Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mechanism of adipose tissue-derived stromal cell-extracellular vesicles in treating oral submucous fibrosis by blocking the TGF-β 1/Smad3 pathway via the miR-760-3p/IGF1R axis

Oral submucous fibrosis (OSF) is a prevalent chronic condition, and understanding its pathogenesis is crucial for developing effective therapeutic strategies. This study explores the potential of adipose tissue-derived stromal cell-extracellular vesicles (ADSC-EVs) in mitigating OSF and investigates the underlying molecular mechanisms. OSF was induced in mice by arecoline feeding. Adipose tissue-derived stromal cells (ADSCs), fibrotic buccal mucosal fibroblasts (fBMFs) isolated from OSF mice, and ADSC-EVs were comprehensively characterized. The treatment effects of extracellular vesicles (EVs) and pcDNA3.1-IGF1R on fBMF proliferation, migration, and invasion were assessed using Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8) assay, transwell assay, and flow cytometry assay. The expression levels of alpha-smooth muscle actin ( α -SMA), collagen I, collagen III, and insulin-like growth factor 1 receptor (IGF1R) were evaluated by reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) and western blot. The interaction between miR-760-3p and IGF1R was investigated. In fBMFs and OSF mice treated with a miR-760-3p inhibitor and/or EVs, the expression patterns of miR-760-3p, IGF1R, and proteins related to the TGF-β 1/Smad3 pathway were determined. ADSC-EVs demonstrated the ability to upregulate miR-760-3p, impede cell proliferation, migration, and invasion, and reduce α -SMA, collagen I, and collagen III levels in fBMFs. The expression of miR-760-3p was diminished in ADSC-EVs treated with a miR-760-3p inhibitor. However, silencing miR-760-3p or overexpressing IGF1R partially counteracted the beneficial effects of ADSC-EVs on fBMF fibrosis. miR-760-3p directly targets IGF1R. Significantly, ADSC-EVs exert their suppressive effects on the TGF-β 1/Smad3 pathway through the miR-760-3p/IGF1R axis. In summary, ADSC-EVs, by transferring miR-760-3p and inhibiting IGF1R expression, effectively block the TGF-β 1/Smad3 pathway, thereby alleviating fibrosis in fBMFs and preventing the progression of OSF.
Edinburgh Research Explorer Recursive Markov Decision Processes and Recursive Stochastic Games

We introduce Recursive Markov Decision Processes (RMDPs) and Recursive Simple Stochastic Games (RSSGs), and study the decidability and complexity of algorithms for their analysis and veriﬁcation. These models extend Recursive Markov Chains (RMCs), introduced in [EY05a,EY05b] as a natural model for veriﬁcation of probabilistic procedural programs and related systems involving both recursion and probabilistic behavior. RMCs deﬁne a class of denumerable Markov chains with a rich theory generalizing that of stochastic context-free grammars and multi-type branching processes, and they are also intimately related to probabilistic pushdown systems. RMDPs & RSSGs extend RMCs with one controller or two adversarial players, respectively. Such extensions are useful for modeling nondeterministic and concurrent behavior, as well as modeling a system’s interactions with an environment. We provide upper and lower bounds for deciding, given an RMDP (or RSSG) A and probability p , whether player 1 has a strategy to force termination at a desired exit with probability at least p . We also address “qualitative” termination, where p = 1, and model checking questions.
Sequential load transport during foraging in Acromyrmex (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) leaf-cutting ants

The complex social organization of leaf cutter ants is closely linked with intricate patterns of division of labor in the worker force. For instance, foraging might involve division of labor between cutters and carriers, as well as task partitioning during leaf transport. However, little is known about division of labor during foraging in Acromyrmex , particularly under field conditions. The goal of the present study is to investigate the behavior of Acromyrmex leaf-cutting ants on trails of different lengths in order to elucidate the effect of foraging distance on the occurrence of transport chains under field and laboratory conditions, and to discuss the hypotheses to explain the occurrence of transport chains. In Acromyrmex crassispinus (F OREL , 1909) and Acromyrmex subterraneus subterraneus (F OREL , 1893), cutting and carrying of fragments were clearly separated activities performed by distinct worker groups differing in body size. In addition, the behavior of foragers of both species differed significantly according to variation in trail distances. On short trails (1 m), cutters frequently transported the fragments directly to the nest, whereas on long trails (more than 10 m), most cutters transferred the fragments to other workers. Transport chains happened more frequently when workers harvested plants far from the nest. These results demonstrate that Acromyrmex species display both division of labor be-tween cutters and carriers, and task partitioning during leaf transport, with trail lengths showing marked effects on the likelihood of sequential transport. Furthermore, the results of this study provide support for the hypothesis that the behavioral response of transferring fragments in Acromyrmex species would have been selected for because of its positive effect on the information flow between workers.
Local Volatility in Interest Rate Models

Local Volatility (LV) is a very powerful tool for market modeling. This tool can be used to generate arbitrage-free scenarios calibrated to all available options. Here we demonstrate how to implement LV in order to reproduce most swaption prices within a single model. There was a good agreement between market prices and Monte Carlo prices for all tenors and maturities from 2 to 20 years. Note that due to the use of a normal distribution in the scenario generation process, the volatility of short-term swaptions cannot be generated accurately.
Comptes Rendus Physique

The chiral nature of a badminton shuttlecock is responsible for its counter-clockwise spinning as it naturally propagates through the air. This induces a dissymmetry between left-and right-handed players and the resulting trajectories of the shuttlecock, which were captured in real condition on the badminton court in slow motion at 3700 fps. The videos clearly evidence this dissymmetry as slice shots performed by right-handersinduceanaturalcounter-clockwisespinning,whiletheonesperformedbyleft-handersinduce a clockwise to counter-clockwise spinning, making trajectories of shuttlecocks di ff erent. The slow motion videos also caught a brief Magnus e ff ect, often neglected in badminton, lifting up the shuttlecock for both left-handers and left-handers and a ff ecting the e ff ectiveness of the slice shot. Résumé
Estimation of Land Surface Temperature of Chilika Lagoon Watershed and its Dependence on Terrain Properties

Land Surface Temperature (LST) is very important thing to understand terrestrial thermal behavior, the regional environmental change, and land atmosphere energy balance of a specific geographic area. Landsat Thematic Mapper Thermal Band has high spatial resolution, for this it has significant potency for many applications related to Land Surface Temperature. The rate of evapo-transpiration, rainfall distribution, rate of geomorphic change and distribution of biotic community is directly influenced by land surface temperature. The Chilika lagoon watershed has a unique setup of bare land, Vegetated land and water. Vegetated land and Water cover ratio is 24:62:14 significantly controlling the Distribution of LST of this Lake Watershed. Various land composition reply various response at LST. Using various software and method to build a Basic model, Land Surface Temperature is extracted from the Landsat Thematic Mapper Image. Then the land surface temperatures are compared with in situ Measurements of field survey. Then the result compare with various results of remote sensed data. Land surface temperature image also compared with various terrain types. © 2014 Published by Vidyasagar University. All rights reserved. Estimation of Land Surface Temperature of Chilika Lagoon Watershed and its Dependence on Terrain Properties Sk Majharul Islam1, Amrit Kamila1 , Subrata Jana2 and Ashis Kr. Paul2 1Department of Remote Sensing and GIS 2Department of Geography and E.M. Vidyasagar University, Midnapore A R T I C L E I N F O Article history: Received 10 July 2014 Received in revised form 18 September 2014 Accepted 22 September 2014 *Corresponding Author E-mail address : skmajharulislam@mail.vidyasagar. ac.in (Sk. M. Islam) Indian Journal of Geography & Environment 13 (2014) 78-98
Adapting Prediction Error Estimates for Biased Complexity Selection in High-Dimensional Bootstrap Samples

The bootstrap is a tool that allows for efficient evaluation of prediction performance of statistical techniques without having to set aside data for validation. This is especially important for high-dimensional data, e.g., arising from microarrays, because there the number of observations is often limited. For avoiding overoptimism the statistical technique to be evaluated has to be applied to every bootstrap sample in the same manner it would be used on new data. This includes a selection of complexity, e.g., the number of boosting steps for gradient boosting algorithms. Using the latter, we demonstrate in a simulation study that complexity selection in conventional bootstrap samples, drawn with replacement, is severely biased in many scenarios. This translates into a considerable bias of prediction error estimates, often underestimating the amount of information that can be extracted from high-dimensional data. Potential remedies for this complexity selection bias, such as alternatively using a fixed level of complexity or of using sampling without replacement are investigated and it is shown that the latter works well in many settings. We focus on high-dimensional binary response data, with bootstrap . 632+ estimates of the Brier score for performance evaluation, and censored time-to-event data with . 632+ prediction error curve estimates. The latter, with the modified bootstrap procedure, is then applied to an example with microarray data from patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.
Working Paper Series

It has been observed that similar prints can obtain quite different prices at different auctions within the same auction period. Previous works applying hedonic price technique to determine the formation of auction prices of objects of art have found no conclusive result about the impact of auction houses on final prices. In these studies the object of art has been the unit, and influence of auction houses is analysed by testing whether auction house impact on price is significant or not within a framework of central tendencies. In order to focus on auction houses as a unit we have applied a benchmarking technique, DEA, developed for efficiency studies. Performance indexes are defined and calculated giving an insight into auction house differences difficult to obtain using hedonic price approach.
Feasibility and Design Factors for Home-Based Pulmonary Rehabilitation of Patients With Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and Chronic Lung Diseases Based on a People-Object-Environment Framework: Qualitative Interview Study

Background The feasibility of implementing home-based pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) can be assessed from the perspectives of patients with chronic lung disease and health care professionals involved in PR. Objective Through a qualitative inquiry using interviews and the adoption of the people-object-environment framework, this study aims to understand the influences of interpersonal, environmental, and situational factors on the perceptions and considerations of individuals involved in home-based PR for patients with chronic lung disease. Methods One-on-one interviews were conducted with 20 patients with chronic lung disease and 20 health care professionals for investigating their attitudes and opinions based on their experiences regarding home-based PR as well as for identifying the key factors affecting the benefits and drawbacks of such therapies. This study further evaluates the feasibility of using digital tools for medical diagnosis and treatment by examining the technology usage of both parties. Results The 4 key issues that all participants were the most concerned about were as follows: distance to outpatient medical care, medical efficiency, internet connectivity and equipment, and physical space for diagnosis and treatment. Interviews with patients and health care professionals revealed that the use of technology and internet was perceived differently depending on age and area of residence. Most participants reported that digital tools and internet connectivity had many benefits but still could not solve all the problems; moreover, these same digital tools and network transmission could lead to problems such as information security and digital divide concerns. This study also emphasizes the significant impact of human behavior and thinking on shaping the design of health care interventions and technologies. Understanding user perspectives and experiences is crucial for developing effective solutions for unmet needs. Conclusions The results of this study indicate that despite the different perspectives of patients and health care professionals, their considerations of the key issues are very similar. Therefore, the implementation of plans related to telemedicine diagnosis, treatment, or rehabilitation should take the suggestions and considerations of both parties into account as crucial factors for telehealth care design.
A decade of earthquake activity at Taup¯o Volcano, New Zealand

Taup¯o, New Zealand, is an active caldera volcano that in recent times has erupted on average every ∼ 500 years, with the latest explosive eruption in 232 ± 10 CE. Monitoring at Taup¯o is challenging as there has been no eruptive activity in documented history; however Taup¯o does undergo periods of unrest on roughly a decadal timescale, such as in 2019. Key to identifying these unrest periods is the establishment of what represents ‘normal’ inter-unrest activity. In this study, we generate and present a detailed earthquake catalogue for Taup¯o for 2010–2019 inclusive, consisting of 46,481 earthquakes. This record shows that the Taup¯o region has background earthquake rates of 50–200 earthquakes per month and that the 2019 unrest episode was preceded by an exponential increase in earthquake rate. We also show that when attenuation is accounted for there is no evidence for low-frequency earthquakes at Taup¯o, and that this is an important consideration for volcano monitoring as low-frequency earthquakes are often used to determine magma movement.
Mapping the COVID-19 Anti -Vaccination Communities on Facebook in Czechia

: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a rise in opposition to vaccination, hindering herd immunity. As social media play a major role in the formation of anti-vaccination communities, it is critical to monitor the discourse on the platforms to effectively counter the negative sentiment and encourage people to vaccinate. This study employs computational content analysis, specifically topic modeling and time series analysis, to monitor the COVID-19 anti-vaccination communities on Facebook in Czechia. The analysis generated 18 topics with politics, governance, and international affairs being the most discussed, and only five dealt with issues directly related to COVID-19. Discussions about information and its credibility were prevalent, and members of these anti-vaccination communities relied heavily on social media content and conspiracy websites as sources of information, while neglecting scientific resources. The study highlights the need for ongoing monitoring of anti-vaccination communities on social media and the development of effective communication strategies to promote vaccination.
This paper is included in the Proceedings of the 32nd USENIX Security Symposium.

RESTful APIs have become arguably the most prevalent end-point for accessing web services. Blackbox vulnerability scanners are a popular choice for detecting vulnerabilities in web services automatically. Unfortunately, they suffer from a number of limitations in RESTful API testing. Particularly, existing tools cannot effectively obtain the relations between API operations, and they lack the awareness of the correct sequence of API operations during testing. These drawbacks hinder the tools from requesting the API operations properly to detect potential vulnerabilities. To address this challenge, we propose N AUTILUS , which includes a novel speciﬁcation annotation strategy to uncover RESTful API vulnerabilities. The annotations encode the proper operation relations and parameter generation strategies for the RESTful service, which assist N AUTILUS to generate meaningful operation sequences and thus uncover vulnerabilities that require the execution of multiple API operations in the correct sequence. We experimentally compare N AUTILUS with four state-of-art vulnerability scanners and RESTful API testing tools on six RESTful services. Evaluation results demonstrate that N AUTILUS can successfully detect an average of 141% more vulnerabilities, and cover 104% more API operations. We also apply N AUTILUS to nine real-world RESTful services, and detected 23 unique 0-day vulnerabilities with 12 CVE
MMTC Communications - Frontiers

The fourth agricultural revolution, known as Agriculture 4.0 makes use of digital technologies to transform the agricultural industry into one that is more environmentally conscious, intelligent, and productive. New agricultural technologies have been developed to improve sustainability and find more efficient farming practices. This includes all digitalization and automation processes in the workplace and in our daily lives, such as robots, the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), big data, virtual and augmented reality. The impact of these technological advancements on our lives is significant. It introduces us to precision agriculture from a technical perspective. With the help of this, farmers can effectively grow and maintain crops on cultivable land by utilizing a data-driven strategy that utilizes the most of their available resources. Massive amounts of data are generated by everyday operations. The majority of this data was untapped until recently, but big data technologies allow for the utilization of this data to enhance crop performance and yield. Digital harvesters, especially in Agriculture 4.0, can help manage large areas in a variety of situations, depending on the type of crop and its growth requirements. This special issue provides a brief overview of Agriculture 4.0 and its state. A thorough discussion of smart farming, a number of important technologies, and particular domains for exploring Agriculture 4.0 is followed by discussion of the major applications of Agriculture 4.0 technologies.
A Review of the Application of Artificial Intelligence in Imperfect Information Games Represented by DouDiZhu

Recently, deep reinforcement learning has achieved superhuman performance in various games such as Go, chess, and shogi. Compared with Go, DouDiZhu, also known as Chinese competitive poker, belongs to Imperfect Information Games (IIG), including hidden information, randomness, multi-agent cooperation, and competition. It is popular in China that it has become a national game. Imperfect information games, as an important branch of machine game, is closer to the decision-making under uncertainty in the complex real world than the perfect information games with transparent opponent information, and has a deeper research value. In addition, the game of DouDiZhu not only contains asymmetric information game, but also coexists competition and cooperation between players, so this relatively underdeveloped field is more considerable for research. This paper outlined the current mainstream reinforcement learning algorithms applied to this game and analyzed their respective advantages and disadvantages. This paper outlined the current mainstream reinforcement learning algorithms applied to this game and analyzed their respective advantages and disadvantages. At the same time, it prospected the future research directions.
Photonics

: For photoelectric theodolite, the mirror is the core optical component, so it is of great signiﬁcance to design and optimize a mirror with excellent overall performance. In order to comprehensively consider the contradictory objectives of mass, natural frequency, and RMS under gravity, a multiobjective optimization method based on the performance analysis of two-parameter coupling was proposed. On the basis of the performance law, a suitable solution for balancing multiple objective functions is obtained by introducing manual intervention. The results show that compared with the traditional empirical design of mirrors, the ﬁrst-order natural frequency, mass, and RMS performance of the optimized mirror are improved by 18.64%, 0.1%, and 15.58%, respectively. The frequency/Mass ratio and 1/(RMS*Mass) ratio are increased by 18.72% and 18.59%, respectively. Its comprehensive performance has been improved. This method is effective and provides a reference for the design of photoelectric theodolite and other mirrors.
Variability in the microbial communities and hydrothermal fluid chemistry at the newly discovered Mariner hydrothermal field, southern Lau Basin

[1] A newly discovered hydrothermal field called the Mariner field on the Valu Fa Ridge in the southern Lau Basin was explored and characterized with geochemical and microbiological analyses. The hydrothermal fluid discharging from the most vigorous vent (Snow Chimney, maximum discharge temperature 365°C) was boiling at the seafloor at a depth of 1908 m, and two distinct end-member hydrothermal fluids were identified. The fluid chemistry of the typical Cl-enriched and Cl-depleted hydrothermal fluids was analyzed, as was the mineralogy of the host chimney structures. The variability in the fluid chemistry was potentially controlled by the subseafloor phase-separation (vapor loss process) and the microbial community activities. Microbial community structures in three chimney structures were investigated using culture-dependent and -independent techniques. The small subunit (SSU) rRNA gene clone analysis revealed that both bacterial and archaeal rRNA gene communities on the chimney surfaces differed among three chimneys. Cultivation analysis demonstrated significant variation in the culturability of various microbial components among the chimneys, particularly of thermophilic H2-oxidizing (and S-oxidizing) chemolithoautotrophs such as the genera Aquifex and Persephonella. The physical and chemical environments of chimney surface habitats are still unresolved and do not directly extrapolate the environments of possible subseafloor habitats. However, the variability in microbial community found in the chimneys also provides an insight into the different biogeochemical interactions potentially affected by the phase separation of the hydrothermal fluids in the subseafloor hydrothermal habitats. In addition, comparison with other deep-sea hydrothermal systems revealed that the Mariner field microbial communities have unusual characteristics.