Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Incidence, Clinical Presentation and Trends in Indication for Diagnostic Work-Up of Small Intestinal and Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumors

Background: The incidence of small intestinal (SI) and pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (siNETs and pNETs) seems to have increased. The increased frequency of incidental findings might be a possible explanation. The study aimed to examine (1) changes in incidence and the stage at diagnosis (2010–2011 vs. 2019–2020), (2) changes in the initial indication for diagnostic workup and 3) the differences in stage between incidentally discovered vs. symptomatic disease during the entire study period. Methods: We performed a retrospective study, that includes consecutive siNET and pNET patients referred to the Copenhagen ENETS center of excellence in 2010–2011 and 2019–2020. Results: The annual incidence of siNET per 100,000 increased from 1.39 to 1.84, (p = 0.05). There was no change in the stage at diagnosis, and in both periods approximately 30% of patients were incidentally diagnosed (p = 0.62). Dissemination was found in 72/121 (60%) of symptomatic vs. 22/50 (44%) of incidentally discovered SI tumors in the entire cohort, (p = 0.06). The annual incidence of pNET increased from 0.42 to 1.39 per 100,000, (p < 0.001). The proportion of patients with disseminated disease decreased from 8/21 (38%) to 12/75 (16%), (p = 0.02) and the number of incidental findings increased from 4/21 (19%) to 43/75 (57%), (p = 0.002). More symptomatic patients had disseminated disease compared to patients with incidentally discovered tumors (15/49 (31%) vs. 5/47 (11%), (p = 0.01)). Conclusion: The incidence of siNET and pNETs increased over the past decade. For siNETs, the stage of disease and the distribution of symptomatic vs. incidentally discovered tumors were unchanged between the two periods. Patients with pNETs presented with more local and incidentally discovered tumors in the latter period. Patients with incidentally discovered siNETs had disseminated disease in 44% of the overall cases. The vast majority of incidentally found pNETs were localized.
Methylmercury-Induced Metabolic Alterations in Caenorhabditis elegans Are Diet-Dependent

Methylmercury (MeHg) is a well-known neurotoxicant; however, its role in metabolic diseases has been gaining wider attention. Chronic exposure to MeHg in human populations shows an association with diabetes mellitus and metabolic syndrome (MS). As the incidences of both obesity and MS are on the rise globally, it is important to understand the potential role of MeHg in the development of the disease. There is a dearth of information on dietary interactions between MeHg and lipids, which play an important role in developing MS. We have previously shown that MeHg increases food seeking behaviors, lipid levels, fat storage, and pro-adipogenic gene expression in C. elegans fed the standard OP50 Escherichia coli diet. However, we hypothesized that these metabolic changes could be prevented if the worms were fed a bacterial diet lower in lipid content. We tested whether C. elegans developed metabolic alterations in response to MeHg if they were fed two alternative E. coli strains (HT115 and HB101) that are known absorb significantly less lipids from their media. Additionally, to explore the effect of a high-lipid and high-cholesterol diet on MeHg-induced metabolic dysfunction, we supplemented the OP50 strain with twice the standard concentration of cholesterol in the nematode growth media. Wild-type worms fed either the HB101 or HT115 diet were more resistant to MeHg than the worms fed the OP50 diet, showing a significant right-hand shift in the dose–response survival curve. Worms fed the OP50 diet supplemented with cholesterol were more sensitive to MeHg, showing a significant left-hand shift in the dose–response survival curve. Changes in sensitivity to MeHg by differential diet were not due to altered MeHg intake in the worms as measured by inductively coupled mass spectrometry. Worms fed the low-fat diets showed protection from MeHg-induced metabolic changes, including decreased food consumption, lower triglyceride content, and lower fat storage than the worms fed either of the higher-fat diets. Oxidative stress is a common characteristic of both MeHg exposure and high-fat diets. Worms fed either OP50 or OP50 supplemented with cholesterol and treated with MeHg had significantly higher levels of reactive oxygen species, carbonylated proteins, and loss of glutathione than the worms fed the HT115 or HB101 low-lipid diets. Taken together, our data suggest a synergistic effect of MeHg and dietary lipid levels on MeHg toxicity and fat metabolism in C. elegans, which may affect the ability of MeHg to cause metabolic dysfunction.
1/f noise in pentacene organic thin film transistors

We report on the flicker (1/f ) noise in pentacene organic thin film transistors (TFTs) of different designs. Our studies show that the TFT design affects the noise level and the noise dependence on the gate- and drain-source biases. The measured noise level was the lowest for the TFTs with a top source and drain contacts design. For these devices, the noise dependence at low drain current values resembled that for n-type crystalline Si metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors. The extracted Hooge parameter α, which allows comparing the noise level in different devices and materials, was 0.045 for the top-contact TFTs. This parameter value is several orders of magnitude lower than that for conducting polymers and only several times higher than that for hydrogenated amorphous Si (α-Si:H) TFTs. The bottom source and drain contacts TFTs had a much higher noise level with a noise dependence on the terminal voltages that differed from the noise voltage dependence for the top-contact TFTs. The Hooge p.
Assessment of heavy metal pollution in agricultural soil around a gold mining area in Yitong County, China, based on satellite hyperspectral imagery

Abstract. Soil is one of the essential natural resources that is at risk from heavy metal pollution. The traditional sampling method for soil heavy metal monitoring and assessment cannot meet the requirements for large-scale areas. The purpose of this study was to estimate the soil heavy metal concentrations based on Gaofen 5 (GF5) satellite hyperspectral imagery for the assessment of the heavy metal pollution in the study area and to analyze the scale effect under different resolutions. A total of 96 topsoil samples were collected in this work, and these samples were analyzed for the arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), nickel (Ni), lead (Pb), and zinc (Zn) contents. To solve the problem of the insignificant features caused by the complex imaging conditions of spaceborne hyperspectral satellite imagery, the binary weight symbiotic organisms search algorithm (BWSOS) was developed. After feature selection based on the BWSOS method, the heavy metal contents are inverted by the use of support vector machine regression. The experimental results show that the BWSOS feature selection method shows a good performance, with the Rp2 values for As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn being 0.67, 0.68, 0.73, 0.71, 0.66, 0.65, and 0.71, respectively. Based on the estimated heavy metal concentration maps, the geoaccumulation index (Igeo), the pollution index, and the potential ecological risk index were calculated to assess the heavy metal pollution status in the study area. The results showed that only As contamination is present at a significant level, but with a low level of potential risk for the whole study area. A comparison with the results obtained using HyMap airborne hyperspectral imagery showed that the GF5 satellite hyperspectral imagery can obtain consistent results for heavy metal pollution assessment. The airborne hyperspectral imagery can provide more fine details, whereas the spaceborne hyperspectral imagery is more suitable for large-scale pollution assessment at a low cost.
InGaAs SPAD and electronics for low time jitter and low noise

We demonstrate that III-V photodetectors operated with dedicated front-end electronics and cooled at sufficiently low temperature (220 K or lower) can be exploited as Single-Photon Avalanche-Diodes (SPAD) for near-infrared photon counting and timing. Low dark-count rate can be achieved in gated-mode operation, though InGaAs/InP SPADs are plagued by strong avalanche carrier trapping that leads to afterpulsing. In order to reach the best performance, we designed fast circuits for gating SPADs and properly sensing the photoninduced avalanche pulse, cancelling spurious spikes due to gate transients thus accurately extracting photon timing information, and reducing avalanche charge thus minimizing afterpulsing. We report the results obtained with In0.53Ga0. 47As/InP SPADs employing an integrated Active Quenching Circuit, designed for gated-mode operation at cryogenic temperature, and a fast signal pick-up network for extracting the best timing resolution. The joint use of a good InGaAs/InP detector and the presented electronics allows to reach low dark count rate (below 20 kHz), low time jitter (about 40 psFWHM), high operation frequency (up to 100 kHz) with limited afterpulsing even when the photodetector is enabled for long gate-on times (even longer than 100 ns).
Penentuan Posisi SUmber Bising pada Area Turbine Geared Compressor Set di PT. Gresik Power Indonesia (The Linde Group) dengan Beamforming

Pada dunia industri kebisingan merupakan hal yang wajib untuk dikendalikan. Identifikasi sumber bising adalah satu metode penting untuk mengoptimalkan emisi bising yang berasal dari area tersebut. Obyek penelitian ini adalah pada area steam turbine geared compressor set di LINDE GROUP. Dalam menentukan posisi sumber bising di suatu area, umumnya mengggunakan metode noise mapping dengan Sound Level Meter. Seiring dengan pesatnya perkembangan di bidang teknologi dan matematika, dari sinilah dikembangkan teknik alternatif untuk menentukan sumber bising pada suatu area dengan beamforming menggunakan sensor mikrofon array. Ada dua jenis metode beamforming yang digunakan yaitu Delay and Sum beamforming dan Minimum Variance Distortionless Response (MVDR) beamforming. Perekaman sinyal suara di Laboratorium dilakukan dengan menggunakan 1 mikrofon pada jarak 15 cm untuk mendapatkan sinyal baseline dan kombinasi 4 mikrofon pada jarak 90 cm terhadap sumber bunyi dengan kombinasi sudut 0°, +45° dan -45°. Sedangkan pada perekaman sinyal suara di Linde Group dilakukan dengan menggunakan 1 mikrofon pada jarak 15 cm untuk mendapatkan sinyal baseline dan kombinasi 4 mikrofon pada jarak 30 cm. Untuk mengetahui unjuk kerja dari kedua metode maka dilakukan perhitungan mean square error (MSE). Hasil penelitian yang didapatkan adalah nilai MSE MVDR beamforming di Linde Group terkecil bernilai 0.0899 yang terdapat pada titik 1 yang terletak pada belokan pipa masukan menuju kompresor stage 2. Sedangkan dengan analisa frekuensi sesaat menggunakan perhitungan Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) didapatkan adalah pola sinyal akustik dari area steam turbine geared compressor set dengan frekuensi yang selalu muncul dengan nilai amplitudo tertinggi yaitu pada 1358 Hz dengan nilai 0.0491. Sedangkan untuk validasi dengan Sound Level Meter (SLM) amplitudo tertinggi juga muncul pada frekuensi sekitar 1000Hz sampai dengan 1500 Hz dengan nilai power nya sebesar 122 dB.
Workload Assessment of IN-CAB Text Message System and Cellular Phone Use by Heavy Vehicle Drivers on the Road

This study assessed the driver workload imposed by a text messaging system and cellular phone on heavy vehicle drivers under various driving conditions. Sixteen (16) professional commercial vehicle operation (CVO) licensed drivers drove an instrumented heavy truck over a 4-hour period on public roads under various conditions of ambient lighting (day or night), traffic density (light or heavy), and road type (divided or undivided). Within driving condition combinations, various levels of text message reading, cellular phone dialing, radio tuning, and communications dialogue were completed by the driver. Continuous measures were taken of visual allocation, steering and accelerator activity, speed maintenance and lane-keeping performance. Results of in-vehicle device use are presented and provide insights into useful workload measures and methods, as well as a contribution to the literature on cellular phone and in-vehicle text messaging system ergonomics.
Preventing Significant Deterioration Under the Clean Air Act: The BACT Requirement and BACT Definition

This Article is the fifth in a series on the Clean Air Act (CAA) Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) program. The first four Articles, which appeared in the December 2005, January 2006, January 2008, and January 2011 issues of the Environmental Law Reporter, focused on baselines, increments and ceilings, on the permit triggers for new facilities, and on area classification and redesignation. This Article examines the requirement that major emitting facilities comply with Best Available Control Technology (BACT) standards for each pollutant subject to regulation under the CAA. This requirement — initially thought to be inconsequential — has now become a dominant feature of the PSD program, for the first time subjecting greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources to federally mandated pollution control standards.
Use of Cardiac Contractility Modulation in an Older Patient with Non-Ischemic Dilated Cardiomyopathy: A Case Report

Cardiac contractility modulation (CCM) is a novel device-based therapy used in patients with HFrEF. CCM therapy is associated with an improvement in exercise tolerance, increased quality of life, reduced HF hospitalizations, and reverse remodelling of the left ventricle in patients with HFrEF. In this case, we report the clinical benefit of CCM in an older patient with advanced HFrEF due to ischemic dilated cardiomyopathy with frequent heart failure-related hospitalizations and poor quality of life despite optimal medical therapy.
Gut Microbiota Regulation and Their Implication in the Development of Neurodegenerative Disease

In recent years, human gut microbiota have become one of the most promising areas of microorganism research; meanwhile, the inter-relation between the gut microbiota and various human diseases is a primary focus. As is demonstrated by the accumulating evidence, the gastrointestinal tract and central nervous system interact through the gut–brain axis, which includes neuronal, immune-mediated and metabolite-mediated pathways. Additionally, recent progress from both preclinical and clinical studies indicated that gut microbiota play a pivotal role in gut–brain interactions, whereas the imbalance of the gut microbiota composition may be associated with the pathogenesis of neurological diseases (particularly neurodegenerative diseases), the underlying mechanism of which is insufficiently studied. This review aims to highlight the relationship between gut microbiota and neurodegenerative diseases, and to contribute to our understanding of the function of gut microbiota in neurodegeneration, as well as their relevant mechanisms. Furthermore, we also discuss the current application and future prospects of microbiota-associated therapy, including probiotics and fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), potentially shedding new light on the research of neurodegeneration.
Detection and classification of Non-Proliferative Diabetic Retinopathy using a Back-Propagation neural network

One of the most serious complications of type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is the Diabetic Retinopathy (DR). DR is a silent disease and is only recognized when the changes on the retina have progressed to a level at which treatment turns complicate, so an early diagnosis and referral to an ophthalmologist or optometrist for the management of this disease can prevent 98% of severe visual loss. The aim of this work is to automatically identify Non Diabetic Retinopathy (NDR), and Background Retinopathy using fundus images. Our results show a classification accuracy of 92%, with sensitivity and specifity of 95%.
Using the CLEAN algorithm to restore undersampled synthetic aperture sonar images

We present an implementation of the CLEAN algorithm for synthetic aperture sonar. The algorithm is designed to restore image degradation due to gaps in data. We have studied its performance on a variety of scenes based on both simulated and real sonar data. When the scene is composed of point-like targets, the algorithm performs very well, rapidly retrieving the true image that would be derived from fully sampled data. This success can be achieved in spite of a substantial 50% undersampling fraction, corresponding to a platform tow-speed twice as fast as the synthetic aperture limit. However, when the scene is composed of extended bright regions, the algorithm tends to either converge extremely slowly, or fail entirely. Quantitative measures of the rate and degree of restoration are discussed, as well as images before and after the CLEAN process. If the data gaps are caused by towing a sonar platform at a speed in excess of the natural synthetic aperture limit, the successful repair of images derived from undersampled data permits an acceleration in the rate at which the seafloor may be surveyed for mines.
Performance Comparison for Single-User and Multi-User Network MIMO Cellular Systems with Power Management

Cellular mobile systems aim at aggressive spectrum reuse to achieve high spectral efficiency. Unfortunately, this leads to unacceptable interference near cell borders. To control this, network multi-input multiple-output (MIMO) can be adopted to improve coverage and cell-edge throughput through multi-cell cooperation. With network MIMO, multiple geographically separated base stations (BSs) cooperatively serve their cell-edge users (CEUs) using their antennas, acting together as a network of distributed antenna array. It can be single-user (SU) or multi-user (MU) network MIMO by coordinating channel allocation in adjacent cells. In this paper, we make a capacity comparison of SU- and MU-network MIMO. In network MIMO, a collaborative BS simultaneously serves its own cell-center users (CCUs) and CEUs, and the CEUs of other partner BSs under a power constraint. As a result, power management among three types of users (intra-cell CCUs/CEUs, inter-cell CEUs) becomes necessary. Accordingly, we propose power management methods to help raise the signal strength of inter-cell CEUs and in the meantime gratify the performance of intra-cell users. Simulation results show that MU-network MIMO with superposition coding offers much better CEU capacity than SU-network MIMO. As for the CCU capacity, MU-network MIMO is generally better than SU-network MIMO.
Observations on the embryonic development of domestic meat-type guinea fowl (Numida meleagris)

Abstract Guinea fowl breeding for meat production is widespread across Europe and the USA. For hatcheries to achieve their output potentials, they need in-depth knowledge about incubation techniques and guinea fowl embryonic development. The aim of this study was to provide updated quantitative data on the developing meat-type strain embryo and to describe its embryonic growth pattern in terms of embryonic weight modelled using Gompertz and logistic functions. Eggs from a 56-week-old genetically controlled flock (Galor S.A.S., Amboise, France) were individually weighed and incubated according to good hatchery practices. 10 embryos were randomly removed every 12 h through to hour 192 of incubation, and thereafter every 24 h. Incubation traits, blastoderm diameter, vitelline circulation diameter, and embryo body weight were recorded, and the mean daily wet embryo-specific mass was calculated. During each session, photographic documentation of the embryos was also obtained, including a general view of the egg content as well as the isolated embryonic body. Embryonic growth curves were estimated using Gompertz and logistic functions, and their parameters are given. High fertility (96%) and hatchability (81%) rates were observed, and the mean keet weight was 32 g at hatch. The accuracy of the curve fit was high for both models. The curves’ inflection points occurred on days 21 and 23 for the logistic and Gompertz models, respectively, demonstrating an embryonic growth pattern typical of a precocial bird species. A photographic chart of the in-ovo chronological development of guinea fowl is provided. HIGHLIGHTS The study follows the incubation and embryonic development of meat-type guinea fowl (Numida meleagris). Daily photographic images and graphical growth models of body weight document the birds’ embryonic development. The results provide effective practical help for hatchery practices by enabling the determination of embryo age.
Making transport work for women and men : challenges and opportunities in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region - lessons from case studies

Transport is not 'gender neutral'. Men and women hold different socio-economic roles and responsibilities that are associated with different patterns of transport access, needs, and use. Yet, there is often not much recorded evidence on the differences in gender travel needs between men and women, in urban areas in particular. Transport planning has not routinely addressed these differences and sex-disaggregated data on transport needs and patterns is very limited. The present regional report summarizes the findings and recommendations of four separate case studies on gender and transport conducted in Casablanca, Morocco, Sana'a and rural Yemen, and Nablus, Jenin, and Tulkarem in the northern part of the West Bank, during between September 2008 and September 2009. The main objective with summarizing the case studies into a regional report is to provide a regional overview relevant for a better understanding of how transport infrastructure and services are facilitating or constraining mobility by gender in the MENA region. In particular, the gender differences in access to resources, markets training, information and employment. The report also aims to review other country experience and good practice to help identify priority areas for public intervention to improve women's mobility and enhance their access to economic empowerment relevant for MENA and other regions.
An opportunistic maintenance strategy for wind turbines

Funding information National Natural Science Foundation of China, Grant/Award Number: 51775186; Science and Technology Plan Projects of Hebei, Grant/Award Number: 15214307D Abstract Maintenance strategies aim at reduction of the operation and maintenance cost of wind turbines. An opportunistic maintenance strategy offers cost advantages over the traditional preventive replacement maintenance strategy by considering cost dependency among maintenance activities. A new opportunistic maintenance strategy of wind turbines is proposed here. First, the proposed strategy includes two sets of reliability thresholds to handle subassemblies those are in operational and failed wind turbines. Using the reliability thresholds, ten maintenance modes and their service conditions are presented. Second, the Weibull distribution with an age reduction factor is introduced to describe reliability variation of subassemblies under imperfect maintenance. Third, the maintenance cost in each maintenance mode is expressed by a reliability variation-based function that is dependent on the stage of maintenance activities. Fourth, due to the randomness of failures, the expected total maintenance cost is determined with Monte Carlo simulation. The proposed approach has been validated with the data provided by a wind farm located in Northern China.