Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evolution of VANETS to IoV

Advancement in wireless communication technology along with the evolution of low power computational devices, have given rise to the Internet of things paradigm. This paradigm is transforming conventional VANETs into Internet-of- vehicles. This transition has led to a substantial commercial interest; as a result, there has been a significant boost in the field of the Internet of vehicles during the past few years. IoV promises a wide range of applications of commercial interest as well as public entertainment and convenience (collision warning systems, on-demand in-car entertainment, smart parking, traffic information). Applications related to vehicular and passenger safety are particularly of great commercial as well as a research interest as such IoV is going to be a core component in implementing the smart city concept. This paper gives an overview of the transition of conventional VANETs to IoV and highlights the potential applications and challenges faced by the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) paradigm.
A Driving Strategy Model of Self-Driving Cars

The self-driving cars are highly developed and about to meet the market, but the driving strategies and corresponding behaviors with others still need to be tested. In this paper, based on its characteristics and behaviors of manual-driving vehicles, we propose the driving strategies of manual-driving cars as well as self-driving cars. And we use the cellular automaton to simulate the traffic reality under different conditions, and to evaluate the efficiency of a road when self-driving cars are put into use. This research can be a reference by traffic planning and vehicles performance test, and further research can be designed in a model which can calculate the efficiency of a road when the percentage of self-driving cars are different.
A narrative review of immune checkpoint inhibitors in early stage triple negative breast cancer

Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive disease characterized by heterogeneous molecular and immunological characteristics that portends worse overall survival compared to other breast cancer subtypes. Until now, chemotherapy has remained the cornerstone of TNBC treatment despite recent efforts to explore new molecularly targeted therapeutic targets and personalized treatments. Given TNBC has a more immunogenic tumor microenvironment than other breast cancer subtypes, there is hope that immunotherapy will emerge as a new pillar of treatment in TNBC. Based on the IMPASSION130 and KEYNOTE-355 studies, the combination of nab-paclitaxel plus atezolizumab, and chemotherapy plus pembrolizumab, respectively, have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for locally recurrent, unresectable, or metastatic TNBC in the first line setting. Several studies have now been published demonstrating PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors given alongside neoadjuvant taxane and anthracyclinebased chemotherapy with or without a platinum agent significantly improves pathologic complete response rate. The choice of chemotherapy given in cooperation with PD-1/PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitor seems to determine the amount benefit derived from immunotherapy. However, longer term follow-up is required to ascertain whether immunotherapy, specifically PD-1/PD-L1 blockade, will improve event-free survival and overall survival. Future studies are underway investigating the role of immunotherapy in the adjuvant setting and in patients with residual disease after neoadjuvant therapy. Other unanswered questions remain including the total duration of immunotherapy, and which patient population would benefit from these expensive and sometimes toxic therapies. This narrative review aims to provide insight on the current landscape of immune checkpoint inhibitors in early TNBC.
Cross-model retrieval with deep learning for business application

Cross-modal retravel has been used in many fields, such as business and search engines. Most search engines for business are text-based, but text-based search engines are limited by equipment and the strict requirement for knowledge. Text-based search needs keyboards to finish the search process, which requires users to have the knowledge of using keyboards. Compared to the text-based search, audio-based search has advantages. First, it avoids the traditional ways of inputting information. And it gets rid of the gap in time between inputting information for searching and getting useful information. In this paper, we propose a way to use audio to search images for business applications. We use deep learning to implement cross-modal retrieval systems between images and audio. We first extract features from images and audio respectively. And then we implement a neural network with two identical networks to learn the correspondence between images and audio. The first network extracts the features from images and audio further for calculation, and the second network learns whether two features from different modalities are related. This research provides a new way for business applications to search for information more instantly.
AN APPROACH TO POSITIONAL QUALITY CONTROL METHODS FOR AIRBORNE INSAR HIGH-RESOLUTION X-BAND ORTHOIMAGES AND P-BAND DIGITAL TERRAIN MODEL

Abstract: The positional validation of datasets is an important step for cartography studies since it allows learning about its accuracy, and also indicates the data process quality. However, the positional validation of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) datasets have some additional challenges when compared to optical images due to the geometric distortions. We employ existing targets such as traffic signs and lampposts in the scene and identify them on the image as control points. We performed the validation of the geographic coordinates used as planialtimetric positional control points, using both the amplitude backscattering orthoimage and the Digital Terrain Model (DTM) generated from the InSAR system. We employed the NMAS, ASPRS and NSSDA tests along with information by the Brazilian Standards. This validation showed these control points presented the following results for 1:10,000 scale: NMAS test - class “A” in PEC and PEC-PCD; ASPRS test - RMSE x = 1.317m, RMSE y = 1.231m and RMSE z = 1.145m; and NSSDA test - RMSE r = 1,802m, Precision r = 3.118m and Precision z = 2.244m. These results prove we can use the proposed targets as control points and the used InSAR datasets meet the expected quality for generation of geotechnic products for 1:10,000 scale.
Behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia: a new framework for holistic understanding and non-pharmacological management

SUMMARY The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) informs us that the first-line treatments for behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) are non-pharmacological. Although psychotropics used to be the main strategy in the management of behaviours that challenge, there has been an increase in the use of biopsychosocial formulations since 2010, and there are now over a dozen to choose from. However, many are overly focused on obtaining information about the agitation, and less specific about providing details of the actions required to manage the behaviours. The NICE guidelines too fail to provide specific guidance on which non-pharmacological approaches to use. This article argues for giving equal weight to both the collection of meaningful information and the development of ‘informed actions’, because it is the actions that lead to change. The article outlines a management programme providing a framework for the assessment, formulation and treatment of agitation in dementia. The work draws on theory, evidence-based practice and practice-based evidence to provide a model with sufficient structure and flexibility to be useful for clinicians across a range of settings and professional groups.
Are gold hoop earrings and a dab of red lipstick enough to get even Democrats on the offensive?

According to news media outlets, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), the newly-elected Democratic representative from New York, has stirred up conflicting feelings among Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill, attracting criticism, mockery and disapproval from both parties. The overarching aim of this study is to explore the extent to which these attitudes are acts of verbal aggression often dissimulated as patronizing warnings or manifestations of an opinion (Ramirez and Andreu 2003; Wodak 2015). In particular, by analyzing a corpus of headlines regarding AOC’s political persona and activism collected from six major conservative and liberal newspapers circulating in the US, the study aims to detect linguistic markers associated with aggression and verify their level of toxicity (Musolff 2012). To this purpose, both quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches are used with particular reference to Corpus Linguistics (Baker et al. 2008; Kilgariff et al. 2014) and the Discourse-Historical Approach (Reisigl and Wodak 2001, 2016). Findings show that biased mediatized political discourse can influence attitudes toward aggressive speech behavior, and, therefore, intensify the devious nature of aggressive acts.
Issues, challenges, and a proposed theoretical core of agile software development research

Over the last two decades, agile software development (ASD) has garnered much attention in both research and practice. Several ASD methods and techniques have been developed and studied. In particular, researchers have provided several theoretical perspectives on ASD and contributed rich insights to the ASD practice. Still, despite calls for a more unified theoretical understanding of ASD, a theoretical core of ASD has not been identified. This paper offers a theoretical core of ASD research, clarifying what is essential and what is less essential for IS agility, hoping to spark a scholarly discussion, and provides implications of such a core for understanding method tailoring.
Evaluation of an Antenna Selection Strategy for Reduced Massive MIMO Complexity

Massive Multiple‐Input Multiple‐Output (MIMO) is emerging as one promising technology for the fifth generation (5G), but the hardware and software complexity arising from the sheer number of transmitting elements is a bottleneck. Antenna selection strategies have been reported as an appealing solution for hybrid beamforming architectures to select a number of radio‐frequency (RF) chains less than the total number of antennas but are yet to be fully defined and evaluated. In this work, a generic strategy relying on the receiver (Rx) spatial correlation is investigated to select the best antenna subset from a full array. It is evaluated from ray‐traced massive MIMO radio channels using propagation metrics, and also sum‐rate capacity computation. The results demonstrate that (1) for a fixed number of users, a subset with wisely selected distributed elements outperforms a collocated one for all studied metrics with performance close to the full array and (2) using a proposed optimization algorithm for a dynamic number of users, the number of active Tx antennas can be further optimized for the different studied subsets. Moreover, for a fixed number of users, the best antenna subset presenting the lowest Rx correlation values is found to reach the optimal sum‐rate capacity using simple linear precoders compared with dirty paper coding. This is achieved with only a third of the initial RF chain hardware complexity, thus validating the proposed approach. Also, experimental measurements, presented for an industrial scenario, validate the proposed approach.
Real‐time vehicle detection and tracking using 3D LiDAR

This paper studies the problem of vehicle detection and tracking for an autonomous vehicle using 3D Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR). In order to increase the accuracy of vehicle detection and tracking, a new clustering algorithm is proposed to obtain vehicle candidates from preprocessed point cloud data collected by the LiDAR. A classifier trained by the support vector machine (SVM) algorithm is used to detect vehicles from vehicle candidates. Kalman filter and global nearest neighbor (GNN) algorithm are used to track vehicles, and the accuracy of vehicle detection result is further improved by the aid of tracking results. The proposed method has been verified on a testing platform.
Europium binding to humic substances extracted from deep underground sedimentary groundwater studied by time-resolved laser fluorescence spectroscopy

ABSTRACT Humic substances (HSs) are ubiquitous in various environments including deep underground and play an important role in the speciation and mobility of radionuclides. The binding of Eu3+, a chemical homologue of trivalent actinide ions, to HSs isolated from sedimentary groundwater at −250 m below the surface was studied by time-resolved laser fluorescence spectroscopy combined with parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) as a function of pH and salt concentration. PARAFAC modeling reveals the presence of multiple factors that correspond to different Eu3+ species. These factors resemble those observed for Eu3+ binding to HSs from surface environments; however, detailed comparison shows that there are some particularities in Eu3+ binding to the deep groundwater HSs. The distribution coefficients (Kd) of Eu3+ binding to the HSs calculated from the PARAFAC modeling exhibits a rather strong salt effect. At 0.01 M NaClO4, the Kd values are relatively large and comparable to those to the surface HSs; they are decreaed at 0.1 M NaClO4 by more than an order of the magnitude. The Kd values are larger for the humic acid fraction of the deep underground HSs than the fulvic acid fraction over the entire range of pH and salt concentration investigated in this study.
Review of flash sintering with strong electric field

National Natural Science Foundation of China, Grant/Award Number: 52077118; State Key Laboratory of New Ceramic and Fine Processing Tsinghua University, Grant/Award Number: KFZD201903 Abstract Flash sintering is a novel field‐assisted sintering technology for ceramics that allows a dramatic reduction in processing time and temperature. Since 2010, when flash sintering was first reported, it has been a focus of research interest in the field of materials science. Recent study results have confirmed that the sintering temperature decreases with the strength of the applied electric field; for some ceramics, the sintering temperature can be lowered even to room temperature. This represents an innovative breakthrough for ceramic sintering at ultra‐low temperatures. However, once the electric field strength in flash sintering is increased, new questions and challenges arise, such as whether or not partial discharge occurs in the green body if under electro‐thermal coupling stress, how to quantitatively analyse the impact of discharge on sintering, and, moreover, whether the sintering mechanism under a strong electric field is consistent with that under a weak electric field. These research questions require knowledge of partial discharge detection, dielectric theory, and other topics that are beyond the scope of materials science. To address this need, this review summarises the work carried out in flash sintering with a strong electric field from the perspective of high voltage and insulation technology. First, the flash sintering process and mechanism are briefly introduced. Then, the published literature on flash sintering with a strong electric field for various ceramic materials is summarised in depth. In addition, experimental phenomena that are observed in flash sintering with a strong electric field, such as flash and blackening, are discussed. Finally, some suggestions for future work are presented. It is anticipated that the knowledge gap between different areas of study can be filled by this review.
The Effectiveness of Stem-Oriented Project and Mini-Research Teaching Materials in Improving Student Learning Outcomes at SMP 37 Medan

Several STEM-oriented project and mini research teaching materials created by undergraduate students were utilized in schools as a contribution of the campus to the school. This study aims to determine the effectiveness of STEM-oriented projects and mini-research teaching materials in improving the learning outcomes of science students at SMP Negeri 37 Medan. The research approach used in this study is a development research model which refers to Thiagarajan, the 4D model. The validation of the teaching materials was carried out by content-related experts, education experts and the science teacher. The effectiveness of the teaching materials was then explored in Grade 7 students of SMP Negeri 37 Medan bydistributing pre-test and post-test as data for the analysis of N-gain calculations. The results showed that the teaching materials were very feasible as accordance to the answer of the content expert; feasible as stated by the education expert; and very feasible as mentioned by the science teacher. Additionally, the students’ responses were very good and the N-gain test result was obtained at 0.5 which is categorized within the “medium” category at the distribution stage. This indicated that the implementation of STEM-oriented project and mini research teaching materials by undergraduate science students is effective in improving the learning outcomes of Grade 7 students in SMP Negeri 37 Medan in the academic year of2020/2021.
Radiatively-driven black hole winds revisited

We examine general relativistic radiatively-driven spherical winds, using the basic equations for relativistic radiation hydrodynamics under the moment formalism. Moment equations are often closed, using the equilibrium diffusion approximation, which has an acausal problem, and furthermore, gives nodal-type critical points. Instead, we use the non-equilibrium diffusion approximation with a closure relation of a variable Eddington factor, f(τ, β), where τ is the optical depth and β is the flow speed normalized by the speed of light. We then analyse the critical properties in detail for several parameters, and found that there appear saddle-type critical points as well as nodal type and spiral one. The most suitable type is the saddle one appears in a region close to a black hole. We also calculate transonic solutions with typical parameters, and show that the luminosity is almost comparable to the Eddington luminosity, the gas is quickly accelerated in the vicinity of the black hole, and wind terminal speeds are on the order of 0.1–0.3 c. These results of radiatively-driven black hole winds can be applied e.g. to ultra-fast outflows, which are supposed to be fast outflows from the vicinity of supermassive black holes.
A 2.53 NEF 8-bit 10 kS/s 0.5 μm CMOS Neural Recording Read-Out Circuit with High Linearity for Neuromodulation Implants

This paper presents a power-efficient complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) neural signal-recording read-out circuit for multichannel neuromodulation implants. The system includes a neural amplifier and a successive approximation register analog-to-digital converter (SAR-ADC) for recording and digitizing neural signal data to transmit to a remote receiver. The synthetic neural signal is generated using a LabVIEW myDAQ device and processed through a LabVIEW GUI. The read-out circuit is designed and fabricated in the standard 0.5 μμm CMOS process. The proposed amplifier uses a fully differential two-stage topology with a reconfigurable capacitive-resistive feedback network. The amplifier achieves 49.26 dB and 60.53 dB gain within the frequency bandwidth of 0.57–301 Hz and 0.27–12.9 kHz to record the local field potentials (LFPs) and the action potentials (APs), respectively. The amplifier maintains a noise–power tradeoff by reducing the noise efficiency factor (NEF) to 2.53. The capacitors are manually laid out using the common-centroid placement technique, which increases the linearity of the ADC. The SAR-ADC achieves a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 45.8 dB, with a resolution of 8 bits. The ADC exhibits an effective number of bits of 7.32 at a low sampling rate of 10 ksamples/s. The total power consumption of the chip is 26.02 μμW, which makes it highly suitable for a multi-channel neural signal recording system.
Temperature coefficients of crystalline-quartz elastic constants over the cryogenic range [4 K, 15 K]

This paper brings out the temperature coefficients of synthetic-quartz elastic constants at liquid helium temperature. The method is based on the relationship between the resonance frequencies of a quartz acoustic cavity and the elastic constants of the material. The temperature coefficients of the elastic constants are extracted from experimental frequency-temperature data collected within the very useful cryogenic range [4 K–15 K] from a set of resonators of various cut angles, because of the anisotropy of quartz.
How to Improve Healthcare for Patients with Multimorbidity and Polypharmacy in Primary Care: A Pragmatic Cluster-Randomized Clinical Trial of the MULTIPAP Intervention

(1) Purpose: To investigate a complex MULTIPAP intervention that implements the Ariadne principles in a primary care population of young-elderly patients with multimorbidity and polypharmacy and to evaluate its effectiveness for improving the appropriateness of prescriptions. (2) Methods: A pragmatic cluster-randomized clinical trial was conducted involving 38 family practices in Spain. Patients aged 65–74 years with multimorbidity and polypharmacy were recruited. Family physicians (FPs) were randomly allocated to continue usual care or to provide the MULTIPAP intervention based on the Ariadne principles with two components: FP training (eMULTIPAP) and FP patient interviews. The primary outcome was the appropriateness of prescribing, measured as the between-group difference in the mean Medication Appropriateness Index (MAI) score change from the baseline to the 6-month follow-up. The secondary outcomes were quality of life (EQ-5D-5 L), patient perceptions of shared decision making (collaboRATE), use of health services, treatment adherence, and incidence of drug adverse events (all at 1 year), using multi-level regression models, with FP as a random effect. (3) Results: We recruited 117 FPs and 593 of their patients. In the intention-to-treat analysis, the between-group difference for the mean MAI score change after a 6-month follow-up was −2.42 (95% CI from −4.27 to −0.59) and, between baseline and a 12-month follow-up was −3.40 (95% CI from −5.45 to −1.34). There were no significant differences in any other secondary outcomes. (4) Conclusions: The MULTIPAP intervention improved medication appropriateness sustainably over the follow-up time. The small magnitude of the effect, however, advises caution in the interpretation of the results given the paucity of evidence for the clinical benefit of the observed change in the MAI. Trial registration: Clinicaltrials.gov NCT02866799.
Sexual life during COVID-19

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has spread rapidly around the world leading to massive changes in various areas. World Health Organization (WHO) has declared this disease a global pandemic in March 2020 causing a range of restrictions and global lockdown. Sexual behaviors have suffered change because of the virus transmission and governmental regulations for people to stay inside their homes. This paper addresses the quality of sexual life during lockdown in Romanian population. We discuss results from an online survey of 395 adults who were asked about their intimate lives, in terms of pornography consumption, solo masturbation and sexual intercourse. We also collected data regarding variables of a good relationship in order to see wether they have an influence over sexual life. We found that a good relationship is strongly connected to quality of sexual life. Our results also show that many people have solo masturbated (72,2%) and have consumed pornography materials (56,5%). Key words: sexual life, COVID-19, sexual behavior.