Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A comparison between bipolar transistor and nanowire field effect transistor biosensors

Important performance metrics, such as sensitivity and signal to noise ratio (SNR) of bipolar transistor based biosensors, are compared to those for nanowire field effect transistor (FET) sensors. The sensor consists of a heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) with silicon germanium base connected to a sensing surface in contact with the solution. The measured sensitivity is ≥2 times and SNR is >20 times higher in comparison to those for nanowire FET sensors. More importantly, the HBT biosensor sensitivity is constant over the sensing range of ∼5 decades and depends only on the temperature. In comparison, the nanowire FET sensor sensitivity varies in a complex manner over the sensing range and exhibits significant fabrication induced sensor to sensor variations. Consequently, HBT sensors would require minimal calibration for quantitative sensing studies. Furthermore, the bipolar transistor SNR is not only significantly higher but is also constant over the sensing range. In comparison, the nanowire FET se.
Sparse representation-based spectral clustering for SAR image segmentation

A new method, sparse representation based spectral clustering (SC) with Nyström method, is proposed for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image segmentation. Different from the conventional SC, this proposed technique is developed by using the sparse coefficients which obtained by solving l1 minimization problem to construct the affinity matrix and the Nyström method is applied to alleviate the segmentation process. The advantage of our proposed method is that we do not need to select the scaling parameter in the Gaussian kernel function artificially. We apply the proposed method, k-means and the classic spectral clustering algorithm with Nyström method to SAR image segmentation. The results show that compared with the other two methods, the proposed method can obtain much better segmentation results.
Subscribing to diverse subjects in different classes: language development dichotomy

Language teachers, yet on the other side, language enhancement is compromised for learners whose home language is not English. Further than that, for teachers lacking specialisation of other subjects allocated to them, besides English language teaching and learning becomes a monotonous activity that does not inspire learner attitudes more so that the greatest percentage of subjects underpinning the curriculum is offered in an English medium. This paper aims to explore if offering different subjects in varying classes has any significant impact on language development. The study is located within interpretivist paradigm using qualitative research appraoch and case study research design. 5 secondary school English language teachers were purposefully nominated and interviewed to study the problem’s complex phenomenon. Findings divulged that multi subject allocation in the site investigated seemed to be compromising subject specification, thus leading to a decline in enhancing language development. The study recommends that to re-build teacher and learner motivation, policies should be put in place to consider subject speciality when allocation of subjects is administered.
A Comparative Study of IRT Fixed Parameter Calibration Methods.

This article provides technical descriptions of five fixed parameter calibration (FPC) methods, which were based on marginal maximum likelihood estimation via the EM algorithm, and evaluates them through simulation. The five FPC methods described are distinguished from each other by how many times they update the prior ability distribution and by how many EM cycles they use. Specifically, the five FPC methods included no prior weights updating and one EM cycle (NWU-OEM) or multiple EM cycles (NWU-MEM), one prior weights updating and one EM cycle (OWU-OEM) or multiple EM cycles (OWU-MEM), and multiple weights updating and multiple EM cycles (MWU-MEM) methods. All the five FPC methods were evaluated in terms of recovery of the underlying ability distribution and item parameters. An important factor in the simulation was three different ability (normal) distributions—N(0, 1), N(0.5, 1.22), and N(1, 1.42)—for FPC groups, with the fixed item parameters obtained with a reference N(0, 1) group. Only the MWU-MEM method appeared to perform properly under all the three distributions. Under the N(0, 1) distribution, the NWU-MEM and OWU-MEM methods also appeared to perform properly. Under the N(0.5, 1.22), and N(1, 1.42) distributions, however, the four methods other than the MWU-MEM method resulted in some or severe under-estimation in the recovery.
A robust controller design method for feedback substitution schemes using genetic algorithms

Controllers for feedback substitution schemes demonstrate a trade-off between noise power gain and normalized response time. Using as an example the design of a controller for a radiometric transduction process subjected to arbitrary noise power gain and robustness constraints, a Pareto-front of optimal controller solutions fulfilling a range of time-domain design objectives can be derived. In this work, we consider designs using a loop shaping design procedure (LSDP). The approach uses linear matrix inequalities to specify a range of objectives and a genetic algorithm (GA) to perform a multi-objective optimization for the controller weights (MOGA). A clonal selection algorithm is used to further provide a directed search of the GA towards the Pareto front. We demonstrate that with the proposed methodology, it is possible to design higher order controllers with superior performance in terms of response time, noise power gain and robustness.
Angular momentum transport in the magnetospheres of cataclysmic variable accretion discs

On applique la theorie de freinage magnetique stellaire aux disques circumstellaires. On considere des etoiles variables cataclysmiques mais les resultats s'appliquent a tout disque dans lequel la vitesse rotationnelle est keplevienne. On effectue des calculs pour deux configurations du champ magnetique et l'on donne les resultats numeriques pour differentes valeurs des parametres physiques
Photonic integrated circuit with multiple waveguide layers for broadband high-efficient 3-D OPA

We demonstrated a 3-D optical phased array device, based on multi-layer Si<inf>3</inf>N<inf>4</inf>/SiO<inf>2</inf> stacks. The multi-waveguide-layer configuration allows utilizing edge couplers at both the input and the emitting ends to achieve broadband high efficiency.
A fluorescent photoaffinity probe for formyl peptide receptor 1 labelling in living cells

Fluorescent ligands for G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) are valuable tools for studying the expression, pharmacology and modulation of these therapeutically important proteins in living cells. Here we report a fluorescent photoaffinity probe for Formyl peptide receptor 1 (FPR1), a critical component of the innate immune response to bacterial infection and a promising target in inflammatory diseases. We demonstrate that the probe binds and covalently crosslinks to FPR1 with good specificity at nanomolar concentrations in living cells and is a useful tool for visualisation and characterisation of this receptor.
White enough, not white enough: racism and racialisation among Poles in the UK

ABSTRACT This paper discusses race, racialisation and whiteness in relation to Eastern European migrants living in Western Europe. Focusing on Poles in the UK, it examines both Polish migrants’ experiences of racism as well as their own investment into racial exclusions of other racialised groups. The paper interrogates how migrants navigate their peripheral whiteness in broader racial hierarchies of Eastern European in-betweenness that are both historically rooted and constantly negotiated. Benefitting from relatively easy access to the UK, Polish migrants occupy at once a racially privileged and racially marginal position that echoes historical tensions around the place of Eastern Europe in wider racial hierarchies of Europeanness. While being white enough to engage in racial exclusions Eastern Europeans are at the same time not white enough to escape racialisation. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with Poles in the UK conducted between 2019–2020 the paper offers insight into complex racialising practices of Polish migrants when they are both racialised and able to benefit from their position as ‘paler migrants’ to distance themselves from other migrants as well as ‘darker citizens’. It contributes to scholarship on racialisation of East–West movers within Europe, in-betweenness and whiteness.
Rule Breaking, Bending, and Workarounds: Police Officers and Chiefs’ Coercion-Discretion of Enforcing State Executive Orders

Abstract This study examines rule non-compliance from police officers and managers who decide not to enforce certain public health edicts and decrees. It examines rule non-compliance from police officers and managers who decide not to enforce certain public health edicts and decrees. The locus of our study is the severity of the consequences for rule non-compliance for citizens. We test to see whether rules with severe punishments for citizens are broken, bent, or worked around by the police more often than expected in Bozeman observations. Thirty-seven police chiefs and managers were interviewed. Sixteen focus groups totaling 149 police officers were held in 15 municipalities in a Canadian province. Non-compliance related to police officers not enforcing 1556 Canadian dollars (US$1260; 1082€) fines was high. This study provides credence that workaround is a flexible concept explaining how discretion is used on the frontlines of public service.
SAR image despeckling via bilateral filtering

Bilateral filtering (BF) can realise both smoothing images and preserving edges, whereas its filtering results are always influenced since its two parameters are difficult to configure to the optimum. In this reported work, the application of BF is extended to synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image despeckling, and the despeckling evaluation indexes, including the equivalent number of looks and the edge save index, are used to estimate the parameters. After BF with estimated parameters imposed on a normalised SAR image, further processing can achieve both despeckling and edge preservation simultaneously. Experimental results show that the visual quality and evaluation indexes of the proposed algorithm outperform the classical Lee filtering.
Gamma shared frailty model based on reversed hazard rate

Abstract Frailty models are used in survival analysis to account for unobserved heterogeneity in individual risks to disease and death. To analyze bivariate data on related survival times (e.g., matched pairs experiments, twin, or family data), shared frailty models were suggested. Shared frailty models are frequently used to model heterogeneity in survival analysis. The most common shared frailty model is a model in which hazard function is a product of random factor(frailty) and baseline hazard function which is common to all individuals. There are certain assumptions about the baseline distribution and distribution of frailty. In this paper, we introduce shared gamma frailty models with reversed hazard rate. We introduce Bayesian estimation procedure using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) technique to estimate the parameters involved in the model. We present a simulation study to compare the true values of the parameters with the estimated values. Also, we apply the proposed model to the Australian twin data set.
Maternal Embryonic Leucine Zipper Kinase Promotes Tumor Growth and Metastasis via Stimulating FOXM1 Signaling in Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is a common gastrointestinal malignancy and is one of the most important cause of cancer related mortalities in the world. However, there is no clinically effective targeted therapeutic drugs for ESCC due to lack of valuable molecular therapeutic targets. In the present study, we investigated the biological function and molecular mechanisms of maternal embryonic leucine zipper kinase (MELK) in ESCC. The expression of MELK mRNA and protein was determined in cell lines and clinical samples of ESCC. MTT, focus formation and soft agar assays were carried out to measure cell proliferation and colony formation. Wound healing and transwell assays were used to assess the capacity of tumor cell migration and invasion. Nude mice models of subcutaneous tumor growth and lung metastasis were performed to examine the function of MELK in tumorigenecity and metastasis of ESCC cells. High expression of MELK was observed in ESCC cell line and human samples, especially in the metastatic tumor tissues. Moreover, overexpression of MELK promoted cell proliferation, colony formation, migration and invasion, and increased the expression and enzyme activity of MMP-2 and MMP-9 in ESCC cells. More importantly, enhanced expression of MELK greatly accelerated tumor growth and lung metastasis of ESCC cells in vivo. In contrast, knockdown of MELK by lentiviral shRNA resulted in an opposite effect both in vitro and in animal models. Mechanistically, MELK facilitated the phosphorylation of FOXM1, leading to activation of its downstream targets (PLK1, Cyclin B1, and Aurora B), and thereby promoted tumorigenesis and metastasis of ESCC cells. In conclusion, MELK enhances tumorigenesis, migration, invasion and metastasis of ESCC cells via activation of FOXM1 signaling pathway, suggesting MELK is a potential therapeutic target for ESCC patients, even those in an advanced stage.
Masticatory Performance Test Using a Gummy Jelly for Older People with Low Masticatory Ability

Evaluation of masticatory ability has become more important in an aging society because decreased masticatory ability has the potential to affect the general health of older people. A new masticatory performance test, intended for older people with low masticatory ability, has been developed using gummy jelly half the size of that used in the conventional masticatory performance test. This study aimed to investigate the compatibility between the new and conventional tests and the adaptation of the new test. The new test using the 8-grade visual score with half-size gummy jelly was performed among 137 removable denture wearers (mean age 75.8 ± 9.0 years) with low masticatory performance (a score of ≤4 on a conventional test). The correlation between the scores of half-size gummy jelly (VS-H) in the new test and those of full-size gummy jelly (VS) in the conventional test was evaluated. VS-H among the groups divided by VS were also compared. A strong positive correlation was detected between VS-H and VS (rs = 0.70). In groups with VS of 0 and 1, VS-H values were widely distributed from 0 to 7. There were significant differences in VS-H between the groups with VS of 0–2 but no significant differences in VS-H between the groups with VS of 2–4. Therefore, the masticatory performance test using half-size gummy jelly is suitable for a detailed evaluation of masticatory ability in older people with low masticatory ability when their visual score of full-size gummy jelly in the conventional test is 2 or less.
Simulation gravity modeling to spacecraft‐tracking data: Analysis and application

It is proposed that line-of-sight gravity measurements derived from spacecraft-tracking data can be used for quantitative subsurface density modeling by suitable orbit simulation procedures. Such an approach avoids complex dynamic reductions and is analogous to the modeling of conventional surface gravity data. This procedure utilizes the vector calculations of a given gravity model in a simplified trajectory integration program that simulates the line-of-sight gravity. Solutions from an orbit simulation inversion and a dynamic inversion on Doppler observables compare well (within 1% in mass and size), and the error sources in the simulation approximation are shown to be quite small. An application of this technique is made to lunar crater gravity anomalies by simulating the complete Bouguer correction to several large young lunar craters. It is shown that the craters all have negative Bouguer anomalies.
Simplified Maximum Likelihood Inference Based on the Likelihood Decomposition for Missing Data

In this paper, we propose an estimation method when sample data are incomplete. We decompose the likelihood according to missing patterns and combine the estimators based on each likelihood weighting by the Fisher information ratio. This approach provides a simple way of estimating parameters, especially for non‐monotone missing data. Numerical examples are presented to illustrate this method.
Object Classification Based on Fractional HoG Features

The purpose of this paper is to classify objects contained in images by the object categories. A new object feature in computer vision is introduced, that is fractional histograms of oriented gradients (fHoG). Due to the characteristics of fractional calculus, it is a descriptor that represents not only the object shape information but also the object texture details information. Together with pyramid decomposition, the fHoG features could be used to classify objects with similar shape but in different categories. For fHoG feature is some kind of local features, pyramid decomposition is designed to capture the hiding corresponding information between pixels. The two pyramid, spatial pyramid and Laplace pyramid, are both introduced. The former one is easy to compute while the calculation cost increasing fast as the pyramid level increasing. The latter one could save the calculation cost and get a better classification effect. Both of them could significantly improves the classification performance.
Product‐sum covariance for space‐time modeling: an environmental application

In this paper a product-sum covariance for space-time modeling of nitrogen dioxide in the Milan district is introduced. Residuals have been generated for all stations after the removal of daily and seasonal trends, which are readily interpretable, in order to estimate and model the spatial-temporal variogram. The trend component and the residual variogram model have been used to predict the hourly averages of nitrogen dioxide for the first two days of January 1997. GSLIB programs were modified for sample variogram computations, cross-validation and kriging. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Case Report: Optical Coherence Tomography, as a Non-Invasive Approach to Evaluate Intracranial Pressure in Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus Patients, as with their Treatment Follow-ups and VP Shunts Reprogramming Procedures

Copyright: Shalbafan B, et al. © (2022). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Bita Shalbafan Neurologist, Clinical Research Development Center of Labbafinejad Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran; Tel: 00989161119656 E-mail: b-shalbafan@alumnus.tums. ac.ir; Shalbafan.b@gmail.com INTRODUCTION
Rehabilitation enhances epothilone-induced locomotor recovery after spinal cord injury

Abstract Microtubule stabilization through epothilones is a promising preclinical therapy for functional recovery following spinal cord injury that stimulates axon regeneration, reduces growth-inhibitory molecule deposition and promotes functional improvements. Rehabilitation therapy is the only clinically validated approach to promote functional improvements following spinal cord injury. However, whether microtubule stabilization can augment the beneficial effects of rehabilitation therapy or act in concert with it to further promote repair remains unknown. Here, we investigated the pharmacokinetic, histological and functional efficacies of epothilone D, epothilone B and ixabepilone alone or in combination with rehabilitation following a moderate contusive spinal cord injury. Pharmacokinetic analysis revealed that ixabepilone only weakly crossed the blood–brain barrier and was subsequently excluded from further investigations. In contrast, epothilones B and D rapidly distributed to CNS compartments displaying similar profiles after either subcutaneous or intraperitoneal injections. Following injury and subcutaneous administration of epothilone B or D, rats were subjected to 7 weeks of sequential bipedal and quadrupedal training. For all outcome measures, epothilone B was efficacious compared with epothilone D. Specifically, epothilone B decreased fibrotic scaring which was associated with a retention of fibronectin localized to perivascular cells in sections distal to the lesion. This corresponded to a decreased number of cells present within the intralesional space, resulting in less axons within the lesion. Instead, epothilone B increased serotonergic fibre regeneration and vesicular glutamate transporter 1 expression caudal to the lesion, which was not affected by rehabilitation. Multiparametric behavioural analyses consisting of open-field locomotor scoring, horizontal ladder, catwalk gait analysis and hindlimb kinematics revealed that rehabilitation and epothilone B both improved several aspects of locomotion. Specifically, rehabilitation improved open-field locomotor and ladder scores, as well as improving the gait parameters of limb coupling, limb support, stride length and limb speed; epothilone B improved these same gait parameters but also hindlimb kinematic profiles. Functional improvements by epothilone B and rehabilitation acted complementarily on gait parameters leading to an enhanced recovery in the combination group. As a result, principal component analysis of gait showed the greatest improvement in the epothilone B plus rehabilitation group. Thus, these results support the combination of epothilone B with rehabilitation in a clinical setting.
Facile Synthesis and Fabrication of NIPAM-Based Cryogels for Environmental Remediation

Herein, polymeric cryogels containing poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) were synthesized by cryo-polymerization at subzero temperature. The synthesized cryogels were loaded with silver and palladium nanoparticles by the chemical reduction method at room temperature using the reducing agent NaBH4. Moreover, for comparison with cryogels, pure poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) hydrogel and its silver hybrid were also prepared by the conventional method at room temperature. The chemical structure and functional group analysis of the pure cryogels was confirmed by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The synthesis of hybrid cryogels was confirmed by the X-ray diffraction technique and energy dispersive X-ray. The pore size and surface morphology of the pure cryogels, their respective hybrid cryogels and of conventional hydrogels were studied by using the scanning electron microscopy technique. The hybrid cryogels were successfully used as a catalyst for the degradation of methyl orange dye. The degradation performance of the hybrid cryogels was much better than its counterpart hybrid hydrogel for methyl orange dye. The effect of temperature and amount of catalyst on catalytic performance was studied by UV-visible spectroscopy. The reduction follows pseudo-first-order reaction kinetics. In addition, the antibacterial activities of these cryogels were evaluated against Gram-positive bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus, ATCC: 2593) and Gram-negative bacteria (Escherichia coli, ATCC: 25922). Both hybrid cryogels have shown much better antibacterial activity for these two strains of bacteria compared to pure cryogels. The results indicate that these cryogels are potential candidates for water purification systems as well as biomedical applications.