Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of using CSS PHY and RTS/CTS Combined with Frame Concatenation in the IEEE 802.15.4 Non-beacon Enabled Mode Performance

This paper studies the performance improvement for the nonbeacon-enabled mode of IEEE 802.15. 4 originated by the inclusion of the Request-To-Send/Clear-To-Send (RTS/CTS) handshake mechanism combined with frame concatenation. Under IEEE 802.15. 4 employing RTS/CTS, the backoff procedure is not repeated for each data frame sent but only for each RTS/CTS set. The throughput and delay performance are mathematically derived for both the Chirp Spread Spectrum and Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum Physical layers for the 2.4 GHz band. The results show that the utilization of RTS/CTS significantly enhances the performance of IEEE 802.15. 4 in terms of maximum throughput, minimum delay and bandwidth efficiency.
Biogeochemical and omic evidence for paradoxical methane production via multiple co-occurring mechanisms in aquatic ecosystems

Aquatic ecosystems are globally significant sources of the greenhouse gas methane (CH4) to the atmosphere. However, CH4 is produced ‘paradoxically’ in oxygenated water via poorly understood mechanisms, fundamentally limiting our understanding of overall CH4 production. Here we resolve paradoxical CH4 production mechanisms through CH4 measurements, δ13CH4 analyses, 16S rRNA sequencing, and metagenomics/metatranscriptomics applied to freshwater incubation experiments with multiple time points and treatments (addition of a methanogenesis inhibitor, dark, high-light). We captured significant paradoxical CH4 production, as well as consistent metabolism of methylphosphonate by abundant bacteria—resembling observations from marine ecosystems. Metatranscriptomics and δ13CH4 analyses applied to experimental treatments identified an additional CH4 production mechanism associated with (bacterio)chlorophyll metabolism and photosynthesis by Cyanobacteria, and especially by Proteobacteria. Both mechanisms occured together within metagenome-assembled genomes, and appear widespread in freshwater. Our results indicate that multiple, co-occurring, and broadly-distributed bacterial groups and metabolic pathways produce CH4 in aquatic ecosystems.
Deliberate Foreign Body Ingestion in a 35-Year-Old Woman With Borderline Personality Disorder and Several Psychiatric Comorbidities

Deliberate foreign body ingestion (DFBI) is a rare psychopathological disorder that involves the swallowing of non-nutritive objects to cause self-harm. It is most commonly associated with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Very scant literature has been published on the psychopathological understanding or psychopharmacological interventions. Mostly, gastroenterological and surgical management regarding the removal of the foreign body has been discussed in the literature. DFBI can be very challenging in terms of the treatment of the patient and the morale of the health providers - it exhausts the patient and the family and evokes frustration among the medical staff due to its resistance to remission. By presenting the case of a patient in this article, we will discuss what is known about the poorly understood DFBI and the challenges and difficulties encountered while treating these patients. Further, we will discuss how a biopsychosocial approach can be used in treating these patients.
Distributed Fractional-Order Intelligent Adaptive Fault-Tolerant Formation-Containment Control of Two-Layer Networked Unmanned Airships for Safe Observation of a Smart City

This article investigates a distributed fractional-order fault-tolerant formation-containment control (FOFTFCC) scheme for networked unmanned airships (UAs) to achieve safe observation of a smart city. In the proposed control method, an interval type-2 fuzzy neural network (IT2FNN) is first developed for each UA to approximate the unknown term associated with the loss-of-effectiveness faults in the distributed error dynamics, and then a disturbance observer (DO) is proposed to compensate for the approximation error and bias fault encountered by each UA, such that the composite learning strategy composed of the IT2FNN and the DO is obtained for each UA. Moreover, fractional-order (FO) calculus is incorporated into the control scheme to provide an extra degree of freedom for the parameter adjustments. The salient feature of the proposed control scheme is that the composite learning algorithm and FO calculus are integrated to achieve a satisfactory fault-tolerant formation-containment control performance even when a portion of leader/follower UAs is subjected to the actuator faults in a distributed communication network. Furthermore, it is shown by Lyapunov stability analysis that all leader UAs can track the virtual leader UA with time-varying offset vectors, and all follower UAs can converge into the convex hull spanned by the leader UAs. Finally, comparative hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) experimental results are presented to show the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method.
HeteroGGM: an R package for Gaussian graphical model-based heterogeneity analysis

SUMMARY Heterogeneity is a hallmark of many complex human diseases, and unsupervised heterogeneity analysis has been extensively conducted using high-throughput molecular measurements and histopathological imaging features. "Classic" heterogeneity analysis has been based on simple statistics such as mean, variance, and correlation. Network-based analysis takes interconnections as well as individual variable properties into consideration and can be more informative. Several Gaussian graphical model (GGM)-based heterogeneity analysis techniques have been developed, but friendly and portable software is still lacking. To facilitate more extensive usage, we develop the R package HeteroGGM, which conducts GGM-based heterogeneity analysis using the advanced penaliztaion techniques, can provide informative summary and graphical presentation, and is efficient and friendly. AVAILABILITY The package is available at https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=HeteroGGM. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Silver@graphene oxide nanocomposite-based optical sensor platform for biomolecules

In this report, a silver@graphene oxide (Ag@GO) nanocomposite-based optical sensor was developed for the detection of biomolecules such as dopamine (DA), ascorbic acid (AA), and uric acid (UA). An aqueous solution of Ag@GO was prepared using a simple chemical reduction method, and it showed a characteristic surface plasmon resonance (SPR) band at 402 nm. The SPR features of the Ag@GO nanocomposite were used for the detection of DA, AA, and UA. The SPR intensity-based limits of detection (LODs) of DA, AA, and UA were 49 nM, 634 nM, and 927 nM, respectively. The SPR band position-based LODs of DA, AA, and UA were 30 nM, 1.64 μM, and 2.15 μM, respectively. The present optical sensor was more sensitive to DA than to UA and AA. The interactions of the biomolecules with Ag@GO were studied based on density functional theory (DFT), and it was found that DA had more interaction than AA and UA. This novel Ag@GO nanocomposite is simple to prepare and showed excellent stability and sensitivity toward the detection of biomolecules.
Estimation of the marbling development pattern in Japanese Black cattle by using serial ultrasound measurement data.

The objective of this study was to develop mathematical equations for describing the change in marbling in Japanese Black steers using longitudinal measurements. Serial ultrasound measurements were taken at 14, 16, 20, and 26 months of age and analyzed using an image analysis software. The longitudinal marbling measurements from the ultrasound images and carcasses were fitted into a nonlinear logistic curve. Data used for the analysis consisted of 749 steers that converged in nonlinear curve fitting and showed reasonable estimated parameters of the logistic curves. The average predicted mature beef marbling score (BMS) and maturation rate were 6.26 and 0.353, respectively, and the average maturity levels at 24 months of age were 83.9%. The heritability estimates for the predicted maturity traits were moderate, indicating that these traits may have potential for genetic improvement. There was a negative relationship between the expected progeny differences between carcass BMS and maturity traits, suggesting that genetic improvement by carcass BMS may lead to the selection of bulls with late maturity for marbling. The results indicate that ultrasound and model building for marbling can be useful tools to correctly select candidate bulls with high marbling in the early fattening period.
Differential Contribution of V0 Interneurons to Execution of Rhythmic and Nonrhythmic Motor Behaviors

Locomotion, scratching, and stabilization of the body orientation in space are basic motor functions which are critically important for animal survival. Their execution requires coordinated activity of muscles located in the left and right halves of the body. Commissural interneurons (CINs) are critical elements of the neuronal networks underlying the left–right motor coordination. Locomotion, scratching, and stabilization of the body orientation in space are basic motor functions which are critically important for animal survival. Their execution requires coordinated activity of muscles located in the left and right halves of the body. Commissural interneurons (CINs) are critical elements of the neuronal networks underlying the left–right motor coordination. V0 interneurons (characterized by the early expression of the transcription factor Dbx1) contain a major class of CINs in the spinal cord (excitatory, V0V; inhibitory, V0D), and a small subpopulation of excitatory ipsilaterally projecting interneurons. The role of V0 CINs in left–right coordination during forward locomotion was demonstrated earlier. Here, to reveal the role of glutamatergic V0 and other V0 subpopulations in control of backward locomotion, scratching, righting behavior, and postural corrections, kinematics of these movements performed by wild-type mice and knock-out mice with glutamatergic V0 or all V0 interneurons ablated were compared. Our results suggest that the functional effect of excitatory V0 neurons during backward locomotion and scratching is inhibitory, and that the execution of scratching involves active inhibition of the contralateral scratching central pattern generator mediated by excitatory V0 neurons. By contrast, other V0 subpopulations are elements of spinal networks generating postural corrections. Finally, all V0 subpopulations contribute to the generation of righting behavior. We found that different V0 subpopulations determine left–right coordination in the anterior and posterior parts of the body during a particular behavior. Our study shows a differential contribution of V0 subpopulations to diverse motor acts that provides new insight to organization of motor circuits. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Commissural interneurons with their axons crossing the midline of the nervous system are critical elements of the neuronal networks underlying the left–right motor coordination. For the majority of motor behaviors, the neuronal mechanisms underlying left–right coordination are unknown. Here, we demonstrate the functional role of excitatory V0 neurons and other subpopulations of V0 interneurons in control of a number of basic motor behaviors—backward locomotion, scratching, righting behavior, and postural corrections—which are critically important for animal survival. We have shown that different subpopulations of V0 neurons determine left–right coordination in the context of different behaviors as well as in the anterior and posterior parts of the body during a particular behavior.
First Pass Recanalization Rates of Solitaire vs Trevo vs Primary Aspiration: The Kaiser Southern California Experience.

CONTEXT New stroke thrombectomy devices have significantly improved recanalization rates in patients with large vessel occlusion. The first pass effect, or complete or near complete recanalization after a single pass of a device, is associated with better outcome. However, it remains unclear whether one technique is superior to the others at first pass recanalization. OBJECTIVE The successful recanalization rates of three common techniques: 1) Stent-retriever with the Solitaire or 2) Trevo device, or 3) primary aspiration (PA) with a distal aspiration catheter, were compared across three Kaiser Permanente Southern California Medical Centers over a 5-year period. DESIGN Retrospective review of cases between October 2013 and May 2018. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Successful recanalization after a single pass of a device. RESULTS Forty-five percent of Solitaire thrombectomies resulted in first pass success, compared with 31% of Trevo and 39% of PA, not statistically significant (p = 0.26). Adjusted for age, gender, and National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score, the odds of successful recanalization were 1.90 ± 0.72 (CI 0.90-3.99, p = 0.09) for Solitaire compared with Trevo, and 1.41 ± 0.50 (CI 0.70-2.84, p = 0.33) for aspiration compared with Trevo. CONCLUSION In this multi-center cohort, there was no statistical difference in successful first pass recanalization between Solitaire, Trevo, and PA. However, there was a trend towards improved efficacy with the Solitaire device compared to Trevo (OR 1.90, p = 0.09). Additional data are needed to determine the conditions under which design differences may favor one technique over another.
Observer-Based Security Control for Interconnected Semi-Markovian Jump Systems With Unknown Transition Probabilities

This article investigates the issue of observer-based security control for the interconnected semi-Markovian jump systems with completely unknown and uncertain bounded transition probabilities (TPs). Considering the limited bandwidth of communication network in each subsystem, an adaptive event-triggered mechanism (AETM) is developed to relieve more network burden than the conventional event-triggered mechanism (ETM), where the designed adaptive law can dynamically adjust the triggering threshold. In addition, two Bernoulli distributed variables are utilized to describe the influence of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks and false-data injection (FDI) attacks in the proposed observer-based security control strategy. Moreover, some sufficient criterions are derived for the stochastic stability with an $H_{\infty }$ attenuation level of augmented systems. Meanwhile, the observer and controller gain matrices can be attained simultaneously with the help of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Finally, we provide a practical example to demonstrate the effectiveness of theoretical results.
High performance dengue virus antigen-based serotyping-NS1-ELISA (plus): A simple alternative approach to identify dengue virus serotypes in acute dengue specimens

Dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) is caused by infection with dengue virus (DENV). Four different serotypes (DENV1-4) co-circulate in dengue endemic areas. The viral RNA genome-based reverse-transcription PCR (RT-PCR) is the most widely used method to identify DENV serotypes in patient specimens. However, the non-structural protein 1 (NS1) antigen as a biomarker for DENV serotyping is an emerging alternative method. We modified the serotyping-NS1-enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (stNS1-ELISA) from the originally established assay which had limited sensitivity overall and poor specificity for the DENV2 serotype. Here, four biotinylated serotype-specific antibodies were applied, including an entirely new design for detection of DENV2. Prediction of the infecting serotype of retrospective acute-phase plasma from dengue patients revealed 100% concordance with the standard RT-PCR method for all four serotypes and 78% overall sensitivity (156/200). The sensitivity of DENV1 NS1 detection was greatly improved (from 62% to 90%) by the addition of a DENV1/DENV3 sub-complex antibody pair. Inclusive of five antibody pairs, the stNS1-ELISA (plus) method showed an overall increased sensitivity to 85.5% (171/200). With the same clinical specimens, a commercial NS1 rapid diagnostic test (NS1-RDT) showed 72% sensitivity (147/200), significantly lower than the stNS1-ELISA (plus) performance. In conclusion, the stNS1-ELISA (plus) is an improved method for prediction of DENV serotype and for overall sensitivity. It could be an alternative assay not only for early dengue diagnosis, but also for serotype identification especially in remote resource-limited dengue endemic areas.
A novel maximum power point tracking technique for PV panels

A novel technique for efficiently extracting maximum power from photovoltaic (PV) panels is presented. The power conversion stage, which is connected between a PV panel and a load or bus, is a SEPIC or Cuk DC/DC converter operating in discontinuous inductor-current or capacitor-voltage mode. The method of locating the maximum power point (MPP) is based on injecting a small-signal sinusoidal perturbation into the switching frequency and comparing the AC component and the average value of the panel terminal voltage. Apart from not requiring any sophisticated digital computation of the panel power, the proposed technique does not approximate the panel characteristics and can globally locate the MPP under wide insolation conditions. The tracking capability has been verified experimentally with a 10 W solar panel under a controlled experimental setup. Performances under different insolation levels and a large insolation level change will be studied.
Implementation of a Post-Surgical, Multimodal Analgesia Pain Management Order Set in Opioid-Naive Patients.

BACKGROUND Perioperative pain management guidelines recommend using multimodal analgesia to improve pain control while reducing opioids administered. The primary objective of this study was to assess whether implementing multimodal analgesia on general surgery postoperative pain management order sets would reduce opioid quantities postoperatively. METHODS Opioid-naive patients undergoing nonemergent general surgery procedures were evaluated before and after order set revision. The primary outcome was the total quantity of inpatient opioids administered. The secondary outcomes were inpatient naloxone administration, patient-reported pain scores, and opioid quantities prescribed at discharge. RESULTS The average daily opioid consumption was less each postoperative day (POD) after implementing the revised postsurgical multimodal analgesia pain management order set. On POD 1 and POD 2, average opioid consumption was 53.6 and 47.9 oral morphine equivalents (OME) before the multimodal analgesia order set, respectively, compared with 21.2 and 21.4 OME after, respectively (p < 0.01 and p < 0.01, respectively). Average daily opioid consumption through POD 3 was 60.6 OME before and 21.14 OME after the revision. Average daily pain scores were similar on POD 0, 1, and 2 before and after (3.2, 2.8, and 2.4 compared with 2.8, 3.1, and 2.7, respectively; p = 0.09, 0.33, and 0.12, respectively). On POD 3, pain scores were higher in the postorder set group (2.8 compared with 1.9; p < 0.01), but this was considered clinically insignificant. Average daily pain score through POD 3 was 2.6 before implementation compared with 2.8 after implementation. Neither group required naloxone administration. CONCLUSION Using perioperative multimodal analgesia reduces opioid consumption without increasing pain scores.
How Physical Interactions Shape Bacterial Biofilms.

Biofilms are structured communities formed by a single or multiple microbial species. Within biofilms, bacteria are embedded into extracellular matrix, allowing them to build macroscopic objects. Biofilm structure can respond to environmental changes such as the presence of antibiotics or predators. By adjusting expression levels of surface and extracellular matrix components, bacteria tune cell-to-cell interactions. One major challenge in the field is the fact that these components are very diverse among different species. Deciphering how physical interactions within biofilms are affected by changes in gene expression is a promising approach to obtaining a more unified picture of how bacteria modulate biofilms. This review focuses on recent advances in characterizing attractive and repulsive forces between bacteria in correlation with biofilm structure, dynamics, and spreading. How bacteria control physical interactions to maximize their fitness is an emerging theme. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Biophysics, Volume 50 is May 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews. org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Polyphasic characterization of carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae clinical isolates suggests vertical transmission of the blaKPC-3 gene

Carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae are a major global threat in healthcare facilities. The propagation of carbapenem resistance determinants can occur through vertical transmission, with genetic elements being transmitted by the host bacterium, or by horizontal transmission, with the same genetic elements being transferred among distinct bacterial hosts. This work aimed to track carbapenem resistance transmission by K. pneumoniae in a healthcare facility. The study involved a polyphasic approach based on conjugation assays, resistance phenotype and genotype analyses, whole genome sequencing, and plasmid characterization by pulsed field gel electrophoresis and optical DNA mapping. Out of 40 K. pneumoniae clinical isolates recovered over two years, five were carbapenem- and multidrug-resistant and belonged to multilocus sequence type ST147. These isolates harboured the carbapenemase encoding blaKPC-3 gene, integrated in conjugative plasmids of 140 kbp or 55 kbp, belonging to replicon types incFIA/incFIIK or incN/incFIIK, respectively. The two distinct plasmids encoding the blaKPC-3 gene were associated with distinct genetic lineages, as confirmed by optical DNA mapping and whole genome sequence analyses. These results suggested vertical (bacterial strain-based) transmission of the carbapenem-resistance genetic elements. Determination of the mode of transmission of antibiotic resistance in healthcare facilities, only possible based on polyphasic approaches as described here, is essential to control resistance propagation.