Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
OF APELIN ON THE CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM

Apelin is an endogenous peptide acting on the APJ receptor. It consists of several isoforms characterised by different numbers of aminoacids. The number of aminoacids in the active isoforms range from 36 to 12. Apelin-13 and, to a lesser extent, apelin-36 are considered the most active isoforms with the greatest activity on the cardiovascular homeostasis. The effects normally exerted by the basal level of endogenous apelin, can be enhanced not only by its up-regulation, but may also by its exogenous administration. The present review considers the effects of apelin on various aspects of the cardiovascular function, such as cardiac development, vasomotor tone, angiogenesis, myocardial inotropy in healthy and failing hearts as well as the prevention of ischemia-reperfusion injury, cardiac fibrosis and remodeling. Also the biphasic changes of apelin level during the evolution of heart failure are considered. Although the positive inotropic effect exerted by apelin in normal and failing hearts would suggest the use of this peptide in the treatment of heart failure, the limited duration and extent of its effect do not support this possibility, unless a long lasting (6 hours) infusion is performed to overcome the limit of its short life. However, although the data on the characteristics of the inotropic activity do not provide a strong support for the treatment of active heart failure, apelin may be used in the prevention of heart failure because of its activity in limiting the consequences of myocardial ischemia such as infarct size and cardiac remodeling.
Analysis of the effects of urban micro-scale vulnerabilities on tsunami evacuation using and Agent-Based model. Case study in the city of Iquique, Chile

The occurrence of mega tsunamis over the last couple of decades has greatly increased the attention of the research community and practitioners to work hand in hand to reduce risks from these highly destructive threats. Protecting the population through evacuation is the best alternative for avoiding loss of life in the wake of the occurrence of a tsunamigenic earthquake. Therefore, guaranteeing the proper state of evacuation routes is very important to ensure appropriate movement to the safe zones. This study carries out a detailed analysis of possible evacuation scenarios, considering the actual state of the 5 escape routes of Iquique, a Chilean city prone to tsunamis, with a substantial amount of urban micro-scale vulnerabilities, i.e., elements that obstruct or complicate pedestrian flow. The quantification of the delay in evacuation processes resulting from the presence of urban micro-vulnerabilities is carried out through micro-scale Agent-Based Modelling (ABM). In addition, these results are integrated with high-resolution tsunami inundation simulations, allowing for an estimation of the potential number of people that the tsunami may reach under different scenarios, by emulating the dynamics and behavior of the population and 10 the decision making regarding the starting time of the evacuation.
Advanced Security Framework for Enabling Protection in Fingerprint Templates

: Biometrics has arisen as an autonomous and trustworthy alternative to old technologies that relied on PINs or passwords, in which a subject's behavioural or physiological traits allow for his identification. One benefit of biometric characteristics is that they cannot be misplaced or forgotten. Although BTP technologies are used to create the biometric references for the registered subjects, it is still possible to impersonate a specific subject using a template obtained from a database without the BTP scheme realising it. The notion behind adding artificial templates to the system to thwart these attacks comes from the Honey words strategy. For the purpose of safeguarding conventional passwords when multiple password hashes are kept for each subject: the hash for hashes for the actual password as well as for imitation or honeypot words. More recently, a framework known as Honey Templates for the use of the honey words concept in biometric authentication systems was proposed, and a specific case study on face verification based on Eigen faces was applied on a small database, demonstrating its effectiveness in terms of both irreversibility and recognition performance.
Shipping noise in a dynamic sea: a case study of grey seals in the Celtic Sea

Shipping noise is a threat to marine wildlife. Grey seals are benthic foragers, and thus experience acoustic noise throughout the water column, which makes them a good model species for a case study of the potential impacts of shipping noise. We used ship track data from the Celtic Sea, seal track data and a coupled ocean-acoustic modelling system to assess the noise exposure of grey seals along their tracks. It was found that the animals experience step changes in sound levels up to ~20dB at a frequency of 125Hz, and ~10dB on average over 10 1000Hz when they dive through the thermocline, particularly during summer. Our results showed large seasonal differences in the noise level experienced by the seals. These results reveal the actual noise exposure by the animals and could help in marine spatial planning.
The European Fault-Source Model 2020 (EFSM20): geologic input data for the European Seismic Hazard Model 2020

Earthquake hazard analyses rely on the availability of seismogenic source models. These are designed in different fashions, such as point sources or area sources, but the most effective is the three-dimensional representation of geological faults. We 35 here refer to such models as fault sources. This study presents the European Fault-Source Model 2020 (EFSM20), which formed the basis for one of the primary input datasets of the recently released European Seismic Hazard Model 2020. The EFSM20 compilation was entirely based on reusable data from existing active fault regional compilations that were first blended and harmonized and then augmented by a set of derived parameters. These additional parameters were devised to enable users to formulate earthquake rate forecasts based on a seismic-moment balancing approach. EFSM20 considers two 40 main categories of seismogenic faults: crustal faults and subduction systems. The compiled dataset covers an area from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge to the Caucasus and from northern Africa to Iceland. It includes 1,248 crustal faults spanning a total length of ~95,100 km and four subduction systems, namely the Gibraltar, Calabrian, Hellenic, and Cyprus Arcs. The model focuses on an area encompassing a buffer of 300 km around all European countries (except for Overseas Countries and Territories, OTCs) and a maximum of 300 km depth for the subducting slabs. All the parameters required to develop a 45 seismic source model for earthquake hazard analysis were determined for crustal faults and subduction systems. A statistical distribution of relevant seismotectonic parameters, such as faulting mechanisms, slip rates, moment rates, and prospective maximum magnitudes, is presented and discussed to address unsettled points in view of future updates and improvements. The dataset, identified by the DOI https://doi.org/10.13127/efsm20, is distributed as machine-readable files using open standards (Open Geospatial Consortium).
Systematic Comparison of Experimental Crystallographic Geometries and Gas-Phase Computed Conformers for Torsion Preferences

We performed exhaustive torsion sampling on more than 3 million compounds using the GFN2-xTB method and performed a comparison of experimental crystallographic and gas-phase conformers. Many conformer sampling methods derive torsional angle distributions from experimental crystallographic data, limiting the torsion preferences to molecules that must be stable, synthetically accessible, and able to be crystallized. In this work, we evaluate the differences in torsional preferences of experimental crystallographic geometries and gas-phase computed conformers from a broad selection of compounds to determine whether torsional angle distributions obtained from semiempirical methods are suitable priors for conformer sampling. We find that differences in torsion preferences can be mostly attributed to a lack of available experimental crystallographic data with small deviations derived from gas-phase geometry differences. GFN2 demonstrates the ability to provide accurate and reliable torsional preferences that can provide a basis for new methods free from the limitations of experimental data collection. We provide Gaussian-based fits and sampling distributions suitable for torsion sampling and propose an alternative to the widely used “experimental torsion and knowledge distance geometry” (ETKDG) method using quantum torsion-derived distance geometry (QTDG) methods.
Control del asentamiento de los diques este y sur del Puerto de Barcelona mediante datos InSAR

[CASTELLA] En este articulo se estudia la viabilidad del uso de InSAR en el control del asentamiento de los diques de reciente construccion en el Puerto de Barcelona. El analisis se realizo a partir de datos obtenidos mediante Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) validandose con datos obtenidos mediante GPS. El uso de satelites de alta resolucion permite obtener una gran densidad de puntos en estas infraestructuras de caracter lineal, facilitando un analisis muy detallado del movimiento que se produce. Aunque su uso en el control de infraestructuras esta limitado por la disponibilidad de las imagenes, no permitiendo su uso como sistema de control unico. [ANGLES] In this paper we study the feasibility of using InSAR in monitoring the settlement of newly built dikes in the Port of Barcelona. The analysis was performed using data obtained by Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI), GPS measures was used to validate PSI data. The use of high-resolution satellites allows a high density of points in these linear nature infrastructures, providing a very detailed analysis of the movement that occurs. Although its use in the control infrastructure is limited by the availability of the images, not allowing use as a unique control system.
Enhanced multivariable fuzzy modeling supported by RBF network

The selection of optimum membership functions and deduction of rules from observed data can be implicitly carried out using conventional artificial neural networks, which can adaptively adjust membership functions and fine-tune rules to achieve better performance. This has resulted in many neuro-fuzzy approaches. These approaches, however do not contribute to the development of fuzzy logic. Also, selection of the number of processing nodes, the number of layers, and the interconnections among these layers in neural networks, still lacks systematic procedures. The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic procedure for the construction of data driven fuzzy models, getting support from a special type multivariable function approximation network, known as radial basis functions (RBF) network the normalized form of which becomes equivalent to a fuzzy model. The normalized RBF network nodes in the hidden layer plays important role according to the case they are involved. One of the key features of normalized RBF networks is their excellent generalization. This property can be exploited to reduce the number of hidden nodes in function representation and classification tasks. To this end, normalized RBF network can be exploited to reduce the number of fuzzy sets in a fuzzy model while the explosive growth in multivariable case is greatly alleviated. The implication of this is the enhanced transparency and accuracy of the fuzzy model. These issues are investigated and the outcomes are reported in this research.
Challenges of AVHRR Vegetation Data for Real Time Applications

Remote sensing data has long been used to monitor global ecosystems for floods and droughts and AVHRR data, as one of the first product, has many users interested in receiving the data within hours of acquisition. With the introduction of a new series of sensors in 2000 (the AVHRR/3 series), the quality of the NDVI datasets available for real time environmental monitoring has declined. This paper provides evidence of problems of cloud contamination, calibration and noise in the real time data which are not present in the historical AVHRR NDVIg dataset. These differences introduce significant uncertainty in the use of the real time data, degrading their utility for detecting climate variations in near real time.
On the Optimal Choice of Quality Metric in Image Compression: a Soft Computing Approach I. Formulation of the Problem

| Images take lot of computer space; in many practical situations, we cannot store all original images, we have to use compression. Moreover, in many such situations , compression ratio provided by even the best lossless compression is not suucient, so we have to use lossy compression. In a lossy compression, the reconstructed image e I is, in general, diierent from the original image I. There exist many diierent lossy compression methods, and most of these methods have several tunable parameters. In diierent situations , diierent methods lead to diierent quality reconstruction, so it is important to select, in each situation, the best compression method. A natural idea is to select the compression method for which the average value of some metric d(I; e I) is the smallest possible. The question is then: which quality metric should we choose? In this paper, we show that under certain reasonable symmetry conditions , L p metrics d(I; e I) = R jI(x) ? e I(x)j p dx are the best, and that the optimal value of p can be selected depending on the expected relative size r of the informative part of the image. A. Image Compression Is Necessary Images tend to take up a lot of computer space, so in many applications, where we cannot store the original images, we must use image compression. Ideally , we would like to use a lossless compression, but unfortunately, there are serious limitations on how much we can compress without losing information. For a more radical compression, we must therefore use lossy compression schemes. In these schemes, some information about the image is lost; as a result , for every point x, the intensity e I(x) of reconstructed image e I at this point may be slightly different from the intensity I(x) of the original image I at this point. B. It Is Important to Select Optimal (Or At Least Good Enough) Compression Scheme There exist many diierent compression schemes, from standard ones like gif, jpg, jpg2000, etc., to specially designed ones. Most of these schemes comes with one or several parameters which we can select. One of the reasons why so many diierent schemes co-exist is that in diierent applications, diierent schemes (with diierent values of parameters) work better. It is vitally important to select an appropriate compression scheme, i.e., a scheme which provides the best compression ratio within the same accuracy. How …
Inferring reservoir filling strategies under limited data availability using hydrological modelling and Earth observation: the case of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD)

The filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) started in 2020, posing additional challenges for downstream water management in (cid:58)(cid:58) the (cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58) Blue (cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58) Nile (cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58) River (cid:58)(cid:58) in (cid:58) Sudan, which is already struggling to cope with the effects of climate change. This is also the case for many transboundary rivers that observe a lack of cooperation and transparency during the filling and operation of new dams. Without information about water supply from neighbouring countries, it is risky to manage downstream dams as usual and operation information is needed to apply modifications. This study aims to test the applicability 5 of using lumped hydrological modelling coupled (cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58) develop (cid:58)(cid:58) a (cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58) novel (cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58)(cid:58)
Moderate consumption of a soluble green/roasted coffee rich in caffeoylquinic acids reduces cardiovascular risk markers. Results from a randomized controlled trial in healthy and hypercholesterolemic subjects

2 Purpose: Coffee is rich in bioactive compounds with health beneficial properties, with 3 green coffee presenting higher phenol content than roasted. We evaluated the effects of 4 regularly consuming realistic amounts of a green/roasted coffee blend on cardiovascular 5 health related biomarkers. 6 Methods: A randomized, cross-over, controlled study
Correlation of Ground Penetrating Radar Data with Geotechnical Prospect Profiles: Reduto Case Study, Belém-PA, Brazil

The study presented in this manuscript aimed to relate the sedimentary strata imaged by the ground penetrating radar (GPR) method through numerical modeling with the mapping of sedimentary strata acquired through geotechnical surveys. The study aimed to expose how obtaining subsoil information through noninvasive/destructive electromagnetic waves is beneficial, as they are reliable and less costly than drilling holes beyond what is necessary to have a subsurface mapping. In this sense, physical-geological modeling was carried out. The information on the type of sediments, acquired through simple recognition surveys carried out in the city of Belém-PA, helped to create a model of a sedimentary package with its respective intrinsic physical properties. The result shows that the GPR recovered with good vertical and horizontal resolution at the beginning and end of the layers of the sedimentary package studied, proving to be very effective for locating geotechnical sounding points and safely reducing costs.
ImplicitPCA: Implicitly-proxied parametric encoding for collision-aware garment reconstruction

The emerging remote collaboration in a virtual environment calls for quickly generating high-fidelity 3D humans with cloth from a single image. To estimate clothing geometry and topology, parametric models are widely used but often lack details. Alternative approaches based on implicit functions can generate accurate details but are limited to closed surfaces and may not produce physically correct reconstructions, such as collision-free human avatars. To solve these problems, we present ImplicitPCA , a framework for high-fidelity single-view garment reconstruction that bridges the good ends of explicit and implicit representations. The key is a parametric SDF network that closely couples parametric encoding with implicit functions and thus enjoys the fine details brought by implicit reconstruction while maintaining correct topology with open surfaces. We further introduce a collision-aware regression network to ensure the physical correctness of cloth and human. During inference, an iterative routine is applied to an input image with 2D garment landmarks to obtain optimal parameters by aligning the cloth mesh projection with the 2D landmarks and fitting the parametric implicit fields with the reconstructed cloth SDF. The experiments on the public dataset and in-the-wild images demonstrate that our result outperforms the prior works, reconstructing detailed, topology-correct 3D garments while avoiding garment-body collisions.
Centralized and Decentralized Equilibria in Hospital Network Breadth

Health insurer competition in hospital networks raises questions on what the socially optimal network breadth is. In this paper I use a structural model of insurer competition in service-level network breadth to derive the social planner’s solution, and to simulate the impact of competition between private insurers on hospital network breadth. I find that the social planner, who maximizes consumer surplus subject to insurers’ participation constraints, would choose complete networks. Collusion between private insurers generates an equilibrium that is farther away from the social planner’s solution. A policy that prohibits network discrimination across services can more closely approximate the first-best.
The Lensing Effect a Proof of Large Scale Entanglement in Holographic CFTs for Non-Black Holes Objects

Many experimental works at small scale (photons, electrons, etc.) try to confirm the entanglement, in this work we will show that the Einstein ring could be a such proof of entanglement but at very large scale (cosmic objects), when, due of a QCD operation (Schwinger effect) inside nucleons is infused in quantum a flux of energy (pulse) that corresponds to stress-energy tensor onto attached nucleons as of  n sheeted Riemann surfaces glued to the boundaries (CFT), there producing a strain of space –the lensing effect. This approach is tested on light lensing around objects (Earth).
Dynamic alterations in the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation in patients with cerebral small vessel disease

Background and purpose Previous studies have focused on the changes of dynamic and static functional connections in cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD). However, the dynamic characteristics of local brain activity are poorly understood. The purpose of this study was to investigate the dynamic cerebral activity changes in patients with CSVD using the dynamic amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (d-ALFF). Methods A total of 104 CSVD patients with cognitive impairment (CSVD-CI, n = 52) or normal cognition (CSVD-NC, n = 52) and 63 matched healthy controls (HCs) were included in this study. Every participant underwent magnetic resonance imaging scans and a battery of neuropsychological examinations. The dynamics of spontaneous brain activity were assessed using dynamic changes in the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) with the sliding-window method. We used voxel-wise one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) to compare dynamic ALFF variability among the three groups. Post-hoc t-tests were used to evaluate differences between each group pair. Finally, the brain regions with d-ALFF values with differences between CSVD subgroups were taken as regions of interest (ROI), and the d-ALFF values corresponding to the ROI were extracted for partial correlation analysis with memory. Results (1) There was no significant difference in age (p = 0.120), sex (p = 0.673) and education (p = 0.067) among CSVD-CI, CSVD-NC and HC groups, but there were significant differences Prevalence of hypertension and diabetes mellitus among the three groups (p < 10−3). There were significant differences in scores of several neuropsychological scales among the three groups (p < 10−3). (2) ANOVA and post-hoc t-test showed that there were dynamic abnormalities of spontaneous activity in several brain regions in three groups, mainly located in bilateral parahippocampal gyrus and bilateral hippocampus, bilateral insular and frontal lobes, and the static activity abnormalities in bilateral parahippocampal gyrus and bilateral hippocampal regions were observed at the same time, suggesting that bilateral parahippocampal gyrus and bilateral hippocampus may be the key brain regions for cognitive impairment caused by CSVD. (3) The correlation showed that d-ALFF in the bilateral insular was slightly correlated with the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) score and disease progression rate. The d-ALFF value of the left postcentral gyrus was negatively correlated with the Clock Drawing Test (CDT) score (r = −0.416, p = 0.004), and the d-ALFF value of the right postcentral gyrus was negatively correlated with the Rey’s Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) word recognition (r = −0.320, p = 0.028). Conclusion There is a wide range of dynamic abnormalities of spontaneous brain activity in patients with CSVD, in which the abnormalities of this activity in specific brain regions are related to memory and execution or emotion.