically, we suggest that environmental agents can cause damage in mitochondrial DNA and consequently lead to mutagenesis. Moreover, we describe current approaches for handling mitochondrial diseases, as well as available prenatal diagnostic tests, towards eliminating these maternally inherited diseases. Undoubtedly, more research is required, as current therapeutic approaches mostly employ palliative therapies rather than targeting primary mechanisms or prophylactic approaches. Much effort is needed into further unravelling the relationship between xenobiotics and mitochondria, as the extent of influence in mitochondrial pathogenesis is increasingly recognised.
Advanced management systems for large lithium-ion battery packs

ELECTRIC vehicles are a potential method of low-emission transportation and have seen significant early adoption in recent years. Core aspects that would facilitate and accelerate their transition into mainstream products include a reduction of vehicle cost and an increase in driving range. Modern electric vehicle drivetrains are powered by a lithium-ion battery pack consisting of between tens and hundreds of individual cells. Each individual cell is chemically limited to a maximum voltage, so in order to provide power efficiently many individual cells are connected in series. Series-connected cells share current but due to differences in both initial manufacturing and operating conditions, can become unevenly charged. As a result, battery management is required to ensure reliable and durable operation. Furthermore, in addition to the drivetrain powered by the high-voltage battery, a lowvoltage supply is required for lights and other uses. A reliable supply that functions even when the main battery is isolated typically necessitates using a voltage converter as well as an additional lead-acid battery. This thesis outlines modelling and cell experimentation research conducted to improve the understanding of battery cell and pack behaviour. It further describes the development, construction and testing of a battery management structure that optimises the utilisation of individual cells in the high-voltage battery and overcomes the need for the additional low-voltage battery. The developed system holds potential for both decreasing the capital cost and increasing the range of electric vehicles.
Use of Continuous Local Anesthetic Infusion in the Management of Postoperative Split-Thickness Skin Graft Donor Site Pain

Donor sites from split-thickness skin grafts (STSG) impose significant pain on patients in the early postoperative period. We report the use of continuous local anesthetic infusion as a method for the management of postoperative STSG donor site pain. Patients undergoing single or dual, adjacent STSG harvest from the thigh (eight patients) or back (one patient) were included in this study. Immediately after STSG harvest, subcutaneous catheters were placed for continuous infusion of local anesthetic. Daily donor site–specific pain severity scores were prospectively recorded in nine patients receiving local anesthetic infusion. Patient characteristics, technical aspects, and postoperative complications were identified in the study. The thigh was the anatomic location chosen for most donor sites. A single catheter was placed for donor sites limited to 4 inches in width or less. A dual catheter system was used for those wider than 4 inches. An elastomeric pump delivered continuously a total of 4 ml/hr of a solution of 0.5% bupivacaine. The average anesthetic infusion duration was 3.1 days. A substantial decrease in worst, least, and average donor site pain scores was found from the first 24 hours to the second postoperative day in our patients, a treatment trend that continued through postoperative day 3. One patient developed minor anesthetic leakage from the catheter insertion site; and in three cases, accidental dislodgement of the catheters occurred. There were no cases of donor site secondary infection. All donor sites were completely epithelialized at 1-month follow-up. Continuous local anesthetic infusion is technically feasible and may represent an option for postoperative donor site pain control after STSG harvesting. Relative cost–benefit of the technique remains to be determined.