Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Geospatial Analytics in the Large for Monitoring Depth of Cover for Buried Pipeline Infrastructure

Operators of pipeline infrastructure buried underground are in many countries required to ensure that depth of cover—a measure of the quantity of soil covering a pipeline—lie within prescribed bounds. Traditionally, monitoring depth of cover at scale has been carried out qualitatively by means of visual inspection. We proceed instead to rely on airborne remote sensing techniques to obtain densely sampled ground surface point measurements from the pipeline's right of way, from which we determine depth of cover using automated algorithms. Proceeding in our manner presents a reproducible, quantitative approach to monitoring depth of cover, yet the demands thus made by the scale of real-world pipeline monitoring scenarios on compute and storage resources can be substantial. We show that the scalability afforded by the cloud can be leveraged to address such scenarios, distributing the algorithms we employ to take advantage of multiple compute nodes and exploiting elastic storage. While the use case underlying this paper is monitoring depth of cover, our proposed architecture can be applied more broadly to a wide variety of geospatial analytics tasks carried out 'in the large', including change detection, semantic classification or segmentation, or computation of vegetation indices.
Neurological Complications Following a Retrobulbar Block. Is There a Role for Intravenous Lipid Emulsion (ILE)? A Case Report and Literature Review

Regional anaesthesia in eye surgery can lead to life-threatening complications such retrobulbar haemorrhage, local anaesthetic systemic toxicity (LAST), due to intra-arterial injection, and brain stem anaesthesia (BSA). Intravenous lipid emulsion (ILE) has been shown to reverse cardiac arrest induced by LAST but there are also reports that suggest its role in reversing neurological complications due to local anaesthetic (LA). Here it is presented a case of a woman undergone to retrobulbar block for a vitrectomy who developed neurological complications, maybe related to BSA, in whom ILE was also administered, with a successful recover of pre-block neurological status.
An explicit Floquet-type representation of Riccati aperiodic exponential semigroups

The article presents a rather surprising Floquet-type representation of time-varying transition matrices associated with a class of nonlinear matrix differential Riccati equations. The main difference with conventional Floquet theory comes from the fact that the underlying flow of the solution matrix is aperiodic. The monodromy matrix associated with this Floquet representation coincides with the exponential (fundamental) matrix associated with the stabilising fixed point of the Riccati equation. The second part of this article is dedicated to the application of this representation to the stability of matrix differential Riccati equations. We provide refined global and local contraction inequalities for the Riccati exponential semigroup that depend linearly on the spectral norm of the initial condition. These refinements improve upon existing results and are a direct consequence of the Floquet-type representation, yielding what seems to be the first results of this type for this class of models.
Classifier-based Polarity Propagation in a WordNet

In this paper we present a novel approach to the construction of an extensive, sense-level sentiment lexicon built on the basis of a wordnet. The main aim of this work is to create a high-quality sentiment lexicon in a partially automated way. We propose a method called Classiﬁer-based Polarity Propagation, which utilises a very rich set of wordnet-based features, to recognize and assign speciﬁc sentiment polarity values to wordnet senses. We have demonstrated that in comparison to the existing rule-base solutions using speciﬁc, narrow set of semantic relations, our method allows for the construction of a more reliable sentiment lexicon, starting with the same seed of annotated synsets.
Physical Aging, Plasticization and Their Effects on Gas Permeation in "Rigid" Polymers of Intrinsic Microporosity

Long-term physical aging and plasticization, two mobility-based phenomena that are counterintuitive in the context of “rigid” polymers of intrinsic microporosity (PIMs), were evaluated using pure- and mixed-gas permeation data for representative ladder and semiladder PIMs. PIMs between 1 and 4 years old retained from 10- to 1000-fold higher H2 and O2 permeabilities than commercial membrane materials with similar or higher selectivities. A triptycene-based ladder polymer (TPIM-1) exhibited very large selectivity gains outweighing permeability losses after 780 days, resulting in unprecedented performance for O2/N2 (P(O2) = 61 Barrer, α(O2/N2) = 8.6) and H2/N2 (P(H2) = 1105 Barrer, α(H2/N2) = 156) separations. Interestingly, TPIM-1 aged more and faster than its more flexible counterpart, PIM-1, which exhibited P(O2) = 317 Barrer and α(O2/N2) = 5.0 at 1380 days. Additionally, the more “rigid” TPIM-1 plasticized more significantly than PIM-1 (i.e., TPIM-1 endured ∼93% increases in mixed-gas CH4 permeability ov.
Escaping the captive diet : enhancing captive breeding of endangered species by determining dietary preferences

Endangered species can be safeguarded against extinction by raising subpopulations in ex situ facilities that mimic their wild habitats. This is difficult when the endangered animal’s diet is cryptic. We present a combined molecular and behavioral approach to assess the ex situ diet of Achatinella, a critically endangered genus of tree snail, to determine how diet of captive snails differs from wild snails. Ex situ snails are currently fed biofilms growing on the surface of leaves, as well as a cultured fungus isolated from this same habitat. Amplicon sequencing of DNA extracted from feces of cultured snails confirms that this cultured fungus is abundant in the wild, but that it dominates the diet of the ex situ snail diet (comprising ~38% of sequences). The diet of captive snails is significantly less diverse compared to wild snails. To test the hypothesis that snails have diet preferences, we conducted feeding trials. These used a surrogate snail species, Auriculella diaphana, which is a confamilial Oahu endemic, though non-federally listed. Contrary to our expectations we found that snails do have feeding preferences. Furthermore, our feeding preference trials show that over all other feeding options snails most preferred the “no-microbe” control, which consisted only of potato dextrose agar (PDA). PDA is rich in simple carbohydrates, in contrast to the oligotrophic environment of wild tree-snails. These results suggest further research should focus on calorie budgets of snails and on devising new approaches to supplementing their ex situ diet. Appendix ES-8B Achatinella Dietary Preferences
Workplace Spirituality and Occupation: A Study of Employees in Higher Education Institutions

The aim of this paper is to examine workplace spirituality in terms of its dimensions, namely meaningful work, sense of community and allignment of values, among employees in private higher education institutions in Greater Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The differences among the spirituality dimensions according to occupation were explored. Data were collected from a sample of 102 employees using self-administered questionnaires. There were no significant mean differences in overall workplace spirituality scores for occupation. Of the three dimensions, meaningful work significantly differed by occupation. Academics reported significantly higher levels of meaningful work than did administrators. Post-hoc analysis of comparison between means for academic and administrator groups indicated a significant difference.
Relationship of fibroblast growth factor 21 with kidney function and albuminuria: multi-ethnic study of atherosclerosis.

BACKGROUND Fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21) may play a role in the development of chronic kidney disease (CKD). We therefore investigated the relationship of plasma FGF21 levels with kidney function and albuminuria in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA). METHODS The analysis included 5724 MESA participants ages 45-84 years between 2000 and 2002, free of clinically apparent cardiovascular disease (CVD). Participants were followed up in person at four additional clinic visits over 10 years. Plasma FGF21 levels were measured at baseline examination by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Kidney function was assessed by estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR). Outcomes were urinary albumin:creatinine ratio (UACR) progression, incident CKD by eGFR (reaching eGFR <60 mL/min/1.73 m2 with eGFR loss rate ≥1 mL/min/1.73 m2 per year) and rapid kidney function decline (eGFR decline >5%/year). RESULTS At baseline, higher FGF21 levels, assessed as both continuous and categorical quartile variables, were significantly associated with lower eGFR and higher UACR, after adjusting for demographic, socioeconomic and other confounding factors [adjusted mean differences of -2.63 mL/min/1.73 m2 in eGFR and 0.134 in log normally transformed UACR (mg/g) for the highest FGF21 quartile compared with the lowest quartile, all P < 0.001]. However, in longitudinal analyses, baseline FGF21 levels did not predict incident CKD by eGFR, rapid kidney function decline or UACR progression. No significant interaction with sex and race/ethnicity was found (all P > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS Our study does not support a role of FGF21 as a biomarker for predicting kidney function decline or albuminuria in adults free of clinically apparent CVD at baseline.
Using replicated evolution in extremophile fish to understand diversification in elemental composition and nutrient excretion

Summary Ecological sources of selection are key drivers of evolutionary change in populations. Information on the ecological relevance of such evolutionary shifts is comparatively sparse and has received renewed interest. The framework of ecological stoichiometry is useful to investigate the reciprocal effects between ecology and evolution, because data on somatic stoichiometry of ancestral and descendent populations can be used to predict ecological functions, such as nutrient recycling, using mass balance-based models. Here, we investigated whether divergent populations of livebearing fishes (genus Poecilia) have diverged in elemental composition. We tested whether adaptation to local environmental conditions is manifested in changes of somatic stoichiometry by measuring carbon (C), nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and sulphur (S) contents of wild-caught individuals inhabiting sulphidic (extreme) and non-sulphidic (benign) habitats. We also attempted to isolate the sources (i.e. genetic, environmental and their interaction) of intraspecific variation in stoichiometry. Finally, we tested whether shifts in somatic stoichiometry impinge on the rates at which key nutrients (N and P) are excreted. We found significant differentiation in somatic stoichiometry between fish from the two different habitat types in two of three river drainages, with fish from sulphidic habitats having lower C but higher P and S contents. Even though there was evidence for temporal variation and plasticity in elemental composition, differences between sulphidic and non-sulphidic populations in P and S contents were maintained in laboratory populations over multiple generations. Finally, some sulphidic and non-sulphidic population pairs differed in the rates of N and P excretions, although excretion rates were not related to somatic stoichiometry. Together, these results show that the elemental composition of organisms appears to have the characteristics typically observed in the evolution of biochemical, physiological and morphological traits. Studying taxa that have undergone replicated evolution illuminate some of the evolutionary mechanisms that drive variation in somatic elemental composition. Applying stoichiometric principles to such variation, as we have performed here, is a useful, yet underutilised approach to understand the ecological relevance of evolutionary change.
Methods and Tools to Construct a Global Indoor Positioning System

A global indoor positioning system (GIPS) is a system that provides positioning services in most buildings in villages and cities globally. Among the various indoor positioning techniques, WLAN-based location fingerprinting has attracted considerable attention because of the wide availability of WLAN and relatively high resolution of the fingerprint-based positioning techniques. This paper introduces methods and tools to construct a GIPS by using WLAN fingerprinting. An unsupervised learning-based method is adopted to construct radio maps using fingerprints collected via crowdsourcing, and a probabilistic indoor positioning algorithm is developed for the radio maps constructed with the crowdsourced fingerprints. Along with these techniques, collecting indoor and radio maps of buildings in villages and cities is essential for a GIPS. This paper aims to collect indoor and radio maps from volunteers who are interested in deploying indoor positioning systems for their buildings. The methods and tools for the volunteers are also described in the process of developing an indoor positioning system within the larger GIPS. An experimental GIPS, named KAIST indoor locating system (KAILOS), was developed integrating the methods and tools. Then indoor navigation systems for a university campus and a large-scale indoor shopping mall were developed on KAILOS, revealing the effectiveness of KAILOS in developing indoor positioning systems. The more volunteers who participate in developing indoor positioning systems on KAILOS-like systems, the sooner GIPS will be realized.
Examining courses of sleep quality and sleepiness in full 2 weeks on/2 weeks off offshore day shift rotations

ABSTRACT To better understand sleep quality and sleepiness problems offshore, we examined courses of sleep quality and sleepiness in full 2-weeks on/2-weeks off offshore day shift rotations by comparing pre-offshore (1 week), offshore (2 weeks) and post-offshore (1 week) work periods. A longitudinal observational study was conducted among N=42 offshore workers. Sleep quality was measured subjectively with two daily questions and objectively with actigraphy, measuring: time in bed (TIB), total sleep time (TST), sleep latency (SL) and sleep efficiency percentage (SE%). Sleepiness was measured twice a day (morning and evening) with the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale. Changes in sleep and sleepiness parameters during the pre/post and offshore work periods were investigated using (generalized) linear mixed models. In the pre-offshore work period, courses of SE% significantly decreased (p=.038). During offshore work periods, the courses of evening sleepiness scores significantly increased (p<.001) and significantly decreased during post-offshore work periods (p=.004). During offshore work periods, TIB (p<.001) and TST (p<.001) were significantly shorter, SE% was significantly higher (p=.002), perceived sleep quality was significantly lower (p<.001) and level of rest after wake was significantly worse (p<.001) than during the pre- and post-offshore work periods. Morning sleepiness was significantly higher during offshore work periods (p=.015) and evening sleepiness was significantly higher in the post-offshore work period (p=.005) compared to the other periods. No significant changes in SL were observed. Courses of sleep quality and sleepiness parameters significantly changed during full 2-weeks on/2-weeks off offshore day shift rotation periods. These changes should be considered in offshore fatigue risk management programmes.
Do stock returns hedge inflation at long horizons?

ABSTRACT We investigate the long-horizon relationship between market returns and inflation in the United States. Conventional tests for long horizon predictability may reject the null too frequently when the predictor variable is highly persistent and endogenous and there are overlapping observations. We use a recently developed econometric technique designed to overcome these problems. We find little to no evidence that securities are able to hedge inflation.
Investigation of Manufacturing of Engine Group of „ Activa ‟ : Assessment of Environmental Impact Evaluation

Every human activity has an impact on the environment in the form of emissions. The environment has some capacity to absorb these emissions so emitted to a certain level without lasting the damage. The manufacturing of a product produces emissions which may be detrimental to air, water and soil, during its entire life beginning from raw material extraction, manufacturing , assembly , transportation, usage to its final disposal. These emissions have harmful effect at local, regional and global levels. In order to have environment friendly engineering product, it is necessary to control the data which has prominent environmental impact during the various stages throughout its life cycle. It is important to identify processes and ingredients, which are major contributors to environmental impacts. Life cycle assessment (LCA) involves the evaluation of the environmental aspects of a product system through all stages of its life cycle. The primary objective of this work is to perform the investigations of manufacturing of Engine group of product ‘Activa’ for quantitative evaluation of its environmental impacts for various impact categories under ‘cradle-to-gate’ variant using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach as per ISO14040. It has been carried out using the designed & developed software ‘SSLCASoft’. The results presents the cumulative environmental impact of ‘Engine Group’ of ‘Activa’’ on various impact categories of EDIP-03. The major portion ‘Engine Group’ of ‘Activa’ having aluminium parts and the steel parts. The materialwise results show that the impact of steel parts is dominating. Subassembly-wise, the impact of Crank Shaft Piston (CSP) and Cam Shaft Valve (CSV) is prominent amongst all other subassemblies of ‘Engine Group’ for steel parts. Looking to the results, there is a major scope of improving the environmental impact arises during the manufacturing life of ‘Engine Group’ of ‘Activa’ at the design stage.
Effects and potential mechanism of atorvastatin treatment on Lp-PLA2 in rats with dyslipidemia

Introduction The effects of statins on lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2 (Lp-PLA2) are controversial, and the present study aimed to investigate whether atorvastatin could reduce Lp-PLA2 in rats with dyslipidemia. Material and methods A high-fat and high-cholesterol diet was prescribed to produce a dyslipidemia model. Thereafter, low-dose atorvastatin (5 mg/kg/day), high-dose atorvastatin (20 mg/kg/day) or saline (without-treatment group) was prescribed for 14 days. At 6 weeks after dyslipidemia model establishment and 14 days of atorvastatin treatment, fasting venous blood was drawn for biochemical analysis. Between-group differences and Pearson correlation analysis were conducted. Results Compared to the normal-control group, fasting plasma total cholesterol (TC) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels were significantly increased in dyslipidemia groups, while plasma nitric oxide (NO) levels were significantly decreased with attendant elevation of plasma C-reactive protein (CRP) and rho-associated kinase 1 (ROCK1) levels (p < 0.05). At 14 days of atorvastatin treatment, compared to the without-treatment group, plasma levels of TC and LDL-C in the high-dose group were significantly reduced (p < 0.05); and compared to low-dose and without-treatment groups, NO up-regulation (1.8 ±1.1 μmol/l), and CRP (–0.8 ±0.4 ng/ml), ROCK1 (–124 ±65 mmol/l) and Lp-PLA2 (–3.8 ±1.2 ng/ml) reduction were more significant in the high-dose group (p < 0.05). Pearson correlation analysis showed that TC (r = 0.365), LDL-C (r = 0.472), CRP (r = 0.501) and ROCK1 (r = 0.675) were positively correlated with Lp-PLA2, while NO (r = –0.378) and atorvastatin (r = –0.511) were negatively correlated with Lp-PLA2. Conclusions Atorvastatin treatment is beneficial for reducing the Lp-PLA2 level in rats with dyslipidemia, which may be related to reduced ROCK1 expression in a dose-dependent manner.
XRCC3 T241M polymorphism is associated risk of glioma: a meta-analysis involving 4637 cases and 5854 controls

Background: The polymorphism of XRCC3 T241M has been indicated to be correlated with glioma susceptibility, but study results are still controversial. The aim of this study was to obtain a more exact estimation of the association between XRCC3 Thr241Met polymorphism and glioma through a meta-analysis. Methods: The meta-analysis included 11 published case-control studies involving 4637 cases and 5854 controls. Odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (95% CI) were used to evaluate the association of XRCC3 T241M polymorphism with glioma. Results: The association between XRCC3 Thr241Met polymorphism and glioma was significant in the allele model, recessive model, and co-dominant model overall. In a stratified analysis by the ethnicity, significantly increased risk was detected in Asians in the allele model, recessive model, and co-dominant model. Conclusions: In conclusion, XRCC3 Thr241Met polymorphism was implied to be associated with increased glioma risk. More studies are needed to validate this result.
Dynamics of acute hepatitis C virus subject to responses of cytotoxic T lymphocytes and antibodies

Acute hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is so asymptomatic that it causes the majority of infected people to develop chronic hepatitis and ultimately cirrhotic hepatitis. Although some patients with AHCVI can undergo spontaneous clearance of the virus, most infected people still die of hepatitis C related-complications worldwide. This study proposed a mathematical model to investigate the transmission dynamics of acute hepatitis C virus with responses of cytotoxic T lymphocytes and antibodies. We established the expression for the basic reproductive number, R01 and computed the sensitivity indices of R01 pertaining to some model parameters. We found that the parameters for the production rate of susceptible hepatocytes,  ; infection rate,  and virus production rate,  are positively sensitive. Besides, the most negatively sensitive parameter is the natural death rate of hepatocytes,  while the least negatively sensitive parameter is the natural death rate of the virus,  . We also performed numerical simulations, which validate the analytical results. Thus, we commend that early strategic intervention should be administered to a patient who is unable to clear the virus spontaneously to fight hepatitis C virus transmission by targeting the most sensitive model parameters. Absolutely, this will prevent disease evolution to more disastrous stages of infection
Design of Low Power CMOS Startup Charge Pump Based on Body Biasing Technique

CMOS is used to construct the integrated circuits with low level of static leakage. With this low level leakage we are designing all the transistor circuits in CMOS logic. To control this static leakage in the circuits the supply voltage is a major concern. Here the step-up converters with charge pump and the level for maintaining its threshold voltage (VT) is to be analyzed and proposed. Here we are going to propose the novel approach as body bias effect and sub-threshold logic. This will be applied for the step-up converters for energy harvesting applications. The backward control is to be processed for control the internal voltage when the charge transfer switch could be in activation. When the supply voltage is to be raise from the fixed voltage level it will be turn OFF the transistor. The maximum level of the converters circuits contain the branch A and branch B which could be contains all p-MOS and n- MOS combinations. The oscillator circuit also to e designed and applied to the proposed six stage charge pump circuit to reduce the power consumption. To reduce the standby mode leakage we are designing the circuit by using power gating logic. These circuits are to be designed and verified by using the TANNER T-SPICE TOOLS.