Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Overview of Electrospinning for Tissue Engineering Applications

Tissue engineering (TE) is an emerging field of study that incorporates the principles of biology, medicine, and engineering for designing biological substitutes to maintain, restore, or improve tissue functions with the goal of avoiding organ transplantation. Amongst the various scaffolding techniques, electrospinning is one of the most widely used techniques to synthesise a nanofibrous scaffold. Electrospinning as a potential tissue engineering scaffolding technique has attracted a great deal of interest and has been widely discussed in many studies. The high surface-to-volume ratio of nanofibres, coupled with their ability to fabricate scaffolds that may mimic extracellular matrices, facilitates cell migration, proliferation, adhesion, and differentiation. These are all very desirable properties for TE applications. However, despite its widespread use and distinct advantages, electrospun scaffolds suffer from two major practical limitations: poor cell penetration and poor load-bearing applications. Furthermore, electrospun scaffolds have low mechanical strength. Several solutions have been offered by various research groups to overcome these limitations. This review provides an overview of the electrospinning techniques used to synthesise nanofibres for TE applications. In addition, we describe current research on nanofibre fabrication and characterisation, including the main limitations of electrospinning and some possible solutions to overcome these limitations.
Human Middle Ear Anatomy Based on Micro-Computed Tomography and Reconstruction: An Immersive Virtual Reality Development

Background: For almost a decade, virtual reality (VR) has been employed in otology simulation. The realism and accuracy of traditional three-dimensional (3D) mesh models of the middle ear from clinical CT have suffered because of their low resolution. Although micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) imaging overcomes resolution issues, its usage in virtual reality platforms has been limited due to the high computational requirements. The aim of this study was to optimize a high-resolution 3D human middle ear mesh model suitable for viewing and manipulation in an immersive VR environment using an HTC VIVE VR headset (HTC and Valve Corporation, USA) to enable a seamless middle ear anatomical visualisation viewing experience in VR while preserving anatomical accuracy. Methods: A high-resolution 3D mesh model of the human middle ear was reconstructed using micro-CT data with 28 μm voxel resolution. The models were optimised by tailoring the surface model polygon counts, file size, loading time, and frame rate. Results: The optimized middle ear model and its surrounding structures (polygon counts reduced from 21 million polygons to 2.5 million) could be uploaded and visualised in immersive VR at 82 frames per second with no VR-related motion sickness reported. Conclusion: High-resolution micro-CT data can be visualized in an immersive VR environment after optimisation. To our knowledge, this is the first report on overcoming the translational hurdle in middle ear applications of VR.
Computationally feasible bounds for representations of integers by ternary quadratic forms and cm lifts of supersingular elliptic curves

For −D a fundamental discriminant and p a prime, we investigate the surjectivity of the reduction map from elliptic curves with CM by O-D to supersingular elliptic curves over Fp whenever p does not split in O-D . Under GRH for Dirichlet L-functions and the L-functions of weight 2 newforms, we are able to show an effectively computable bound D p such that the reduction map is surjective for every D > Dp with p nonsplit. Our investigation takes a detour through a study of quaternion algebras and quadratic forms. In particular, in showing our result, we obtain as a side effect the following result. For each positive definite quadratic form Q whose associated theta series is in Kohnen's plus space of weight 3/2 and level 4p, M+3/2 (4p), we show an effectively computable bound DQ, dependent upon GRH such that Q represents every D for which D > DQ and p does not split in O-D . Moreover, we give an explicit algorithm to compute D Q (respectively Dp), and for small p we explicitly compute DQ (resp. Dp). For a further restricted set of p, we moreover obtain a computationally feasible bound, allowing us to give a full list of fundamental discriminants −D for which the map is not surjective. To determine the full list we develop a specialized algorithm to compute which D < Dp are represented more efficiently whenever all of the elliptic curves are defined over Fp . Additionally, we obtain as an additional side effect a new proof and an explicit algorithm, conditional upon GRH, for the Ramanujan-Petersson conjecture for weight 3/2 cusp forms of level 4N in Kohnen's plus space with N odd and squarefree.
“ThermoTRP” Channel Expression in Cancers: Implications for Diagnosis and Prognosis (Practical Approach by a Pathologist)

Temperature-sensitive transient receptor potential (TRP) channels (so-called “thermoTRPs”) are multifunctional signaling molecules with important roles in cell growth and differentiation. Several “thermoTRP” channels show altered expression in cancers, though it is unclear if this is a cause or consequence of the disease. Regardless of the underlying pathology, this altered expression may potentially be used for cancer diagnosis and prognostication. “ThermoTRP” expression may distinguish between benign and malignant lesions. For example, TRPV1 is expressed in benign gastric mucosa, but is absent in gastric adenocarcinoma. TRPV1 is also expressed both in normal urothelia and non-invasive papillary urothelial carcinoma, but no TRPV1 expression has been seen in invasive urothelial carcinoma. “ThermoTRP” expression can also be used to predict clinical outcomes. For instance, in prostate cancer, TRPM8 expression predicts aggressive behavior with early metastatic disease. Furthermore, TRPV1 expression can dissect a subset of pulmonary adenocarcinoma patients with bad prognosis and resistance to a number of commonly used chemotherapeutic agents. This review will explore the current state of this rapidly evolving field with special emphasis on immunostains that can already be added to the armoire of diagnostic pathologists.
Real World Evidence on the Effectiveness of Nusinersen within the National Program to Treat Spinal Muscular Atrophy in Poland

Background: Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a debilitating neuromuscular disease resulting in children’s mortality and disability. Nusinersen is available to all SMA patients in Poland since 2019. Aim: To compare mortality or disease progression to mechanical ventilation in two patient cohorts before and after the program’s introduction. Additionally, to describe the patient population treated with nusinersen and costs incurred by the public payer. Methods: We used the National Health Fund (NHF) database to identify patients born in either 2014 or 2019, who received at least two health services with an ICD10 G12 diagnosis. Outcomes were time to event: death or first mechanical ventilation. We identified all benefits received by nusinersen-treated patients, between 1 January 2019 and 31 May 2022. Results: Children with SMA born in 2019 had significantly lower mortality in the first years of their lives than children born in 2014. Approximately 875 patients (all age groups) were treated with nusinersen in the analysis period. The cost of causal drugs in this period amounted to €51.4 million. The cost of healthcare benefits amounted to €14.9 million. Conclusions: The drug program to treat SMA improved patient care in Poland. The NHF database was a reliable source to monitor resource-intensive therapies’ costs, demography, and selected patient outcomes.
Energy efficient heterogeneous leach with enhanced stability for wireless sensor network systems

Wireless sensor network consists of one or more base station and lots of sensor nodes. These sensor nodes are scattered in a specific area and these are battery operated. Since, the energy of battery is limited alternative to this problem is either to recharge the battery or to replace it with other one. But practically it is not possible as these are large in numbers and may deploy in a harsh environment. LEACH was the first basic distributed clustering protocol that utilizes randomized rotation of cluster head to distribute energy load among sensors in network in order to not to dissipate the energy of a single node. Further, heterogeneity has been introduced in LEACH protocol to prolong the network lifetime by adding fraction of nodes with more energy called as advanced nodes. Thus, energy efficiency in heterogeneous LEACH is improved as compared to LEACH protocol. In this paper, an Energy Efficient Heterogeneous LEACH (EEHL) with enhanced stability has been proposed. This protocol results in improved energy efficiency and network lifetime by utilizing advanced nodes in an intelligent manner. On the basis of shortest distance, a normal cluster head transmit its data either to base station or its nearby advanced cluster head in order to minimize the energy consumption of a normal cluster head. Simulation has been carried out using MATLAB and shows that the stability period of the network has increased by 10% compared to Heterogeneous LEACH and by 32% as compared to LEACH protocol. Also, the network lifetime and energy consumption has been considered for proposed protocol evaluation. Simulation result shows that the proposed protocol outperforms LEACH and Heterogeneous LEACH.
Reasons and Resolutions for Inconsistent Variant Interpretation

In the postgenomic era, variant interpretation is crucial for diagnosing monogenic diseases, which is the premise of precision medicine. The bottleneck and difficulty of genetic disease diagnosis have switched from the inaccessibility of detection technology to the interpretation of sequencing results. Multiple studies have suggested that the inconsistency rate of interlaboratory variant interpretation is approximately 10~40%. However, many clinicians have not paid enough attention to this area at present. In this review, we summarized the reasons for inconsistency, including classification methodology, information obtained by the interpreter, evidence application, and expert judgement. For clinicians, genetic counsellors, and molecular pathologists, it is necessary to reevaluate genetic reports, especially those supported by old literature and databases in clinical practice. For unresolvable cases, pedigree analysis, collaboration with research labs for functional experiments, and long-term follow-up to combine advanced clinical presentations with updated data and literature are needed.
Young Myeloma Patients: A Systematic Review of Manifestations and Outcomes

Multiple myeloma usually affects older adults. However, younger patients constitute a significant subset as approximately 10% of cases occur in subjects younger than 50 years old. Young patients, who are underrepresented in the literature, are diagnosed during their most productive years of life, urging the need for tailored treatment approaches. This literature review aims to report recent studies specifically addressing young patients with a focus on characteristics at diagnosis, cytogenetics, treatments, and outcomes. We searched PubMed for studies involving young patients with multiple myeloma ≤50 years old. The time span of our literature review search was from 1 January 2010 to 31 December 2022. Overall, 16 retrospective studies were analyzed for this review. Young patients with multiple myeloma tend to have less advanced disease, more frequent light chain subtypes, and survive longer compared to their older counterparts. However, available studies included a limited number of patients; the newest revised international staging system was not used to stratify patients, cytogenetics varied from one cohort to another, and most patients did not receive contemporary triplet/quadruplet treatments. This review emphasizes the need to perform contemporary, large-scale retrospective studies to improve knowledge regarding the presentation and outcomes of young myeloma patients in the era of modern treatments.
Self-Directed Learning Attitudes: A Study on English Department Students

This research aims to describe the first-year students’ self-directed learning attitudes by employing a descriptive quantitative approach. This study’s population was the second-semester students of the English education department, n=(95), while the sample was selected through a cluster random sampling technique that consists of 55 students. A questionnaire was used to collect the data and distributed online through Google form. The questionnaire adopted from Williamson (2007) comprises five components of self-directed learning; awareness, learning strategies, learning activities, evaluation, and inter-personal skills. The techniques of data analysis involved collecting the data, presenting the data, and interpreting the data. The results showed that 80% of the students are aware of their responsibility in learning. As for learning strategies and activities, 70.91 – 80% of students considered modern educational interactive technology enhance their learning process effectively. There are 60 – 69.09% of the students who applied the self-assess method and are said to monitor their learning progress in terms of evaluation. Regarding their inter-personal skills, most of the students, with a percentage of 83 – 87.27%, are interested in learning about something they frequently exposed to and feel the need to maintain a good interpersonal relationship with others. In conclusion, most of the students, with a percentage of 72.72%, are high self-directed learners with a positive attitude. The attitudes shown by the students are responsible, initiative, independent, curious, and friendly.Keywords: Self-directed learning, Language learning, attitude
Flexure of Thick Plates Resting on Elastic Foundation Using Two-Variable Refined Plate Theory

The two-variable reﬁned plate theory is used in this paper for the analysis of thick plates resting on elastic foundation. This theory contains only two unknown parameters and predicts parabolic variation of transverse shear stresses. It satisﬁes the zero traction on the plate surfaces without using shear correction factor. Using the principle of minimum potential energy, the governing equations for simply supported rectangular plates resting on Winkler elastic foundation are obtained. The Navier method is adopted for solution of obtained coupled governing equations, and several benchmark problems under various loading conditions are solved by present theory. The comparison of obtained results with other common theories shows the excellent eﬃciency of this theory in modeling thick plates resting on elastic foundation. Also, the eﬀect of foundation modulus, plate thickness and type of loading are studied and the results show that the deﬂections are decreased by increasing the foundation modulus and plate thickness.
Processing of Interferometric Data

In this thesis, fast and highly accurate interferometric metrology systems for both smooth and rough surfaces are presented. First, high-speed algorithms for white-light interferometry (WLI) and line scanning WLI are developed and their performance is compared. For large height differences, multiple wavelength interferometry is significantly faster, though, as in this approach the number of frames required for a surface estimate does not increase with surface height range. A system based on a tunable diode laser is discussed in detail, and new sampling schemes and estimation algorithms for the device are derived. An approximation to the theoretically optimal sampling pattern is given and a corresponding fast estimation algorithm is presented. As a building block for that algorithm, accurate and fast phase and frequency estimation from a low number of samples is discussed, and a new approach based on an interpolated FFT is presented. The influence of laser speckle on rough surfaces is investigated. A robust, adaptive filtering algorithm is developed. It takes spatial relationships into account — without imposing strong smoothness constraints — and uses additional knowledge on the signal from the raw data to improve performance significantly, especially on rough surfaces.
Power of Graph-Based Two-Sample Tests

Testing equality of two multivariate distributions is a classical problem for which many non-parametric tests have been proposed over the years. Most of the popular tests are based either on geometric graphs constructed using inter-point distances between the observations (multivariate generalizations of the Wald-Wolfowitz's runs test) or on multivariate data-depth (generalizations of the Mann-Whitney rank test). These tests are known to be asymptotically normal under the null, and consistent against fixed alternatives. This paper introduces a general notion of graph-based two-sample tests, which includes the tests described above, and provides a unified framework for analyzing their asymptotic properties. The asymptotic efficiency of a general graph-based test is derived using Le Cam's theory of local asymptotic normality, which provides a theoretical basis for comparing the tests. As a consequence, it is shown that tests based on geometric graphs such as the Friedman-Rafsky test (1979), the test based on the $K$-nearest neighbor graph, and the cross-match test of Rosenbaum (2005) have zero asymptotic (Pitman) efficiency against $O(N^{-\frac{1}{2}})$ alternatives. Asymptotic efficiencies of the tests based on multivariate depth functions (the Liu-Singh rank sum statistic (1993)) are also derived from the proposed general theory. Applications of these results are illustrated both on synthetic and real datasets.
Reducción de problemas de generación de horarios a SAT

The problem of deciding the satisfiability of propositional formulas (SAT) does not only lie at the heart of the most important open problem in complexity theory (P vs.~NP), it is also at the basis of many practical applications in such areas as Electronic Design Automation, Verification, Artificial Intelligence, and Operations Research. Thanks to recent advances in SAT-solving technology, propositional solvers are becoming the tool of choice for attacking more and more practical problems. Timetabling problems are, in general, NP problems , hence, an encoding may be found to SAT. In this document we present work done in developing different encodings of three cases of timetabling problems to SAT, namely one school timetabling specific case and two formulations for university timetabling. We show that these encodings may be a good solution aproach for real-world problems that need a zero-cost solution.
Development of a boundary layer parameters identification method for transition prediction with complex grids

Predicting boundary layer transition accurately is important to thermal protection and drag reduction of flight vehicles. Up to now, there has been many transition prediction methods. However, most of those methods need boundary layer parameters, which are difficult to obtain in massively parallel execution since some parameters are nonlocal variables, thus greatly limiting the application of those methods. A grid-reorder method is developed to obtain the boundary layer parameters, which is suitable for parallel computing in this paper. With the grid-reorder method the wall normal grid cells can be easily found, and two criteria are used to determine the boundary layer edge in the wall normal direction, then the boundary layer parameters such as boundary layer thickness, boundary layer momentum thickness, boundary layer edge velocity, cross-flow velocity, and so on, can be obtained accurately and efficiently. The method has been coupled to three transition prediction methods, the γ-Reθ model, the k-ω-γ model, and the transition correlations, to validate its effectiveness. For the γ-Reθ model, the cross-flow velocity is obtained with the grid-reorder method, then a cross-flow intermittency factor is developed and introduced into the model, and the inclined prolate spheroid case is used to test the performance of the model. For the k-ω-γ model, the grid-reorder method is applied to obtain the boundary layer edge velocity and the inflection point velocity which are of vital importance to form the second-mode timescale for hypersonic transition prediction. For the transition correlations, Reθ/Me is obtained effectively with the grid-reorder method. The X-51 forebody is selected to test the effectiveness of Reθ/Me for complex geometries and the results show a good correspondence with the experiment results. The successful application in three transition prediction methods demonstrates that the grid-reorder method has an excellent performance in obtaining the boundary layer parameters and can broaden the application of the existing transition prediction method in engineering.
Multifractal detrended $uctuation analysis of nonstationary time series

We develop a method for the multifractal characterization of nonstationary time series, which is based on a generalization of the detrended $uctuation analysis (DFA). We relate our multifractal DFA method to the standard partition function-based multifractal formalism, and prove that both approaches are equivalent for stationary signals with compact support. By analyzing several examples we show that the new method can reliably determine the multifractal scaling behavior of time series. By comparing the multifractal DFA results for original series with those for shu6ed series we can distinguish multifractality due to long-range correlations from multifractality due to a broad probability density function. We also compare our results with the wavelet transform modulus maxima method, and show that the results are equivalent. c
Flexible Passive Sensor Patch with Contactless Readout for Measurement of Human Body Temperature

A passive flexible patch for human skin temperature measurement based on contact sensing and contactless interrogation is presented. The patch acts as an RLC resonant circuit embedding an inductive copper coil for magnetic coupling, a ceramic capacitor as the temperature-sensing element and an additional series inductor. The temperature affects the capacitance of the sensor and consequently the resonant frequency of the RLC circuit. Thanks to the additional inductor, the dependency of the resonant frequency from the bending of the patch has been reduced. Considering a curvature radius of the patch of up to 73 mm, the maximum relative variation in the resonant frequency has been reduced from 812 ppm to 7.5 ppm. The sensor has been contactlessly interrogated by a time-gated technique through an external readout coil electromagnetically coupled to the patch coil. The proposed system has been experimentally tested within the range of 32–46 °C, giving a sensitivity of −619.8 Hz/°C and a resolution of 0.06 °C.