Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparative Analyses of Single-Cell Transcriptomic Profiles between In Vitro Totipotent Blastomere-like Cells and In Vivo Early Mouse Embryonic Cells

The developmental potential within pluripotent cells in the canonical model is restricted to embryonic tissues, whereas totipotent cells can differentiate into both embryonic and extraembryonic tissues. Currently, the ability to culture in vitro totipotent cells possessing molecular and functional features like those of an early embryo in vivo has been a challenge. Recently, it was reported that treatment with a single spliceosome inhibitor, pladienolide B (plaB), can successfully reprogram mouse pluripotent stem cells into totipotent blastomere-like cells (TBLCs) in vitro. The TBLCs exhibited totipotency transcriptionally and acquired expanded developmental potential with the ability to yield various embryonic and extraembryonic tissues that may be employed as novel mouse developmental cell models. However, it is disputed whether TBLCs are ‘true’ totipotent stem cells equivalent to in vivo two-cell stage embryos. To address this question, single-cell RNA sequencing was applied to TBLCs and cells from early mouse embryonic developmental stages and the data were integrated using canonical correlation analyses. Differential expression analyses were performed between TBLCs and multi-embryonic cell stages to identify differentially expressed genes. Remarkably, a subpopulation within the TBLCs population expressed a high level of the totipotent-related genes Zscan4s and displayed transcriptomic features similar to mouse two-cell stage embryonic cells. This study underscores the subtle differences between in vitro derived TBLCs and in vivo mouse early developmental cell stages at the single-cell transcriptomic level. Our study has identified a new experimental model for stem cell biology, namely ‘cluster 3’, as a subpopulation of TBLCs that can be molecularly defined as near totipotent cells.
Research and evaluation of ruts in the asphalt pavement on Lithuanian highways

AbstractWhen exposed to destructive climate and weather factors and heavy vehicle loads, the pavement wears and deflects. In recent decades, apart from cracks and potholes, the depth of ruts grows and makes an increasing share of the pavement surface. The deeper are the tracks, the poorer are traffic conditions for fast-moving cars: drivers are struggling, speed is decreasing and the number of accidents is increasing. After track depth reaches a critical and permissible limit, the road surface must be repaired or speed limit has to be reduced. The work presents a theoretical analysis of track emergence causes and factors determining their depth. With the help of Mobile Road Research Laboratory RST 28, the track depth of all Lithuanian highways has been measured every 20 metres. The obtained data have been processed using the methods of mathematical statistics. Each road has a sample average of every rut, sample standard deviation and a coefficient of individually measured variation. The paper has drawn hi.
Technological interventions to reduce loneliness and social isolation among community-living older adults: A scoping review

Background: Loneliness and social isolation are recognized as significant challenges affecting older adults living in the community. In recent years, there has been an increase in the use of technological interventions to address these issues. Objective : The primary objective of this study is to provide a comprehensive overview of the types of technological interventions that have been developed to reduce loneliness and/or social isolation for community-dwelling older adults. The secondary objective is to compare via mapping the technological intervention article characteristics in terms of date of publication, country of publication, study design, sample characteristics, loneliness/ social isolation measure, and efficacy/support for the intervention. Method : Using the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) methodology (Joanna Briggs Institute, 2011) and the PRISMA extension for systematic/scoping reviews, a scoping review of seven aca- demic databases (Academic Search Premier, Ageline, Global Health, MEDLINE, PsycIN-FO, Web of Science and ClinicalTrials.gov) was conducted. Results : This scoping review identified 26 technological approaches to reducing loneliness and social isolation that met our criteria. We found three groupings; (1) computer and tablet-based competence training; (2) health-oriented technical interventions; and 3) Video games and animatronic pets interventions. The majority of technological interven- tions (15 out of 26) were effective in demonstrating support for reductions in loneliness and/or social isolation among older adults. Issues of accessibility, technology literacy, and complexity of the intervention were found to act as barriers to uptake. Conclusion: A variety of technologies have been employed to reduce social and loneli- ness amongst older adults, with a growing body of evidence in support of technology-driven interventions.
An overview on reliability, availability, maintainability and supportability (RAMS) engineering

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of RAMS engineering in industry and research.Design/methodology/approach – A range of research articles (1988‐2005) covering RAMS engineering is discussed to provide a practical and theoretical overview of RAMS engineering in industry and research.Findings – The paper provides information about the current scenario and also about the past scenario of RAMS engineering in research and industry. Research limitations/implications – This paper reviews much of the literature on RAMS engineering. The literature is collected from major journals and conference proceedings, the period covered is from 1988 to 2005. The authors have tried to make it reasonably comprehensive, but those papers which are not included were either inadvertently overlooked or considered peripheral to this survey. In the present work the authors have only considered those articles which have included two or more aspects of RAMS. Practical implications – The paper is a very useful.
Prevalence and Factors Associated with Parents’ Non-Intention to Vaccinate Their Children and Adolescents against COVID-19 in Latin America and the Caribbean

We aimed to estimate the prevalence and factors associated with parents’ non-intention to vaccinate their children and adolescents against COVID-19 in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). We performed a secondary analysis using a database generated by the University of Maryland and Facebook (Facebook, Inc., Menlo Park, CA, USA). We included adult (18 and over) Facebook users residing in LAC who responded to the survey between 20 May 2021 and 14 July 2021. We included sociodemographic characteristics, comorbidities, mental health, economic and food insecurity, compliance with mitigation strategies against COVID-19, and practices related to vaccination against this disease. We estimated the crude (cPR) and adjusted (aPR) prevalence ratios with their respective 95%CI. We analyzed a sample of 227,740 adults from 20 LAC countries. The prevalence of parents’ non-intention to vaccinate their children and adolescents against COVID-19 was 7.8% (n = 15,196). An age above 35 years old, educational level above college, compliance with physical distancing, use of masks, having economic insecurity, having had COVID-19, anxiety symptoms, depressive symptoms, having a chronic condition or two or more comorbidities, and being vaccinated were associated with a lower prevalence of non-intention to vaccinate children and adolescents against COVID-19. Living in a town, a village, or a rural area was associated with a higher prevalence of non-intention to vaccinate children and adolescents against COVID-19. Approximately nine out of ten parents in LAC intended to vaccinate their children and adolescents against COVID-19. Our results allow for understanding parents’ intentions to vaccinate children and adolescents and help promote and develop education strategies for national vaccination plans against COVID-19.
A Simple Capacitor Voltage Balancing Method with a Fundamental Sorting Frequency for Modular Multilevel Converters

A Fundamental Frequency Sorting Algorithm (FFSA) is proposed in this paper to balance the voltages of floating dc capacitors for Modular Multilevel Converters (MMCs). The main idea is to change the sequences of the CPS-PWM carriers according to the capacitor voltage increments during the previous fundamental period. Excessive frequent sorting is avoided and many calculating resources are saved for the controller. As a result, more sub-modules can be dealt with. Furthermore, it does not need to measure the arm currents. Therefore, the communication between the controllers can be simplified and the number of current sensors can be reduced. Moreover, the proposed balancing method guarantees that all of the switching frequencies of the sub-modules are equal to each other. This is quite beneficial for the thermal design of the sub-modules and the lifetime of the power switches. Simulation and experimental results acquired from a 9-level prototype verify the viability of the proposed balancing method.
The Research and Application of an IPv6 Firewall Based on Netfilter

Now IPv6 has been considered as one of the core standards for the next generation Internet Protocol. The network behavior and attack are quite different in IPv6 environment because of the difference between IPv4 and IPv6 Protocol. The increasing expansion of network scale and the exponential growth of network application are urging the research that a firewall for IPv6 environment should be deployed and implemented. This paper studies Netfilter architecture in detail, and explores the Shorewall6 firewall source codes. Furthermore, an IPv6 firewall based on Netfilter is implemented by modifying the Shorewall6 firewall source codes and adding some iptables rules according to the application environment. The implemented IPv6 firewall based on Netfilter makes it convenient for administrators to simplify IPv6 network administration tasks and has furthered the development of IPv6 firewall to some extent.
Low Temperature Electronics workshop

Interest in cool and cold electronics has increased markedly over the last five years. The benefits of low temperature operation have long been known, but until recently, efforts to commercialize moderate to high volume applications, such as high performance computing, employing high capacity chilling systems have universally failed. Powerful and simple cooling approaches combined with an increasing need for speed have reawakened interest in low temperature applications. The SEMITHERM Low Temperature Electronics workshop addresses the critical areas of cost effective cooling and issues associated with the application of chilling within high performance computers. Detailed discussions of below-ambient cooling of two commercially available computers, an enterprise server and a 1 GHz personal computer clearly overview the state-of-the-art. Efforts underway to develop smaller and colder cooling systems are also overviewed.
Optimization for Parameters of Generalized Bézier Patch

: In 2016, Várady, et al. introduced the generalized Bézier patch (GB-patch) using generalized barycentric coordinates and bivariate Bernstein functions. GB-patch has a simple control structure and wonderful geometric properties, but the parameters of Bernstein basis functions are rational polynomial of generalized barycentric coordinates. The linear form of generalized barycentric coordinates is used as parameters of the GB-patch. So, it is convenient to analyze the geometric properties of the patch. Furthermore, it is proved that the new GB-patch has the same blending condition as the original GB-patch between the shared boundary of adjacent patches. Next, the time complexity of the new GB-patch is compared to original GB-patch, which shows that the calculating time is reduced. Finally, several geometric examples are pre-sented to show that the geometric characteristics of the patch are almost the same as those of the original ones.
Electrical modeling of dielectric elastomer stack transducers

Performance of dielectric elastomer transducers (DEST) depends on mechanical and electrical parameters. For designing DEST it is therefore necessary to know the influences of these parameters on the overall performance. We show an electrical equivalent circuit valid for a transducer consisting of multiple layers and derive the electrical parameters of the circuit depending on transducers geometry and surface resistivity of the electrodes. This allows describing the DESTs dynamic behavior as a function of fabrication (layout, sheet and interconnection resistance), material (breakdown strength, permittivity) and driving (voltage) parameters. Using this electrical model transfer function and cut-off frequency are calculated, describing the influence of transducer capacitance, resistance and driving frequency on the achievable actuation deflection. Furthermore non ideal boundary effects influencing the capacitance value of the transducer are investigated by an electrostatic simulation and limits for presuming a simple plate capacitor model for calculating the transducer capacitance are derived. Results provide the plate capacitor model is a valid assumption for typical transducer configurations but for certain aspect ratios of electrode dimensions to dielectric thickness -- arising e.g. in the application of tactile interfaces -- the influence of boundary effects is to be considered.
Evaluation of passive boundary layer flow control techniques for aero-optic mitigation

Results of recent experimental measurements of the effect of passive boundary layer flow control method using Large-Eddy Break-Up devices on aero-optical distortions caused by turbulent subsonic boundary layers at a range of trans-sonic speeds are presented. Measurements were performed using a Malley probe to collect instantaneous onedimensional wavefronts with high resolution. Detailed statistical analysis of optical spectra of aero-optical distortions are presented in order to evaluate the effect of modified turbulent structures on optical wavefront fluctuations, and to assess the mitigating aero-optical effect of each flow control method. It was found that a long, at least 1.6 boundary-layer thicknesses, LEBU device, placed at 0.5. 0.6 boundary-layer thicknesses away from the wall resulted in significant, up to 33% reduction in overall level of aero-optical distortions. In addition, velocity profiles measured with hot-wires are presented and analyzed in order to investigate how the underlying large-scale flow structure is modified by the LEBU device.
Low-power low-voltage superior-order curvature corrected voltage reference

A complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) voltage reference with a logarithmic curvature-correction will be presented. The first-order compensation is realised using an original offset voltage follower (OVF) block as a proportional to absolute temperature (PTAT) voltage generator, with the advantages of reducing the silicon area and of increasing accuracy by replacing matched resistors with matched transistors. The new logarithmic curvature-correction technique will be implemented using an asymmetric differential amplifier (ADA) block for compensating the logarithmic temperature dependent term from the first-order compensated voltage reference. In order to increase the circuit accuracy, an original temperature-dependent current generator will be designed for computing the exact type of the implemented curvature-correction. The relatively small complexity of the current squarer allows an important increasing of the circuit accuracy that could be achieved by increasing the current generator complexity. As a result of operating most of the MOS transistors in weak inversion, the original proposed voltage reference could be valuable for low-power applications. The circuit is implemented in 0.35 μm CMOS technology and consumes only 60μA for t = 25°C, being supplied at the minimal supply voltage V DD = 1.75V. The temperature coefficient of the reference voltage is 8.7 ppm/°C, while the line sensitivity is 0.75 mV/V for a supply voltage between 1.75 V and 7 V.
Optical Flow-Based Monocular Vision/INS Integrated Navigation for Mobile Robot Indoors

This paper proposed a new algorithm for optical flow-based monocular vision (MV)/ inertial navigation system (INS) integrated navigation. In this mode, a downward-looking camera is used to get the image sequences, which is used to estimate the velocity of the mobile robot by using optical flow algorithm. INS is employed for the yaw variation. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed method, a real indoor test has done. The result shows that the proposed method has good performance for velocity estimation. It can be applied to the autonomous navigation of mobile robots when the Global Positioning System (GPS) and code wheel is unavailable.
Research on vehicle speed estimation method based on microphone array

In order to address the problems of high cost, inconvenient installation and susceptibility to weather conditions of existing vehicle speed measurement methods, this paper presents a novel differential beamforming-based vehicle speed measurement method, which applies differential microphone array beamforming techniques for vehicle speed measurement with better robustness in real-world environments. To evaluate the performance of the method on vehicle speed estimation, we conducted field experiments. The experimental results show that the method proposed in this paper has a lower cost of implementation and reduced computational complexity. Our algorithm produced better accuracy and performance in vehicle speed measurement (VSM).
Identification of Damping Characteristics of Viscoelastically Damped Structures Using Vibration Test Results

Damping plays an important role in structural stability and vibration control and so frequently special efforts are taken to increase structural damping, of which the most effective measure to date is the viscoelastic damping treatment. However, damping properties, especially those of viscoelastic damping, are the most difficult to model analytically but can only be revealed by vibration test. This paper examines the feasibility of identifying damping characteristics of viscoelastically damped structures whose damping and stiffness characteristics are frequency dependent by correlating finite element modelling with vibration test results and presents an effective method for achieving such an objective. Measured frequency response function data are used instead of conventional modal data, since in the case of viscoelastically damped structures that are frequency dependent modal data are not defined while frequency response functions can be easily measured. The method is developed based on the practical assumption that the measured coordinates are incomplete and the identified damping matrix is physically meaningful and possesses the same physical connectivity as that of the stiffness matrix. Computational aspects regarding the practical application of the proposed method are discussed. Several numerical case studies are given to demonstrate the practical applicability of the proposed method.
Smad3 deficiency improves islet-based therapy for diabetes and diabetic kidney injury by promoting β cell proliferation via the E2F3-dependent mechanism

Rationale: Poor β cell proliferation is one of the detrimental factors hindering islet cell replacement therapy for patients with diabetes. Smad3 is an important transcriptional factor of TGF-β signaling and has been shown to promote diabetes by inhibiting β cell proliferation. Therefore, we hypothesize that Smad3-deficient islets may be a novel cell replacement therapy for diabetes. Methods: We examined this hypothesis in streptozocin-induced type-1 diabetic mice and type-2 diabetic db/db mice by transplanting Smad3 knockout (KO) and wild type (WT) islets under the renal capsule, respectively. The effects of Smad3KO versus WT islet replacement therapy on diabetes and diabetic kidney injury were examined. In addition, RNA-seq was applied to identify the downstream target gene underlying Smad3-regulated β cell proliferation in Smad3KO-db/db versus Smad3WT-db/db mouse islets. Results: Compared to Smad3WT islet therapy, treatment with Smad3KO islets produced a much better therapeutic effect on both type-1 and type-2 diabetes by significantly lowering serum levels of blood glucose and HbA1c and protected against diabetic kidney injuries by preventing an increase in serum creatinine and the development of proteinuria, mesangial matrix expansion, and fibrosis. These were associated with a significant increase in grafted β cell proliferation and blood insulin levels, resulting in improved glucose intolerance. Mechanistically, RNA-seq revealed that compared with Smad3WT-db/db mouse islets, deletion of Smad3 from db/db mouse islets markedly upregulated E2F3, a pivotal regulator of cell cycle G1/S entry. Further studies found that Smad3 could bind to the promoter of E2F3, and thus inhibit β cell proliferation via an E2F3-dependent mechanism as silencing E2F3 abrogated the proliferative effect on Smad3KO β cells. Conclusion: Smad3-deficient islet replacement therapy can significantly improve both type-1 and type-2 diabetes and protect against diabetic kidney injury, which is mediated by a novel mechanism of E2F3-dependent β cell proliferation.
Dual‐mode ring resonators with inductive ω‐shaped perturbations for miniaturizations and dual‐bands

Novel inductive Ω‐shaped perturbations for dual‐mode ring resonators (DMRR) to design dual‐band band‐pass filter with size reduction are presented in this article. Both inductive Ω‐shaped perturbations in DMRR and DMDRR (Dual‐Mode Double Ring Resonator) are studied to improve the performance of the conventional DMRR and DMDRR. Significant size reductions over 56 and 10% are achieved at dual‐band 1.13 and 2.11 GHz, respectively. To obtain a lower insertion loss (2.49/0.75 dB), higher rejection (−19.93/−16.41 dB), and wider bandwidth (about 4.82/16.45%) responses, the miniaturized DMDRR filter are presented. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 51: 1986–1991, 2009; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.24502
Stability of a DPCM transmission system with an order t predictor

Bounded-input-bounded-output (BIBO) stability is investigated for a DPCM transmission system. For the input signal, the output is calculated by a nonlinear feedback loop. The quantizer characteristics can be taken as continuous in the feedforward path. The quantizer exhibits a saturation level and has a linear part with a variable slope greater than 1. In the feedback path, the linear filter R is recursive. The stability of R is sufficient to ensure the stability of the DPCM system. The case of an order-1 predictor has been investigated previously. In this work, the stability of an order-t predictor is considered. The main result is that the stability of R is not necessary. In the second-order case, the shape of the stability domain in terms of the prediction coefficients is investigated. >