Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Emerging Infectious Disease and Bioterrorism

The emerging infectious disease is the unwanted situation in public health. However, there are several new emerging infectious diseases within the past decade. The consideration on the worldwide outbreak of the new emerging infectious disease is set. An interesting point is the trend of bioterrorism using the new emerging infectious pathogen. This topic will be further discussed in this editorial.
Hydroclimate variability and long-lead forecasting of rainfall over Thailand by large-scale atmospheric variables

Abstract The development of statistical relationships between local hydroclimates and large-scale atmospheric variables enhances the understanding of hydroclimate variability. The rainfall in the study basin (the Upper Chao Phraya River Basin, Thailand) is influenced by the Indian Ocean and tropical Pacific Ocean atmospheric circulation. Using correlation analysis and cross-validated multiple regression, the large-scale atmospheric variables, such as temperature, pressure and wind, over given regions are identified. The forecasting models using atmospheric predictors show the capability of long-lead forecasting. The modified k-nearest neighbour (k-nn) model, which is developed using the identified predictors to forecast rainfall, and evaluated by likelihood function, shows a long-lead forecast of monsoon rainfall at 7–9 months. The decreasing performance in forecasting dry-season rainfall is found for both short and long lead times. The developed model also presents better performance in forecasting pre-monsoon season rainfall in dry years compared to wet years, and vice versa for monsoon season rainfall. Editor Z.W. Kundzewicz Citation Singhrattna, N. , Babel, M.S. and Perret, S.R. , 2012. Hydroclimate variability and long-lead forecasting of rainfall over Thailand by large-scale atmospheric variables. Hydrological Sciences Journal, 57 (1), 26–41.
A Power Allocation Scheme Using Updated SLNR Value Based on Perturbation Theory

The performance of downlink multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) cellular networks is limited by co-channel interference (CCI). In this paper, we propose a linear precoding scheme based on signal-to-leakage-and-noise ratio (SLNR) criteria which can reduce the CCI significantly. Since each user’s SLNR value is corresponding to the largest eigenvalue of the generalized matrix which indicates the channel quality that we propose a scheme to do a dynamic power allocation as an auxiliary way to improve SLNR precoding scheme. We use the perturbation theory to update each user’s SLNR value each time step in time-varying channels rather than directly decompose the channel matrix so as to reduce the amount of calculation. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme offers about 0.3 bps/Hz additional capacity gain and 0.5 dB BER gain over conventional SLNR precoding method with lower computational complexity. And it also obtains about 0.5 bps/Hz additional capacity gain and 1 dB BER gain compared to the scheme only update the preceding vectors.
Does Resting-state EEG Band Power Reflect Fluid Intelligence?

Fluid intelligence refers to the ability to engage in abstract reasoning, which is independent of life experiences and knowledge. Brain studies have associated fluid intelligence with resting-state electroencephalograms (EEGs). This study investigated the relationship between resting-state EEG band power and fluid intelligence. The resting-state EEGs of 39 healthy volunteers were recorded from 32 scalp locations with a linked ears reference while the subjects were positioned in a Faraday cage for 15 min (10 min, eyes open; 5 min, eyes closed). The same participants completed the Ravenâ€™s Standard Progressive Matrices (RSPM) test. Brain electrical activity was divided into delta, theta, alpha, and beta bands, and correlation coefficients were calculated to identify associations between the resting-state EEG powers and RSPM scores. The mean RSPM score of the participants was 49.31 (females=50.43, males=48). No correlation between the resting-state EEG power values (delta, theta, alpha, and beta bands) and fluid intelligence was found. The results of correlation analyses showed no relationship between EEG data and intelligence scores. These results indicate that data on resting-state EEG power values do not contribute to an understanding of fluid intelligence. However, brain network studies may deepen our understanding of the neural mechanisms underpinning intelligence.
Artificial Neural Network Application in Classifying the Left Ventricular Function of the Human Heart Using Echocardiography

This paper proposes a methodology to assist Acute Care Physicians in diagnosing the heart condition of a patient with high accuracy within the least possible time. As the initial step in diagnosing the heart condition, we focused on automatically classifying the Left Ventricular Systolic function of the Human Heart into two categories as normal or abnormal. The proposed solution is a combination of image processing techniques and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). Images obtained from Echocardiography videos were subjected to a series of image pre-processing techniques. The two parameters; Left Ventricular Internal Systolic diameter (LVIDs) and Left Ventricular Internal Diastolic diameter (LVIDd) were extracted from the echocardiography videos using a feature extraction algorithm. These two parameter values were used to calculate the Ejection Fraction (EF). LVIDs, LVIDd and EF values were then used as inputs to the Artificial Neural Network. A feed-forward back propagation neural network was trained as a classifier to distinguish between normal and abnormal Left Ventricular Systolic function. The cardiologist's decision was used as the expected output for the training of the Artificial Neural Network. A dataset of 50 images that included both normal and abnormal heart condition was used. The trained Artificial Neural Network could classify the images with an accuracy of 98%.
Are biochemical-genetic variation and mating systems related in large mammals?

In some families of large mammals (Cervidae, Bovidae, Canidae), authors examined relationships between the various mating systems adopted and biochemical-genetic variation measured in terms of the mean proportion of polymorphic loci (P), mean heterozygosity (H) and derived coefficients, such as the ratio Pt:P and F IS. Hypothesis was the genetic variability decreases as the degree of polygyny of the mating system adopted increases. Most of the data were in accordance with this prediction, but also some ambiguous results could be observed. Methodological and practical difficulties connected with our synoptical approach, such as the lack of comparability among most electrophoretic studies and the general scarcity of quantitative behavioural data are critically discussed.
IMPROVING THE EFFICIENCY AND SUSTAINABILITY OF DISINFECTION AT A SMALL RURAL WATER TREATMENT PLANT

The Alice Water Treatment Plant (AWTP) has several operating problems, which often result in poor turbidity removal and inadequate disinfection residual. Some progress has been made in upgrading the skills of plant operators, but the plant performance has failed to improve because of faulty equipment, a shortage of maintenance staff and treatment chemicals that are not delivered in time. The coagulant-dosing pump was found to be malfunctioning for an extended period of time resulting in overdose problems. The self-backwashing filters were no longer backwashing as per design and were producing poor quality filtrate. This in turn increased the chlorine demand and combined with frequent failure of the chlorinators, the plant was producing poor microbiological quality final water. The storage system in the bulk distribution system was investigated and it was found that adequate chlorine residual could be achieved, provided the plant problems were rectified. The difficulties experienced in training and retaining adequately skilled people to run water treatment plants in impoverished rural municipalities have been among the major hurdles to providing acceptable water services in these areas. However a partnership between the Universities and the AWTP came up as a possible solution to these problems. It is therefore recommended that rural municipalities consider this approach and strengthen this relationship, as it played a large role in plant improvement. Water SA Vol. 30 (5) 2005: pp.69-74
Singlet oxygen generation by biopolymer functionalized gold nanoparticle under ultraviolet and visible photo irradiation

A Singlet oxygen plays an important role in photodynamic therapy of cancers, photodynamic abortion of microorganisms and photo oxidation. Herein we exhibit a common platform to improve singlet oxygen production via resonance coupling between surface plasmon and photosensitizers. Pectin functionalized gold nanoparticle (AuNPs) were synthesized. The crystalline size of nanoparticles was investigated using powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) method. The presence of pectin on the surface of gold nanoparticle as visualized from UV-Vis spectra provided the stability and capping density of polymer on surface of AuNPs. The Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy of the sample has confirmed the presence of pectin on the surface of AuNPs. The nanoparticle size was measured utilizing XRD, Dynamic light scattering (DLS). Singlet oxygen generation was observed by photo luminescence spectrophotometer (PL). By adsorbing photosensitizers into pectin containing gold nanoparticles, strong resonance coupling between the photosensitizers and the gold nanoparticle enhance the singlet oxygen generation under UV irradiation. This work establishes a general platform to improve singlet oxygen production and to develop a more effective and efficient hybrid metal-photosensitizer for photodynamic inactivation of cancer cells.
Two-hit Reprograming of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

Endogenous and exogenous stresses produce reactive oxygen species (ROS) in cells, and these can cause DNA damage, apoptosis, autophagy, and senescence. The reprogramming of somatic cells to produce induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) initially requires ROS production and then represses the endogenous expression of tumor suppressor factors such as p53, p21Cip1, and p16Ink4a. This article discusses a two-hit model of stress-induced reprogramming for generating iPSCs and suggests new clinical tools for stem cell therapy.
Associations among Hypertension, Depression and Obesity in a sample of the U.S. adults

Although there have been studies showing the determinants of obesity, there have been relatively little attention paid to other factors such as mental health disorders like depression and chronic illnesses like hypertension. In addition, there exists a controversy over the association between hypertension and depression. Thus, we have investigated the associations among hypertension, depression, and obesity by adjusting age, gender, race, and socioeconomic status. The data was from the 2011 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES). This survey is conducted every year and in particular the data involves approximately 5,000 individuals of all ages in the United States, who completed the health examination component of the survey. We have utilized a logistic regression analysis to examine how hypertension, depression and obesity are associated one another. We have also used a proportional odds model to test how hypertension and depression may affect obesity. The main findings from the results of study are the following: first, being obese and feeling down, depressed or hopeless were associated with an increased likelihood of having hypertension and second, hypertension and depression may positively affect obesity. The findings suggest that as the determinants of obesity, depression and hypertension should be timely diagnosed and treated properly for considering the associations one another. By doing so, it can provide with the overall cost-savings and more importantly, people’s health.
Stable and unstable accretion in the classical T Tauri stars IM Lup and RU Lup as observed by MOST

Results of the time variability monitoring of the two classical T Tauri stars, RU Lup and IM Lup, are presented. Three photometric data sets were utilised: (1) simultaneous (same field) MOST satellite observations over four weeks in each of the years 2012 and 2013, (2) multicolour observations at the SAAO in April - May of 2013, (3) archival V-filter ASAS data for nine seasons, 2001 - 2009. They were augmented by an analysis of high-resolution, public-domain VLT-UT2 UVES spectra from the years 2000 to 2012. From the MOST observations, we infer that irregular light variations of RU Lup are caused by stochastic variability of hot spots induced by unstable accretion. In contrast, the MOST light curves of IM Lup are fairly regular and modulated with a period of about 7.19 - 7.58 d, which is in accord with ASAS observations showing a well defined 7.247+/-0.026 d periodicity. We propose that this is the rotational period of IM Lup and is due to the changing visibility of two antipodal hot spots created near the stellar magnetic poles during the stable process of accretion. Re-analysis of RU Lup high-resolution spectra with the Broadening Function approach reveals signs of a large polar cold spot, which is fairly stable over 13 years. As the star rotates, the spot-induced depression of intensity in the Broadening Function profiles changes cyclically with period 3.71058 d, which was previously found by the spectral cross-correlation method.
The Role of Competition in Today's Hong Kong The Views of Hong Kong Chinese Adolescents in Comparative Perspective

Open-ended responses to the question "what kind of role does competition play in Hong Kong today? " were obtained from 257 senior Hong Kong secondary school students aged 16-18 years. Content analysis showed the respondents viewed competition in terms of the areas in which competition was involved, the importance of such competition, and the value of this competition. Their views of areas of competition were closest to the reported views of Hungarian and Japanese peers but nothing like those of UK or US adolescents who placed more emphasis on competition in sports. The respondents also viewed competition as very important and generally a positive force leading to the improvement of Hong Kong at both societal and individual levels. Like the research program of Fulop et al., these findings show that views of the nature and function of competition vary across cultures and that collectivist societies can be just or more competitive than individualist.
Informed Priors for Deep Representation Learning

In this work, we discuss the possibility of using informed priors for deep generative models. We use word embedding as an example to form such prior. These informed priors aid the learning of the latent variables towards the desired representation instead of superimposing a certain structure. We exemplify the usefulness of method on the problems of image classification and retrieval and use it as an image similarity metric.
A Wavelet Time-Frequency Representation Based Complex Network Method for Characterizing Brain Activities Underlying Motor Imagery Signals

Brain is the most complex organ of human, which serves as the center of controlling most activities. A novel methodology called complex network is capable of characterizing the functional connectivity of human brain by means of graph theoretical measures. We designed and conducted experiments to record electroencephalograph (EEG) signals during left and right hand movement imagery tasks and then probed into brain activities by analyzing multichannel motor imagery signals from the perspective of complex networks. More specifically, we first utilized wavelet time–frequency analysis to calculate energy sequence of each channel and then modeled human brain as a graph by treating the channels of scalp EEG as nodes and determining interconnections according to the distance between energy sequences of each channel. The functional connectivity of derived brain networks could be interpreted with characteristics of nodes and edges. Results demonstrated that when subjects imagined left hand movements, the node betweenness centrality (BC) of right sensorimotor area was greater than that of left sensorimotor area. The node BC distribution was roughly opposite when imagining right hand movements. It could be concluded that nodes of contralateral sensorimotor regions were more likely to be activated to control information flows during motor imagery tasks.
A Collaborative Filtering Recommendation Algorithm Based On Conditional Entropy Trust Model

The traditional collaborative recommendation algorithm doesn't take the non-linear dependence between users into consider, which is not accurate enough in prediction. The collaborative filtering algorithm based on entropy can measure the nonlinear characteristics of users, but it can't reasonably describe the relationship between users and is subject to sparsity. To address this problem, conditional entropy trust model is proposed, which uses the conditional entropy to describe the non-linear dependence between users, and Laplace estimation is introduced to alleviate sparsity. A collaborative filtering algorithm based on the conditional entropy trust model (CECF) is designed. The experiments show that this algorithm doesn't increase the time complexity and significantly improve the degree of accuracy.
Microbiological air quality at municipal waste sorting plant

Abstract Municipal waste plants can be a source of biological contamination of the environment, depending on the method of operation and the type of collected waste. The aim of this study was the quantitative characteristics of airborne microorganisms at the Barycz municipal waste sorting plant in Cracow. Bioaerosol measurements of indoor and outdoor air of the municipal waste sorting plant were performed during the summer season using a six-stage Andersen cascade impactor. The highest concentration of bacterial and fungal aerosol was observed in the medium fraction sorting room (129.02×103 cfu·m-3 and 116.21×103 cfu·m-3, respectively). There were statistically significant differences in the concentrations of bacterial and fungal aerosol between indoor and outdoor air. The calculations showed a significant correlation between the concentration of bioaerosol and particulate matter. Based on the analysis of bioaerosol particle size distribution, it was found that the concentration of bacteria and fungi has a maximum value in the diameter range 3.3-7.0 μm. The study confirmed that the municipal waste sorting plants can be causing exposure to microbiological agents.
Person Re-identification Based on Feature Fusion and Triplet Loss Function

The task of Person re-identification (re-ID) is to recognize an individual observed by non-overlapping cameras. Robust feature representation is a crucial problem in re-ID. With the rise of deep learning, most current approaches adopt convolutional neural networks (CNN) to extract features. However, the feature representation learned by CNN is often global and lacks detailed local information. To address this issue, this paper proposes a simple CNN architecture consisting of a re-ID subnetwork and an attribute sub-network. In re-ID sub-network, global feature and semantic feature are extracted and fused in a weighted manner, and triplet loss is adopted to further improve the discriminative ability of the learned fusion feature. On the other hand, attribute sub-network focuses on local aspects of a person and offers local structural information that is helpful for re-ID. The two sub-networks are combined on the loss level and their complementary aspects are leveraged to improve the re-ID accuracy. Comparative evaluations demonstrate that our method outperforms several state-of-the-art ones. On the challenging Market1501 and DukeMTMC datasets, 86.3% rank-1 accuracy and 69.4% mAP, and 72.1% rank-1 accuracy and 53.4% mAP are achieved respectively.
Polarization under incomplete markets and endogenous labor productivity

We explore the accumulation of assets in the presence of limited insurance against idiosyncratic shocks, borrowing constraints and endogenous labor productivity due to the so-called "nutrition curve". We show that in such an environment, any stationary equilibrium is characterized by a polarized distribution of wealth. That is, there are only extremely rich and extremely poor agents.
Additional Quantitative Trait Loci and Candidate Genes for Seed Isoflavone Content in Soybean

Seed isoflavone content of soybean (Glycine max L. Merr.) is a trait of moderate heritablity and an ideal target for marker selection. To date over 20 QTL have been identified underlying this trait among seven populations. The objectives of this study were to identify additional QTL and candidate genes controlling isoflavone content in a set of recombinant inbred line (RIL) populations of soybean grown in two different seasons. Variations of isoflavones namely daidzein, glycitein and genistein contents over two growing seasons and locations suggests that isoflavones are influenced by both genes and environments. Six QTL were identified on five different chromosomes (Chr) or linkage groups (LG) that controlled daidzein (Chr_2/LG-M; Chr_17a/LG-D2), glycitein (Chr_2/LG-D1b; Chr_8/LG-A2) and genistein (Chr_8/LG-A2; Chr_12/LG-H) respectively in the seeds grown in season 2010. Two QTL were identified for daidzein (Chr_6/LG-C2; Chr_13b/LG-F), two QTLs for glycitein (Chr_1/LG-D1a; Chr_17c/LG-D2) and five QTLs for genistein (Chr_3/ LG-N; Chr_8/LG-A2; Chr_9/LG-K; Chr_18/LG-G) in the seeds of the 2011 growing season. Genes located within QTL confidence intervals were retrieved and gene ontology (GO) terms were used to identify those related to the flavonoid biosynthesis process. Twenty six candidate genes were identified that may be involved in isoflavones accumulation in soybean seeds.
Nanoring magnetic tunnel junction and its application in magnetic random access memory demo devices with spin-polarized current switching „ invited ...

Current-driven magnetization switching was observed in the nanoring-shaped magnetic tunnel junctions NR-MTJs with key stack layers of both spin-valve-type antiferromagnetic/ ferromagnetic/insulator/ferromagnetic and sandwich-type hard ferromagnetic/insulator/soft ferromagnetic structures. We successfully fabricated a series of ring-shaped MTJs with different ring-outer diameters of between 80 nm and 4 m and different ring width of between 25 nm and 2 m. Tunneling magnetoresistance ratio between 20% and 80% with different thickness of thin Al–O barrier was measured at room temperature as we apply a magnetic field or a pulsed current. When the electric current density exceeds a critical value of the order of 6 106 A /cm2, the magnetization of the two free and reference magnetic rings can be switched back and forth between parallel and antiparallel onion states. The experiments show that the spin transfer torque plays a main switching role in the magnetization reversal and the current-induced circular magnetic field plays an assisted-switching role in such NR-MTJs. © 2008 American Institute of Physics. DOI: 10.1063/1.2839774