Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of postprandial hypoglycemia in patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease by oral glucose tolerance testing and continuous glucose monitoring

Objective Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is often associated with insulin resistance and glucose intolerance. Postprandial hypoglycemia frequently occurs in NAFLD patients; however, the details remain unclear. Patients and methods The 75-g oral glucose tolerance test (75gOGTT) in 502 patients with biopsy-proven NAFLD and continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) in 20 patients were performed, and the characteristics and causes of postprandial hypoglycemia were investigated. Results The proportion of patients in the Hypo subgroup [plasma glucose (PG) at 180 min<fasting-PG (FPG)] among patients with normal glucose tolerance was significantly higher than that with diabetes mellitus and impaired glucose tolerance or impaired fasting glucose. FPG and hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) were lower, and area under the curve of total insulin secretion within 120 min (<120 min) was higher in Hypo than Hyper in overall patients. Although FPG and PG at 30 min were higher in Hypo than Hyper, HOMA-IR and the insulinogenic index were not different in normal glucose tolerance and impaired glucose tolerance or impaired fasting glucose. In multivariate logistic regression analysis, low HbA1c, low fasting immunoreactive insulin, and high area under the curve of total insulin secretion (<120 min) were found to be independent factors associated with hypoglycemia. CGM showed postprandial hypoglycemia until lunch in 70% of NAFLD patients. However, no remarkable relationship in terms of hypoglycemia was identified between the 75gOGTT and CGM. Conclusion Postprandial hypoglycemia was identified in many NAFLD patients detected by 75gOGTT and CGM. It was clarified that important causes of postprandial hypoglycemia were related to low HbA1c, an early elevation of PG, low fasting and relatively low early insulin secretion, and delayed hyperinsulinemia.
Functional Connectivity Analysis of Mental Fatigue Reveals Different Network Topological Alterations Between Driving and Vigilance Tasks

Despite the apparent importance of mental fatigue detection, a reliable application is hindered due to the incomprehensive understanding of the neural mechanisms of mental fatigue. In this paper, we investigated the topological alterations of functional brain networks in the theta band (4 - 7 Hz) of electroencephalography (EEG) data from 40 male subjects undergoing two distinct fatigue-inducing tasks: a low-intensity one-hour simulated driving and a high-demanding half-hour sustained attention task [psychomotor vigilance task (PVT)]. Behaviorally, subjects demonstrated a robust mental fatigue effect, as reflected by significantly declined performances in cognitive tasks prior and post these two tasks. Furthermore, characteristic path length presented a positive correlation with task duration, which led to a significant increase between the first and the last five minutes of both tasks, indicating a fatigue-related disruption in information processing efficiency. However, significantly increased clustering coefficient was revealed only in the driving task, suggesting distinct network reorganizations between the two fatigue-inducing tasks. Moreover, high accuracy (92% for driving; 97% for PVT) was achieved for fatigue classification with apparently different discriminative functional connectivity features. These findings augment our understanding of the complex nature of fatigue-related neural mechanisms and demonstrate the feasibility of using functional connectivity as neural biomarkers for applicable fatigue monitoring.
Assessment on the Characterization of Mineralogical Phase of Ceramic Tiles Available in Kathmandu Valley (Nepal) Using XRD and FTIR Analyses

The mineralogical phase of eight different types of contemporary and historical ceramic tile samples used in Kathmandu valley of Nepal was analyzed using their X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra to assess their quality. Mineralogical phases existed in these eight different tile samples, i. e. , three wall, three floor and two ancient tile sample specimens, used in this study are identified as quartz, feldspars, spinel, mullite and hematite including paragonite with the help of the corresponding Joint Committee for Powder Diffraction Standards (JCPDS) database files. The firing temperature applied during the time of these ceramic tiles production should be 1000° C or slightly more. The mineralogical compositions of the contemporary tile samples are found to be comparable with those of the ancient brick samples of the historical temples and monuments of Kathmandu valley of Nepal.Int. J. Appl. Sci. Biotechnol. Vol 6(3): 238-243
Total Body Mass Estimation from Anthropometric Measurements in Modern Young Adult U.S. Populations with Healthy Body Fat Percentages (NHANES III)

This study presents a method by which to estimate total body mass in modern young adult U.S. populations who self‐identified as non‐Hispanic U.S. White, non‐Hispanic U.S. Black, and Mexican American with anthropometric measurements from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III) 1988–1994 dataset (N = 2532). Correlations of stature and bi‐iliac breadth with total body mass were stronger among males (r = 0.717–0.774) than among females (r = 0.549–0.661), yet these results were more accurate assessments of total body mass than existing techniques. This study also examined additional anthropometric measurements to estimate total body mass using an information‐theoretic approach demonstrating that some error in the stature–bi‐iliac breadth method is attributed to a nonsupported model with multimodel inference. The limitations of the current total body mass technique are discussed as well as the need for future studies to validate the method.
Tracking Causal Order in AWS Lambda Applications

Serverless computing is a new cloud programming and deployment paradigm that is receiving wide-spread uptake. Serverless offerings such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) Lambda, Google Functions, and Azure Functions automatically execute simple functions uploaded by developers, in response to cloud-based event triggers. The serverless abstraction greatly simplifies integration of concurrency and parallelism into cloud applications, and enables deployment of scalable distributed systems and services at very low cost. Although a significant first step, the serverless abstraction requires tools that software engineers can use to reason about, debug, and optimize their increasingly complex, asynchronous applications. Toward this end, we investigate the design and implementation of GammaRay, a cloud service that extracts causal dependencies across functions and through cloud services, without programmer intervention. We implement GammaRay for AWS Lambda and evaluate the overheads that it introduces for serverless micro-benchmarks and applications written in Python.
Optimal design method of LLCL filter for weak grid connected inverter

LLCL filter is formed by inserting a small inductor in the capacitor branch of LCL filter to get a series resonance peak to suppress switching ripple. Weak grid, complex circuit and two resonance peaks make it difficult to design LLCL circuit parameters compared to LCL filter. This paper presents a new comprehensive optimal design method of LLCL filter for weak grid-connected inverter. Initial design constraints such as the limit of current ripples and harmonics are considered to calculate the ranges of the LLCL parameters. Subsequently, optimization goals are determined to satisfy the stable operation without the inhibition of resonance peak under weak grid and minimize the inverter losses within the ranges. The relationship between the inductance ratio and current harmonics is considered to optimize circuit parameters. Linear fitting is used to build a mathematical model to optimize the relationship between inverter losses and inverter-side inductance. Simulations by MATLAB/Simulink validate the optimized parameters, the design constraints and optimal index are also sufficiently satisfied.
Associations between early caregiving and rural, low-SES, African-American children’s representations of attachment relationships

ABSTRACT Little research has examined the legacy of early maternal care for later attachment representations among low-income and ethnic minority school-aged children. Using data from a sample of 276 rural, low-income, African-American families, this study examined associations between maternal care in infancy and children’s representations of attachment figures in middle childhood. Maternal care was coded from 10-min home-based observations at 6, 15, and 24 months of age. Representations of attachment figures were assessed using the Manchester Child Attachment Story Task at 6 years of age. Sensitive maternal care in infancy was not significantly related to attachment security or episodic disorganized behaviors in children’s representations. However, children exposed to more harsh–intrusive parenting during infancy displayed less secure representations of attachment figures in middle childhood and more episodic disorganized behaviors, even after controlling for numerous child and family contextual covariates. Findings inform conceptualizations of attachment formation among rural, low-income, African-American parent–child dyads.
Influence of deposited CNTs on the surface of carbon fiber by ultrasonically assisted electrophoretic deposition

The surface property of carbon fiber directly affects the interface performance between carbon fiber and matrix. To improve the surface property of carbon fiber, we proposed a simple method to prepare carbon nanotubes /carbon fiber hybrid fiber via ultrasonically assisted electrophoretic deposition (EPD). Surface morphologies and surface functional group of carbon fibers were examined by atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FTIR), respectively. The results show that the deposition of carbon nanotubes changed the surface morphologies of carbon fibers and introduced polar groups (C=O and C-O) to carbon fiber surface. Comparing the results with EPD-only, ultrasonically assisted EPD increased the uniformity of carbon nanotubes coatings whereas only sparse and not uniformly deposition formed without ultrasonic.
Multi-objective reconfigurable three phase off-board charger for EV

In this paper, a three phase off-board charger is proposed that has a bi-directional flow of active power. The charger uses both solar photo voltaic (PV) array and grid energy to charge the electric vehicle (EV) battery. Moreover, the charger also feeds the solar PV array and battery energy into the grid. To achieve this, the charger has a provision to act as a standalone generator to generate the sinusoidal voltage of reference amplitude and frequency. In case of grid outage, unavailability of solar PV generation, the charger feeds household loads. It acts as an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) and has the capability to synchronize with the grid voltage on grid restoration and maintains the uninterruptible power supply to the load. While feeding the nonlinear loads an improved linear sinusoidal tracer (ILST) algorithm is used to estimate the fundamental current component of load current, so that the current drawn from the grid is always sinusoidal and at unity power factor (UPF). The controller is designed to extract the maximum power in all operating conditions. Moreover, the controller is designed such that it takes the decision of power flow among the different energy sources based on the demand. The charger is designed for a three phase 230V (rms) line, 50 Hz supply. The charger performance is analyzed in various dynamic conditions.
Live Migration for Multiple Correlated Virtual Machines in Cloud-Based Data Centers

With the development of cloud computing, virtual machine migration is emerging as a promising technique to save energy, enhance resource utilizations, and guarantee Quality of Service (QoS) in cloud datacenters. Most of existing studies on the virtual machine migration, however are based on a single virtual machine migration. Although there are some researches on multiple virtual machines migration, the author usually does not consider the correlation among these virtual machines. In practice, in order to save energy and maintain system performance, cloud providers usually need to migrate multiple correlated virtual machines or migrate the entire virtual datacenter (VDC) request. In this paper, we focus on the efficient online live migration of multiple correlated VMs in VDC requests, for optimizing the migration performance. To solve this problem, we propose an efficient VDC migration algorithm (VDC-M). We use the US-wide US National Science Foundation (NSF) network as substrate network to conduct extensive simulation experiments. Simulation results show that the performance of the proposed algorithm is promising in terms of the total VDC remapping cost, the blocking ratio, the average migration time and the average downtime.
Disentangling the Taxonomy of Rickettsiales and Description of Two Novel Symbionts (“Candidatus Bealeia paramacronuclearis” and “Candidatus Fokinia cryptica”) Sharing the Cytoplasm of the Ciliate Protist Paramecium biaurelia

ABSTRACT In the past 10 years, the number of endosymbionts described within the bacterial order Rickettsiales has constantly grown. Since 2006, 18 novel Rickettsiales genera inhabiting protists, such as ciliates and amoebae, have been described. In this work, we characterize two novel bacterial endosymbionts from Paramecium collected near Bloomington, IN. Both endosymbiotic species inhabit the cytoplasm of the same host. The Gram-negative bacterium “Candidatus Bealeia paramacronuclearis” occurs in clumps and is frequently associated with the host macronucleus. With its electron-dense cytoplasm and a distinct halo surrounding the cell, it is easily distinguishable from the second smaller symbiont, “Candidatus Fokinia cryptica,” whose cytoplasm is electron lucid, lacks a halo, and is always surrounded by a symbiontophorous vacuole. For molecular characterization, the small-subunit rRNA genes were sequenced and used for taxonomic assignment as well as the design of species-specific oligonucleotide probes. Phylogenetic analyses revealed that “Candidatus Bealeia paramacronuclearis” clusters with the so-called “basal” Rickettsiales, and “Candidatus Fokinia cryptica” belongs to “Candidatus Midichloriaceae. ” We obtained tree topologies showing a separation of Rickettsiales into at least two groups: one represented by the families Rickettsiaceae, Anaplasmataceae, and “Candidatus Midichloriaceae” (RAM clade), and the other represented by “basal Rickettsiales,” including “Candidatus Bealeia paramacronuclearis. ” Therefore, and in accordance with recent publications, we propose to limit the order Rickettsiales to the RAM clade and to raise “basal Rickettsiales” to an independent order, Holosporales ord. nov., inside Alphaproteobacteria, which presently includes four family-level clades. Additionally, we define the family “Candidatus Hepatincolaceae” and redefine the family Holosporaceae. IMPORTANCE In this paper, we provide the characterization of two novel bacterial symbionts inhabiting the same Paramecium host (Ciliophora, Alveolata). Both symbionts belong to “traditional” Rickettsiales, one representing a new species of the genus “Candidatus Fokinia” (“Candidatus Midichloriaceae”), and the other representing a new genus of a “basal” Rickettsiales. According to newly characterized sequences and to a critical revision of recent literature, we propose a taxonomic reorganization of “traditional” Rickettsiales that we split into two orders: Rickettsiales sensu stricto and Holosporales ord. nov. This work represents a critical revision, including new records of a group of symbionts frequently occurring in protists and whose biodiversity is still largely underestimated.
Inferring Smartphone Users' Handwritten Patterns by using Motion Sensors

Mobile devices including smartphones and wearable devices are increasingly gaining popularity as platforms for collecting and sharing sensor data, such as the accelerometer, gyroscope, and rotation sensor. These sensors are used to improve the convenience of smartphone users, e.g., supporting the mobile UI motionbased commands. Although these motion sensors do not require users’ permissions, they still bring potential risks of leaking users’ private information reflected by the changes of sensor readings. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of inferring a user’s handwritten pattern on a smartphone touchscreen by using the embedded motion sensors. Specifically, our inference attack is composed of two key steps where we 1) first exploit the dynamic time warping (DTW) technique to differentiate any pair of time-series sensor recordings corresponding to different handwritten patterns; and 2) develop a novel sensor fusion mechanism to integrate information contained in multiple motion sensors by exploiting the majority voting strategy. Through extensive experiments using real-world data sets, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed attack which can achieve 91.4% accuracy for inferring smartphone users’ handwritten patterns.
Multilayer Networks in a Nutshell

Complex systems are characterized by many interacting units that give rise to emergent behavior. A particularly advantageous way to study these systems is through the analysis of the networks that encode the interactions among the system constituents. During the past two decades, network science has provided many insights in natural, social, biological, and technological systems. However, real systems are often interconnected, with many interdependencies that are not properly captured by single-layer networks. To account for this source of complexity, a more general framework, in which different networks evolve or interact with each other, is needed. These are known as multilayer networks. Here, we provide an overview of the basic methodology used to describe multilayer systems as well as of some representative dynamical processes that take place on top of them. We round off the review with a summary of several applications in diverse fields of science.
On Plastic Zone Around an Indentation During Stress Determination by Impact Indentation Method

The impact indentation method is an new stress measurement technique developed and applied recently.The experimental results have shown that the main point of applying the method is just based on the strain overlap increment in elastic region,not plastic region,apart from the indentation.But there is no any evidence from theoretic analysis.In this paper,the plastic zone around an indentation was investigated by finite element method (FEM) when the residual stress was measured with the impact indention method.It was discovered that maximum radius with 4mm will be formed around the indentation with 1.2mm surface diameter for common metal materials under the action of high value stress.Therefore,the measuring strain gage should be arranged apart from the plastic zone in order to avoid its disturbance on the linear rule while stress determination.
Understanding the ligamentum teres of the hip: a histological study

Objective: To perform a histological study describing the microstructure of the ligamentum teres of the hip, with special emphasis on the presence of nerve bundles. Our study aims to correlate the microstructure of the ligamentum teres with its postulated functions, allowing greater understanding of its role within the hip joint. Methods: Fresh specimens excised intra-operatively in 11 patients undergoing open hip procedures were preserved in formalin and sent to the laboratory for histological analysis by our collaborating pathologist. The specimens were sectioned and stained, and examined under the microscope to look at their microstructure. In addition, a novel staining technique was employed to detect neural elements within the individual specimens . Results: The ligamentum teres is composed predominantly of a connective tissue matrix of collagen fibers, fibrous and adipose tissue, with an overlying layer of investing synovium. In addition, there are blood vessels of various sizes surrounded by a layer of encircling fat. In all specimens examined, there were nerve bundles of various shapes and sizes, regardless of the age of the patient. Conclusion: The ligamentum teres has both mechanical and biological functions within the hip joint and should no longer be considered a developmental vestige. Where possible, any surgical procedures around the hip joint should aim to limit damage to this structure to minimize any potential loss of function. Level of Evidence Basic Science Study.
Impact of Temperature Variations on the Reliability of LoRa - An Experimental Evaluation

Temperature variations are known to affect the performance of wireless sensor networks deployed outdoors. Whilst the impact of temperature on IEEE 802.15. 4 transceivers has long been investigated by the research community, still little is known about how temperature affects the performance of increasingly popular longrange wireless technologies such as LoRa. To fill this gap, this paper presents an experimental evaluation of the reliability of LoRa in the presence of temperature variations. First, we highlight that temperature can have a significant impact on LoRa’s communication performance and show that an increase in temperature can be sufficient to transform a perfect LoRa link into an almost useless one. We then carry out a detailed investigation on the performance of different LoRa physical settings with fluctuating temperatures and show that an optimal selection can help in increasing the probability of packet reception and is hence key to mitigate temperature-induced effects. We believe that our results will serve as a reference to orient researchers and system designers employing LoRa to build large-scale low-power wide area networks.
Better bounds for poset dimension and boxicity

We prove that the dimension of every poset whose comparability graph has maximum degree $\Delta$ is at most $\Delta\log^{1+o(1)} \Delta$. This result improves on a 30-year old bound of Furedi and Kahn, and is within a $\log^{o(1)}\Delta$ factor of optimal. We prove this result via the notion of boxicity. The "boxicity" of a graph $G$ is the minimum integer $d$ such that $G$ is the intersection graph of $d$-dimensional axis-aligned boxes. We prove that every graph with maximum degree $\Delta$ has boxicity at most $\Delta\log^{1+o(1)} \Delta$, which is also within a $\log^{o(1)}\Delta$ factor of optimal. We also show that the maximum boxicity of graphs with Euler genus $g$ is $\Theta(\sqrt{g \log g})$, which solves an open problem of Esperet and Joret and is tight up to a $O(1)$ factor.