Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Application of dynamic programming to optimal energy management of grid-independent hybrid railcars

In this paper, a dynamic programming-based optimization analysis is performed to quantitatively assess the energy-saving potential associated to the battery hybridization of railcars, which is nowadays regarded as a high-potential solution to reduce the greenhouse-gas impact of regional trains. A computationally effective longitudinal model is first developed, starting from an available energetic macroscopic representation modeling tool. The resulting simplified railcar model was first integrated with a battery state of charge simulator and then embedded within a fast constrained optimization algorithm. The optimization outcomes, reachable within reasonable timeframe and considering cost-effective hybridization scenarios, are highly informative for train manufacturers and operators interested in substantial hybridization of railcars. Particularly, fuel savings as high as 18% can be achieved with respect to the current diesel-powered trains. As a consequence, useful design and control guidelines are made available, considering both retrofitting or replacing the existing railway systems (particularly focusing on regional trains), while coping with capital and operating costs, safety, and traffic constraints.
Home range use and habitat selection by barbastelle bats (Barbastella barbastellus): implications for conservation

Abstract We studied foraging behavior and habitat selection of barbastelle bats (Barbastella barbastellus) at two breeding colonies in southern England. In total, 28 adult female bats were radiotracked to determine home range use, habitat preferences, and patterns of nocturnal activity. Individual home ranges varied considerably, with bats traveling between 1 and 20 km to reach foraging areas (X̄ = 6.8 km ± 4.8 SD). Nonreproductive females foraged at greater distances than reproductive females, providing evidence of state-dependent foraging behavior. Commutes were typically rapid and direct and bats moved freely across large open areas. Individual bats foraged independently from one another and were highly faithful to their respective core foraging areas, which formed just a small fraction of home ranges. Riparian zones and broad-leaved woodland were habitats most strongly selected for foraging. Unimproved grassland and field margins were also important components of the foraging environment. Bats night-roosted only occasionally and for short periods. Conservation efforts for B. barbastellus should target the protection and enhancement of preferred foraging habitats within 7 km of roost sites. Linear landscape elements such as tree lines and hedgerows should be managed to improve their value to foraging bats and to enhance connectivity with roost sites.
A study of longitudinal processes and interactions in compressible viscous flows

Fluid motion has two well-known fundamental processes: the vector transverse process characterized by vorticity, and the scalar longitudinal process consisting of a sound mode and an entropy mode, characterized by dilatation and thermodynamic variables. The existing theories for the sound mode involve the multi-variable issue and its associated difficulty of source identification. In this paper, we define the source of sound inside the fluid by the objective causality inherent in dynamic equations relevant to a longitudinal process, which naturally favours the material time-rate operator $D/Dt$ rather than the local time-rate operator $\unicode[STIX]{x2202}/\unicode[STIX]{x2202}t$, and describes the sound mode by inhomogeneous advective wave equations. The sources of sound physical production inside the fluid are then examined at two levels. For the conventional formulation in terms of thermodynamic variables at the first level, we show that the universal kinematic source can be condensed to a scalar invariant of the surface deformation tensor. Further, in the formulation in terms of dilatation at the second level, we find that the sound mode in viscous and heat-conducting flow has sources from rich nonlinear couplings of vorticity, entropy and surface deformation, which cannot be disclosed at the first level. Preliminary numerical demonstration of the theoretical findings is made for two typical compressible flows, i.e. the interaction of two corotating Gaussian vortices and the unsteady type IV shock/shock interaction. The results obtained in this study provide a new theoretical basis for, and physical insight into, understanding various nonlinear longitudinal processes and the interactions therein.
Tumor Necrosis Factor-α Induces Nuclear Factor-κB-dependent TRPC1 Expression in Endothelial Cells*

We investigated the role of tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) in activating the store-operated Ca2+ channels in endothelial cells via the expression of transient receptor potential channel (TRPC) isoforms. We observed that TNF-α exposure of human umbilical vein endothelial cells resulted in TRPC1 mRNA and protein expression, whereas it had no effect on TRPC3, TRPC4, or TRPC5 expression. The TRPC1 expression was associated with increased Ca2+ influx after intracellular Ca2+ store depletion with either thrombin or thapsigargin. We cloned the 5′-regulatory region of the human TRPC1 (hTRPC1) gene which contained a TATA box and CCAAT sequence close to the transcription initiation site. We also identified four nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB)-binding sites in the 5′-regulatory region. To address the contribution of NF-κB in the mechanism of TRPC1 expression, we determined the effects of TNF-α on expression of the reporter luciferase after transfection of hTRPC1 promoter-luciferase (hTRPC1-Pro-Luc) construct in the human dermal microvascular endothelial cell line. Reporter activity increased >4-fold at 4 h after TNF-α challenge. TNF-α-induced increase in reporter activity was markedly reduced by co-expression of either kinase-defective IKKβ kinase mutant or non-phosphorylatable IκB mutant. Treatment with NEMO-binding domain peptide, which prevents NF-κB activation by selectively inhibiting IKKγ interaction with IKK complex, also blocked the TNF-α-induced TRPC1 expression. Thus, TNF-α induces TRPC1 expression through an NF-κB-dependent pathway in endothelial cells, which can trigger augmented Ca2+ entry following Ca2+ store depletion. The augmented Ca2+ entry secondary to TRPC1 expression may be an important mechanism of endothelial injury induced by TNF-α.
The Characteristics of Feet Center of Pressure Trajectory during Quiet Standing

To investigate the level of bilateral symmetry or asymmetry between right and left foot center of pressure (COP) trajectory in the mediolateral and anteroposterior directions, this study involved 102 participants (54 females and 48 males). Ground reaction forces were measured using two Kistler force plates during two 45-s quiet standing trials. Comparisons of COP trajectory were performed by correlation and scatter plot analysis. Strong and very strong positive correlations (from 0.6 to 1.0) were observed between right and left foot anteroposterior COP displacement trajectory in 91 participants; 11 individuals presented weak or negative correlations. In the mediolateral direction, moderate and strong negative correlations (from −0.5 to −1.0) were observed in 69 participants, weak negative or weak positive correlations in 30 individuals, and three showed strong positive correlations (0.6 to 1.0). Additional investigation is warranted to compare COP trajectories between asymptotic individuals as assessed herein (to determine normative data) and those with foot or leg symptoms to better understand the causes of COP asymmetry and aid clinicians with the diagnosis of posture-related pathologies.
Thermoplastic polyurethane-based flexible multilayer microfluidic devices

Abstract Background: Microfluidics has been widely used in the biological and medical fields, and polymers are the most widely used materials in microfluidics at present due to their low cost and ease of processing. Both thermoplastics and thermosets were used as the bulk materials in microfluidics. The third option of a material with both advantages from thermoplastics and thermosets will be of great significance. Aim: We try to establish a low cost and rapid fabrication approach for thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU)-based microfluidics. Several demonstrations were also provided with the proposed fabrication method for TPU-based microfluidics. Approach: A CO2 laser ablation instrument was used for the fabrication of the TPU-based microfluidic devices. The width and depth of microchannels fabricated with various laser scan speeds and energies were studied in detail. For sealing the fabricated channels, a thermal fusion bonding method was also proposed with the bonding strength testing. Several types of the most commonly used microfluidic chips were fabricated for demonstration of the proposed fabrication method. Results: A comprehensive fabrication approach for TPU-based microfluidic devices was achieved. A series of microfluidic chips were designed, fabricated, and tested. Conclusions: TPU-based microfluidics is achievable and could be used as an alternative material for polydimethylsiloxane or thermoplastics for the fabrication of microfluidic devices. The proposed method could have broad potential applications in biological and chemical fields.
MIXED METAL CATALYSTS IN CATALYTIC HYDROGENATION

Of the seventy-five or so elements in the Periodic Classification which may be classed as metals, only a very few have significant catalytic properties in the elemental state: they occur principally in Groups VIII and IB. For any selected reaction, it is usually found that maximum activity resides in one metal or in one horizontal row or vertical Group. Yet, since there is ample evidence that electronic constitution of the solid plays a dominant role in determining activity, it is inherently improbable that maximum activity should occur at the particular electron/atom ratio possessed by pure metals, especially when we recall that the manner of utilization of valency electrons is itself a function of atomic number. What has been rather grandly called the Electronic Theory of catalysis has stimulated much work on alloy systems, but more specially on alloys formed from metals of Group VIII, and 1B.l In broad outline it is clear that d-electron vacancies are important in hydrogenation catalysis, their absence from the Group IB metals deciding the low activity of these metals; however, many points of detail remain obscure. Until recently, little work has been reported on alloys of the Group VIII metals themselves, and a thorough assessment of the Electronic Theory requires an investigation of such alloys. The work described in this paper was performed because it was believed that the reduction of binary oxides might be the most convenient way of obtaining alloys in such a fine state of dispersion as to constitute viable catalysts, and hence enable us to survey rapidly a large number of binary systems, with both theoretical and practical benefits. The grounds for this belief were provided by the several publications by Nishimura* on mixed oxide systems.
DETERMINANTS OF INCOME SECURITY AMONG PENSIONABLE RETIRED PERSONS IN KENYA

Retirees’ income security constitutes a key concern for nations aiming to secure their ageing populations. Kenya has a growing retirement sector with about 252,000 retired civil servants who are on pension and a significant number of private sector retirees who receive a gratuity at retirement. Though formally retired workers may receive a pension, studies consistently report low pensions uptake and inadequate incomes for those retired as well as an increasing national and societal burden. This paper explores the key determinants of income security among 978retired persons who were receiving dues on their retirement savings. Guided by the life cycle and third age theory, the study investigated whether retirees’ socio-economic attributes, pre-retirement financial status, retirees’ benefit package, retirees’ utilization of retirement savings and investments and pre-retirement preparation correlated with income security. A mixed-method study design was used combining survey and case study approaches. Cluster, purposive and random sampling methods were employed to select retirees under the four categories of retirement schemes in Kenya across 18 selected counties of Kenya. Hypotheses were tested using the Chi square test of significance and comparison of means (t-test) specifically to illustrate the relationship between socio-economic indicators, pre-retirement factors and income security at retirement. Logistic regression procedure was employed to isolate the significant factors that predict income security in retirement. The binary logistic regression analysis confirm that retirees with higher education had 26% higher chances of enjoying income security, those who earned higher pre-retirement salary had 25% higher chances of having a secure income at retirement, those knowledgeable about pensions had 35% higher chances of being income secure while those who had planned for their retirement had 14% higher chances of achieving income security. The study recommends crafting of a robust retirement planning package, financial and health plans for retirees’ income security and sustainable livelihoods.
Association Among Glucocorticoid Receptor Sensitivity, Fatigue, and Inflammation in Patients With Head and Neck Cancer

Supplemental digital content is available in the text. ABSTRACT Objective Fatigued cancer patients often have high peripheral inflammation; however, the biological mechanisms of this association remain unclear. We examined whether decreased sensitivity of immune cells to the anti-inflammatory effects of glucocorticoids may contribute to inflammation and fatigue in head and neck cancer (HNC) patients during treatment. Methods HNC patients without distant metastasis and with curative intent (n = 77) were studied 1 week before intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) and 1 month after IMRT. At each time point, fatigue was measured by the Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory-20 along with plasma inflammation markers and glucocorticoid receptor (GR) sensitivity as determined by in vitro dexamethasone suppression of lipopolysaccharide-induced interleukin 6. Linear regression models were used. Results In contrast to our hypothesis, GR sensitivity increased during treatment; however, increased fatigue was associated with a lesser increase in GR sensitivity from baseline to 1 month after IMRT (unstandardized estimate = 4.07, p = .02). This effect was more prominent in human papillomavirus–unrelated HNCs (unstandardized estimate = 8.22, p = .002). Lower increases in GR sensitivity were also associated with increased inflammation at 1 month after IMRT as represented by C-reactive protein, interleukin 6, and tumor necrosis factor α. Addition of inflammation markers to models of GR sensitivity predicting fatigue indicated that these inflammation markers were stronger predictors of fatigue than GR sensitivity. Conclusions Lower increases in GR sensitivity during HNC treatment were significantly predictive of increased fatigue and inflammation markers. Inflammation markers in turn predicted fatigue above and beyond levels of GR sensitivity. Our findings indicate that HNC patients with cancer-related fatigue may exhibit a decreased capacity for glucocorticoids to regulate inflammatory processes, as evidenced by a lower increase in GR sensitivity. Larger studies are necessary to verify the findings.
Livestock water productivity: feed resourcing, feeding and coupled feed-water resource data bases

While water requirement for livestock is widely perceived as daily drinking water consumption, ~100 times more water is required for daily feed production than for drinking water. Increasing livestock water productivity can be achieved through increasing the water-use efficiency (WUE) of feed production and utilisation. The current paper briefly reviews water requirements for meat and milk production and the extent of, and reason for, variations therein. Life-cycle analysis (LCA) can reveal these variations in WUE but LCA are not tools that can be employed routinely in designing and implementing water-use-efficient feed resourcing and feeding strategies. This can be achieved by (1) choosing agricultural by-products and crop residues where water applications are partitioned over several products for example grain and straw (or food and fodder) contrary to planted forage production where water and land have to be exclusively allocated to fodder production, (2) select and breed WUE crops and forages and exploit cultivar variations, (3) increase crop productivity by closing yield gaps; and (4) increase per animal productivity to reduce the proportion of feed (and therefore water) allocated for maintenance requirement rather than productive purposes. Feed-mediated WUE of dairy buffalo production on almost completely (94%) by-product-based feeding systems could be reduced from 2350 to 548 L of water per kg of milk by the combined effect of increasing basal ration quality in a total mixed ration, which resulted in increased milk yield of ~30%, and by increasing crop productivity from 1 t (actual crop yield) to 3 t (potential crop yield). Exemplary, multi-dimensional sorghum improvement using staygreen quantitative trait loci (QTL) introgression for concomitant improvement of WUE of grain and stover production and stover fodder quality showed opportunities for further linked improvement in WUE of crop and livestock production. Metabolisable energy (ME) yield under water stress conditions measured in lysimeters, (which measure crop water transpired) ranged QTL dependent from 16.47 to 23.93 MJ ME per m3 H2O. This can be extrapolated to 8.23–11.97 MJ ME per m3 H2O evapotranspired under field conditions. To mainstream improvement in WUE of feed resourcing and feeding, the paper suggests the combination of feed resource databases with crop–soil–meteorological data to calculate how much water is required to produce the feed at the available smallest spatial scale of crop–soil–meteorological data available. A framework is presented of how such a tool can be constructed from secondary datasets on land use, cropping patterns and spatially explicit crop–soil–meteorological datasets.
The Complications of Cesarean Section at Teaching Hospital Gabriel TOURE, Bamako Mali

Cesarean operation permits to save the mother and fetus. However, in developing countries as ours, complications related to this cesarean are not to be neglected. It constitutes an important cause of maternal and fetal morbidity and mortality. Here we rapport the experience of our structure about the complications of cesarean. Objectives: The objectives of this study were to study the complications the complications of cesarean section at teaching hospital Gabriel TOURE, Bamako Mali. Materials and methods: We have carried out a cross sectional analytic study from January 1st 2003 to December 31st 2013. All the patients who gave birth by cesarean operation in gynecology-obstetric service of teaching hospital Gabriel TOURE were included during this period of study. Descriptive statistics were used, Chi-square test Pearson, and Cochran Armitage test have been used to calculate the P-value of trend. We performed multivariate analyses with a high alpha threshold of 10%, and then logistic regression multivariate. Results: We have registered 28,376 deliveries with 9509 cases of cesarean (33.5%) and a complication cesarean rate of 32% (3049/9509). The main risk factors for cesarean operation completions were adolescence primiparity, obesity, the non-realization of antenatal care, evacuations and co-morbidities. Intraoperative complications were dominated by hemorrhage 8.3% and bladder lesion 1.1%, whereas anemia (58.8%) and parietal infection (21.1%) dominated the postoperative complications table. The evacuation (Odds Ratio adjusted (ORa) = 1.96) as well pre-eclampsia/eclampsia (ORa = 2.34) and the sicle cell disease (ORa = 9.99) were the main influencing factors of material death. Praevia placenta (ORa = 1.75) abruption placenta (ORa = 11.08) and fetal malformation (ORa = 2.21) dominated the influencing factors of perinatal death. Conclusion: The cesarean complications rates were high in our improvement of the quality of antenatal care. The reorganization and revitalization of the reference and against reference system will permit to program some cesarean operation to reduce the morbidity related to caesarean.
Chinese Sentence Emotion Classification Method Based on Semantic Analysis

: in Emotional Dictionary Building Research, the Paper Puts Forward a Method of Building Based on Semantic Analysis of Chinese Basic Emotional Lexicon, Use How.Net and Sent Word Net Resources, Will Automatically Be Decomposed into Multiple Meaning Words Yuan after the Emotional Tendency of Strength Calculation, Using Support Vector Institutions to Build Sentences Emotion Classifiers for Experiments, the Experimental Results Show That the Dictionary is Better Than General Emotional Polarity Dictionary. in Terms of Network Language Emotional Dictionary and Metical-Symbol Emotional Dictionary Construction, Using the So-Pmi Algorithm, the Emotional Weights of the Corresponding Candidate Word Sets Are Calculated Based on the Method of Corpus Statistics. in the Research of Chinese Sentence Emotion Analysis, a Semantic Analysis Based on Semantic Analysis is Proposed. Compromise Methods Constructed Dictionary Interdependence Syntactic Analysis Was Carried out on the Text, and Build Emotional Expression Trees, Calculate According to the Rules Set by the Emotional Intensity of Sentences, Emotional Tendency According to the Strength Value Judgment Sentence Category. the Experimental Results Verify the Effectiveness of the Proposed Method, and Also Indicate That the Emotional Dictionary and the Online Language Emotion Dictionary Constructed Can Effectively Enhance the Performance of Emotional Classifiers. in Text Sentiment Analysis Experiment System Design and Implementation, Using the Dictionary Resources and Build the Emotional Analysis, Design and Implementation Based on C/s and B/s Hybrid Architecture of Experiment System, Text Sentiment Analysis of Mass Data Text Sentiment Analysis Were Discussed. the Functions of the Experimental System Mainly Include Emotional Dictionary Construction Tools, Corpus Management Tools, Emotional Classification Tools and Online Emotional Analysis and Visualization Tools.
Effects of Acylpeptide K-26 on the Motility of Sea Urchin Sperm Model. II. Mechanism of the Inhibitory Effect of K-26

An acylpeptide called K-26 inhibited the motility of Triton-ex-tracted sea urchin sperm. This inhibition was canceled by the addition of both cAMP and a Triton X-100-soluble fraction of the sperm. The concentration of cAMP that was required to restore the motility was above 1μM. Incorporation of Pi into the Triton-extracted sperm was suppressed by K-26 at the same con-centration as that which inhibited the motility. A factor in the Triton-soluble fraction that was able to cancel the inhibition of the motility by K-26, was par-tially purified by hydroxylapatite and DEAE-cellulose column chromatogra-phies. In both of these steps, the activity to cancel the inhibition of the motility coeluted with that of cAMP-dependent protein kinase (cA kinase). The activity of cA kinase was also inhibited by K-26. The incorporation of Pi into the Triton-extracted sperm was suppressed in the presence of K-26 and was restored by the addition of both cAMP and the cA kinase fraction. From these results, it was suggested that K-26 affects the cAMP-dependent phosphorylation in the Triton-extracted sperm and thereby inhibits the process to convert the sliding of outer doublet microtubules into the bending of the flagellum.