Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
NZO/HlLtJ as a novel model for the studies on the role of metabolic syndrome in acute radiation toxicity

Abstract Purpose: Growing rates of metabolic syndrome and associated obesity warrant the development of appropriate animal models for better understanding of how those conditions may affect sensitivity to IR exposure. Materials and methods: We subjected male NZO/HlLtJ mice, a strain prone to spontaneous obesity and diabetes, to 0, 5.5, 6.37, 7.4 or 8.5 Gy (137Cs) of total body irradiation (TBI). Mice were monitored for 30 days, after which proximal jejunum and colon tissues were collected for further histological and molecular analysis. Results: Obese NZO/HlLtJ male mice are characterized by their lower sensitivity to IR at doses of 6.37 Gy and under, compared to other strains. Further escalation of the dose, however, results in a steep survival curve, reaching LD100/30 values at a dose of 8.5 Gy. Alterations in the expression of various tight junction-related proteins coupled with activation of inflammatory responses and cell death were the main contributors to the gastrointestinal syndrome. Conclusions: We demonstrate that metabolic syndrome with exhibited hyperglycemia but without alterations to the microvasculature is not a pre-requisite of the increased sensitivity to TBI at high doses. Our studies indicate the potential of NZO/HlLtJ mice for the studies on the role of metabolic syndrome in acute radiation toxicity.
Wide-beam circularly polarized curved wire antenna for millimetre wave application

A wide-beam circularly polarized wire antenna with the beam-width of 162°, a uniform pattern, and an axial ratio of less than 2.3 dB over the whole beam-width is designed. This antenna is designed at 30 GHz as a sensing antenna for nearfield measurement and characterization of large phased array antennas.
Signal and Noise Sources from Microwire Arrays Implanted in Rodent Cortex

Microelectrode arrays are commonly used in neuroscience experimentation, but detailed engineering-oriented characterizations of these devices are rarely found in the literature. This manuscript presents spectral and time domain measurements from microwire arrays (TDT) implanted in rodent cortex. Characterizations of thermal noise, local field potentials, and action potential activity were performed with custom low noise electronics as well as a commercial neural recording system. The measurements show spectral characteristics relevant to noise specifications for front-end electronics designed for neural recording, often referred to as “neural amplifiers. ” Background noise levels in different frequency bands were quantified, and suggest lower noise specifications for front-end electronics than are often used in state-of-the-art designs. The measurements are also relevant to understanding intracortical recordings in general, particularly in less explored regions of the spectrum.
D{é}tection de locuteurs dans les s{é}ries TV

Speaker diarization of audio streams turns out to be particularly challenging when applied to fictional films, where many characters talk in various acoustic conditions (background music, sound effects, variations in intonation.). Despite this acoustic variability, such movies exhibit specific visual patterns, particularly within dialogue scenes. In this paper, we introduce a two-step method to achieve speaker diarization in TV series: speaker diarization is first performed locally within scenes visually identified as dialogues; then, the hypothesized local speakers are compared to each other during a second clustering process in order to detect recurring speakers: this second stage of clustering is subject to the constraint that the different speakers involved in the same dialogue have to be assigned to different clusters. The performances of our approach are compared to those obtained by standard speaker diarization tools applied to the same data.
Can Nurturing the Young Be the Key to Tackling Chronic Diseases in the Old? A Narrative Review With a Global Perspective

Background: One of the greatest challenges in healthcare today is dealing with a growing burden of multimorbid chronic diseases in an aging population. Awareness is growing that a healthy start in life plays a critical role in reversing this trend, especially for young women, pregnant mothers, and children in their first 2 years of life. Methods: We reviewed the international literature on early childhood nutrition and development, based on the landmark Lancet series on maternal and child nutrition and child development, and World Health Organization reports. Results: Contemporary literature points to the importance of strategies that focus on early childhood for enhancing both health and socioeconomic outcomes. We discuss programs and initiatives that aim to improve the health of mothers and children at a global level, with a focus on high-income countries such as Australia and the United States. Conclusion: Tackling the epidemic of chronic diseases requires a comprehensive life course approach that must include pregnant women and their young children. Healthcare systems and professionals play an important role. The health and well-being of the next generation must be everyone’s business.
Slicing on the Road: Enabling the Automotive Vertical through 5G Network Softwarization

The demanding requirements of Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) applications, such as ultra-low latency, high-bandwidth, highly-reliable communication, intensive computation and near-real time data processing, raise outstanding challenges and opportunities for fifth generation (5G) systems. By allowing an operator to flexibly provide dedicated logical networks with (virtualized) functionalities over a common physical infrastructure, network slicing candidates itself as a prominent solution to support V2X over upcoming programmable and softwarized 5G systems in a business-agile manner. In this paper, a network slicing framework is proposed along with relevant building blocks and mechanisms to support V2X applications by flexibly orchestrating multi-access and edge-dominated 5G network infrastructures, especially with reference to roaming scenarios. Proof of concept experiments using the Mininet emulator showcase the viability and potential benefits of the proposed framework for cooperative driving use cases.
In vivo acute toxicity of detoxified Fuzi (lateral root of Aconitum carmichaeli) after a traditional detoxification process

Many herbs of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) possess not only therapeutic efficacy, but also toxicity towards normal tissues. The herbal toxicities occasionally cause serious adverse events or even fatal poisoning due to the erroneous use of TCM herbs. Fuzi (lateral root of Aconitum carmichaeli) is such an herb with its toxic ingredient, aconites. Aconitine, mesaconitine, and hypaconitine are the main toxic components of Fuzi, which are hydrolyzed into non-toxic derivatives by water decoction. Therefore, long-time decoction was commonly applied as a traditional way to detoxify Fuzi before use. Nevertheless, recent clinical trials presorted on adverse events induced by long-time decocted Fuzi, putting some doubt on the safety of Fuzi after the traditional detoxification procedure. To thoroughly determine whether or not long-time decocted Fuzi was safe, we conducted in vivo acute toxicity assays using both rodent and zebrafish models and performed chemoprofile analyses using HPLC and UPLC-MS. The HPLC analysis showed that toxic aconitine components were hydrolyzed into benzoyl derivatives with increasing time of decoction. These aconitines were undetected by HPLC in Fuzi after 2 h-decoction (FZ-120), indicating seemingly non-toxicity of FZ-120. Unlike the non-decocted Fuzi (FZ-0) and 60 min-decocted Fuzi (FZ-60) with lethal toxicity, FZ-120 at 130 g/kg did not cause any deaths or side effects in mice regarding body weight and biochemical parameters. This seems to confirm safety of Fuzi after long-time decoction. However, histopathological observations revealed an abnormal liver phenotype and a significant decrease of the liver index following FZ-120 treatment, indicating a potential hepatoxicity of FZ-120. By using a zebrafish model, we observed that FZ-120 at a dose range from 288 to 896 μg/ml caused considerable adverse events including arrhythmia, liver degeneration, yolk sac absorption delay, length decrease, and swim bladder loss, which clearly speak for acute toxicity on cardiovascular, digestive, development, and respiratory systems. The dose range of FZ-120 was lower than that used for clinical application in human beings. Moreover, UPLC-MS revealed that FZ-120 still contained toxic aconitines that were not detectable by HPLC, which might explain its acute toxicity in zebrafish. We concluded that Fuzi is not sufficiently safe even after long-time decoction. The zebrafish model combined with UPLC-MS assay may represent an appropriate test system to unravel aconitine-related acute toxicity.
An Effective Current Limitation Algorithm For Servo Drive

This paper proposes a method of limiting the effective current value in a closed loop control system of electric drive on the basis of known nominal parameters of the motor and measuring the instantaneous value of current at the interval of work with the maximum current. Simulation in MATLAB/Simulink results show that utilization of the proposed method makes it possible to operate at allowable temperature over a wide range of velocity using maximum currents at short intervals.
The State-of-the-Art of Knowledge-Intensive Agriculture: A Review on Applied Sensing Systems and Data Analytics

The application of sensors and information and communication technology (ICT) in agriculture has played a vital role in improving agricultural production and the value chain. Recently, the use of data analytics has shifted agriculture from input-intensive to knowledge-intensive as a large amount of agricultural data can be stored, shared, and analyzed to create information. In this paper, we have reviewed existing sensors and data analytics techniques used in different areas of agriculture. We have classified agriculture into five categories and reviewed the state-of-the-art technology in practice and ongoing research in each of these areas. Also, we have presented a case study of Korean scenario compared with other developed nations and addressed some of the issues associated with it. Finally, we have discussed current and future challenges and provided our views on how such issues can be addressed.
Grid tied inverter system with leakage current cancellation for photovoltaic applications

This paper presents an improved single phase transformer less inverter topology for a grid connected photovoltaic system. The common safety issue of leakage current in transformer less system is eliminated in the presented topology. Like in a full bridge inverter, the transformer less inverter can sustain the low input voltage and guarantees zero leakage current. The input dc voltage is provided by a pv module and a dc-dc converter with mppt control. The control strategy employed is inverse sine carrier pulse width modulation which provides a lower THD. MPPT control is used to extract maximum power from the solar panel. The overall system is developed using Simulink environment. To check the effectiveness of the proposed system, a conventional inverter topology with same modulation strategy is simulated and leakage currents in both cases are measured. The proposed topology is also simulated using unipolar sine pulse width modulation and a comparative study on THD is also done to check The effectiveness of the control method.
Understanding Model Predictive Control for Electric Vehicle Charging Dispatch

This paper illustrates the principles of Model Predictive Control (MPC) applied to control the dispatch of power to Electric Vehicle (EV) chargers in a charging station. The MPC strategy aims to determine a control signal by following a day-ahead scheduling and minimizing an economic objective function. The strategy works in closed-loop architecture. The MPC calculates an optimal charging sequence at each time step of the prediction horizon, but it applies the control signal only for the first step of the sequence, following a receding horizon strategy. The results of the MPC strategy lead to track a dayahead scheduling by considering uncertainties on the EV arrival state of charge, and generation disturbances. The MPC strategy outcomes are compared with an open-loop strategy, with the target to apply the scheduled power.
Fuzzy Sliding Mode Control for Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors

This paper proposes a T -S fuzzy model-based sliding mode control for permanent magnet synchronous motors(PMSM). Firstly, the PMSM is modeled as a T-S fuzzy singularly perturbed system(SPS). Secondly, the parameter perturbations and local torque changes are taken into account in the design of T-S fuzzy model-based sliding mode controller. In order to reduce the chattering problem, the fuzzy control method is used to replace the discontinuous sliding mode controller. Finally, the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed methods are demonstrated by the simulation results.
Effect of Wheat Bran on Fecal Butyrate-Producing Bacteria and Wheat Bran Combined with Barley on Bacteroides Abundance in Japanese Healthy Adults

Wheat bran (WB) is rich in insoluble arabinoxylan, while BARLEYmax (BM) is a barley line that is rich in fructan, resistant starch, and β-glucan. In the present study, we investigated which of these two fiber sources would produce more favorable changes in the fecal variables of healthy subjects. Sixty healthy subjects were randomly divided into four groups (n = 15 per group) and fed twice daily for 4 weeks with baked cereal bars containing neither WB nor BM (WB−BM−), WB without BM (WB+BM−), BM without WB (WB−BM+), or WB and BM (WB+BM+). At baseline and after 4 weeks, the fecal microbiota composition and the concentrations of short-chain fatty acids were measured. A significant interactive effect of WB and BM on the abundance of genus Bacteroides was observed at week 4. The abundance of butyrate-producing bacteria and the fecal concentration of n-butyrate were significantly higher in the WB+ groups than in the WB− groups. In conclusion, WB was associated with elevated fecal concentrations of short-chain fatty acids including butyrate owing to an increase in the abundance of butyrate-producing bacteria. Additionally, the combination of WB and BM was associated with an increase in the abundance of genus Bacteroides. Therefore, both WB alone and WB combined with BM favorably influenced the fecal variables of healthy subjects.
Comparison of Student and Patient Perceptions for Medication Non-adherence

Objective. To compare pharmacy students’ perceptions with patients’ reasons for medication non-adherence. Methods. Pharmacy students completing an experiential rotation recruited patients exhibiting medication non-adherence from community pharmacies and asked them to respond to statements about reasons for their medication non-adherence. Patient responses were ranked in order of prevalence and compared to self-reported student perceptions on reasons for non-adherence. Results. There was a significant difference between patients' and students' rankings of reasons for medication non-adherence. Significant factors for patients included medications that interfere with lifestyle, sexual health and drinking alcohol; whereas, students believed that cognitive-related issues were patients’ primary reasons for non-adherence to their medications. Conclusion. Educational opportunities to reflect on and discuss differing perspectives should be provided in the pharmacy curriculum to better equip students to address medication adherence issues and improve patient care.
Performance comparison of MRI restoration methods with low-rank priors

Compressive sensing is a technique of restoring original signals from a small number of observation data by utilizing the sparseness of signals. By applying this technique to MRI, image acquisition time is shortened, and it is possible to reduce the burden of a subject and the image deterioration in the part where there is movement such as a heart. Compressive sensing restoration can be formulated as a convex optimization problem with sparsity taken into account. As a regularization function for the convex optimization, ASTV (Arranged Structure tensor Total Variation) [1] is proposed. This regularization considers the low-rank of the spatial structure of the local region and the correlation between the slices indirectly. In this research, we propose modified ASTV, considering smoothness in space direction and correlation between slices at the same time. In the experiment, compressive sensing reconstruction of MRI is performed, and it shows that the performance is superior to the conventional methods.
Stevioside inhibits experimental fibrosis by down‐regulating profibrotic Smad pathways and blocking hepatic stellate cell activation

Liver cirrhosis is associated with increased morbidity and mortality with important health and social consequences; however, an effective treatment has not been found yet. Previous reports have shown some beneficial effects of stevioside (SVT) in different diseases, but the ability of SVT to inhibit liver cirrhosis has not been reported. Therefore, we studied the potential of this diterpenoid to inhibit liver cirrhosis induced by thioacetamide, a model that shares many similarities with the human disease, and investigated the possible underlying molecular mechanism using in vivo and in vitro approaches. Cirrhosis was induced in male Wistar rats by chronic thioacetamide administration (200 mg/kg) intraperitoneally three times per week. Rats received saline or SVT (20 mg/kg) two times daily intraperitoneally. In addition, co‐cultures were incubated with either lipopolysaccharide or ethanol. Liver fibrosis, hepatic stellate cells activation, metalloproteinases activity, canonical and non‐canonical Smads pathway and expression of several profibrogenic genes were evaluated. Thioacetamide activated hepatic stellate cells and distorted the liver parenchyma with the presence of abundant thick bands of collagen. In addition, thioacetamide up‐regulated the protein expression of α‐smooth muscle actin, transforming growth factor‐β1, metalloproteinases‐9,‐2 and ‐13 and overstimulate the canonical and non‐canonical Smad pathways. SVT administration inhibited all of these changes. In vitro, SVT inhibited the up‐regulation of several genes implicated in cirrhosis when cells were exposed to lipopolysaccharides or ethanol. We conclude that SVT inhibited liver damage by blocking hepatic stellate cells activation, down‐regulating canonical and non‐canonical profibrotic Smad pathways.
Store-Operated Ca2+ Entry in Breast Cancer Cells: Remodeling and Functional Role

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer in women. It is a heterogeneous disease that ranges from the less undifferentiated luminal A to the more aggressive basal or triple negative breast cancer molecular subtype. Ca2+ influx from the extracellular medium, but more specifically store-operated Ca2+ entry (SOCE), has been reported to play an important role in tumorigenesis and the maintenance of a variety of cancer hallmarks, including cell migration, proliferation, invasion or epithelial to mesenchymal transition. Breast cancer cells remodel the expression and functional role of the molecular components of SOCE. This review focuses on the functional role and remodeling of SOCE in breast cancer cells. The current studies suggest the need to deepen our understanding of SOCE in the biology of the different breast cancer subtypes in order to develop new and specific therapeutic strategies.
Design Tradeoff of Internal Memory Size and Memory Access Energy in Deep Neural Network Hardware Accelerators

This paper analyzes the memory access amount in different data reuse schemes and internal memory sizes in order to design hardware deep neural network (DNN) accelerator with better power efficiency. After comparing the trade-off between memory energy consumption and SRAM sizes, we decide to design the accelerator using mixed input/output reuse schemes. Experimental results show that the numbers of DRAM access and SRAM access are reduced compared with stateoi-the-art designs of similar designs for computation of the convolutional layers in the VGG-16 model.
Association of aldosterone synthase CYP11B2 (-344C/T) gene polymorphism with essential hypertension and left ventricular hypertrophy in the Egyptian population

ABSTRACT Background and Objectives: Essential hypertension is a complex progressive cardiovascular disorder. Renin–angiotensin aldosterone system (RAAS) plays a major role in blood pressure regulation. Aldosterone, synthesized in the adrenal cortex by aldosterone synthase is encoded by the CYP11B2 gene. This case-control study was aiming to investigate the relationship between the aldosterone synthase gene (CYP11B2) biallelic polymorphism in the promoter at position −344 (−344C/T) with essential hypertension and left ventricular hypertrophy in the Egyptian population. Methods: This study was conducted on 100 hypertensive patients (group I) and 50 healthy control subjects (group II). Serum aldosterone, plasma renin, ARR levels were investigated. Echocardiography was done to evaluate LV dimensions. Genotyping of the CYP11B2 gene was performed by PCR/RFLP confirmed by direct sequencing. Results: Our study revealed that CYP11B2 (−344T) allele was significantly higher than (−344C) allele in hypertensive patients as compared to healthy control (OR-2.51; 95% CI:1.3–3.5; P = 0.002) and −344TT genotype was associated with increased LVMI as compared with −344CC genotype (P = 0.001). Conclusion: A Significant association was observed between the CYP11B2 (−344C/T) polymorphism and −344T allele and essential hypertension in the Egyptian population. Also, we found that the CYP11B2 −344C/T polymorphism and −344T allele are associated with left ventricular hypertrophy which may predispose to cardiovascular complications of hypertension.
A Comparative Study among Different Algorithms Investigating Optimum Design of PID Controller in Automatic Voltage Regulator

Proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller is the most widely applicable controller in industrial control applications. Tuning of PID controller parameters manually requires experience in control tuning and may lead to inaccurate and poor performance. This paper explains in details how to employ whale optimization algorithm (WOA) and water cycle algorithm (WCA) to obtain the optimum PID controller parameters of an automatic voltage regulator (AVR) to enhance the terminal voltage of a synchronous generator. The saturation effect on AVR control system is taken into account in system simulation in order to represent a realistic AVR control system. A comparison is performed between these proposed algorithms and the genetic algorithm (GA) showing that the WCA offers a more satisfactory performance and faster convergence compared to the WOA, and GA.