Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of aging on color stability of amine-free resin cement through the ceramic laminate veneer

Background: This study aimed to assess the color change of two amine-free dual-cure resin cements following aging in comparison with a light-cure resin cement. Materials and Methods: This in vitro, experimental study evaluated 6 groups (n = 10), including three groups of cements bonded to feldspathic porcelain and three groups of resin cements alone. Panavia V5 (Kuraray) and G-CEM LinkForce (GC) dual-cure resin cements and Choice 2 (Bisco) light-cure resin cements were bonded to porcelain according to the manufacturers’ instructions. The color parameters of the groups were measured before and after 5000 thermal cycles by spectrophotometry. Data were analyzed using two-way ANOVA and Tukey's post hoc test (α =0.05). Results: The color change (ΔE) of the cement groups alone was significantly greater than that of porcelain-bonded cements. The ΔE of G-CEM LinkForce cement group was significantly higher than that of Panavia V5 group (P = 0.020), and the ΔE of the latter group was significantly higher than that of Choice 2 cement group (P = 0.021). Conclusion: Considering the color change of cements evaluated in this study, Choice 2 and Panavia V5 cements bonded to porcelain showed acceptable color change, which indicates that they are suitable for cementation of esthetic dental restorations. Ceramic laminates have become an ideal esthetic treatment for anterior restorations. The resin cement discoloration can affect final appearance of these restorations. Besides that, exposed resin cement line can lead to the esthetic problem over time.
Novel Biomarkers Differentiating Viral from Bacterial Infection in Febrile Children: Future Perspectives for Management in Clinical Praxis

Differentiating viral from bacterial infections in febrile children is challenging and often leads to an unnecessary use of antibiotics. There is a great need for more accurate diagnostic tools. New molecular methods have improved the particular diagnostics of viral respiratory tract infections, but defining etiology can still be challenging, as certain viruses are frequently detected in asymptomatic children. For the detection of bacterial infections, time consuming cultures with limited sensitivity are still the gold standard. As a response to infection, the immune system elicits a cascade of events, which aims to eliminate the invading pathogen. Recent studies have focused on these host–pathogen interactions to identify pathogen-specific biomarkers (gene expression profiles), or “pathogen signatures”, as potential future diagnostic tools. Other studies have assessed combinations of traditional bacterial and viral biomarkers (C-reactive protein, interleukins, myxovirus resistance protein A, procalcitonin, tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand) to establish etiology. In this review we discuss the performance of such novel diagnostics and their potential role in clinical praxis. In conclusion, there are several promising novel biomarkers in the pipeline, but well-designed randomized controlled trials are needed to evaluate the safety of using these novel biomarkers to guide clinical decisions.
Evaluation of species distribution models for estimating animal dark diversity

Aim Applying wide and effective sampling of animal communities is rarely possible due to the associated costs and the use of techniques that are not always efficient. Thus, many areas have a faunistic hidden diversity we denote Animal Dark Diversity (ADD), defined as the diversity that is present but not yet detected plus the diversity defined by Pärtel et al. (2011) that is not (yet) present despite the area’s favourable habitat conditions. We evaluated different species distribution model types (SDM techniques) on the basis of three requirements for ADD estimate reliability: 1) estimated spatial patterns of ADD do not differ significantly from other SDM techniques; 2) good predictive performances; and 3) low overfitting. Location Iberian Peninsula. Taxon Chiroptera and Noctuoidea (Lepidoptera) Methods We used distribution data for 25 species of bats and 352 species of moths. We evaluated eleven SDM techniques using biomod2 package implemented in the R software environment. We fitted the various SDM techniques to the data for each species and compared the resulting ADD estimates for the two animal groups under three threshold types. Results The results demonstrated that estimated ADD spatial patterns vary significantly between SDM techniques and depend on the threshold type. They also showed that SDM techniques with overfitting tend to generate smaller ADD sizes, thus reducing the possible species presence estimates. Among the SDMs studied, the ensemble models delivered ADD geographic patterns more like the other techniques while also presenting a high predictive performance for both faunal groups. However, the Ensemble Model Committee Average (ECA) performed much better on the sensitivity metric than all other techniques under any of the thresholds tested. In addition, ECA stood out clearly from the other ensemble model techniques in displaying low-medium overfitting. Main conclusions SDM techniques should no differ among each other in their ADD estimations, have good predictive performances and exhibit low overfitting. Furthermore, to reduce estimate uncertainty it is suggested that the threshold type be one that transforms high values of presences probabilities into binary information and furthermore that the SDM technique have a sensitivity bias, as otherwise the estimates will perform better for species absence in cases where it is not in fact known whether a species is truly absent.
Simulating the integration of photovoltaic technology on the modern infantry soldier using modelling and simulation: scenarios and guidelines

The operational range and manoeuvrability of the modern infantry soldier is restricted by the overall load and bulk of equipment ranging from 50 to 75 kg. Today’s soldiers rely heavily on batteries to meet their power requirements, which make up 25% of the overall load. This results in a significant increase on soldier’s physical stress and cognitive burden. Recent developments in renewable energy, and more particularly the evolution of very thin and flexible wearable photovoltaic devices, provide promising solutions for the application of such technologies on the infantry soldier. However, since these flexible substrate devices are still under development or produced at a very small scale, their application and use has to be simulated prior to integrating to the infantry soldier. Such simulations need to take into account the specific requirements and different fields of operation of the infantry soldier, in the context of weather, date and time, global location and for different military mission environments. This paper presents a number of simulations performed for a wide range of scenarios in the context of the Solar Soldier project. It discusses the key results, offering a set of guidelines for the positioning and integration of such renewable energy technology on the modern infantry soldier. Moreover, this paper suggests future improvements on the methodology and optimisation of the procedures.
Deep Graph Learning for QoT Estimation of Unseen Optical Sub-Network States: Capturing the Crosstalk Impact on the In-Service Lightpaths

In this work, deep graph convolutional neural networks (DGCNN) are applied for estimating the quality-of-transmission (QoT) of unseen network states in elastic optical networks (EONs) in the presence of physical layer impairments (PLIs), including inter- and intra-channel crosstalk (XT). The objective is to find a DGCNN-QoT model that accurately estimates network state feasibility. A network state is considered feasible if the QoT of the in-service lightpaths and of the lightpath under provisioning is sufficient; that is, the DGCNN does not only infer about the feasibility of an unestablished lightpath but also whether the feasibility of the in-service lightpaths will be affected by the establishment of a new lightpath due to XT. As DGCNN model generalization over unseen graphs is known to be negatively affected by the number of possible graphs and their dimensionality, problem uncertainty and complexity is reduced by formulating the QoT estimation problem over sub-network states, capturing only the spatio-temporal correlations that are relevant to the unestablished lightpath at decision time. DGCNN model accuracy is compared to a state-of-the-art deep neural network (DNN) model trained only over per-lightpath information. It is shown that DGCNN achieves accuracies above 92%, while DNN performs poorly with accuracies as low as 77%, as it fails to infer about the feasibility of in-service connections; an indicator of the importance of explicitly considering during the QoT model training, not only the lightpath patterns, but also the network-state patterns capturing the XT effect. Importantly, it is demonstrated that deep graph learning is a promising approach towards accomplishing this objective.
Introduction to special issue on institutional influences on retirement, health and well-being

Countries make differing policy choices. They can serve as a scientific laboratory for drawing lessons on the policy paths to follow or to avoid and the consequences of those institutional choices on individuals at older ages. In this special issue we bring together six articles that evaluate the influence of institutions on retirement decisions, health and well-being of older adults using common data that have emerged with the international network of health and retirement studies to study key life outcomes such as health, work, and lifecycle transitions at older ages.
Bovine serum albumin promotes reactivation of viable but non-culturable Mycobacterium tuberculosis via the activation of protein kinase-dependent cell division processes

Objective Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) H37Ra strain has been reported to rapidly enter the viable but non-culturable (VBNC) state following treatment with an NADH oxidase inhibitor (diphenyleneiodonium [DPI]) and to be reactivated by fetal bovine serum (FBS). However, the mechanism underlying FBS-induced reactivation is unclear. We tried to reveal the mechanism of FBS-induced reactivation using M. tuberculosis H37Rv. Methods First, we evaluated the effect of DPI on culturability, viability and changes of acid-fastness toward H37Rv. Secondly, we measured the reactivation-promoting effects of human serum albumin, egg-white albumin and antioxidative agents in DPI-induced VBNC cells. We also inhibited adenylyl cyclase and protein kinase which is the downstream of adenylyl cyclase to evaluate the influence to reactivation capacity of bovine serum albumin (BSA). Results DPI treatment induced VBNC state in H37Rv, resulting in a high proportion of viable cells but a low proportion of culturable cells, loss of acid-fastness and lipid-accumulation. Not only FBS but also BSA alone could reactivate H37Rv. Contrary to our expectation, only human serum albumin had a similar restorative effect to BSA. The inhibition of adenylyl cyclase by SQ22536 did not have a significant effect on reactivation; however, the inhibition of mycobacterial protein kinase by H89 and staurosporine strongly suppressed the BSA-induced reactivation. Conclusion DPI-induced VBNC Mtb cells may be reactivated via the activation of protein kinase-dependent cell division processes through interaction with BSA.
Experimental study of dual-core photonic crystal fibre

The authors report the fabrication and characterisation of photonic crystal (‘holey’) fibres in which multiple cores are created by filling in selected air-holes with glass. The guidance mechanism is modified total internal reflection. Using a tunable diode laser, the inter-core coupling is investigated as a function of air-hole spacing.
The relationship between customer satisfaction and shareholder value

Abstract This paper studies the relationship between customer satisfaction and shareholder value. In the first section of the paper the link between the two variables is examined theoretically, it is then tested empirically. Customer satisfaction data were taken from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) database. Shareholder value was measured using Tobin's q. The sample consisted of 99 companies with ACSI data and Tobin's q from 1994 to 2002. The results of this study give insights into the relationship between customer satisfaction and shareholder value. First, there is a positive association between customer satisfaction and shareholder value. Second, this relationship is not affected by the turbulence of financial markets after the beginning of the year 2000. Third, there is a time lag of three quarters between customer satisfaction and the strongest impact on shareholder value. Fourth, it seems that there exists an optimal level of customer satisfaction, and if it is exceeded value will be destroyed.
Advanced Load Balancing Based on Network Flow Approach in LTE-A Heterogeneous Network

Long-term evolution advanced (LTE-A) systems will offer better service to users by applying advanced physical layer transmission techniques and utilizing wider bandwidth. To further improve service quality, low power nodes are overlaid within a macro network, creating what is referred to as a heterogeneous network. However, load imbalance among cells often decreases the network resource utilization ratio and consequently reduces the user experience level. Load balancing (LB) is an indispensable function in LTE-A self-organized network (SON) to efficiently accommodate the imbalance in traffic. In this paper, we firstly evaluate the negative impact of unbalanced load among cells through Markovian model. Secondly, we formulate LB as an optimization problem which is solved using network flow approach. Furthermore, a novel algorithm named optimal solution-based LB (OSLB) is proposed. The proposed OSLB algorithm is shown to be effective in providing up to 20% gain in load distribution index (LDI) by a system-level simulation.
Relative salience of chord-type and chord-voicing changes: A two-oddball paradigm

Our research project investigated the effect of background and stimuli factors on the relative salience of chord-type and chord-voicing changes. Earlier studies have shown that surface features tend to be easier to perceive than deeper features and that musical training attenuates this general tendency. For further studying how deeper-level and surface-level musical features are perceived, we used a two-oddball paradigm. Each item consisted of a succession of five same-root chords: one chord-type oddball (deeper feature), one voicing oddball (surface feature), and three standards. Participants chose the chord that sounded most different to them. All chord-type pairings formed of major, minor, dominant seventh, major seventh, and minor seventh chords were tested. Chord-type oddball and voicing oddball were chosen equally often, together forming the majority of the responses. Musical training and conceptual knowledge of chords affected the chord-type oddball responses, but not the voicing-oddball responses. However, chord-type oddballs were chosen regardless of the musical training. Chord-type responses were easiest for pairs consisting of a major-based and a minor-based chord and for pairs involving two pitch-class changes. Our results suggest that musical training and conceptual knowledge about chords is not the only factor influencing the relative salience of chord-type changes over voicing changes.
Medullary vasomotor center: a modern view of the structure, function and its role in arterial hypertension pathogenesis

The medullary centers of blood pressure regulation have been in the field of vision of both physiologists and doctors for a very long period of time. This is mainly due to the abundance of structures and interstructural interactions in the brain stem, involved in maintaining blood pressure. Advances in research technology open new opportunities these days to look at this problem from a different angle. Moreover, research of medullary centers of blood pressure regulation will make it possible to understand better the mechanisms of persistent increase in blood pressure, which will create the preconditions for the formation of new pathogenetically substantiated therapeutic approaches in the treatment of such a widespread and dangerous pathology as arterial hypertension. Therefore, the aim of this work was to analyze modern views about the structure and composition of the medullary vasomotor center, its functions and its role in the arterial hypertension development. To achieve this goal, the search by keywords: arterial hypertension, baroreflex, NTS, DMN, RVLM, CVLM, CPA, SHR, LC and analysis of scientific articles from the databases of search engines Google Scholar, Web of Science, Pub Med was done. Conclusions: 1. The analysis of literature sources showed that the concept of "medullar vasomotor center" includes a number of brainstem formations, the most studied of which are the structures of the dorsal complex of the vagus nerve (the nucleus of the solitary tract, the dorsal motor nucleus, area postrema), the rostral and caudal ventrolateral regions of medulla, caudal pressor area, noradrenergic structures of the brainstem, in particular the locus coeruleus, as the biggest of them. 2. According to literary sources, arterial hypertension is accompanied by the changes in the morphofunctional state of the above-mentioned structures. The most common mechanisms are violation of the neurotransmitter composition within the structure and the neuroinflammatory process.
Cash flow risk in dual-channel supply chain

This paper focuses on multi-period cash flow risk which is measured by the SD in dual-channel supply chain. The manufacturer offers a consignment contract to the retailer, exposing cash flow risk due to the payment delay. We analyze cash inflows, outflows, and netflows of each member in dual-channel supply chain. We also examine different influencing factors on the preference of cash flows in dual-channel supply chain and then provide some managerial implications to deal with cash flow risk.
Urinary Concentrations of (+)-Catechin and (-)-Epicatechin as Biomarkers of Dietary Intake of Flavan-3-ols in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) Study

This study examines the correlation of acute and habitual dietary intake of flavan-3-ol monomers, proanthocyanidins, theaflavins, and their main food sources with the urinary concentrations of (+)-catechin and (-)-epicatechin in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition study (EPIC). Participants (N = 419, men and women) provided 24-h urine samples and completed a 24-h dietary recall (24-HDR) on the same day. Acute and habitual dietary data were collected using a standardized 24-HDR software and a validated dietary questionnaire, respectively. Intake of flavan-3-ols was estimated using the Phenol-Explorer database. Concentrations of (+)-catechin and (-)-epicatechin in 24-h urine were analyzed using tandem mass spectrometry after enzymatic deconjugation. Simple and partial Spearman’s correlations showed that urinary concentrations of (+)-catechin, (-)-epicatechin and their sum were more strongly correlated with acute than with habitual intake of individual and total monomers (acute rpartial = 0.13–0.54, p < 0.05; and habitual rpartial = 0.14–0.28, p < 0.01), proanthocyanidins (acute rpartial = 0.24–0.49, p < 0.001; and habitual rpartial = 0.10–0.15, p < 0.05), theaflavins (acute rpartial = 0.22–0.31, p < 0.001; and habitual rpartial = 0.20–0.26, p < 0.01), and total flavan-3-ols (acute rpartial = 0.40–0.48, p < 0.001; and habitual rpartial = 0.23–0.33, p < 0.001). Similarly, urinary concentrations of flavan-3-ols were weakly correlated with both acute (rpartial = 0.12–0.30, p < 0.05) and habitual intake (rpartial = 0.10–0.27, p < 0.05) of apple and pear, stone fruits, berries, chocolate and chocolate products, cakes and pastries, tea, herbal tea, wine, red wine, and beer and cider. Moreover, all comparable correlations were stronger for urinary (-)-epicatechin than for (+)-catechin. In conclusion, our data support the use of urinary concentrations of (+)-catechin and (-)-epicatechin, especially as short-term nutritional biomarkers of dietary catechin, epicatechin and total flavan-3-ol monomers.
Structural health monitoring using a fiber optic polarimetric sensor and a fiber optic curvature sensor - static and dynamic test

In this paper, a fiber optic polarimetric sensor (FOPS) and a fiber optic curvature sensor (FOCS), for global health\damage monitoring of an aluminum specimen with different cracks, are theoretically and experimentally analyzed. The relation between the sensor sensitivity and the specimen stiffness is given and a static damage factor (SDF) is introduced to describe the stiffness reduction of the specimen. Based on this parameter, the experimental results show that the two sensors can be used as quantitative damage indicators for the global health monitoring of structures. The dynamic damage factor (DDF) is also introduced to describe the damage level of cracked beams. The relation between DDF and the frequency of nth mode is deduced. The experimental results from FOPS show that the DDF is an alternate measure of the damage and is shown to be similar to the SDF.
Ultrasonic Signal Denoising for Robust Measurement of Solid-Propellant Burning Rates

Recently, an effective approach (namely, an ultrasonic full-waveform analysis method) has been proposed for the ultrasonic measurement of solid-propellant burning rate as a function of pressure in a single test. In this study, highfrequency ultrasonic transducers are adopted for the acquisition of ultrasonic full waveforms in order to increase the spatial resolution of the measurement. Unfortunately, however, these transducers are susceptible to random noise. This paper addresses an effective approach for reducing high-frequency random noise to the ultrasonic full waveforms using the wavelet-shrinkage method. Furthermore, this paper presents the results of the noise reduction at ultrasonic full waveforms captured from solid-propellant samples together with the improvement in the measurement accuracy of solid-propellant burning rates obtained by adopting the proposed approach.
Energy Expenditure of Recreational Kayaking

Hoffman, AC, Garner, KJ, Krings, AR, Becker, RR, Ottney, DC. Energy Expenditure of Recreational Kayaking. Journal of Undergraduate Kinesiology Research. 2006; 2(1):26-31. Kayaking is a form of exercise that has not been researched extensively as an alternative to traditional cardiovascular activities. Purpose: The purpose of this experiment is to determine the physiological effects of recreational kayaking. Methods: This study involved ten subjects (six male and four female), with mean age of 31.9 ± 14.5, height 175 ± 11.8 cm, weight 77.7 ± 16.6 kg, VO2max of 54.2 ± 13.1 ml/kg/min, with all participants having at least a recreational level of physical activity. Most of the participants had some prior knowledge of the mechanics of kayaking. Each of the ten subjects was required to perform a VO2 max test using the Modified Balke protocol, which was conducted in the UWEC exercise physiology laboratory. Each participant was required to kayak a 1.5 mile designated course at an RPE of 3-4 (1-10 scale). Heart rate was measured during each session and RPE was reported at the conclusion of the trip. Results: After completing all testing, our results indicated that recreational kayaking can be used as a viable mode of exercise to fulfill ACSM exercise recommendations. While kayaking participants burned approximately 339 kcals in 19.5 minutes, and had a heart rate reserve of 40%. Conclusion: These findings are important because recreational kayaking can be used as a healthy alternative to traditional cardiovascular exercise training. Our study found that recreational kayaking exhibits outstanding physiological benefits.