Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Origin of the emergent fragile-to-strong transition in supercooled water

Significance Upon cooling, the liquid dynamics generally slow down, with a rate that either keeps constant for a strong liquid or monotonically increases for a fragile one. However, water, silica, and some metallic liquids do not obey this general rule and the rate exhibits a maximum. This unusual phenomenon is known as the fragile-to-strong transition and its origin remains very controversial. Here we show that the fragility of water is only apparent and that it originates from a crossover between a high-temperature liquid without locally favored structures and a low-temperature one full of them, both of which have Arrhenius dynamics. Given its generality, this explanation of dynamic anomalies may be common to any liquids having a tendency to form locally favored structures. Liquids can be broadly classified into two categories, fragile and strong ones, depending on how their dynamical properties change with temperature. The dynamics of a strong liquid obey the Arrhenius law, whereas the fragile one displays a super-Arrhenius law, with a much steeper slowing down upon cooling. Recently, however, it was discovered that many materials such as water, oxides, and metals do not obey this simple classification, apparently exhibiting a fragile-to-strong transition far above Tg. Such a transition is particularly well known for water, and it is now regarded as one of water’s most important anomalies. This phenomenon has been attributed to either an unusual glass transition behavior or the crossing of a Widom line emanating from a liquid–liquid critical point. Here by computer simulations of two popular water models and through analyses of experimental data, we show that the emergent fragile-to-strong transition is actually a crossover between two Arrhenius regimes with different activation energies, which can be naturally explained by a two-state description of the dynamics. Our finding provides insight into the fragile-to-strong transition observed in a wide class of materials.
Transforaminal Epiduroscopic Basivertebral Nerve Laser Ablation for Chronic Low Back Pain Associated with Modic Changes: A Preliminary Open-Label Study

Background Chronic low back pain (CLBP) arising from degenerative disc disease continues to be a challenging clinical and diagnostic problem whether treated with nonsurgical, pain intervention, or motion-preserving stabilization and arthrodesis. Methods Fourteen patients with CLBP, greater than 6 months, unresponsive to at least 4 months of conservative care were enrolled. All patients were treated successfully following screening using MRI findings of Modic type I or II changes and positive confirmatory provocative discography to determine the affected levels. All patients underwent ablation of the basivertebral nerve (BVN) using 1414 nm Nd:YAG laser-assisted energy guided in a transforaminal epiduroscopic approach. Macnab's criteria and visual analog scale (VAS) score were collected retrospectively at each follow-up interval. Results The mean age was 46 ± 9.95 years. The mean symptoms duration was 21.21 ± 21.87 months. The mean follow-up was 15.3 ± 2.67 months. The preoperative VAS score of 7.79 ± 0.97 changed to 1.92 ± 1.38, postoperatively (P < 0.01). As per Macnab's criteria, seven patients (50%) had excellent, six patients (42.85%) had good, and one patient (7.14%) had fair outcomes. Conclusion The transforaminal epiduroscopic basivertebral nerve laser ablation (TEBLA) appears to be a promising option in carefully selected patients with CLBP associated with the Modic changes.
Mechanisms for therapeutic effect of bulleyaconitine A on chronic pain

Bulleyaconitine A, a diterpenoid alkaloid isolated from Aconitum bulleyanum plants, has been used for the treatment of chronic pain in China since 1985. Clinical studies show that the oral administration of bulleyaconitine A is effective for treating different kinds of chronic pain, including back pain, joint pain, and neuropathic pain with minimal side effect in human patients. The experimental studies have revealed that bulleyaconitine A at therapeutic doses potently inhibits the peripheral sensitization and central sensitization that underlie chronic pain and has no effect on acute pain. Bulleyaconitine A preferably blocks tetrodotoxin-sensitive voltage-gated sodium channels in dorsal root ganglion neurons by inhibition of protein kinase C, and the effect is around 600 times more potent in neuropathic animals than in naïve ones. Bulleyaconitine A at 5 nM inhibits the hypersensitivity of dorsal root ganglion neurons in neuropathic rats but has no effect on excitability of dorsal root ganglion neurons in sham group. Bulleyaconitine A inhibits long-term potentiation at C-fiber synapses in spinal dorsal horn, a synaptic model of pathological pain, preferably in neuropathic pain rats over naïve rats. The following mechanisms may underlie the selective effect of bulleyaconitine A on chronic pain. (1) In neuropathic conditions, protein kinase C and voltage-gated sodium channels in dorsal root ganglion neurons are upregulated, which enhances bulleyaconitine A’s effect. (2) Bulleyaconitine A use-dependently blocks voltage-gated sodium channels and therefore inhibits the ectopic discharges that are important for neuropathic pain. (3) Bulleyaconitine A is shown to inhibit neuropathic pain by the modulation of spinal microglia, which are involved in the chronic pain but not in acute (nociceptive) pain. Moreover, bulleyaconitine A facilitates the anesthetic effect of morphine and inhibits morphine tolerance in rats. Together, bulleyaconitine A is able to inhibit chronic pain by targeting at multiple molecules. Further clinical and experimental studies are needed for evaluating the efficacy of bulleyaconitine A in different forms of chronic pain in patients and for exploring the underlying mechanisms.
Robust 3D Distributed Formation Control with Application to Quadrotors

We present a distributed control strategy for a team of quadrotors to autonomously achieve a desired 3D formation. Our approach is based on local relative position measurements and does not require global position information or inter-vehicle communication. We assume that quadrotors have a common sense of direction, which is chosen as the direction of gravitational force measured by their onboard IMU sensors. However, this assumption is not crucial, and our approach is robust to inaccuracies and effects of acceleration on gravitational measurements. In particular, converge to the desired formation is unaffected if each quadrotor has a velocity vector that projects positively onto the desired velocity vector provided by the formation control strategy. We demonstrate the validity of proposed approach in an experimental setup and show that a team of quadrotors achieve a desired 3D formation.
Fair Dynamic Spectrum Management in Licensed Shared Access Systems

Licensed shared access (LSA) is a spectrum sharing mechanism where bandwidth is shared between a primary network, called incumbent, and a secondary mobile network. In this paper, we address dynamic spectrum management mechanisms for LSA systems. We propose a fair spectrum management algorithm for distributing incumbent's available spectrum among mobile networks. Then, we adapt the proposed algorithm to take mobile network operator's regulatory compliance aspect into account and penalize the misbehaving network operators in spectrum allocation. We extend our results to the scenario where more than one incumbent offer spectrum to the mobile operators in a service area and propose various protocols, which ensure long term fair spectrum allocation within the individual LSA networks. Finally, we numerically evaluate the performance of the proposed spectrum allocation algorithms and compare them using various performance metrics. For the single incumbent case, the numerical results show that the spectrum allocation is fair when the mobile operators follow the spectrum access regulations. We demonstrate the effect of our proposed penalty functions on spectrum allocation when the operators do not comply with the regulatory aspects. For the multi-incumbent scenario, the results show a tradeoff between efficient spectrum allocation and flexibility in spectrum access for our proposed algorithms.
Sino-Nasal Status in Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary
Disease.

Background. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a preventable and treatable disease with serious impact on quality of life (QoL). There are limited studies available supporting coexistence of sino-nasal involvement in COPD. Methods. A prospective study was conducted to evaluate sino-nasal status in patients with COPD (n=100) presenting to the Department of Respiratory Medicine, Mahatma Gandhi Medical College and Hospital, Jaipur from July 2011 to October 2012. COPD was diagnosed based on the Global initiative on Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) guidelines. Sino-nasal status was assessed by detailed history, radiograph of the para-nasal sinuses (PNS), nasal endoscopy and mucociliary clearance time. Results. Sino-nasal symptoms were present in 74 patients with COPD; nasal discharge (75.7%) being the most common. Tobacco smokers with COPD had a higher occurrence of sino-nasal symptoms (76.8%). Radiograph of para-nasal sinuses showed that maxillary sinus was most commonly involved. Nasal endoscopy revealed discharge in 63.5% cases. Nasal mucociliary clearance time was delayed (>11 to >40 min) in 98% cases. Nasal mucociliary clearance time was significantly delayed (>20 min) in COPD patients who were tobacco smokers as compared to non-smokers (53.7% versus 16.7%) and also related with increasing severity of COPD. Conclusions. Our observations suggest that sino-nasal involvement and delayed mucociliary clearance are common in patients with COPD, especially in tobacco smokers. Assessment of upper airway involvement in all the patients with COPD can help better therapeutic intervention and improvement in QoL.
Parity Crowdsourcing for Cooperative Labeling

Consider a database of $k$ objects, e.g., a set of videos, where each object has a binary attribute, e.g., a video's suitability for children. The attributes of the objects are to be determined under a crowdsourcing model: a worker is queried about the labels of a chosen subset of objects and either responds with a correct binary answer or declines to respond. Here we propose a parity response model: the worker is asked to check whether the number of objects having a given attribute in the chosen subset is even or odd. For example, if the subset includes two objects, the worker checks whether the two belong to the same class or not. We propose a method for designing the sequence of subsets of objects to be queried so that the attributes of the objects can be identified with high probability using few ($n$) answers. The method is based on an analogy to the design of Fountain codes for erasure channels. We define the query difficulty $\bar{d}$ as the average size of the query subsets and we define the sample complexity $n$ as the minimum number of collected answers required to attain a given recovery accuracy. We obtain fundamental tradeoffs between recovery accuracy, query difficulty, and sample complexity. In particular, the necessary and sufficient sample complexity required for recovering all $k$ attributes with high probability is $n = c_0 \max\{k, (k \log k)/\bar{d}\}$ and the sample complexity for recovering a fixed proportion $(1-\delta)k$ of the attributes for $\delta=o(1)$ is $n = c_1\max\{k, (k \log(1/\delta))/\bar{d}\}$, where $c_0, c_1>0$.
Neural Correlate of Visual Familiarity in Macaque Area V2

Neurons in macaque inferotemporal cortex (ITC) respond less strongly to familiar than to novel images. It is commonly assumed that this effect arises within ITC because its neurons respond selectively to complex images and thus encode in an explicit form information sufficient for identifying a particular image as familiar. However, no prior study has examined whether neurons in low-order visual areas selective for local features also exhibit familiarity suppression. To address this issue, we recorded from neurons in macaque area V2 with semichronic microelectrode arrays while monkeys repeatedly viewed a set of large complex natural images. We report here that V2 neurons exhibit familiarity suppression. The effect develops over several days with a trajectory well fitted by an exponential function with a rate constant of ∼100 exposures. Suppression occurs in V2 at a latency following image onset shorter than its reported latency in ITC. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Familiarity suppression, the tendency for neurons to respond less strongly to familiar than novel images, is well known in monkey inferotemporal cortex. Suppression has been thought to arise in inferotemporal cortex because its neurons respond selectively to large complex images and thus explicitly to encode information sufficient for identifying a particular image as familiar. No previous study has explored the possibility that familiarity suppression occurs even in early-stage visual areas where neurons are selective for simple features in confined receptive fields. We now report that neurons in area V2 exhibit familiarity suppression. This finding challenges our current understanding of information processing in V2 as well as our understanding of the mechanisms that underlie familiarity suppression.
Investigating the Fractal Dimension of the Foveal Microvasculature in Relation to the Morphology of the Foveal Avascular Zone and to the Macular Circulation in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

In this study, we examined the relationship between the fractal dimension (FD), the morphology of the foveal avascular zone (FAZ) and the macular circulation in healthy controls and patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) with and with no diabetic retinopathy (DR). Cross-sectional data of 47 subjects were analyzed from a 5-year longitudinal study using a multimodal optical imaging approach. Healthy eyes from nondiabetic volunteers (n = 12) were selected as controls. Eyes from patients with T2DM were selected and divided into two groups: diabetic subjects with mild DR (MDR group, n = 15) and subjects with DM but without DR (DM group, n = 20). Our results demonstrated a higher FD in the healthy group (mean, 1.42 ± 0.03) than in the DM and MDR groups (1.39 ± 0.02 and 1.35 ± 0.03, respectively). Also, a bigger perimeter, area, and roundness of the FAZ were found in MDR eyes. A significant difference in area and perimeter (p ≤ 0.005) was observed for the MDR group supporting the enlargement of the FAZ due to diabetic complications in the eye. A moderate positive correlation (p = 0.014, R2 = 43.8%) between the FD and blood flow rate (BFR) was only found in the healthy control group. The BFR calculations revealed the lowest values in the MDR group (0.98 ± 0.27 μl/s vs. 1.36 ± 0.86 μl/s and 1.36 ± 0.57 μl/sec in the MDR, DM, and healthy groups, respectively, p = 0.2). Our study suggests that the FD of the foveal vessel arborization could provide useful information to identify early morphological changes in the retina of patients with T2DM. Our results also indicate that the enlargement and asymmetry of the FAZ might be related to a lower BFR because of the DR onset and progression. Interestingly, due to the lack of FAZ symmetry observed in the DM and MDR eyes, it appears that the distribution of flow within the retinal vessels loses complexity as the vascular structures distributing the flow are not well described by fractal branching. Further research could determine how our approach may be used to aid the diagnosis of retinal neurodegeneration and vascular impairment at the early stage of DR.
Insights into possibilities for grouping and read-across for nanomaterials in EU chemicals legislation

Abstract This paper presents a comprehensive review of European Union (EU) legislation addressing the safety of chemical substances, and possibilities within each piece of legislation for applying grouping and read-across approaches for the assessment of nanomaterials (NMs). Hence, this review considers both the overarching regulation of chemical substances under REACH (Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006 on registration, evaluation, authorization, and restriction of chemicals) and CLP (Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008 on classification, labeling and packaging of substances and mixtures) and the sector-specific pieces of legislation for cosmetic, plant protection and biocidal products, and legislation addressing food, novel food, and food contact materials. The relevant supporting documents (e.g. guidance documents) regarding each piece of legislation were identified and reviewed, considering the relevant technical and scientific literature. Prospective regulatory needs for implementing grouping in the assessment of NMs were identified, and the question whether each particular piece of legislation permits the use of grouping and read-across to address information gaps was answered.
A scoping review on community mobilisation for maternal and child health in sub-Saharan Africa: Impact on empowerment

ABSTRACT This review integrates evidence on community mobilisation (CM) for maternal and child health in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to identify the impact on empowerment. For the purposes of this review we use the following definition of CM: ‘a capacity-building process through which community members, groups or organizations plan, carry out and evaluate activities on a participatory and sustained basis to improve their health and other conditions, either on their own initiative or stimulated by others’, [Howard-Grabman, L. , Storti, C. , Hummer, P., Pooler, B. , & Geneva: USAID (2007). Demystifying community mobilization: An effective strategy to improve maternal and newborn health. Retrieved from http://pdf.usaid. gov/pdf_docs/pnadi338.pdf, p. 5]. A scoping review was chosen to conduct a search and analysis of the literature due to the broad, complex nature of the topic. The search yielded 136 articles, and 19 met the inclusion criteria. This review illustrates CM as an important research process for engaging the community, ensuring that interventions are meeting the needs of the community, take context into account and are sustainable. Community mobilisation was associated with positive behaviour change and/or health outcomes. However, community mobilisation was not defined or operationalised consistently among the identified studies. Empowerment was also not defined, measured, or reported on in the articles. This review provides recommendations for the reporting of CM and its influence on empowerment in communities in sub-Saharan Africa.
The effect of premorbid features on post-stroke rehabilitation outcome

Background: A wide variety of factors influence stroke prognosis, including age, stroke severity, stroke mechanism, infarct location, comorbid conditions, clinical findings, and related complications. The aim of this study was to detect the prognostic determinants in patients with acute stroke for guiding rehabilitation. Methods: Patients with ischemic acute stroke were included in the study. Patients’ age, sex, education level, and marital status, premorbid personality traits, comorbidities such as current smoking status and alcohol consumption, regular exercise habits, and sleeping disorder were recorded. Motor assessment and daily activity skills were evaluated according to the Brunnstrom staging and Functional Independence Measure (FIM), respectively. Results: A total of 85 patients were studied. All patients’ motor and functional stages were significantly improved with the rehabilitation. The improvements in the upper extremity motor levels were less in whom over 76 years and smokers, in patients who had 4 and more comorbidities and sleep disorders. The functional improvement was less in whom over 76 years and men, and in patients who had 4 and more comorbidities and sleep disorders. Conclusion: The significant post-stroke predictor of insufficiency in functioning was having 4 or more risk factors.
Degradation of Alias Rejection in Continuous-Time Delta–Sigma Modulators by Weak Loop-Filter Nonlinearities

Implicit anti-aliasing is a remarkable property of continuous-time delta–sigma modulators employing a time-invariant loop filter. It turns out that weak nonlinearity of the operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) used in the input integrator, in conjunction with the DAC pulse shape and OTA parasitics can greatly degrade the alias rejection of the modulator. The authors report and analyze this hitherto undiscovered mechanism. The theory is borne out by measurement results from a fourth-order single-bit filtering delta–sigma modulator designed in a 65-nm CMOS process. The alias-rejection of the modulator, which is expected to be about 160dB, is degraded to around 70dB by weak OTA nonlinearity and OTA parasitics.
Six DOFs Motion Platform using Omni-Spherical Wheels

This paper presents the development of a six degree-of-freedom (DOF) motion platform based on omni-spherical wheels. Various motion platforms have been developed for motion realization, but there are limits such as workspace and rigidity. The motion platform developed here is capable three DOFs unlimited rotation and three DOFs translation. The omni-spherical wheels motion platform is designed to improve the motion control as well as realization of unlimited rotation and high rigidity. The motion platform in this paper has symmetric design but additional driving actuators compared to the existing. However, it can provide large workspace about linear motion with generation of large linear and angular velocity. The design is still compact and lightweight with one additional stage offering larger motion capability. Kinematic and dynamic analysis of the platform is investigated to provide a basis of motion and demonstrated from numerical simulation. The experiment is implemented by using actual prototype model. Both results from numerical simulation and experiments show the design feasibility and motion capability.
Twitter Opinion Mining and Boosting Using Sentiment Analysis

Social media has been one of the most efficacious and precise by speakers of public opinion. A strategy which sanctions the utilization and illustration of twitter data to conclude public conviction is discussed in this paper. Sentiments on exclusive entities with diverse strengths and intenseness are stated by public, where these sentiments are strenuously cognate to their personal mood and emotions. To examine the sentiments from natural language texts, addressing various opinions, a lot of methods and lexical resources have been propounded. A path for boosting twitter sentiment classification using various sentiment proportions as meta-level features has been proposed by this article. Analysis of tweets was done on the product iPhone 6.
Design and Performance Comparisons of Brushless Doubly Fed Generators With Different Rotor Structures

The brushless doubly fed generator (BDFG) shows the great potential for use in large variable speed wind turbines due to its high reliability and cost benefits of a partially rated power electronics converter. However, it suffers from the compromised efficiency and power factor in comparison with conventional doubly fed induction or synchronous generators. Therefore, optimizing the BDFG, especially the rotor, is necessary for enhancing its torque density and market competitiveness. In this paper, a novel cage-assisted magnetic barrier rotor, called the hybrid rotor, is proposed and analyzed. The detailed analytical design approaches based on the magnetic field modulation theory are investigated. In addition, the machine losses and mutual inductance values using the proposed rotor designs are calculated and their performance implications evaluated. Finally, the comparative experimental results for two BDFG prototypes are presented to verify the accuracy and effectiveness of the theoretical studies.