Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Organic electrical bistable devices and rewritable memory cells

Electrical bistability is a phenomenon in which a device exhibits two states of different conductivities, at the same applied voltage. We report an organic electrical bistable device (OBD) comprising of a thin metal layer embedded within the organic material, as the active medium [L. P. Ma, J. Liu, and Y. Yang, US Patent Pending, (2001)]. The performance of this device makes it attractive for memory-cell type of applications. The two states of the OBD differ in their conductivity by several orders in magnitude and show remarkable stability, i.e., once the device reaches either state, it tends to remain in that state for a prolonged period of time. More importantly, the high and low conductivity states of an OBD can be precisely controlled by the application of a positive voltage pulse (to write) or a negative voltage pulse (to erase), respectively. One million writing-erasing cycles for the OBD have been tested in ambient conditions without significant device degradation. These discoveries pave the way fo.
A model of calcium transport and regulation in the proximal tubule

The objective of this study was to examine theoretically how Ca2+ reabsorption in the proximal tubule (PT) is modulated by Na+ and water fluxes, parathyroid hormone (PTH), Na+-glucose cotransporter (SGLT2) inhibitors, and acetazolamide. We expanded a previously published mathematical model of water and solute transport in the rat PT (Layton AT, Vallon V, Edwards A. Am J Physiol Renal Physiol 308: F1343–F1357, 2015) that did not include Ca2+. Our results indicate that Ca2+ reabsorption in the PT is primarily driven by the transepithelial Ca2+ concentration gradient that stems from water reabsorption, which is itself coupled to Na+ reabsorption. Simulated variations in permeability or transporter activity elicit opposite changes in paracellular and transcellular Ca2+ fluxes, whereas a simulated decrease in filtration rate lowers both fluxes. The model predicts that PTH-mediated inhibition of the apical Na+/H+ exchanger NHE3 reduces Na+ and Ca2+ transport to a similar extent. It also suggests that acetazolamide- and SGLT2 inhibitor-induced calciuria at least partly stems from reduced Ca2+ reabsorption in the PT. In addition, backleak of phosphate (PO4) across tight junctions is predicted to reduce net PO4 reabsorption by ~20% under normal conditions. When transcellular PO4 transport is substantially reduced by PTH, paracellular PO4 flux is reversed and contributes significantly to PO4 reabsorption. Furthermore, PTH is predicted to exert an indirect impact on PO4 reabsorption via its inhibitory action on NHE3. This model thus provides greater insight into the mechanisms that modulate Ca2+ and PO4 reabsorption in the PT.
Joint Resource Optimization of Shared Electric Bicycles in Smart Cities

As an important part of the green transportation of the smart city, the public electric bicycle sharing system has been deployed in more and more cities. However, users often encounter the situation that no bicycle left for rent or no available dock to return, due to many factors such as dynamic demands and stochastic usage, which seriously affects the experience of users. The state-of-art technology "borrow anywhere & return anyplace" for public bicycles is not suitable for electric bicycles since latter ones need docks for batteries recharging. Therefore, the efficient allocation of the stations, bicycles and docks, is still the key solution to the problem. This paper proposes a joint optimization of the resources allocation under the condition of limited number of stations, bicycles and docks, as well as the synthetical profiles of the candidate locations. The three factors are fully considered. Furthermore, part of resources are especially preserved for the future scheduling so that the proposed scheme can adapt to the dynamics. Users' behavior is modeled as Poisson distribution for each location. The goal of the solution is to optimize the total QoS, not that of a single station. Through the experiments on real data trace, it shows that the proposed resource allocation scheme can achieve better QoS.
MODELO DE ESTÁGIOS DE ALINHAMENTO ESTRATÉGICO DA TECNOLOGIA DA INFORMAÇÃO AO NEGÓCIO EMPRESARIAL

RESUMO Alinhar os recursos da Tecnologia da Informacao (TI) ao negocio empresarial requer competencia dos gestores nas atividades praticas, dinâmicas e inteligentes das estrategias empresariais, onde as informacoes oportunas e os conhecimentos personalizados sao fatores essenciais. Em tempos de mercado exigente e desafiador, essas atividades nao acontecem facilmente e exigem das empresas planejamentos a curto e longo prazo. Esse artigo descreve sobre um modelo proposto de alinhamento do Planejamento Estrategico da TI ao Planejamento Estrategico Empresarial e sobre os seus respectivos estagios de alinhamento, auferidos a partir de analises quanti-qualitativas de um survey realizado em 78 grandes empresas brasileiras. Com diferentes variaveis, o modelo envolve 4 recursos sustentadores: TI; sistemas de informacao e do conhecimento; pessoas; e contexto organizacional. Os 4 estagios de alinhamento possuem diferentes caracteristicas e atividades. As contribuicoes resgatam a visao moderna da TI alinhada ao negocio empresarial e possibilitam que as empresas se enquadrem nos estagios de alinhamento para estabelecer analogias e perspectivas de crescimento. A conclusao reitera a importância do modelo e dos estagios do alinhamento, tornando-os uma ferramenta para contribuir na gestao de empresas inteligentes. Palavras chave: Tecnologia da Informacao, Planejamento Estrategico, Alinhamento de Negocios.
Evaluation of the HbA1c Reduction Cut Point for a Nonglycemic Effect on Cardiovascular Benefit of Hypoglycemic Agents in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Based on Endpoint Events

Background Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) is a major cause of death among patients with diabetes but can be improved by certain hypoglycemic agents. However, adjudicating criteria on whether improvements are a glycemic or nonglycemic effect of these agents remain unclear. Methods Hypoglycemic agents that produce a cardiovascular benefit in nondiabetic patients are considered to do so via a nonglycemic effect. We performed a subgroup analysis for primary and secondary prevention or very high risk of ASCVD in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2DM). Where glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) was reduced to the same extent in a head-to-head comparison, cardiovascular benefits were judged as a nonglycemic effect. Furthermore, by analyzing the endpoints of four important randomized controlled intensive glucose control studies, UKPDS33, ADVANCE, ACCORD, and VADT, we calculated the cut point of HbA1c reduction for a nonglycemic effect on cardiovascular benefit by hypoglycemic agents in ASCVD groups of different severities. Results For the ASCVD primary prevention group of T2DM, UKPDS33 indicated a reduction in HbA1c < 0.9%, and a cardiovascular benefit within 10 years was considered a nonglycemic effect. For ASCVD secondary prevention or in the very high-risk group, pioglitazone exerted a nonglycemic effect on cardiovascular benefit in nondiabetic patients with insulin resistance; metformin may exert a similar effect in T2DM patients in a head-to-head study. Analysis of T2DM intensive glucose control studies showed a reduction in HbA1c of <1.0%, and a cardiovascular benefit after approximately 5 years was deemed a nonglycemic effect. Conclusions For ASCVD primary prevention in T2DM, a reduction in HbA1c < 0.9% and a cardiovascular benefit within 10 years were considered a nonglycemic effect. For ASCVD secondary prevention or in a very high-risk population, a reduction in HbA1c < 1.0% and a cardiovascular benefit within about 5 years were also considered a nonglycemic effect.
Caching in Information-Centric Networking: Strategies, Challenges, and Future Research Directions

Information-Centric Networking (ICN) is an appealing architecture that has received a remarkable interest from the research community thanks to its friendly structure. Several projects have proposed innovative ICN models to cope with the Internet practice, which moves from host-centrism to receiver-driven communication. A worth mentioning component of these novel models is in-network caching, which provides flexibility and pervasiveness for the upturn of swiftness in data distribution. Because of the rapid Internet traffic growth, cache deployment and content caching have been unanimously accepted as conspicuous ICN issues to be resolved. In this article, a survey of cache management strategies in ICN is presented along with their contributions and limitations, and their performance is evaluated in a simulation network environment with respect to cache hit, stretch ratio, and eviction operations. Some unresolved ICN caching challenges and directions for future research in this networking area are also discussed.
Interoceptive Awareness Skills for Emotion Regulation: Theory and Approach of Mindful Awareness in Body-Oriented Therapy (MABT)

Emotion regulation involves a coherent relationship with the self, specifically effective communication between body, mind, and feelings. Effective emotion regulation involves the ability to accurately detect and evaluate cues related to physiological reactions to stressful events, accompanied by appropriate regulation strategies that temper and influence the emotional response. There is compelling evidence demonstrating links between poor or disrupted awareness of sensory information, or interoceptive awareness, and difficulties with emotion regulation. This paper presents a framework, based on psychological and neurobiological research, for understanding how interoceptive awareness facilitates regulation and an integrated sense of self, and thus contributes to health and well-being. A mind-body therapeutic approach called mindful awareness in body-oriented therapy (MABT), uniquely designed to teach fundamental skills of interoceptive awareness, is described. MABT develops the distinct interoceptive awareness capacities of identifying, accessing, and appraising internal bodily signals that are identified in physiological models as the critical components of interoception for emotion regulation. The explanatory model is that the development of these key interoceptive capacities improves sensory (physical and emotional) awareness, reduces distress, and improves regulation. Strategies for teaching and learning interoceptive awareness are not well-developed in mindfulness or psychotherapeutic approaches, particularly important for people who may have difficulty attending to interoceptive awareness due to stress, chronic pain or trauma. To address this issue, MABT provides an individualized protocol for scaffolding interoceptive awareness through a combination of psychoeducation and somatic approaches explicitly addressing difficulties with interoceptive processing. Clinical vignettes are included to provide exemplars of this approach and to highlight key components of the therapeutic process. Results from research are also included to highlight the acceptability, safety, health outcomes, and possible mechanisms underlying the MABT approach.
Linear Regression Model to Identify the Factors Associated with Carbon Stock in Chure Forest of Nepal

Use of woody plants for greenhouse gas mitigation has led to the demand for rapid cost-effective estimation of forest carbon stock and related factors. This study aims to assess the factors associated with carbon stock in Chure forest of Nepal. The data were obtained from Department of Forest Research and Survey (DFRS) of Nepal. A multiple linear regression model and then sum contrasts were used to observe the association between variables such as stem volume, diameter at breast height, altitude, districts, number of trees per plot, and ownership of the forest. 95% confidence interval (CI) plots were drawn for comparing the adjusted carbon stocks with each of the factors and with the overall carbon stock. The linear regression showed a good fit of the model (adjusted R2 = 83.75%) with the results that the stem volume (sv), diameter at breast height (dbh), and the number of trees per plot showed statistically significant (p value ≤ 0.05) positive association with carbon stock. The highest carbon stock was associated with sv more than 199 m3/ha, average dbh more than 43.3 cm/plot, and number of trees more than 20/plot, whereas the altitude, geographical location, and ownership had no statistical associations at all. The results can be of use to the government for enhancing carbon stock in Chure that supports both natural resource conservation and United Nations-Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation program to mitigate carbon emission issues.
Improved texture recognition of SAR sea ice imagery by data fusion of MRF features with traditional methods

Image texture interpretation is an important aspect of the computer-assisted discrimination of SAR sea ice imagery. Co-occurrence probabilities are the most common approach to solve this problem. However, other texture feature extraction methods exist that have not been fully studied for their ability to interpret SAR sea ice imagery. Gabor filters and Markov random fields (MRF) are two such methods considered. Classification and significance level testing shows that co-occurrence probabilities classify the data with the highest classification rate, with Gabor filters a close second. MRF results significantly lag Gabor and co-occurrence results. However, the MRF features are uncorrelated with respect to co-occurrence and Gabor features. The fused co-occurrence/MRF feature set achieves higher performance.
Evaluation and Comparison of Three Types of Spray Dried Coprocessed Excipient Avicel® for Direct Compression

As coprocessed excipients (CPE) gain a lot of focus recently, this article compares three commercially available CPE of Avicel brand, namely, CE 15, DG, and HFE 102. Comparison is based on measured physical properties of coprocessed mixtures, respectively, flow properties, pycnometric density, mean particle size, specific surface area, moisture content, hygroscopicity, solubility, pH leaching, electrostatic charge, SEM images, and DSC. Tablets were made employing three pressure sets. Viscoelastic properties and ejection force were assessed during compression, as well as pycnometric density, mass uniformity, height, tensile strength, friability, disintegration, and wetting times. Avicel CE 15 is of mid-range flow properties, contains mid-size and nonspherical particles, and has high hygroscopicity, growing negative charge, best lubricity, lowest tensile strength, and mid-long disintegration times. Avicel DG possesses the worst flow properties, small asymmetrical particles, lowest hygroscopicity, stable charge, intermediate lubricity, and tensile strength and exhibits fast disintegration of tablets. Finally, Avicel HFE 102 has the best flow properties, large symmetrical particles, and middle hygroscopicity and its charge fluctuates throughout blending. It also exhibits inferior lubricity, the highest tensile strength, and slow disintegration of tablets. Generally, it is impossible to select the best CPE, as their different properties fit versatile needs of countless manufacturers and final products.
Mapping the Structure-Function Relationship in Glaucoma and Healthy Patients Measured with Spectralis OCT and Humphrey Perimetry

Purpose To study the structure-function relationship in glaucoma and healthy patients assessed with Spectralis OCT and Humphrey perimetry using new statistical approaches. Materials and Methods Eighty-five eyes were prospectively selected and divided into 2 groups: glaucoma (44) and healthy patients (41). Three different statistical approaches were carried out: (1) factor analysis of the threshold sensitivities (dB) (automated perimetry) and the macular thickness (μm) (Spectralis OCT), subsequently applying Pearson's correlation to the obtained regions, (2) nonparametric regression analysis relating the values in each pair of regions that showed significant correlation, and (3) nonparametric spatial regressions using three models designed for the purpose of this study. Results In the glaucoma group, a map that relates structural and functional damage was drawn. The strongest correlation with visual fields was observed in the peripheral nasal region of both superior and inferior hemigrids (r = 0.602 and r = 0.458, resp.). The estimated functions obtained with the nonparametric regressions provided the mean sensitivity that corresponds to each given macular thickness. These functions allowed for accurate characterization of the structure-function relationship. Conclusions Both maps and point-to-point functions obtained linking structure and function damage contribute to a better understanding of this relationship and may help in the future to improve glaucoma diagnosis.
MIT-MEDG at SemEval-2018 Task 7: Semantic Relation Classification via Convolution Neural Network

SemEval 2018 Task 7 tasked participants to build a system to classify two entities within a sentence into one of the 6 possible relation types. We tested 3 classes of models: Linear classifiers, Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) models, and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) models. Ultimately, the CNN model class proved most performant, so we specialized to this model for our final submissions. We improved performance beyond a vanilla CNN by including a variant of negative sampling, using custom word embeddings learned over a corpus of ACL articles, training over corpora of both tasks 1.1 and 1.2, using reversed feature, using part of context words beyond the entity pairs and using ensemble methods to improve our final predictions. We also tested attention based pooling, up-sampling, and data augmentation, but none improved performance. Our model achieved rank 6 out of 28 (macro-averaged F1-score: 72.7) in subtask 1.1, and rank 4 out of 20 (macro F1: 80.6) in subtask 1.2.
Energetic baroclinic super‐tidal oscillations on the southeast Florida shelf

Historical and recent data reveal a very energetic regime on the shelf off southeast Florida. In addition to spin off eddies, large‐amplitude tidal velocity fluctuations with amplitudes exceeding 0.5 ms−1 are observed. Recent exploratory measurements conducted as a part of the South Florida Ocean Measurement Center (SFOMC) show that the time scale of these oscillations is about 10 hrs. This period does not coincide either with the inertial period (27 Hrs) or with the semidiurnal M2 (12.42 hrs) or S2 (12 hrs) tidal constituents. In addition, these internal oscillations appear to be modulated seasonally. A possible explanation is that these oscillations are near‐resonant internal seiches generated by barotropic tidal wave in the channel between Florida and Bahamas.
Antifibrogenic Influence of Mentha piperita L. Essential Oil against CCl4-Induced Liver Fibrosis in Rats

Essential oils of some aromatic plants provide an effective nonmedicinal option to control liver fibrosis. Mentha piperita L. essential oil (MPEO) have been reported to possess protective effects against hepatotoxicity. However, its effect against liver fibrosis remains unknown. The present study investigated the antifibrogenic potential of MPEO and its underlying mechanisms. Forty male rats divided into 4 groups were used: group 1 served as normal control, group 2 (liver fibrosis) received CCl4 (2.5 mL/kg, IP, twice weekly) for 8 weeks, group 3 concurrently received CCl4 plus MPEO (50 mg/kg, IP, daily, from the 3rd week), and group 4 received MPEO only. MPOE significantly improved the liver injury markers, lipid peroxidation (LPO), antioxidant capacity, CYP2E1 gene expressionand liver histology. Furthermore, MPOE ameliorated liver fibrosis as evidenced by the reduced expression of desmin, α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA), transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1), and SMAD3 proteins. In addition, MPOE counteracted the p53 upregulation induced by CCl4 at both mRNA and protein levels. In conclusion, MPOE could effectively attenuate hepatic fibrosis mainly through improving the redox status, suppressing p53 and subsequently modulating TGF-β1 and SMAD3 protein expression. These data promote the use of MPOE as a promising approach in antifibrotic therapy.
ISCLAB at SemEval-2018 Task 1: UIR-Miner for Affect in Tweets

This paper presents a UIR-Miner system for emotion and sentiment analysis evaluation in Twitter in SemEval 2018. Our system consists of three main modules: preprocessing module, stacking module to solve the intensity prediction of emotion and sentiment, LSTM network module to solve multi-label classification, and the hierarchical attention network module for solving emotion and sentiment classification problem. According to the metrics of SemEval 2018, our system gets the final scores of 0.636, 0.531, 0.731, 0.708, and 0.408 on 5 subtasks, respectively.
The status and distribution of alien plants on the islands of the south coast of Western Australia.

Alien plants pose a substantial threat to island ecosystems in Australia and worldwide. A better understanding of weed distributions is necessary to more effectively manage natural resources on islands. To address this need for Western Australian islands, we created a database of all available records of alien plants on these islands. Here we report on records from all islands located along the south coast of Western Australia. From 789 individual records, a total of 116 alien plant species were recorded on the 43 islands with existing weed records. A disproportionately large number of weed species were recorded on estuarine islands and islands with a history of intensive human activity. Some of the species are known to be serious environmental weeds, including bridal creeper (Asparagus asparagoides), pig’s ear (Cotyledon orbiculata), sea spurge (Euphorbia paralias), cleavers (Galium aparine), African boxthorn (Lycium ferocissimum), tree mallow (Malva arborea), arum lily (Zantedeschia aethiopica), and the annual grasses Avena, Bromus, Ehrharta, Hordeum, Lolium and Vulpia. Developing management plans to address these species, as well as surveying islands adjacent to known infestations, should be a conservation priority for south coast islands. Improved biosecurity procedures and enforcement could prevent the establishment of new island weed populations and reduce future costs associated with the management of active infestations.
Hydrogen bonds and π–π interactions in two new crystalline phases of methylene blue

Two unprecedented solid phases of methylene blue (MB +), viz. 3,7-bis(dimethylamino)phenothiazin-5-ium chloride dihydrate and 3,7-bis(dimethylamino)phenothiazin-5-ium bisulfite, have been obtained and structurally characterized. The effective absence of hydrogen-bond donors in the second compound has important consequences on the stacking geometry and supramolecular interactions of the MB+ ions, which are analysed by Hirshfeld fingerprint plots.