Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Research on the Intelligent Assessment Algorithm of Bone Age Based on Attention Mechanism

Bone age is a reliable index to reflect the maturity of physical development, which is of great significance to evaluate the growth and development of children and adolescents, diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Traditional bone age assessment based on artificial has many problems, such as its time-consuming and subjective result, which may lead to great fluctuation of assessment results. Based on the X-ray image of the hand bones, this study proposes an intelligent prediction model of bone age in Deep Learning based on attention mechanism, combined with the traditional methods of bone age interpretation in Deep Learning. In the pre-processing stage, U-Net is used to remove the background of X-ray image of hand bones, and the dense connection network of attention mechanism is used to extract image features, and the mean absolute error function is introduced to improve the accuracy of this model. In the data set of RSNA competition, the mean absolute error of the method proposed in this study is 0.38 ± 0.10 years old, and obtained the best results reported at present.
BARREIRAS E FACILITADORES NA INTERSECÇÃO DO USO DE BIODIGESTORES NA ECONOMIA CIRCULAR

Nos últimos anos as pesquisas sobre os benefícios do uso de biodigestores aumentaram consideravelmente. A implementação e uso de biodigestores, entre outras vantagens, contribui para a redução de gases do efeito estufa, melhor descarte de resíduos sólidos e autossuficiência energética. Os biodigestores são equipamentos compostos por um gasômetro e uma câmara fechada, sem a entrada de oxigênio, e que atuam como reatores químicos, transformando a matéria orgânica em biogás e biofertilizantes. Paralelamente a isso, a abordagem da Economia Circular (EC) visa o crescimento econômico contínuo, em um ciclo fechado, com maior aproveitamento dos recursos naturais e reaproveitamento dos resíduos, preservando os recursos disponíveis para as gerações futuras. O objetivo deste trabalho é identificar os principais artigos e autores que relacionam os temas Biodigestores e EC, além de enunciar as barreiras e os facilitadores apresentados por esses trabalhos. O método de pesquisa empregado foi o de revisão bibliométrica dos artigos filtrados seguida por uma análise detalhada de cada um deles. A pesquisa bibliométrica demonstrou um aumento na publicação dos dois temas de maneira integrada. Além disso, identificou-se aplicações dos biodigestores para a EC, tais como o uso de dutos para redução do custo de transporte, e a integração com mais fontes renováveis como meio para aumentar a eficiência energética.
Effects of Earthquake Recurrence on Localization of Interseismic Deformation Around Locked Strike‐Slip Faults

Localized geodetic deformation of arctan shape around locked strike‐slip faults is widely reported, but there are also important exceptions showing distributed deformation. Understanding the controlling mechanism is important to hazard assessment and geodynamic analysis. Here we use simple finite element viscoelastic earthquake cycle models to investigate the basic mechanics of this process. Our models feature a vertical strike‐slip fault in an elastic layer overlying a viscoelastic substrate of Maxwell or Burgers rheology, with or without a low‐viscosity shear zone representing deeper extension of the fault. We demonstrate that the primary control on the localization of interseismic deformation is the recurrence interval of past earthquakes. Given viscosity, shorter recurrence leads to greater localization, regardless of the rheological model used. The presence of a low‐viscosity deep fault does not change this conclusion, although it tends to lessen localization by promoting faster postseismic stress relaxation. Distributed deformation, although less reported, is a natural consequence of very long recurrence and in theory should be as common as localized deformation. We think that the apparent propensity of the latter is likely associated with the much greater quantity and better quality of geodetic observations from higher‐rate and shorter‐recurrence faults. Our results also show the important role of nearby earthquakes along the same fault. For faults of relatively short recurrence, frequent ruptures of nearby segments, modeled using a migrating rupture sequence, further enhance localization. For faults of very long recurrence, faster near‐fault deformation induced by a recent earthquake may give a false impression of localized interseismic deformation.
A Non-Invasive Stroke Volume Monitoring for Early Detection of Minimal Blood Loss: A Pilot Study.

INTRODUCTION Alternation in traditional vital signs can only be observed during advanced stages of hypovolemia and shortly before the hemodynamic collapse. However, even minimal blood loss induces a decrease in the cardiac preload which translates to a decrease in stroke volume, but these indices are not readily monitored. We aimed to determine whether minor hemodynamic alternations induced by controlled and standardized hypovolemia can be detected by a whole-body bio-impedance technology. METHODS This was a non-randomized controlled trial that enrolled healthy blood donors. Vital signs, as well as shock index and stroke volume (SV), were recorded using NiCAS, a non-invasive whole-body impedance-based hemodynamic analysis system, during phlebotomy. RESULTS Sixty subjects were included in the study group and 20 in the control group. Blood loss of 450 ml resulted in a significant decrease in systolic blood pressure (5 mmHg; 95% CI 3, 6) and SV (5.07 ml; 95% CI 3.21, 6.92), and increase in shock index (0.03 bpm/mmHg; 95% CI 0.01, 0.05). Clinically detectable changes (≥10%) in blood pressure and shock index were detectable in 15% and 5%, respectively. SV decreased by more than 10% in 40% of blood donors. No significant changes occurred in the control group. CONCLUSION Continuous non-invasive monitoring of SV may be superior to conventional indices (e.g. heart rate, blood pressure or shock index) for early identification of acute blood loss. As an operator-independent and point of care technology, the SV whole body bio-impedance measurement may assist in accurate monitoring of potentially bleeding patients and early identification of hemorrhage.
Future impact of climate extremes in the Mediterranean: Soil erosion projections when fire and extreme rainfall meet

Climate change projections over the Mediterranean basin point toward an increase in frequency and intensity of extreme events that will directly impact ecosystems resilience. In this study, we evaluated future trends of soil loss in forestland in Catalonia (NE Spain) due to fires and vegetation dynamics, considering the potential future impacts of co‐occurring extreme fire and rainfall events, and assessing how fire suppression can contribute to soil erosion mitigation. The process‐based MEDFIRE model was used to simulate changes in forestland due to climate and fires between 2011 and 2050 under six different future scenarios that resulted from the combination of two climatic scenarios and three fire management policies. Annual projections on landscape changes were used to estimate soil loss using the Universal Soil Loss Equation. Projected annual soil losses for forested land in Catalonia ranged between 15 and 16 tons/ha, with scenarios simulating current levels of fire suppression projecting around −5% soil loss than those assuming more relaxed suppression strategies. On average, fires explained 12–16% of annual soil loss in the region, but in fire‐severe years, they explained up to 90% of the total annual soil loss. Projected mean total soil loss in years where extreme rainfall and fire meet was 150% higher than in years where both events were not contemporary. The estimated annual probability that the two extreme impacts will co‐occur in the future ranged between 0.09 and 0.11 between scenarios. Our results highlight the importance of landscape and fire management in minimizing soil loss and its potential impacts for ecosystems.
CURLI FIBRES AND PRION STRUCTURAL REVERSIONS – IMPLICATIONS TO PHYSICAL BIOLOGY STUDIES -

New investigations in the field of protein structures, bacterial exudes and prion research; and related experimental indications derived suggest that when infectious forms of prion plaques placed in or with resistance – providing variant form(s) are irradiated with appropriate laser power; reversions of prion plaques into structures like coils, helices, etc. may hypothetically take place. These structures are less stable than the beta sheets, hence more susceptible to being biologically cleared off the plaque residues. This provides for a means to effectively cure or prevent prion – like amyloid plaque related diseases; with further implications for physical biology.
Hydrodynamic mediation of killifish predation on infaunal polychaetes

To explore predator‐prey interactions between California killifish (Fundulus parvipinnis) and spionid polychaetes (Polydora cornuta and Streblospio benedicti) in saltmarsh creeks, we conducted a laboratory flume experiment to quantify whether killifish prey‐patch selectivity varies with water flow. The flume included a 300‐cm2 area of defaunated sediment within which we centrally positioned 24 P. cornuta, 24 S. benedicti, or no worms as a control. We videotaped groups of three killifish for 50 min at one of six unidirectional flow speeds (3 cm s−1, 6 cm s−1, 9 cm s−1, 12 cm s−1, 15 cm s−1, or 18 cm s−1) and recorded their bite rate anywhere in the sediment vs. bites directed at the central patch containing worms (98 cm2). The number of bites anywhere in the 300‐cm2 sediment area increased as flow increased from 3 cm s−1 to 6 cm s−1 and declined linearly as flow increased further. The number of bites anywhere was lower in treatments with no worms than when either worm species was present. The percentage of bites directed at the central patch varied significantly with flow speed and worm presence. With defaunated sediment only, ∼ 33% of bites were directed at the central patch at all flows, consistent with a null model of nonselective foraging. When either worm species inhabited the central patch, ∼ 65% of bites were directed at the central patch at 3 cm s−1 and 6 cm s−1, with patch selection declining as flow increased. Despite differences in morphology and behavior, the two prey species elicited similar foraging activity by killifish. These results suggest the importance of hydrodynamics in driving these epibenthic predator‐prey interactions.
Managerial ownership, audit committees and non-audit services

We extend prior research on corporate governance and non-audit services (NAS) by distinguishing between the management entrenchment region of management ownership and regions in which the interests of management and shareholders converge. Management entrenchment and convergence-of-interests regions were estimated for our sample of 5198 Australian firm-years. NAS is negatively (positively) associated with management ownership in the convergence-of-interests (entrenchment) regions. However, using a sub-sample based on firms that have audit committees, we find the association between NAS and management ownership is confined to the entrenchment region, while audit committee strength is negatively associated with NAS fees across all management ownership regions. JEL Classification: M42, M48
A scoping review of problems and challenges faced by school leaders (2003–2019)

The purpose of this scoping review is to analyse the literature concerning principals’ problems and challenges, beginning in 2003 and ending in 2019. The research team conducted an extensive search to locate relevant academic literature, comprising 17 years of research, and a total of 153 documents were analysed. According to the findings, most of the documents (71%) correspond to the last six years (2014–2019), and most are studies from Anglo-Saxon countries (55%). The results point to eight main categories related to the complex nature of the job (the management challenge, the complexity challenge and the learning challenge), and interactions with different stakeholders (problems with educational authorities and educational policy; the staff and teaching process; the students; the families and the school community; and the society). Although the importance given to each category varies from one context to another, problems concerning the complex nature of the job and with the educational authorities and the educational policy are the most recurrent. A significant increase in the number and complexity of problems and challenges throughout the times was noticed, which seems to enhance the need for changes in educational policies and the careful design and implementation of leadership training programmes.
Falcipain-2 and falcipain-3 inhibitors as promising antimalarial agents.

Malaria remains a serious problem in global public health, particularly widespread in South America and in tropical regions of Africa and Asia. Chemotherapy is actually the only way to treat this poverty-related disease, since an effective vaccine is not currently available. However, the onset of resistance to the most common antimalarial drugs sometimes makes the current therapeutic regimen problematic. Therefore, the identification of new targets for a new drug discovery process is an urgent priority. In this context, falcipain-2 and falcipain-3 of P. falciparum represent the key enzymes in the life-cycle of the parasite. Both falcipain-2 and falcipain-3 are involved in hemoglobin hydrolysis, essential pathway to provide free amino acids for the parasite metabolic needs. In addition, falcipain-2 is involved in cleaving ankirin and band 4.1 protein, cytoskeletal elements essential for the stability of red cell membrane. This review article is focused on the most recent and effective inhibitors of falcipain-2 and falcipain-3, with a particular attention to peptide, peptidomimetic or nonpeptide inhibitors which targeted one or both the malarial cysteine proteases, endowed with a consistent activity against P. falciparum.
Genetic analysis for five important morphological attributes in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.).

Six wheat genotypes and their F1 diallel hybrids were evaluated for gene action of yield and related attributes. Highly significant differences were detected amongst the genotypes for all the traits under study. Components of genetic variation highlighted the importance of both additive and non-additive gene effects for the inheritance of studied traits. Graphical representation displayed additive gene action with partial dominance for tillers per plant, grain yield per plant, 1000-grain weight and plant height and over dominance for flag leaf area. Selection in early generation and later generations was considered feasible for traits governed by additive and dominant genes, respectively. High narrow sense heritability was observed for majority traits except flag leaf area. Grain yield had strong correlation with tillers per plant.
Multiple Roles for the MLL/COMPASS Family in the Epigenetic Regulation of Gene Expression and in Cancer

The mixed lineage leukemia (MLL) gene is involved in numerous chromosomal translocations that result in acute myeloid and acute lymphoid leukemias. The MLL protein belongs to a family of six methyltransferases in mammals that can methylate histone H3 on lysine 4 (H3K4). The methyltransferase activities of MLL and the other family members, SETD1A, SETD1B, MLL2, MLL3 and MLL4, depend on their participation within macromolecular complexes called COMPASS (complex of proteins associated with Set1). Functional diversity within the COMPASS family includes the propensity to mono-, di-, or trimethylate H3K4 and to regulate promoters or enhancers. Recent cancer genome sequencing and animal studies have identified MLL3 and MLL4 as cancer drivers in a wide variety of hematologic and solid tumors. MLL3 and MLL4 implement monomethylation of H3K4 at enhancer regions, whereas another enzyme in MLL3 and MLL4 COMPASS, UTX, which is also frequently mutated in multiple types of cancer, demethylates H3K27me3, a modification a.
Early Childhood Social Competence Scale (EC-SCS): Factor Structure and Psychometric Properties

The Early Childhood Social Competence Scale (EC-SCS) was elaborated to evaluate social behavior on behalf of others in infantile populations. Due to the emergence and development of these behaviors from very early ages, the interest in its assessment is high from a developmental, educational, and applied perspective. The aim of the present study is to develop a Spanish population version of the scale, considering a specific dimensional structure. It was tested with a sample of 504 children of ages between 3 and 5 years, enrolled in school centers of infantile education. The results show that the new version of the instrument is a suitable measure for the assessment of social competence behaviors in early infancy. The joint consideration of prosocial and unfriendly behavior is important as it allows for the promotion of social competence behaviors and optimizes the detection of and intervention in behavioral problems later in life.
Optimizing Latent Factors and Collaborative Filtering for Students’ Performance Prediction

The problem of predicting students’ performance has been recently tackled by using matrix factorization, a popular method applied for collaborative filtering based recommender systems. This problem consists of predicting the unknown performance or score of a particular student for a task s/he did not complete or did not attend, according to the scores of the tasks s/he did complete and the scores of the colleagues who completed the task in question. The solving method considers matrix factorization and a gradient descent algorithm in order to build a prediction model that minimizes the error in the prediction of test data. However, we identified two key aspects that influence the accuracy of the prediction. On the one hand, the model involves a pair of important parameters: the learning rate and the regularization factor, for which there are no fixed values for any experimental case. On the other hand, the datasets are extracted from virtual classrooms on online campuses and have a number of implicit latent factors. The right figures are difficult to ascertain, as they depend on the nature of the dataset: subject, size, type of learning, academic environment, etc. This paper proposes some approaches to improve the prediction accuracy by optimizing the values of the latent factors, learning rate, and regularization factor. To this end, we apply optimization algorithms that cover a wide search space. The experimental results obtained from real-world datasets improved the prediction accuracy in the context of a thorough search for predefined values. Obtaining optimized values of these parameters allows us to apply them to further predictions for similar datasets.
European and American Options Valuation by Unsupervised Learning with Artificial Neural Networks

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) have recently also been applied to solve partial differential equations (PDEs). In this work, the classical problem of pricing European and American financial options, based on the corresponding PDE formulations, is studied. Instead of using numerical techniques based on finite element or difference methods, we address the problem using ANNs in the context of unsupervised learning. As a result, the ANN learns the option values for all possible underlying stock values at future time points, based on the minimization of a suitable loss function. For the European option, we solve the linear Black–Scholes equation, whereas for the American option, we solve the linear complementarity problem formulation.
Distributed Adaptive Output Consensus for High-Order Multiagent Systems with Input Saturation and Uncertain Nonlinear Dynamics

This paper deals with the leader-following output consensus problem for a class of high-order affine nonlinear strict-feedback multiagent systems with unknown control gains and input saturation under a general directed graph. Nussbaum gain function technique is used to handle the unknown control gains, and the uncertain nonlinear dynamics of each agent is approximated by radial basis function neural networks. Distributed adaptive controllers are designed via the backstepping technique as well as the dynamic surface control approach. It is proved that the closed-loop multiagent systems are semiglobally uniformly ultimately bounded, and the output consensus error can converge to a small region around the origin. Finally, the theoretical results are supported by a numerical simulation.
Seed dispersal distributions resulting from landscape‐dependent daily movement behaviour of a key vector species, Anas platyrhynchos

Dispersal via animals (zoochory) is a primary mechanism for seed exchange between habitat patches. Recent studies have established that many plant species can survive waterbird gut passage. To quantify the patterns and consequences of waterbird‐mediated dispersal, information on ingestion and gut passage must be combined with bird movement data. Such analysis has recently revealed seed dispersal kernels by migrating waterbirds. However, since many waterbird populations are largely resident, and migrating populations spend only a minor part of the main dispersal season (autumn–winter) on active migration, daily regional‐scale movements probably cause more frequent dispersal. We synthesized high‐resolution empirical data on landscape‐scale movements and seed gut passage times in a key disperser species, the mallard (Anas platyrhynchos), using a spatially explicit, mechanistic model to quantify dispersal distributions resulting from daily autumn–winter movements. We evaluated how landscape composition and seed traits affect these dispersal patterns. The model indicates that mallards generate highly clumped seed deposition patterns, dispersing seeds primarily between core areas used for foraging and resting. Approximately 34% of all dispersed seeds are transported to communal roost areas, which may function as reservoirs for mallard‐dispersed species, and 7% are transported between foraging areas. Landscape‐dependent movement patterns strongly affect the dispersal distributions, resulting in multi‐modal dispersal kernels, with dispersal distances increasing with fragmentation of freshwater foraging habitat. Seed size‐related gut retention times determine the proportion of seeds being dispersed away from the ingestion area, with larger seeds (20 mm3) having a 8–10% higher potential for long‐distance dispersal than smaller seeds (0·2 mm3), if surviving gut passage. However, twice as many small seeds will finally accomplish long‐distance dispersal due to their higher gut passage survival. Synthesis. Firstly, this study reveals how seed dispersal patterns resulting from daily waterfowl movements are shaped by landscape‐dependent differences in movement patterns. Secondly, seed survival appears more important than retention time in determining the scale of long‐distance dispersal by non‐migrating mallards. We conclude that the frequent flights of staging waterbirds result in directed dispersal over distances inversely related to wetland availability, indicating that they maintain landscape connectivity across a range from wet to increasingly dry landscapes.