Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tele-Rehabilitation Interventions for Motor Symptoms in COVID-19 Patients: A Narrative Review

The COVID-19 pandemic brought new challenges to global healthcare systems regarding the care of acute patients and the delivery of rehabilitation programs to post-acute or chronic patients. Patients who survive severe forms of COVID-19 often report incomplete healing and long-term symptoms. The need of these patients for rehabilitation has been recognized as a public health problem. In this context, the application of tele-rehabilitation has been explored to reduce the burden on healthcare systems. The purpose of this narrative review is to present an overview of the state of the art regarding the application of remote motor rehabilitation programs for paucisymptomatic acute and post-acute COVID-19 patients, with a focus on the motor aspects of tele-rehabilitation. Following an extensive search on PubMed, the Web of Science, and Scopus, specific studies have been reviewed and compared in terms of study objectives and participants, experimental protocols and methods for home-based interventions, functional assessment, and rehabilitation outcomes. Overall, this review suggests the feasibility and the effectiveness of tele-rehabilitation as a promising tool to complement face-to-face rehabilitation interventions. However, further improvements are needed to overcome the limitations and the current lack of knowledge in the field.
Filling factor characteristics of masking phase-only hologram on the quality of reconstructed images

The present study evaluates the filling factor characteristics of masking phase-only hologram on its corresponding reconstructed image. A square aperture with different filling factor is added on the phase-only hologram of the target image, and average cross-section intensity profile of the reconstructed image is obtained and deconvolved with that of the target image to calculate the point spread function (PSF) of the image. Meanwhile, Lena image is used as the target image and evaluated by metrics RMSE and SSIM to assess the quality of reconstructed image. The results show that the PSF of the image agrees with the PSF of the Fourier transform of the mask, and as the filling factor of the mask decreases, the width of PSF increases and the quality of reconstructed image drops. These characteristics could be used in practical situations where phase-only hologram is confined or need to be sliced or tiled.
Investing in community power building to increase civic engagement through voting: lessons from the Building Healthy Communities initiative

ABSTRACT The objective of this study was to examine the impact of investments in community organizing made as part of a 10-year comprehensive community initiative focused on community power building in California. Data from multiple sources were used to examine the relationship between investments and one measure of civic engagement, voter turnout. Comparisons were made over time (2010–2019) and between intervention and propensity-weighted comparison sites. Analyses determined that investments by the funder were positively associated with turnout; this effect differed across elections and was largest in 2012. Broad investments to support community engagement, organizing, and base building had a positive impact on voting, an important indicator of civic engagement. In historically marginalized or underserved communities, investing in power building can yield benefits despite structural barriers that result in inequities. As restrictive electoral reforms grow across the country in the wake of the 2020 election, initiatives designed to build power may support proactively organizing against these changes or provide the infrastructure to understand and navigate them. Investing in community power building is a promising strategy for philanthropic organizations, organizers, and policy makers.
Elucidating the Mesocarp Drupe Transcriptome of Açai (Euterpe oleracea Mart.): An Amazonian Tree Palm Producer of Bioactive Compounds

Euterpe oleracea palm, endemic to the Amazon region, is well known for açai, a fruit violet beverage with nutritional and medicinal properties. During E. oleracea fruit ripening, anthocyanin accumulation is not related to sugar production, contrarily to grape and blueberry. Ripened fruits have a high content of anthocyanins, isoprenoids, fibers, and proteins, and are poor in sugars. E. oleracea is proposed as a new genetic model for metabolism partitioning in the fruit. Approximately 255 million single-end-oriented reads were generated on an Ion Proton NGS platform combining fruit cDNA libraries at four ripening stages. The de novo transcriptome assembly was tested using six assemblers and 46 different combinations of parameters, a pre-processing and a post-processing step. The multiple k-mer approach with TransABySS as an assembler and Evidential Gene as a post-processer have shown the best results, with an N50 of 959 bp, a read coverage mean of 70x, a BUSCO complete sequence recovery of 36% and an RBMT of 61%. The fruit transcriptome dataset included 22,486 transcripts representing 18 Mbp, of which a proportion of 87% had significant homology with other plant sequences. Approximately 904 new EST-SSRs were described, and were common and transferable to Phoenix dactylifera and Elaeis guineensis, two other palm trees. The global GO classification of transcripts showed similar categories to that in P. dactylifera and E. guineensis fruit transcriptomes. For an accurate annotation and functional description of metabolism genes, a bioinformatic pipeline was developed to precisely identify orthologs, such as one-to-one orthologs between species, and to infer multigenic family evolution. The phylogenetic inference confirmed an occurrence of duplication events in the Arecaceae lineage and the presence of orphan genes in E. oleracea. Anthocyanin and tocopherol pathways were annotated entirely. Interestingly, the anthocyanin pathway showed a high number of paralogs, similar to in grape, whereas the tocopherol pathway exhibited a low and conserved gene number and the prediction of several splicing forms. The release of this exhaustively annotated molecular dataset of E. oleracea constitutes a valuable tool for further studies in metabolism partitioning and opens new great perspectives to study fruit physiology with açai as a model.
Goldilocks Discourse — math scaffolding that’s just right

The Common Core has brought a sharp shift in what it means to be mathematically literate. Becoming mathematically literate is now as much a matter of acquiring mathematical practices as of acquiring any defined set of content standards. This more ambitious definition of literacy presents a challenge not only for students, but also for teachers who are supposed to provide students with opportunities to persevere in challenging tasks. To achieve this, teachers need to relinquish just the right amount of control to the students; relinquishing too little constrains students’ opportunities to persevere; relinquishing too much runs the risk of students engaging in unsystematic exploration. The secret ingredient to making it just right is what we call Goldilocks Discourse.
Score Tests and Powers for Departures from Nominal Dispersion in Separable and Continuous Generalized Nonlinear Models with Longitudinal Data

Exponential family nonlinear models,or generalized nonlinear models are gener- alized from generalized linear models and nonlinear regression.For separable and continous exponential family models(such as normal,gamma,and inverse Gaussian models),this paper discusses the tests for departures from nominal dispersion in the framework of lon- gitudinal nonlinear models with varying dispersion and/or random effects.The score test statistics are constructed and their asymptotic distributions and local powers are derived. The properties of test statistics are investigated through Monte Carlo simulations.We illustrate our test methods by data concerning the yield of coastal Bermuda grass.
Influence of Halides on Elastic and Vibrational Properties of Mixed-Halide Perovskite Systems Studied by Brillouin and Raman Scattering

The relationship between halogen content and the elastic/vibrational properties of MAPbBr3−xClx mixed crystals (x = 1.5, 2, 2.5, and 3) with MA = CH3NH3+ has been studied using Brillouin and Raman spectroscopy at room temperature. The longitudinal and transverse sound velocities, the absorption coefficients and the two elastic constants C11 and C44 could be obtained and compared for the four mixed-halide perovskites. In particular, the elastic constants of the mixed crystals have been determined for the first time. A quasi-linear increase in the sound velocity and the elastic constant C11 with increasing chlorine content was observed for the longitudinal acoustic waves. C44 was insensitive to the Cl content and very low, indicating a low elasticity to shear stress in mixed perovskites regardless of the Cl content. The acoustic absorption of the LA mode increased with increasing heterogeneity in the mixed system, especially for the intermediate composition where the Br and Cl ratio was 1:1. In addition, a significant decrease in the Raman-mode frequency of the low-frequency lattice modes and the rotational and torsional modes of the MA cations was observed with decreasing Cl content. It clearly showed that the changes in the elastic properties as the halide composition changes were correlated with the lattice vibrations. The present findings may facilitate a deeper understanding of the complex interplay between halogen substitution, vibrational spectra and elastic properties, and may also pave the way for optimizing the operation of perovskite-based photovoltaic and optoelectronic devices by tailoring their chemical composition.
Effects of severe hypoxia and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) knock-down on its gene expression, activity, subcellular localization, and apoptosis in gills of the shrimp Penaeus vannamei

ABSTRACT Penaeus vannamei, experiences hypoxia in its natural habitat and in aquaculture. Under hypoxia, cells enhance anaerobic energy production through glycolysis dependent on the up-regulation of glycolytic enzymes including glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) in gills. In vertebrates, GAPDH translocates into the nucleus and displays “moonlighting” functions including apoptosis. These alternative localizations and functions have not been described in crustaceans. We examined the effect of severe hypoxia and GAPDH silencing by RNA interference (RNAi) on its mRNA expression localization and glycolytic activity in P. vannamei gills. Expression and cytosolic activity were up-regulated only in hypoxia-exposed shrimp, but not in hypoxia-silenced specimens. GAPDH was immunodetected in cytosol and nucleus regardless of oxygen conditions. Hypoxia and RNAi decreased activity in cytosol and nucleus without affecting protein abundance, which suggests that nuclear GAPDH may have non-glycolytic functions. Moreover, Caspase-3 (Casp-3) expression increased with GAPDH silencing, suggesting alternative roles for GAPDH in apoptosis evasion.
Bayesian Estimation of Scale Parameter of Pareto Type-I Distribution by Two Different Methods

Bayesian estimators of the scale parameter of Pareto type I model have been obtained by direct method and Lindley’s approach. Further, the expressions for posterior expected loss under squared error loss function (SELF) and asymmetric precautionary loss function (APLF) are obtained. The calculations have been illustrated with the help of numerical example.
What role Workplace Fun (WF) play in Organizations? Analysing the Effect on Job Satisfaction, Task Performance and Organization Citizenship Behavior (OCB)

Workplace fun has been taken as non supportive in organizaitons, however, happy and satisfied workers play a critical role in the success of the organizations. The fun at workplace enables the employees to remain calm and exert more effort in the performance of their tasks. Thus, the main objective of the research is to examine the effects of workplace fun on individual workplace outcomes. The extensive literature studied in the field of workplace fun and performance of employees, but the gap has found that how it affects on the employee’s work behavior outcomes. Therefore, it empirically examines the impact of workplace fun on job satisfaction, task performance and organization citizenship behavior of employees. Thirty four (34) item questionnaires were designed with five point Likert scale, which were distributed to the employees who had been working in the oil and gas companies. The convenience sampling technique was used that enable to get 216 effective responses. The key finding of this study is that workplace fun more positively on task performance as compared to job satisfaction and organization citizenship of employees. This study provides the platform for HR professionals that they should develop such an amusing and entertaining environment at work place through which employees love to do the work. This study also provides the new road map for further research: role of management, cultural issues, and parental status of employees can be considered for a future as a moderating variable.
Fe-Incorporated Nickel-Based Bimetallic Metal–Organic Frameworks for Enhanced Electrochemical Oxygen Evolution

Developing cost-effective and high-efficiency catalysts for electrocatalytic oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is crucial for energy conversions. Herein, a series of bimetallic NiFe metal–organic frameworks (NiFe-BDC) were prepared by a simple solvothermal method for alkaline OER. The synergistic effect between Ni and Fe as well as the large specific surface area lead to a high exposure of Ni active sites during the OER. The optimized NiFe-BDC-0.5 exhibits superior OER performances with a small overpotential of 256 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm−2 and a low Tafel slope of 45.4 mV dec−1, which outperforms commercial RuO2 and most of the reported MOF-based catalysts reported in the literature. This work provides a new insight into the design of bimetallic MOFs in the applications of electrolysis.
Automatic classification of endoscopic images for premalignant conditions of the esophagus

Barrett's esophagus (BE) is a precancerous complication of gastroesophageal reflux disease in which normal stratified squamous epithelium lining the esophagus is replaced by intestinal metaplastic columnar epithelium. Repeated endoscopies and multiple biopsies are often necessary to establish the presence of intestinal metaplasia. Narrow Band Imaging (NBI) is an imaging technique commonly used with endoscopies that enhances the contrast of vascular pattern on the mucosa. We present a computer-based method for the automatic normal/metaplastic classification of endoscopic NBI images. Superpixel segmentation is used to identify and cluster pixels belonging to uniform regions. From each uniform clustered region of pixels, eight features maximizing differences among normal and metaplastic epithelium are extracted for the classification step. For each superpixel, the three mean intensities of each color channel are firstly selected as features. Three added features are the mean intensities for each superpixel after separately applying to the red-channel image three different morphological filters (top-hat filtering, entropy filtering and range filtering). The last two features require the computation of the Grey-Level Co-Occurrence Matrix (GLCM), and are reflective of the contrast and the homogeneity of each superpixel. The classification step is performed using an ensemble of 50 classification trees, with a 10-fold cross-validation scheme by training the classifier at each step on a random 70% of the images and testing on the remaining 30% of the dataset. Sensitivity and Specificity are respectively of 79.2% and 87.3%, with an overall accuracy of 83.9%.
1,25-Dihydroxy Vitamin D3 Facilitates the M2 Polarization and β-Amyloid Uptake by Human Microglia in a TREM2-Dependent Manner

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by dementia as the primary clinical symptom. The production and accumulation of aggregated β-amyloid (Aβ) in patient brain tissues is one of the hallmarks of AD pathogenesis. Microglia, brain-resident macrophages, produce inflammatory cytokines in response to Aβ oligomers or fibrils exacerbating Aβ pathology in AD. HMO6 cells were treated with Aβ42 in the presence or absence of 1,25-dihydroxy vitamin D3 (1,25(OH)2D3) to determine its potential immunomodulatory effects, and the expression of pro-/anti-inflammatory cytokines, M1/M2-associated markers, Toll-like receptors (TLRs), and triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells 2 (TREM2) was examined. 1,25(OH)2D3 was found to suppress Aβ-induced expression of proinflammatory cytokines (TNF-α, IL-1β, and IL-6), M1 markers (CD86 and iNOS), and TLR2/4, whilst increasing the expression of anti-inflammatory cytokines (IL-4, IL-10, and CCL17) and M2 markers (CD206 and Arg-1). Furthermore, 1,25(OH)2D3 promoted TREM2 expression and Aβ uptake by HMO6 cells, and the enhancement of Aβ uptake and M2 polarization was revealed to be TREM2-dependent. The findings of this study suggest that 1,25(OH)2D3 facilitates M2 polarization and Aβ uptake in a TREM2-dependent manner.
Association between Childhood Onset Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Psychiatric Comorbidities in Adulthood

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which includes Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, and unspecified inflammatory bowel disease, is a chronic, unpredictable and immune-mediated condition of the gastrointestinal tract. In pediatric populations, the diagnosis of a chronic and debilitating pathology significantly reduces quality of life. Children diagnosed with IBD may cope with physical symptoms such as abdominal pain or fatigue, but mental and emotional well-being are also important for preventing and reducing the risk of developing psychiatric conditions. Short stature, growth delay and delayed puberty can contribute to poor body image and low self-esteem. Furthermore, treatment per se can alter psycho-social functioning due to the side effects of medication and surgical procedures such as colostomy. It is essential to acknowledge and treat early signs and symptoms of psychiatric distress in order to prevent the development of serious psychiatric disorders in adult life. The literature underlines the importance of incorporating psychological and mental health services as part of the management of inflammatory bowel disease. Diagnosing mental health problems in pediatric patients with IBD can improve their adherence to treatment and pathology course and, consequently, reduce long-term morbidity and mortality.
Effect of Surface Modifications on Surface Roughness of Ti6Al4V Alloy Manufactured by 3D Printing, Casting, and Wrought

This work aimed to comprehensively evaluate the influence of different surface modifications on the surface roughness of Ti6Al4V alloys produced by selective laser melting (SLM), casting and wrought. The Ti6Al4V surface was treated using blasting with Al2O3 (70–100 µm) and ZrO2 (50–130 µm) particles, acid etching with 0.017 mol/dm3 hydrofluoric acids (HF) for 120 s, and a combination of blasting and acid etching (SLA). It was found that the optimization of the surface roughness of Ti6Al4V parts produced by SLM differs significantly from those produced by casting or wrought processes. Experimental results showed that Ti6Al4V alloys produced by SLM and blasting with Al2O3 followed by HF etching had a higher surface roughness (Ra = 2.043 µm, Rz = 11.742 µm), whereas cast and wrought Ti6Al4V components had surface roughness values of (Ra = 1.466, Rz = 9.428 m) and (Ra = 0.940, Rz = 7.963 m), respectively. For Ti6Al4V parts blasted with ZrO2 and then etched by HF, the wrought Ti6Al4V parts exhibited higher surface roughness (Ra = 1.631 µm, Rz = 10.953 µm) than the SLM Ti6Al4V parts (Ra = 1.336 µm, Rz = 10.353 µm) and the cast Ti6Al4V parts (Ra = 1.075 µm, Rz = 8.904 µm).
Interaction of Drug-Sensitive and -Resistant Human Melanoma Cells with HUVEC Cells: A Label-Free Cell-Based Impedance Study

Cancer cell extravasation is a crucial step in cancer metastasis. However, many of the mechanisms involved in this process are only now being elucidated. Thus, in the present study we analysed the trans-endothelial invasion of melanoma cells by a high throughput label-free cell impedance assay applied to transwell chamber invasion assay. This technique monitors and quantifies in real-time the invasion of endothelial cells by malignant tumour cells, for a long time, avoiding artefacts due to preparation of the end point measurements. Results obtained by impedance analysis were compared with endpoint measurements. In this study, we used human melanoma M14 wild type (WT) cells and their drug resistant counterparts, M14 multidrug resistant (ADR) melanoma cells, selected by prolonged exposure to doxorubicin (DOX). Tumour cells were co-cultured with monolayers of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC). Results herein reported demonstrated that: (i) the trans-endothelial migration of resistant melanoma cells was faster than sensitive ones; (ii) the endothelial cells appeared to be strongly affected by the transmigration of melanoma cells which showed the ability to degrade their cytoplasm; (iii) resistant cells preferentially adopted the transcellular invasion vs. the paracellular one; (iv) the endothelial damage mediated by tumour metalloproteinases seemed to be reversible.
Metabolic engineering for 4-aminophenylalanine production from lignocellulosic biomass by recombinant Escherichia coli

To synthesize a high-performance biopolyimide bioplastic from lignocellulosic feedstock, Escherichia coli was metabolically engineered to produce 4-amino-L-phenylalanine (4APhe) as a diamine monomer. A high-biomass sorghum cultivar was used as the.
Opportunities of IoT in Fog Computing for High Fault Tolerance and Sustainable Energy Optimization

Today, the importance of enhanced quality of service and energy optimization has promoted research into sensor applications such as pervasive health monitoring, distributed computing, etc. In general, the resulting sensor data are stored on the cloud server for future processing. For this purpose, recently, the use of fog computing from a real-world perspective has emerged, utilizing end-user nodes and neighboring edge devices to perform computation and communication. This paper aims to develop a quality-of-service-based energy optimization (QoS-EO) scheme for the wireless sensor environments deployed in fog computing. The fog nodes deployed in specific geographical areas cover the sensor activity performed in those areas. The logical situation of the entire system is informed by the fog nodes, as portrayed. The implemented techniques enable services in a fog-collaborated WSN environment. Thus, the proposed scheme performs quality-of-service placement and optimizes the network energy. The results show a maximum turnaround time of 8 ms, a minimum turnaround time of 1 ms, and an average turnaround time of 3 ms. The costs that were calculated indicate that as the number of iterations increases, the path cost value decreases, demonstrating the efficacy of the proposed technique. The CPU execution delay was reduced to a minimum of 0.06 s. In comparison, the proposed QoS-EO scheme has a lower network usage of 611,643.3 and a lower execution cost of 83,142.2. Thus, the results show the best cost estimation, reliability, and performance of data transfer in a short time, showing a high level of network availability, throughput, and performance guarantee.