Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CLINICAL-EPIDEMIOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF GUILLAIN BARRÉ SYNDROME IN A CUBAN CASE SERIE.

Background: The broad spectrum of Guillain Barré Syndrome (GBS) includes different pathological phenotypes, with a heterogeneous distribution. The reports, by country and region, have shown its great variability and clarified its behavior.Objective: Characterize GBS and define the most frequent phenotypes.Methods: A time series was constructed to analyze the epidemiological behavior of GBS. The demographic, epidemiological, clinical and complementary aspects of 167 patients were retrospectively described. The severity was analyzed and the patients were classified.Results: The mean age was 33 years, 22.8% were children. The incidence decreased with age and a seasonal preference was seen for the month of August, that usually coincides with higher rates of respiratory and digestive infections. Dengue preceded some GBS outbreaks. The Acute Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyradiculopathy (AIDP) variant predominated and was most severe. Regional variants, a recurrent GBS and a family one were detected. Age, personal history of autoimmune disease, preceding infectious phenomenon, latency between the preceding phenomenon and the onset of the clinical picture, the extent of the motor disorder, facial involvement, gait impairment, ventilatory compromise, and degradation of the osteotendinous reflexes, significantly correlated with the severity.Conclusions: The predominance of AIDP coincides with some countries in the area, with varying geographical location and climatic conditions. The incidence decreases with age. The relationship between the severity and the personal history of autoimmune disease, the preceding infectious phenomenon, and the latency between the preceding phenomenon and the onset of the clinical picture, could be reflecting an underlying autoimmune mechanism in each case.
Accumulation and Removal Effect of Compound Pollution of Heavy Metals in Water Body by Eichhornia crasipes and Pistiastratiotes L.

Experiment was carried out to study accumulation and removal effect of compound pollution of Hg2+,Pb2+,Cd2+,Zn2+,Cu2+in water body by Eichhornia crassipes and Pistiastratiotes L.The result showed that Eichhornia crassipes and Pistiastratiotes L.of 5kinds of heavy metals enrichment coefficient is larger.The discending order of accumulation coefficient of Eichhornia crassipes was Pb2+Zn2+Cd2+Hg2+Cu2+,and Pistiastratiotes L.was Pb2+Cd2+Zn2+Hg2+Cu2+. The biggest removal rate of 5kinds of heavy metals of Eichhornia crassipes was95.45%,98.33%,90.40%,84.64%,27.43%,respectively,and PistiastratiotesL.was 95.45%,97.23%,84.00%,84.53%,38.54%. The removal rate of Eichhornia crassipes and Pistiastratiotes L.was significantly different from control group(P0.01),while the removal rate between two plants was not significant(P0.05). Meanwhile,the other 4kinds of ions (Hg2+、Pb2+、Cd2+、Zn2+)dropped from 0.0011,0.1359,0.0125,0.2780mg/L to fishery water quality standard except Cu2+within 4~12d.
Retracted: Deep neural network‐based detection of pilgrims location in Holy Makkah

Taha MA, Direkoglu MS, Direkoglu C. Deep neural network‐based detection of pilgrims location in Holy Makkah, International Journal of Communication Systems 2021, (https://doi.org/10.1002/dac.4792). The above article published online on 27 May 2021 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by agreement between the Editor and John Wiley and Sons Ltd. Following publication, it has come to our attention that the people named as the Guest Editors of the Special Issue were being impersonated by a fraudulent entity and the articles were not reviewed in line with the journal's peer review standards. The Editor has determined that the articles do not meet the required scholarly standards of the journal, and therefore has taken the decision to retract the article. We did not find any evidence of misconduct by the authors. The authors have been informed of the decision to retract.
Monitoring Turbidity in San Francisco Estuary and Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta Using Satellite Remote Sensing

This study utilizes satellite data to investigate water quality conditions in the San Francisco Estuary and its upstream delta, the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta. To do this, this study derives turbidity from the European Space Agency satellite Sentinel‐2 acquired from September 2015 to June 2019 and conducts a rigorous validation with in situ measurements of turbidity from optical sensors at continuous monitoring stations. This validation includes 965 matchup comparisons between satellite and in situ sensor data across 22 stations, yielding R2 = 0.63 and 0.75 for Nephelometric Turbidity Unit and Formazin Nephelometric Unit (FNU) stations, respectively. This study then applies remote sensing to evaluate patterns in turbidity during the Suisun Marsh Salinity Control Gates Action (“Gates action”), a pilot study designed to increase habitat access and quality for the endangered Delta Smelt. The basic strategy was to direct more freshwater into Suisun Marsh, creating more low salinity habitat that would then have higher (and more suitable) turbidity than upstream river channels. For all seven acquisitions considered from June 29 to September 27, 2018, turbidity conditions in Bays and Sloughs subregions were consistently higher (and more suitable) (26–47 FNU) than what was observed in the upstream River region (13–25 FNU). This overall pattern was observed when comparing images acquired during similar tidal stages and heights.
Remote sensing image super-resolution based on convolutional blind denoising adaptive dense connection

The current super-resolution (SR) deep network is mainly applied to the common image and pays little attention to the image with noise. The remote sensing image contains much noise, so that the SR reconstruction effect is not satisfactory. Therefore, a convolution blind denoising adaptive dense connection SR (CBD-ADCSR) network for the remote sensing image is proposed in this paper. The whole model is divided into a convolution blind denoising (CBD) network for denoising and an ADCSR network for reconstruction. Firstly, the components of the network are given in detail and are analysed. Secondly, a data set making method is designed combining motion blur, defocusing blur and Gaussian noise, which is used to generate low-resolution image data sets with complex degradation for the model training. Finally, through the detailed comparative experiment, it is proved that the reconstruction effect of the CBD-ADCSR model is better than that of the most state-of-the-art algorithms in objective criteria. In addition, compared with the original ADCSR network, CBD-ADCSR has a stronger ability for noise suppression.
Fundamentals of electrospinning and processing technologies

ABSTRACT Nanofibers have been the subject of recent intensive research due to their unique properties, especially their large surface-area-to-volume ratio, which is about 1000 times higher than that of a human hair. They also have several other remarkable characteristics, such as flexibility in surface functionality, superior mechanical properties such as stiffness and tensile strength, their capacity to be formed into a variety of shapes, and the fact that they can be produced from a wide range of organic and inorganic polymers and ceramics. These outstanding properties make polymer nanofibers the optimal candidates for providing significant improvements in current technology and for opening the door to novel applications in many research areas. The present review presents a comprehensive summary of the existing solution and melts electrospinning technologies and the effects of parameters on the electrospinning process and nanofiber morphology.
Dynamical forcings in heavy precipitation events over Italy: lessons from the HyMeX SOP1 campaign

Abstract. The first Special Observation Period (SOP1) of HyMeX (Hydrological cycle in the Mediterranean eXperiment) was held in Fall 2012 and focused on heavy precipitation events (HPEs) and floods in the northwestern Mediterranean. Nine intensive observation periods (IOPs) involved the three Italian target areas (north-eastern Italy, NEI; Liguria and Tuscany, LT; central Italy, CI), enabling an unprecedented analysis of precipitation systems in these regions. In the present work, we highlight the major findings emerging from the HyMeX campaign and in the subsequent research activity over the three target areas, by means of conceptual models and through the identification of the relevant recursive mesoscale features. For NEI, two categories of events (Upstream and Alpine HPEs) have been identified, which differ mainly in the temporal evolution of the stability of the upstream environment and of the intensity of the impinging flow (i.e., the Froude number). The numerical simulation of convection in the Po Valley was found very sensitive to small changes in the environmental conditions, especially when they are close to the threshold between “flow-over” and “flow-around” regimes. Some mesoscale features (e.g., the presence of a shallow pressure minimum in the eastern Po Valley) were identified as fundamental to adequately simulate the detailed evolution of severe convective episodes. For LT, HyMeX SOP1 focused on orographically-enhanced precipitation over the Apennines and quasi-stationary mesoscale convective systems over the sea or close to the coast. For the latter category of events, associated with the majority of the recent HPEs in the area, local-scale or large-scale convergence lines appear fundamental to trigger and sustain convection. These lines are affected not only by the orography of the region, but also by perturbations induced by Sardinia and Corsica on the environmental flow. Cold pools formed via evaporation of precipitation also played a major role in determining the position of the trigger at later times. The accurate representation of the moisture structure below 2 km is the key to an accurate simulation of the timing and location of precipitation. For CI, a high low-level moisture content and marked low-level convergence over the sea were critical to support deep convection in IOPs affecting the Tyrrhenian coast. Also, an elevated moisture plume from the Tropics was observed to locally reinforce the intensity of the updrafts. For HPEs affecting the Adriatic regions, generally a cut-off low over the Tyrrhenian Sea induces intense Bora over the Adriatic basin. Low-level convergence triggers convection over the sea, while orographic uplift produces stratiform precipitation. The Adriatic Sea plays a critical role mainly through air-sea exchanges, which modify the characteristics of the flow and in turn the effect of the orographic forcing.
When the chickens come home to roost: The long‐term impact of party positions on religious voting

Despite the widespread secularisation of West European societies, research has only found mixed evidence of a decline in the inﬂuence of religion on people’s electoral preferences. A relatively recent line of inquiry has adopted a ‘top-down’ approach to this problem, arguing that the impact of religion not only depends on structural social changes, but also on parties’ convergence on moral issues. Drawing upon this ‘top-down’ approach and the ‘impressionable years’ model, this article argues that parties’ political strategies aimed at (de-)mobilising social cleavages have a lasting effect on voters’ party preferences. Using nine rounds of the European Social Survey for 19 West European countries, I ﬁnd the impact of religiosity on voting for the centre-right (Conservative and Christian Democratic parties) to be signiﬁcantly smaller for voters who were exposed during emerging adulthood (aged 15– 25) to a centre-right party that adopted similar positions on moral issues to those of its main competitors. These ﬁndings have important implications because they highlight the role of generational replacement in bringing about electoral change, even when this is prompted by parties’ strategic choices.
Efficient hard real-time implementation of CNNs on multi-core architectures

Autonomous driving applications rely on processing large amounts of data in order to ensure sufficient perception performance. In this context, Convolutional Neuronal Networks (CNNs), which are used for object detection in camera images, are an integral part of sensor data processing. However, safety-related hard deadlines are counteracted by the required high data rates that stress the platform w.r. t. memory interference. Providing high camera frame rates under hard latency requirements is still an open issue. In a case study focusing on high-performance multi-core architectures, we evaluate in detail the advantages of a private L2 and shared L3 cache architecture for CNN processing and show how to remove malicious data synchronization effects. In this context we deploy MobileNet as well as YOLO on an Intel i5 processor and demonstrate their applicability to a worst-case design under high CNN frame rates. Last, we provide a heuristic optimization scheme that is able to efficiently find feasible high frame rate configurations. Contrary to common assumptions, our results show that high-performance multi-core COTS platforms are suitable for the application of CNNs even under hard deadline constraints and, hence, offer substantial gains in cost and productivity due to their greater ease of programming.
A Novel Graph-Based Vulnerability Metric in Urban Network Infrastructures: The Case of Water Distribution Networks

The key contribution of this paper is to embed the analysis of the network in a framework based on a mapping from the input space whose elements are nodes of a graph or the entire graph into an information space whose elements are probability distributions associated to objects in the input space. Specifically, a node is associated to the probability distribution of its node-to-node distances and the whole graph to the aggregation of these node distributions. In this space two distances are proposed for this analysis: Jensen-Shannon and Wasserstein, based respectively on information theory and optimal transport theory. This representation allows to compute the distance between the original network and the one obtained by the removal of nodes or edges and use this distance as an index of the increase in vulnerability induced by the removal. In this way a new characterization of vulnerability is obtained. This new index has been tested in two real-world water distribution networks. The results obtained are discussed along those which relate vulnerability to the loss of efficiency and those given by the analysis of the spectra of the adjacency and Laplacian matrices of the network. The models and algorithms considered in this paper have been integrated into an analytics framework which can also support the analysis of other networked infrastructures among which power grids, gas distribution, and transit networks are included.
Observed Vertical Structure of Precipitation Influenced by Dry Air for Landfalling Tropical Cyclones Over China

The vertical structure of precipitation and its evolution during midlevel dry‐air intrusion (DAI) for landfalling tropical cyclones (LTCs) over China in the past 10 years were examined using several observed Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) PR products and a reanalysis data set. We show that in the outer region where the environmental midlevel dry air intrudes more easily, the process of environmental DAI has an important effect on the vertical structure and precipitation of LTCs through promoting substantially stratiform precipitation, while inhibiting infrequent intense convective precipitation. Although the total mean rain rate does not change much during the DAI period, both the mean rain rate and area of stratiform precipitation are almost doubled, while the convective precipitation halves compared to the situation prior to the DAI period. Also, the vertical structure of precipitation relative to the vertical wind shear (VWS) is modulated by the dry air, with a clear stratiform precipitation structure in the DAI region, though the dry‐air distribution of LTCs does not depend on the direction of the VWS but rather on the synoptic environmental collocation. Further analysis shows that the mid‐level DAI is favorable to the generation of stratiform precipitation through producing moderate midlevel convergence and less intense low‐level subsidence, which contribute to the mid‐level spin‐up without spinning down the low‐level circulation. At the same time, it helps in maintaining the uniform stratiform precipitation above the melting layer and homogenizing the low‐level circulation, and thus boosts the development of stratiform precipitation in intensity and area in the outer region.
The Effect of Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility on Financial Performance: Evidence from China

ABSTRACT This study uses the perspective of corporate strategy to examine the relationship between corporate social responsibility and corporate financial performance in China. Following the theoretical business strategy framework and resource-based theory, we adopt the ordinary least squares method to conduct a multiple regression analysis of the relationship between CSR and CFP under different strategy types. We find that for prospectors, CSR is positively correlated with CFP. However, for defenders, it is negatively correlated. Our results remain robust after a series of robustness tests and controlling endogeneity. Our findings help to explain the inconsistent results obtained in the literature, extend our understanding of CSR and the consequences of corporate strategy, and provide a reference for international investors and emerging markets.
Tickling tensions: Gazing into the parallax gap of the multicultural imaginary

This article explores why cultural branding – ideo-affective market communication addressing intense political tensions – paradoxically seems to lead to political inertia rather than political mobilization. I critically analyse advertising addressing political tensions related to race, ethnicity and immigration, but instead of only following the traced-out trajectory of postcolonial theory, I use the lens of Žižek’s radicalized Lacanian psychoanalysis and treat the therapeutic visuality in cultural branding as ideological fantasies of the market’s multicultural imaginary. Through critical visual methodologies, I situate four ‘multicultural’ commercials in their culture- and idea historical contexts, and juxtapose a postcolonial with a Žižekian reading for each of them. I come to argue that the market’s multicultural imaginary (unconsciously) serves important ideological functions in sustaining the political status quo not foremost because it placates anxiety, but because it doesn’t. Tapping into previous discussions in critical marketing on fetishistic disavowal and inversion, I offer yet another explanation. The political inertia following from ideo-affective dimensions of cultural branding does not primarily come from therapeutic sedation, but from the opposite, namely the parallax object’s upholding of gruesome tension and suspense; a fetishistic tickling. This article ends by critiquing the compulsory use of postcolonial theory in research on racial and ethnic relations. From the Žižekian reading, it appears that the postcolonial gaze is now a punishing agency like any dominant ideology, where the social inequality of global capitalism is deemed a more bearable alternative than the traumatic horror of visible racism, which, subsequently, closes the circuit from radical politics.
Chapter 5:Photosensitization

Photosensitization is the most common process producing singlet oxygen. The photosensitized production of singlet oxygen is important both in nature and in synthetic chemistry. Some natural products, such as cercosporin and hypericin, are potent singlet-oxygen-generating photosensitizers. Many singlet oxygen-generating photosensitizers have also been synthesized in the laboratory and form the basis of several practical uses for singlet oxygen. These uses include synthesis of fine chemicals, photoactivated herbicides, photoactivated insecticides, photodynamic therapy of cancer, photosterilization of blood products and wastewater treatment. Much is now known about the primary photochemical reactions generating singlet oxygen. Singlet oxygen is most commonly produced by oxygen quenching of a photosensitizer in an excited triplet state. Less commonly, singlet oxygen is produced by quenching of a photosensitizer in an excited singlet state. Photosensitized singlet-oxygen production always competes with other photochemical pathways. The novel electronic structure of the oxygen molecule and the high concentration of oxygen in the environment often favor singlet-oxygen generation over other pathways.
Comparison of Software Defined Networking with Traditional Networking

The Internet has caused the advent of a digital society; wherein almost everything is connected and available from any place. Thus, regardless of their extensive adoption, traditional IP networks are yet complicated and arduous to operate. Therefore, there is difficulty in configuring the network in line with the predefined procedures and responding to the load modifications and faults through network reconfiguring. The current networks are likewise vertically incorporated to make matters far more complicated: the control and data planes are bundled collectively. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is an emerging concept which aims to change this situation by breaking vertical incorporation, promoting the logical centralization of the network control, separating the network control logic from the basic switches and routers, and enabling the network programming. The segregation of concerns identified between the policies concept of network, their implementation in hardware switching and data forwarding is essential to the flexibility required: SDN makes it less complicated and facilitates to make and introduce new concepts in networking through breaking the issue of the network control into tractable parts, simplifies the network management and facilitate the development of the network. In this paper, the SDN is reviewed; it introduces SDN, explaining its core concepts, how it varies from traditional networking, and its architecture principles. Furthermore, we presented the crucial advantages and challenges of SDN, focusing on scalability, security, flexibility, and performance. Finally, a brief conclusion of SDN is revised.