Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Atlas of Thyroid Hormone Receptors’ Target Genes in Mouse Tissues

We gathered in a single database available RNA-seq and ChIP-seq data to better characterize the target genes of the thyroid hormone receptors in several cell types. This database can serve as a resource to analyze the mode of action of the hormone. Also, it is an easy-handling convenient tool to obtain information on specific genes in regards to T3 regulation, or extract larger list of genes of interest based on the users’ criteria. Overall, this atlas is a unique compilation of recent sequencing data focusing on thyroid hormones, their receptors, mode of action, targets and roles which may profit researchers within the field. A preliminary analysis indicates extensive variations in the repertoire of target genes which transcription is upregulated by chromatin-bound nuclear receptor. Although it has a major influence, chromatin accessibility is not the only parameter that determines the cellular selectivity of hormonal response.
An exploratory investigation of the relationship between the achievement of ISO 9000 quality standards and the level of customer service provided by manufacturing companies in the Durban area

During the past 20 years, marketing in industrialized countries has evolved towards Relationship Marketing placing more attention on customer loyalty. To achieve this new objective, increased interest has been placed on delivering quality customer service. In parallel, the notion of quality has evolved toward total quality, now considering every aspect in the company. Following this evolution, new quality tools have been developed, such as the ISO 9000 standards.
Styled Algorithmic Trading and the MV-MVP Style

Except for pre-trade assessment, algorithmic trading for optimal execution has to be dynamically adapted to real-time market environments and inventory positions. This makes dynamic programming (DP) the most natural approach. Due to the curse of dimensionality, however, it is highly challenging to design a rigorous DP strategy that invites a tractable solution procedure. Approximate dynamic programming (ADP) has hence emerged as a practical solution, and the proposed framework of styled trading follows the ADP paradigm. A styled model makes a particular choice for its state variables as well as the parametric forms of its trading policies. Its calibration then becomes a nonlinear, constrained, but lower-dimensional optimization problem. The current framework also goes beyond the additive objectives normally required by a traditional DP strategy and its associated Bellman solution procedure. It works with the mean-variance utilities of Almgren and Chriss (J. Risk, 3, 2000) to effectively express risk aversion of a typical trader. The new framework is demonstrated through building one particular style called MV-MVP, i.e., the mean-variance (MV) objective formulated upon the state variables of moneyness and volume participation (MVP). The MV-MVP style generalizes the VWAP strategy by facilitating dynamic reactions to moneyness and by embodying the popular street practice of trading aggressively or passively while in the money. Numerical calibration based on stochastic gradient descent and binomial-tree gradient descent is discussed. Simulated dynamic trading paths help illustrate the general behavior of the MV-MVP style.
Spatial Distribution of Vulnerability to Extreme Flood: in provincial scale of China

Extreme flood (EF) disasters in China are characterized by large influence range, high frequency, strong burst and uneven distribution in time and space. Once the EF disaster occurs, it will pose a great threat to the people’s life safety, 10 economic, natural and social environment. Compared with the hazards and exposure factors of EF, the vulnerability of disaster regions shows great differences due to China’s vastness and complex social and environmental background of disasters, which leads to less large-scale study at provincial-level on EF vulnerability. This study calculated the vulnerability to EF from the favorable and unfavorable factors of flood resistance of four aspects including life, economy, environment and society. The Cloud-improved Entropy Method is used to calculate the index weight, and the Fuzzy Variable Theory is 15 used to calculate the comprehensive vulnerability grads. The vulnerability ranking of 31 provinces or regions in China was made according to the differences of population, social structure, economy and environment among these regions. Furthermore, synthesizing disaster science and geographic mapping, the spatial distribution map of vulnerability to EF in China was generated, which shows that vulnerability to EF in most regions of China is in “moderate” or “severe” grade. The spatial distribution of the EF risk vulnerability shows (1) a decreasing trend from the regions with high population density to 20 regions with low population density, (2) a decreasing trend from economically developed regions to economically backward regions, (3) a decreasing trend from the eastern coastal regions to the central agricultural provinces and then to the southwest, northwest and northeast regions in China. The outcome of this study maybe one of the first efforts providing research database for vulnerability to EF in large scale of China, and it is useful for future regional research and risk management. systematic evaluation method of the at
Numerical Simulation of Stretch Bending for L-section Aluminum Alloy Profile

stretching ABSTRACT: High precision stretch bending of aluminum alloy profile is the key technology for making car’s frame body. A numerical simulation study on the displacement-controlled process for a typical kind of L-section aluminum alloy profile used in high-speed rail with finite element analysis software is presented. The effect of different friction coefficients, with or without baffle and cover plate on the equivalent stress, strain and cross-sectional distortion are investigated. It is shown that the increase of the friction coefficient can increase the cross-sectional distortion, equivalent stress and strain. The installation of baffle and cover plate can significantly reduce the cross-sectional distortion in the middle section of the profile, and increase the equivalent stress and strain to some extent.
Uncle Maker: (Time)Stamping Out The Competition in Ethereum

We present and analyze an attack on Ethereum 1's consensus mechanism, which allows miners to obtain higher mining rewards compared to their honest peers. This attack is novel in that it relies on manipulating block timestamps and the difficulty-adjustment algorithm (DAA) to give the miner an advantage whenever block races ensue. We call our attack Uncle Maker, as it induces a higher rate of uncle blocks. We describe several variants of the attack. Among these, one that is risk-free for miners. Our attack differs from past attacks such as Selfish Mining, that have been shown to be profitable but were never observed in practice: We analyze data from Ethereum's blockchain and show that some of Ethereum's miners have been actively running a variant of this attack for several years without being detected, making this the first evidence of miner manipulation of a major consensus mechanism. We present our evidence, as well as estimates of the profits gained by attackers, at the expense of honest miners. Since several blockchains are still running Ethereum 1's protocol, we suggest concrete fixes and implement them as a patch for geth.
Content and Style-Based Analysis of Persuasive Editorials Master’s Thesis

Persuasion is abundant in the media documents; many articles (e.g., news editorials) are written to persuade the readers in the favour of a particular political ideology. Persuasion can be achieved by diverse strategies that attempt to influence the readers’ minds. Most of these strategies can be categorized into contentand style-based. While the style-based strategies have been tackled in several studies, content-based ones, especially those related to argumentative topics and frames, are rarely considered. This thesis proposes methods for identifying topics and frames of argumentative articles, and use them (in addition to previously studied style features) for persuasiveness prediction. Experiments on a set of 1000 New York Times articles annotated for the persuasiveness show that style features when combined with topics and frames enhance the classifier in better prediction of persuasiveness effect.
Chloroquine Attenuates Oxidative Stress in Gentamicin-Induced Nephrotoxicity in Rats

The wider application of gentamicin is limited by potential adverse effects (nephrotoxicity and ototoxicity). The goal of our study was to investigate the effects of chloroquine on biochemical and oxidative stress parameters in gentamicin-induced nephrotoxicity in rats. Animals were randomly divided into 1 of 5 groups. First was Sham group (0.9% NaCl) (n = 8); second group received gentamicin (n = 8); while third (n = 8), fourth (n = 8) and fifth group (n = 8) received gentamicin and chloroquine in a dose of 0.3, 1 and 3 mg/kg, respectively. The urea and creatinine levels were significantly lower in chloroquine treated groups in doses of 0.3 mg/kg and 1 mg/kg (P < 0.001). Total oxidant status and the oxidative stress index showed significantly lower values in all chloroquine treated groups (P < 0.001; P < 0.005). Malondialdehyde was lower in chloroquine treatment in doses of 0.3 mg/kg (P < 0.005) and 3 mg/kg (P < 0.05). Chloroquine treatment markedly reduced the level of superoxide dismutase in doses of 1 mg/kg (P < 0.01) and 3 mg/kg (P < 0.05). Our study showed that chloroquine attenuates gentamicin-induced nephrotoxicity in rats regarding biochemical and oxidative stress parameters.
Germline predisposition to soft tissue sarcoma

Soft tissue sarcoma (STS) most often occurs sporadically, but can also arise in the setting of a germline cancer predisposition syndrome (CPS). There is significant diversity amongst STS diagnoses as these tumors exhibit a variety of histologies, occur in all age groups, and can occur in any location in the body. This diversity is also reflected in the many known associated germline cancer predisposition associations. Some STS diagnoses, such as anaplastic rhabdomyosarcoma, are associated with high heritability and other STS, such as Ewing sarcoma, are notably absent from known CPS. Recognizing when a STS is more likely to be hereditary can influence clinical management. Individuals diagnosed with STS due to CPS may be at risk for other malignancies and should undergo additional surveillance for early detection. Additionally, family members should undergo genetic testing as they also may be at risk to develop STS and other CPS-associated malignancies. Some underlying cancer predisposition diagnoses may have implications for the treatment of a concurrent malignancy as in the case of PARP inhibitor therapy in the setting of homologous recombination deficiency. This review summarizes current knowledge of selected STS and their associations with CPS.
High-speed sub-threshold operation of carbon nanotube interconnects

Sub-threshold voltage operated circuits are the future for ultra-low-power applications. These circuits are inherently slow due to the very small sub-threshold currents. Here, the authors propose two approaches for improving the speed of SWCNT bundle interconnects driven by CNTFET-based circuits under sub-threshold conditions. First, the authors modulate the channel length of the CNTFETs that are used in the driver circuits to increase sub-threshold output current. The output current is maximum when the channel length is optimised to 15 nm. Second, the authors design driver circuits made of CNTFET-based inverters and transmission gates for SWCNT bundle interconnects at sub-threshold voltages. The authors consider five different configurations of the driver and load circuits. SPICE simulations show that transmission gates play a vital role in driver circuits by reducing the propagation delay and increasing the switching speed at high frequencies. Finally, the authors perform temperature-dependent analysis of the best cases from the proposed circuits and show that the propagation delay and power dissipated by them increases drastically at increased temperatures up to 500 K.
Preliminary Result of Ionospheric Channel Characteristic Observation Over Java Island, Indonesia

Ionosphere channel characteristic is needed for designing a digital ionosphere communication system. Although International Telecommunication Union (ITU) already provide the general classification of earth ionosphere channel characteristic in three different conditions and three different regions, the empirical data are still needed in order to verify and enrich the information of channel characteristic for real implementation purposes. One of the methods that use to obtain the channel characteristic is the channel impulse response (CIR) observation. In this paper, the preliminary results of ionosphere channel characteristic observation over Java island Indonesia using CIR method are reported. As part of low latitude and Equatorial Ionosphere Anomaly (EIA) region, the Power Delay Profile (PDP) and root mean square (r.m.s) of time delay from the channel characteristic observation are given. That information is potential to be used in the design of digital ionosphere communication system.
PaFPN-SOLO: A SOLO-based Image Instance Segmentation Algorithm

In order to improve the image instance segmentation algorithm due to the long propagation path of the underlying location information and the slow speed of convolutional operations in the process of capturing long-distance dependencies due to low computational efficiency, a PaFPN-SOLO algorithm is proposed in this paper. By adding Non-local operation to the ResNet backbone, the feature information of the image in the feature extraction process is better preserved; by using the bottom-up path augmentation method, more accurate position information is extracted on the lower feature layers, which not only improves the feature structure localization ability of the network model, but also shortens the information propagation path between the feature layers. The experimental results show that the algorithm in this paper has good segmentation effect on both COCO2017 and Cityscapes datasets, and the average segmentation accuracy reaches 56% and 47.3%, respectively, which improves 4.4% and 7.4% compared with the original SOLO network, respectively.
Study of Absorbing CO2 from Emissions Using a Spray Tower

In order to reduce the environmental impact caused by CO2 emissions from ships and achieve the goal of green shipping, a spray tower using NaOH solution for the absorption of CO2 has been established in this paper. Using the characteristics of a 6135G128ZCa marine diesel engine, the CO2 absorption system was designed and mathematical models of CO2 absorption efficiency were developed. The effects of the variation in engine exhaust gas temperature, the concentration of NaOH solution, the exhaust gas velocity, different load conditions, and different nozzle types on the absorption efficiency of CO2 were thoroughly investigated experimentally. Moreover, the mechanism of CO2 absorption was analyzed. The developed model was verified by comparing the test results with the simulation results. The results of the study proved that using NaOH solution to absorb CO2 from ship exhausts could reduce the level of CO2 emissions from ships by more than 20%, which indicates that this technology could be used in the future to reduce the level of CO2 emissions from ships.
Water economy with smart water system in the City of Carouge

This paper describes the ongoing efforts on efficient water resource management in the city of Carouge, Switzerland, tackling Sustainable Development Goals on water resources. The city handles two unique use cases that connect water economy with urban agriculture and quality of water resources related to the health of citizens. Through the H2020 European project NAIADES, cloud based IoT solutions with integrated AI technology and consumer awareness are being developed. Further efforts will be continued with a focus on collecting more data for AI systems and enhancing data integrity by adding blockchain based data security solutions.
Flavonoid and Phenolic Acid Profiles of Dehulled and Whole Vigna subterranea (L.) Verdc Seeds Commonly Consumed in South Africa

Bambara groundnut (BGN) is an underexploited crop with a rich nutrient content and is used in traditional medicine, but limited information is available on the quantitative characterization of its flavonoids and phenolic acids. We investigated the phenolic profile of whole seeds and cotyledons of five BGN varieties consumed in South Africa using UPLC-qTOF-MS and GC-MS. Twenty-six phenolic compounds were detected/quantified in whole seeds and twenty-four in cotyledon, with six unidentified compounds. Flavonoids include flavan-3-ol (catechin, catechin hexoside-A, catechin hexoside-B), flavonol (quercetin, quercetin-3-O-glucoside, rutin, myricetin, kaempherol), hydroxybenzoic acid (4-Hydroxybenzoic, 2,6 Dimethoxybenzoic, protocatechuic, vanillic, syringic, syringaldehyde, gallic acids), hydroxycinnamic acid (trans-cinnamic, p-coumaric, caffeic, ferulic acids) and lignan (medioresinol). The predominant flavonoids were catechin/derivatives, with the highest content (78.56 mg/g) found in brown BGN. Trans-cinnamic and ferulic acids were dominant phenolic acid. Cotyledons of brown and brown-eyed BGN (317.71 and 378.59 µg/g) had the highest trans-cinnamic acid content, while red seeds had the highest ferulic acid (314.76 µg/g) content. Colored BGN had a significantly (p < 0.05) higher content of these components. Whole BGN contained significantly (p < 0.05) higher amount of flavonoids and phenolic acids, except for the trans-cinnamic acid. The rich flavonoid and phenolic acid content of BGN seeds highlights the fact that it is a good source of dietary phenolics with potential health-promoting properties.
SECURE CLOUD ACCESS USING AES ENCRYPTION AND
DECRYPTION ALGORITHM

Distributed resources are shared in an open environment through network in cloud computing. As aresult, users may simply access their data from any location. Security and privacy concerns are present at the same time for a variety of reasons. First, there has been a significant advancement in network technology. Anotheris the rising need for processing power, which forces many businesses to outsource their data storage. Therefore,in an unrestricted cloud environment where the earner is unreliable, there is a necessity for protected cloud packing services. In a cloud computing context, this article discusses several data safety and confidentiality protection concerns and suggests a technique for delivering security services including authentication, authorisation, and confidentiality as well as monitoring in real time. Using the 128 bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), data security and confidentiality are improved. In the suggested method, information is encodedusing AES before being uploaded to the cloud. The suggested model prevents unwanted access to user data by using the Mail Service warning mechanism.
Quadsight® Vision System in Adverse Weather Maximizing the benefits of visible and thermal cameras

Autonomous vehicles are currently one of the most popular research topics in computer vision. United Nations Economic Commission for Europe recently proposed a regulation for SAE level 3 automated driving systems. The current Operational Design Domains (ODD) are highway, slow speed (i.e. traffic jam), and clear weather conditions. Research is steadily creeping towards a focus on harsh weather conditions. There are now two major issues to investigate: (1) knowing how to characterize ODD and (2) extending ODD to include ‘new’ conditions. This investigation is being carried out within the framework of the AWARD project at Cerema's PAVIN platform. Foresight Automotive's QuadSight® vision system was tested under a range of artificially reproduced weather conditions. The novelty of this work is to present results of a 3D object detection ODD characterization: (a) on a commercially ready system, (b) using visible and thermal wavelengths, and (c) in controlled fog and rain conditions. The use of dual visible and long-wave infrared thermal sensors in stereo is essential to the all-weather detection of pedestrians and vehicles. The thermal sensor is essential in challenging conditions such as nighttime or adverse weather conditions. Rain and low lighting conditions pose no problem for the QuadSight system. The system also performs well in foggy conditions, with the only exception of compromised performance in very dense fog.
Be(e)ha(i)viour(e): assessment of honey consumption in Europe

PurposeHoney is a product that has been consumed for thousands of years owing to honey's nutritional value and unique properties. This survey aimed to assess factors affecting consumer behaviour for honey in countries of the Balkans and Western Europe, on a comparative basis.Design/methodology/approachThe high importance of honey consumption along with findings from previous surveys on consumer behaviour are included in the introduction chapter. Based on these, and focussing on the fundamental consumer behaviour theories (stimulus-organism-response (SOR) model, theory of planned behaviour (TPB), and health belief model (HBM)), a questionnaire was designed and answered by 2,113 individuals from the Balkans and Western Europe, of which 2,088 were honey consumers. Principal component analysis (PCA) analysis was used to interpret the results.FindingsAccording to the analysis, both Western Europeans and Balkans consume honey weekly, whilst only a few consume honey daily. A crucial difference between the two samples is that Western Europeans consider honey to be an expensive product, whilst Balkans considers honey's price acceptable. In general, men consume more honey than women, and households with children purchase honey more often and in more significant quantities. In conclusion, the main reason affecting European honey consumption is the health impact, which is related to therapeutic properties and high nutritional value of honey.Originality/valuePCA results clarified the factors affecting honey consumption, whilst at the same time, consumer profiles of Balkan and Western European consumers were outlined and compared with each other, outlining a more detailed description of honey consumption in Europe.
Broad Elastic Softening of (Mg,Fe)O Ferropericlase Across the Iron Spin Crossover and a Mixed‐Spin Lower Mantle

The elastic bulk modulus softening of (Mg,Fe)O ferropericlase across the iron spin crossover induces dramatic changes in its physical properties, including seismic P‐velocities and viscosity. Here, we performed compression of powders of (Mg0.8‐0.9Fe0.2‐0.1)O in a piezo‐driven dynamic Diamond Anvil Cell (dDAC) and derive the bulk modulus by differentiation of pressure and volume data, providing first data on the broadness of the elastic softening for ferropericlase with mantle‐relevant compositions. We complement our experimental results with theoretical calculations that extend previous studies by considering multiple random configurations of iron, and going beyond treating high‐ and low‐spin iron as an ideal solution. Both experiments and computations show a broad and asymmetric softening of the bulk modulus, and suggest that the softening is sensitive to the distribution of iron in the ferropericlase structure. Our high‐temperature calculations show that mixed‐spin (Mg,Fe)O dominates the lower mantle at all depths below 1,000 km. In contrast to most previous works, we find that ferropericlase will not exist in pure low‐spin state along a typical mantle geotherm. Based on our model, the physical properties of ferropericlase will show significant lateral variation at depths below 1,400 km, with the strongest effects expected between 2,000 and 2,600 km.