Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Imagens CBERS para o estudo de manguezais do Brasil: aplicações, potencialidades e limitações

Brazil shows the third largest world mangrove area, but the increase of anthropogenic pressures has been leading to high loss of these forests. This highlights the need for synoptic, multiscale and multitemporal studies of Brazilian mangroves by the use of remote sensing tools. For this purpose, the CBERS (China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite) images are valuable tools. In this paper we presented and discussed features, applications, potentialities and limitations of the CBERS-2 and 2B images from sensors IRMSS, CCD and HRC for the study of Brazilian mangroves. For a case study, images of these three sensors of the coastal zone of Sergipe State (Northeast Brazil) were processed in GIS. The use of CBERS images allows the identification (IRMSS), mapping, area quantification, change detection, identification of types of mangroves stands, analysis of canopy closure and biomass estimate (CCD) and extraction of detailed information about mangrove coverage (HRC). The selection of the most appropriate sensor for a particular mangrove study should mainly occur by the scale of analysis. The joint use of the three sensors is suitable for micro-region studies, since this approach offers a range of supplementary information, which is not possible to obtain using images of a single sensor. Palavras-chave: coastal zone, IRMSS, CCD, HRC, Sergipe, zona costeira, CCD, IRMSS, HRC, Sergipe.
NRG/RTOG 0837: Randomized, phase II, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of chemoradiation with or without cediranib in newly diagnosed glioblastoma

Abstract Background A randomized, phase II, placebo-controlled, and blinded clinical trial (NCT01062425) was conducted to determine the efficacy of cediranib, an oral pan-vascular endothelial growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor, versus placebo in combination with radiation and temozolomide in newly diagnosed glioblastoma. Methods Patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma were randomly assigned 2:1 to receive (1) cediranib (20 mg) in combination with radiation and temozolomide; (2) placebo in combination with radiation and temozolomide. The primary endpoint was 6-month progression-free survival (PFS) based on blinded, independent radiographic assessment of postcontrast T1-weighted and noncontrast T2-weighted MRI brain scans and was tested using a 1-sided Z test for 2 proportions. Adverse events (AEs) were evaluated per CTCAE version 4. Results One hundred and fifty-eight patients were randomized, out of which 9 were ineligible and 12 were not evaluable for the primary endpoint, leaving 137 eligible and evaluable. 6-month PFS was 46.6% in the cediranib arm versus 24.5% in the placebo arm (P = .005). There was no significant difference in overall survival between the 2 arms. There was more grade ≥ 3 AEs in the cediranib arm than in the placebo arm (P = .02). Conclusions This study met its primary endpoint of prolongation of 6-month PFS with cediranib in combination with radiation and temozolomide versus placebo in combination with radiation and temozolomide. There was no difference in overall survival between the 2 arms.
Integration with Transcriptomic and Metabolomic Analyses Reveals the In Vitro Cytotoxic Mechanisms of Chinese Poplar Propolis by Triggering the Glucose Metabolism in Human Hepatocellular Carcinoma Cells

Natural products serve as a valuable reservoir of anticancer agents. Chinese poplar propolis (CP) has exhibited remarkable antitumor activities, yet its precise mechanisms of action remain elusive. This study aims to elucidate the in vitro cytotoxic mechanisms of CP in human hepatocellular carcinoma cells (HepG2) through comprehensive transcriptomic and metabolomic analyses. Our evidence suggested that CP possesses a great potential to inhibit the proliferation of HepG2 cells by targeting the glucose metabolism. Notably, CP exhibited a dose- and time-dependent reduction in the viability of HepG2 cells. Transcriptome sequencing unveiled significant alterations in the cellular metabolism, particularly within glucose metabolism pathways. CP effectively restrained glucose consumption and lactic acid production. Moreover, the CP treatment led to a substantial decrease in the mRNA expression levels of key glucose transporters (GLUT1 and GLUT3) and glycolytic enzymes (LDHA, HK2, PKM2, and PFK). Correspondingly, CP suppressed some key protein levels. Cellular metabolomic analysis demonstrated a marked reduction in intermediary products of glucose metabolism, specifically fructose 1,6-bisphosphate and acetyl-CoA, following CP administration. Finally, key compounds in CP were screened, and apigenin, pinobanksin, pinocembrin, and galangin were identified as potential active agents against glycolysis. It indicates that the effectiveness of propolis in inhibiting liver cancer is the result of the combined action of several components. These findings underscore the potential therapeutic value of propolis in the treatment of liver cancer by targeting glycolytic pathways.
GEOCHEMICAL INDICATORS OF EXTERNAL ADDITIONS TO SOILS IN BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK, TEXAS

Soil genesis in semiarid climates must consider the influences of aeolian and other forms of sediment deposition, particularly the emplacement of dust and dissolved constituents in rain and sediment trapped by overland flow. The purpose of this study was to explore the possibility of using Ti-indexed elemental concentrations of the fine earth, whole clay fractions, and rock fragments extracted from the soil to propose that the soil’s elemental composition is incompatible with its development exclusively from the underlying igneous parent material. The soil, a member of the Brewster series (Loamy-skeletal, mixed, superactive, thermic Lithic Haplustolls), is located in the Chisos Mountains of Big Bend National Park, Texas. The soil profile descriptions, chemical properties and clay mineralogy are consistent with a limited degree of soil weathering. However the total Ti-indexed concentrations of the macro-elements and the rare earth elements indicate a substantial elemental depletion, suggesting that weathering has been prolonged and intensive. Titanium concentrations in the clay fraction are substantially greater than those of the whole soil, suggesting that external clay additions inflate both the Ti content of the whole soil and the elemental loss estimates. The evolution of these soils is, in part, predicated on external clay additions, with sediment accumulation caused by the trapping of overland flow the most plausible scenario.
Ice haze, snow, and the Mars water cycle

Images of the limb of Mars reveal discrete cloud layers between 20 and 80 km above the surface. They appear to be composed of water ice and have a number of characteristics similar to hazes that produce diamond dust precipitation in the continental Antarctic of Earth. Temperatures from 170 K to 190 K are deduced at the condensation levels. Eddy diffusion coefficients around 10{sup 5} cm{sup 2} s{sup {minus}1}, typical of a nonconvecting atmosphere, are also derived in the haze regions at times when the atmosphere is relatively clear of dust. This parameter apparently changes by more than 3 orders of magnitude with season and local conditions, with important implications for vertical transport of water and dust and for models of photochemistry and middle atmosphere dynamics. For the cases studied, particle sizes vary systematically by more than an order of magnitude with condensation level, in such a way that the characteristic fall time for particles is always about 1 Mars day, which is the dominant thermal forcing time. The hazes may play a key role in the seasonal water cycle of Mars. They provide a mechanism for growing particles large enough to move atmospheric water closer to the surface, therebymore » improving the efficiency of adsorption and ice deposit formation in the regolith. This is particularly likely in late northern summer, when the rapid hemispheric decrease in atmospheric water vapor may reflect the precipitation of snow. This rapid decrease in late summer involves atmospheric water vapor in about the quantities needed to supply the mid-latitude regolith with the water that appears in the atmosphere early in the following spring. « less
Urinary Liver-Type Fatty Acid Binding Protein, a Biomarker for Disease Progression, Dialysis and Overall Mortality in Chronic Kidney Disease

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a major public health concern with an increasing proportion of sufferers progressing to renal replacement therapy (RRT). Early identification of those at risk of disease progression could be key in improving outcomes. We hypothesise that urinary liver-type fatty acid binding protein (uL-FABP) may be a suitable biomarker for CKD progression and can add value to currently established biomarkers such as the urinary protein-to-creatinine ratio (uPCR). A total of 583 participants with CKD 1–5 (not receiving renal replacement therapy) entered a 2 yr prospective longitudinal study. UPCR and uL-FABP were measured at baseline and CKD progression was defined as either (i) a decline in eGFR of >5 mL/min/1.73 m2 or an increase in serum creatinine by 10% at 1 yr; (ii) a decline in eGFR of >6 mL/min/1.73 m2 or an increase in serum creatinine by 20% at 2 yrs; or (iii) the initiation of RRT. A combined outcome of initiating RRT or death was also included. Approximately 40% of participants showed CKD progression. uL-FABP predicted CKD progression at both years 1 and 2 (OR 1.01, p < 0.01). Sensitivity and specificity were comparable to those of uPCR (AUC 0.623 v 0.706) and heat map analysis suggested that uL-FABP in the absence of significant proteinuria can predict an increase in serum creatinine of 10% at 1 yr and 20% at 2 yrs. The risk of the combined outcome of initiating RRT or death was 23% higher in those with high uL-FABP (p < 0.01) independent of uPCR. uL-FABP appears to be a highly sensitive and specific biomarker of CKD progression. The use of this biomarker could enhance the risk stratification of CKD and its progression and should be assessed further.
TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF KOŠICE FACULTY OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND INFORMATICS Visualization of Garbage Collection Algorithms in JRE Master's Thesis

The vast majority of the currently developed software systems is not implemented using low-level programming languages, but rather using higher-level programming languages that are executed in virtual machines. Garbage Collection (GC) is the process dealing with automatic memory management including the cleanup of no longer used objects. GC turns out to be one of the most important research areas around virtual machines over the last decades. There are many metrics that could measure the efficiency of the particular GC algorithm, but one of the most natural one is the visualization of the GC process. The main goal of this thesis is to analyze, design and implement a GC visualization tool built on top of the original GCSpy project foundations.
Biomass Production and Development of Native Vegetation Following Biowaste Amendment of a Degraded, Semi-Arid Soil

Water erosion is a worrying environmental problem affecting many Mediterranean soils, which are subject to progressive degradation due mainly to the loss of organic matter. To promote the restoration of an abandoned, degraded soil with a semi-arid climate, sewage sludge (SS) and municipal solid waste (MSW) were surface-applied once only to field plots with an 8–12% slope at four different rates: 0, 40, 80, 120 Mg ha−1. The growth of native plants was enhanced by the addition of these organic wastes. Total plant biomass and canopy cover increased significantly and remained higher in all the biowaste treatments over the 5-year study period. An estimated maximum biomass of 550 g m−2 was obtained when 80 Mg ha−1 of SS were applied; for MSW, a maximum estimated value of 361 g m−2 was obtained with the 40 Mg ha−1 rate. Native plant species richness decreased with an increasing biowaste application rate. Differences in the composition of native plant communities were observed among treatments, but with a reduction in perennial and an increase in annual plants seen in all biowaste-treated plots. This was more remarkable in the plots in which SS was applied, and was seen throughout 5 years of the study. Increasing biowaste rates resulted in somewhat increased nutrient concentrations, mainly nitrogen; this effect was less evident in the last years. All plant heavy metal concentrations determined were below those considered hazardous.
Measuring the influence of stress and burnout in teacher-child relationship

Most research finds socio-psychological aspects and the organism-environment relationship crucial in the onset of stress-related phenomena; equally important is the subject’s evaluation of stimuli. The Burnout syndrome is defined as a psychological state perceived as emotive breakdown and sense of depersonalization, featuring decreased effectiveness at work and a lower evaluation of one’s performance. At school, the most significant widespread stressors are issues in managing student behavior. However, in the literature few works treat stress and burnout as a specific function of the teacher-pupil relationship. This research will highlight the significant correlations existing between burnout, self-efficacy, students’ academic performance and the quality of pupil-teacher relationships. 37 primary-school teachers in north-west Italy were involved (age range: 27-57 yrs; M=44.76 yrs; SD=8.38 yrs). Tools used were a specially designed socio-personal questionnaire, the Maslach Burnout Inventory (M.B.I.) and the Classroom and School Context Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale (CSC-TSES), while teachers’ perception of the relationship with their pupils was investigated with STRS (Italian adaptation). Preliminary analysis reveals mutual influence between teachers' self-efficacy levels and degree of burnout; Conflict is the only dimension correlating significantly with burnout levels and self-efficacy in class management ability.
Estimation of water content in a temperate glacier from radar and seismic sounding data

Abstract Radio-wave velocity measurements in temperate and polythermal glaciers, combined with dielectric mixture formulae by Looyenga or Paren, have been used during the last decade to estimate the water content in temperate ice. We have used a similar mixture formula by Riznichenko, but based on elastic properties of the material, to estimate the water content from seismic velocity data. To compare the suitability of the two methods, we have used seismic and radar data from a temperate glacier on an Antarctic island. The estimated water contents are within 0.4–2.3% (average 1.2 ±0.6%) when radio-wave velocities are used, and within 0.9–3.2% (average 2.2±0.9%) when seismic velocities are used. These results are similar to those directly measured from ice cores and to those estimated from radar data on other temperate glaciers. The water-content estimates from seismic data are higher than those from radar data, which we attribute to the different behaviour of seismic and radar velocities as functions of density. Near-surface conditions (ice–firn conditions, presence of crevasses, etc.) have a strong influence on the propagation of elastic and electromagnetic waves, and thus on the accuracy of the velocity determinations and water-content estimates, and so should not be disregarded.
Weakly-Supervised Anomaly Detection in Surveillance Videos Based on Two-Stream I3D Convolution Network

A widespread adoption of city surveillance systems has led to an increase in the use of surveillance videos in order to maintain public safety and security. This thesis tackles the problem of detecting anomalous events in surveillance videos. The goal is to automatically identify abnormal events by learning from both normal and abnormal videos. Most previous works considered any deviation from learned normal patterns as an anomaly. However, this may not always be valid since the same activity could be normal or abnormal under different circumstances. To address this issue, this thesis utilized Two-Stream Inflated 3D (I3D) Convolutional Networks to extract spatial and temporal video features and demonstrated how it outperformed the 3D Convolutional Network (C3D) used in prior work as a feature extractor. To avoid annotating abnormal activities in training videos, a weakly supervised anomaly detection model was implemented based on the Multiple Instance Learning (MIL) framework. The model considers normal and abnormal videos as bags and video clips as instances. It learns a ranking model to predict high anomaly scores for video clips containing anomalies. The thesis further shows that the choice of features input, such as concatenating RGB and Flow features, and careful choice of optimization settings, such as optimizer, can significantly improve the performance of the anomaly detection model on some evaluation metrics.
Asteroids in the Thermal Infrared

The importance of the thermal-infrared spectra region for investigations of asteroids lies traditionally in the dependence of the thermal emission of an asteroid on its visual albedo and size. Knowledge of albedos and sizes is crucial in many areas of asteroid research, such as mineralogy and taxonomy, the sice-frequency distribution of families and populations of asteroids (e.g., near-Earth asteroids), and the relationship between asteroids in the outer solar system and comets. However, the rapid increase in the availability of computing power over the past decade has cleared the way for development of sophisticated thermophysical models of asteroids with interesting new areas of application. Recent progress in the thermal modeling of asteroids and observational work in the thermal infrared are described. The use of thermal models for the physical characterization of asteroids and other applications is discussed.
Generalized Mirror Symmetry of a Point Set in E 3

This thesis deals with generalised reflectional symmetry of point sets in E3. The generalisation is based on replacing a plane as a mirroring surface by a general curved surface. The goal of this work was to formulate a definition of such a generalisation of mirror symmetry and to propose methods capable of finding a set of points lying on the surface of symmetry or the surface itself. The proposed algorithms were implemented and their functionality was tested on various types of input data.
Spatial enhancement of satellite images using data fusion algorithms in the wavelet domain

Image processing is becoming one of the most demanding domains of satellite imaging for remote sensing applications. Whatever the application, image processing evolves in the way different sensors are asked to contribute to the decision of combining the observation they get on the object of interest. In this paper, we present some tools used to make a fusion of images and we discuss the fundamentals of these tools. We present the mathematical theory of multiresolution analysis then develop wavelets. In fact, there are mathematical tools for hierarchically decomposing functions. They allow a function to be described in terms of a coarse overall shape, plus details that range from broad to narrow. We develop and discuss the case of Haar, Daubechies and biorthogonal (linear B-spline and quadratic B-spline) wavelets in two dimensions and show how they can be used for image fusion. A quantitative comparison of all developed methods is achieved using a SPOT image of the Australian region including urban areas (SPOT-XS 20m and Panchromatic 10m).
Salience network and cognitive impairment in Parkinson’s disease

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease with cognitive as well as motor impairments. While much is known about the brain networks leading to motor impairments in PD, less is known about the brain networks contributing to cognitive impairments. Here, we leveraged resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) data from the Parkinson's Progression Marker Initiative (PPMI) to examine network dysfunction in PD patients with cognitive impairment. We tested the hypothesis that cognitive impairments in PD involve altered connectivity of the salience network (SN), a key cortical network that detects and integrates responses to salient stimuli. We used the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) as a continuous index of coarse cognitive function in PD. We report two major results. First, in 82 PD patients we found significant relationships between lower intra-network connectivity of the frontoparietal network (FPN; comprising the dorsolateral prefrontal and posterior parietal cortices bilaterally) with lower MoCA scores. Second, we found significant relationships between lower inter-network connectivity between the SN and the basal ganglia network (BGN) and the default mode network (DMN) with lower MoCA scores. These data support our hypothesis about the SN and provide new insights into the brain networks contributing to cognitive impairments in PD.
Wellbeing After Stroke (WAterS): feasibility testing of a co-developed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) intervention, to support psychological adjustment after stroke

Objective: Feasibility test a co-developed intervention based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to support psychological adjustment post-stroke, delivered by a workforce with community in-reach. Design: Observational feasibility study utilising Patient, Carer, Public Involvement (PCPI). Setting: Online. UK. Participants: Stroke survivors with self-reported psychological distress 4+ months post-stroke Interventions: The co-developed Wellbeing After Stroke (WAterS) intervention includes: nine weekly, structured, online, group sessions for stroke survivors, delivered via a training programme to upskill staff without previous ACT experience, under Clinical Psychology supervision. Main measures: Feasibility of recruitment and retention; data quality from candidate measures; safety. Clinical and demographic information at baseline; Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) via online surveys (baseline, pre- and post-intervention, 3 and 6 months after intervention end) including Mood (HADS), Wellbeing (ONS4), Health-Related Quality of Life (EQ5D5L), Psychological Flexibility (AAQ-ABI) and Values-Based Living (VQ). Results: We trained eight staff and recruited 17 stroke survivors with mild-to-moderate cognitive and communication difficulties. 12/17 (71%) joined three intervention groups with 98% attendance and no related adverse events. PROMS data were well-completed. The HADS is a possible future primary outcome (self-reported depression lower on average by 1.3 points: 8.5 pre-group to 7.1 at 3 month follow up; 95% CI 0.4 to 3.2). Conclusion: The WAterS intervention warrants further research evaluation. Staff can be trained and upskilled to deliver. It appears safe and feasible to deliver online to groups, and study recruitment and data collection are feasible. Funding has been secured to further develop the intervention, considering implementation and health equality. Keywords: Stroke; rehabilitation; acceptance and commitment therapy; intervention; wellbeing; psychological adjustment; feasibility
Advances in plant molecular biology: towards new challenges

© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Experimental Biology. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Special Issue Editorial