Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Empfehlungen für projektbezogene Untersuchungen möglicher bau- und betriebsbedingter Auswirkungen von Offshore-Windenergieanlagen auf Vögel

Recommendations for project-related studies of possible impacts of marine wind farms during construction and operation on birds The construction of offshore windfarms may become the largest technical impact on Europe’s marine habitats. For roughly a quarter of the area of Germany’s Exclusive Economic Zone there are plans to erect offshore windfarms. Several international conventions as well as national laws necessitate environmental impact assessment studies. We hence suggest methods for standardised investigations on the distribution, movements and flight behaviour of birds at sea. They include visual, acoustic and radar-based techniques and observations.
Accelerometer‐Derived Daily Life Movement Classified by Machine Learning and Incidence of Cardiovascular Disease in Older Women: The OPACH Study

Background Current physical activity guidelines focus on volume and intensity for CVD prevention rather than common behaviors responsible for movement, including those for daily living activities. We examined the associations of a machine‐learned, accelerometer‐measured behavior termed daily life movement (DLM) with incident CVD. Methods and Results Older women (n=5416; mean age, 79±7 years; 33% Black, 17% Hispanic) in the Women’s Health Initiative OPACH (Objective Physical Activity and Cardiovascular Health) study without prior CVD wore ActiGraph GT3X+ accelerometers for up to 7 days from May 2012 to April 2014 and were followed for physician‐adjudicated incident CVD through February 28th, 2020 (n=616 events). DLM was defined as standing and moving in a confined space such as performing housework or gardening. Cox models estimated hazard ratios (HR) and 95% CI, adjusting for age, race and ethnicity, education, alcohol use, smoking, multimorbidity, self‐rated health, and physical function. Restricted cubic splines examined the linearity of the DLM‐CVD dose‐response association. We examined effect modification by age, body mass index, Reynolds Risk Score, and race and ethnicity. Adjusted HR (95% CIs) across DLM quartiles were: 1.00 (reference), 0.68 (0.55–0.84), 0.70 (0.56–0.87), and 0.57 (0.45–0.74); p‐trend<0.001. The HR (95% CI) for each 1‐hour increment in DLM was 0.86 (0.80–0.92) with evidence of a linear dose‐response association (p non‐linear>0.09). There was no evidence of effect modification by age, body mass index, Reynolds Risk Score, or race and ethnicity. Conclusions Higher DLM was independently associated with a lower risk of CVD in older women. Describing the beneficial associations of physical activity in terms of common behaviors could help older adults accumulate physical activity.
Clinical Validity of Plasma-Based Genotyping for Microsatellite Instability Assessment in Advanced GI Cancers: SCRUM-Japan GOZILA Substudy

PURPOSE Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) genotyping may guide targeted therapy for patients with advanced GI cancers. However, no studies have validated ctDNA genotyping for microsatellite instability (MSI) assessment in comparison with a tissue-based standard. PATIENTS AND METHODS The performance of plasma-based MSI assessment using Guardant360, a next-generation sequencing–based ctDNA assay, was compared with that of tissue-based MSI assessment using a validated polymerase chain reaction–based method in patients with advanced GI cancers enrolled in GOZILA study, a nationwide ctDNA profiling study. The primary end points were overall percent agreement, positive percent agreement (PPA), and negative percent agreement. The efficacy of immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy was also evaluated. RESULTS In 658 patients with advanced GI cancers who underwent both plasma and tissue testing for MSI, the overall percent agreement, PPA, and negative percent agreement were 98.2% (95% CI, 96.8 to 99.1), 71.4% (95% CI, 47.8 to 88.7), and 99.1% (95% CI, 98.0 to 99.7), respectively. In patients whose plasma samples had a ctDNA fraction ≥ 1.0%, the PPA was 100.0% (15/15; 95% CI, 78.2 to 100.0). Three patients with MSI-high (MSI-H) tumors detected only by ctDNA genotyping achieved clinical benefits after receiving anti–programmed cell death 1 therapy with the progression-free survival ranging from 4.3 to 16.7 months. One patient with an aggressive cancer of an unknown primary site benefited from pembrolizumab after rapid detection of MSI-H by ctDNA genotyping. CONCLUSION ctDNA genotyping was able to detect MSI with high concordance to validated tissue-based MSI testing, especially in patients with tumors that have sufficient ctDNA shedding. Furthermore, ctDNA genotyping enabled identification of patients with MSI-H tumors who benefited from immune checkpoint inhibitor treatment.
Engineering Robust Ag‐Decorated Polydopamine Nano‐Photothermal Platforms to Combat Bacterial Infection and Prompt Wound Healing

Polydopamine (PDA) nanoparticles have emerged as an attractive biomimetic photothermal agent in photothermal antibacterial therapy due to their ease of synthesis, good biodegradability, long‐term safety, and excellent photostability. However, the therapeutic effects of PDA nanoparticles are generally limited by the low photothermal conversion efficiency (PCE). Herein, PDA@Ag nanoparticles are synthesized via growing Ag on the surface of PDA nanoparticles and then encapsulated into a cationic guar gum (CG) hydrogel network. The optimized CG/PDA@Ag platform exhibits a high PCE (38.2%), which is more than two times higher than that of pure PDA (16.6%). More importantly, the formulated CG/PDA@Ag hydrogel with many active groups can capture and kill bacteria through effective interactions between hydrogel and bacteria, thereby benefiting the antibacterial effect. As anticipated, the designed CG/PDA@Ag system combined the advantages of PDA@Ag nanoparticles (high PCE) and hydrogel (preventing aggregation of PDA@Ag nanoparticles and possessing inherent antibacterial ability) is demonstrated to have superior antibacterial efficacy both in vitro and in vivo. This study develops a facile approach to boost the PCE of PDA for photothermal antibacterial therapy, providing a significant step forward in advancing the application of PDA nano‐photothermal agents.
Gypenoside A attenuates dysfunction of pancreatic β cells by activating PDX1 signal transduction via the inhibition of miR‐150‐3p both in vivo and in vitro

Saponin gypenoside A (GP) has shown its potential to handle diabetes mellitus. MicroRNA‐150‐3p (miR‐150‐3p) is closely related to the dysfunction of pancreatic β cells by targeting PDX1. Given the function of GP is related to its regulation on different miRs, the current study assessed the role of miR‐150‐3p as a therapeutic target for the hypoglycemic effects of GP. Pancreatic β cell dysfunction was induced in mice using the high‐fatty diet (HFD) method and then handled with GP. Changes in insulin release and resistance and the activity of the miR‐150‐3p/PDX1 axis were detected. The expression of miR‐150‐3p was induced to confirm its central in the effects of GP. The results of in vivo tests were then validated with in vitro assays. HFD administration suppressed glucose tolerance, delayed insulin release, and induced insulin resistance and pancreas apoptosis in mice, which was indicative of the dysfunction of β pancreatic cells. Changes in pancreatic β function were associated with the increased expression of miR‐150‐3p and suppressed expression of PDX1. After the administration of GP, the impairments of the pancreas were alleviated and the expression of miR‐150‐3p was inhibited, contributing to the restored level of PDX1. The injection of miR‐150‐3p agomir counteracted the protective effects of GP. In in vitro assays, the pretransfection of miR‐150‐3p mimetics also counteracted the protective effects of GP on pancreatic β cells against palmitic acid. Collectively, miR‐150‐3p played a key role in the protective effects of GP against pancreatic β cell dysfunction by inhibiting PDX1 expression.
The effect of all‐trans retinoic acid on the mitochondrial function and survival of cardiomyoblasts exposed to local photodamage

Using H9C2 cardiomyoblasts, we have shown that all‐trans retinoic acid (ATRA), the biologically active metabolite of vitamin A, affects mitochondrial dynamics and functions. The low dose (10 nM) ATRA stimulates the expression of nuclear retinoid receptors and induces mechanisms that are protective against severe local damage caused by laser irradiation at the mitochondrial level. These changes include increased density of the mitochondrial network, higher number of mitochondrial junctions, and enhanced mitochondrial velocity. Moreover, the treated cells had lower basal level of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and could maintain mitochondrial potential (ΔΨm) after photodamage. Cells treated with 10 nM ATRA had significantly better survival rate after photodamage in comparison to control cells. Cells treated with pharmacological concentration of ATRA (1 µM) expressed higher mitochondrial connectivity without increased motility, which did not lead to better survival or decreased ROS level as was in the case of low‐dose ATRA. The proteomics analysis showed changes in proteins related to cellular metabolism (glycolysis) and respiration in ATRA‐treated cells. The l‐lactate assay confirmed the shift to anaerobic glycolysis in cells treated with 1 µm ATRA, whereas the 10 nM ATRA decreased the level of lactate in medium. The increased levels of cytochrome c or peroxiredoxins 5 level and also lower expression of retinoid and rexinoid receptors were observed in cells treated with 1 µM ATRA. The effect of ATRA is concentration‐dependent; the increased mitochondrial dynamics and slower metabolism at 10 nM ATRA contributed significantly to the chance of survival of the cells after photodamage whereas the higher concentration of ATRA overrode the protective effect and led to the unfavorable ones.
Emerging Role of Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Diagnosing Myocarditis

Acute myocarditis is a disease affecting the myocardial tissue, which is caused by infections, rheumatic diseases, especially sarcoidosis, or certain therapies. Its diagnosis may be difficult, owing to its variable clinical presentation. In this setting, cardiac magnetic resonance plays a pivotal role in detecting myocardial inflammation through qualitative, semiquantitative, and quantitative parameters, in particular with the new quantitative techniques such as T1 and T2 mapping, combined or not with late gadolinium enhancement evaluation. This is in accordance with the revised Lake Louise criteria. In this review, the emerging role of the new cutting-edge cardiac magnetic resonance imaging techniques in diagnosing myocarditis is extensively presented.
Clinical and genetic study of a pseudo-dominant retinoschisis pedigree: the first female patient reported in Chinese population

ABSTRACT Background The inheritance pattern of genetically confirmed hereditary juvenile retinoschisis reported so far is X-linked recessive with limited number of female cases. We identified a female patient with retinoschisis, and this study reports the clinical features as well as the underlying genetic defect of this family. Materials and methods Detailed family history and pedigree analysis were performed. All affected subjects underwent detailed ophthalmic examinations, including best corrected visual acuity (BCVA), dilated fundoscopy, optical coherent tomography (OCT) and fundus autofluorescence (FAF). DNA sample of the proband was sequenced by next-generation sequencing (NGS). Sanger sequencing was performed for validation and segregation. Results Three affected subjects including one female and two males were confirmed in this consanguineous family. The BCVA ranged from 20/50 to hand motion. Foveoschisis, hyperopia, subcapsular cataracts, vitreous opacity, retinal pigmentation, and macular atrophy were present in all three patients, with variable severity. Nystagmus, esotropia, and retinal vessels transposition were noted in the female patient. Retinal detachment occurred in the female patient and her affected brother. A small deletion in RS1 gene c.97delT (p.W33Gfs*93) (NM_000330.3) was found, which was co-segregated in the pedigree. Conclusions Consanguineous family having XLRS female patient could manifest as pseudo-dominant inheritance. Significant intrafamilial phenotypic variation was revealed.
The Vertical Precedence Effect: Utilizing Delay Panning for Height Channel Mixing in 3D Audio

3D or spatial audio aims to recreate or construct immersive sound environments by emulating natural psychoacoustic cues. A strong understanding of these cues is necessary for effective reproduction. Previous research has shown multichannel systems are more effective than conventional stereo in creating immersive and enveloping sound stages. Within this realm there are a number of different loudspeaker configurations and panning techniques used, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. In this thesis, vertical delay panning for frontal imaging in the Auro-3D 9.1 configuration was investigated. Using an interface built in Max/MSP, forty subjects were asked for their perceptions regarding phantom image location, width, and vertical spread. It was found that vertical inter-channel time differences (ICTDs) had a significant effect on the perceived images, indicating the operation of the precedence in the vertical direction and highlighting its spectral basis. In particular, 5 ms was found to be a threshold for maximal source elevation. Within this region, ICTDs in the surround (lower) loudspeaker layer tended to result in elevated phantom images, while ICTDs in the height channels would lower the image. Above the 5 ms threshold elevation effects were less prominent, but ICTDs were an effective way of increasing both the width and vertical spread of phantom images. The results confirmed that the precedence effect does operate in the vertical direction and gave insight into its spectral basis. The techniques established by this thesis can assist in the creation of effective, perception-based immersive content, thereby contributing to the wider impact and adoption of 3D audio. The findings were also directly implemented in the recording of the free jazz ensemble Sweat. ’s debut album.
Grooved Laminated Waveguides in LTCC for mm-wave Packaging

The Laminated Waveguide (LWG) has earned lots of attention recently in its one-layer form referred to as Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW). This paper reports on the fabrication and measurement results of a type of LWG, the Grooved Laminated Waveguide (GLWG) which is implemented in Low Temperature Co-fired Ceramics (LTCC). Results are given on the fabrication issues and measurements for GLWG devices realized in one and four LTCC layers, working in four distinct frequency bands; U, V, W and G, i.e. from 40 to 220 GHz.
Hypomethylation of miR-17-92 cluster in lupus T cells and no significant role for genetic factors in the lupus-associated DNA methylation signature

Objectives Lupus T cells demonstrate aberrant DNA methylation patterns dominated by hypomethylation of interferon-regulated genes. The objective of this study was to identify additional lupus-associated DNA methylation changes and determine the genetic contribution to epigenetic changes characteristic of lupus. Methods Genome-wide DNA methylation was assessed in naïve CD4+ T cells from 74 patients with lupus and 74 age-matched, sex-matched and race-matched healthy controls. We applied a trend deviation analysis approach, comparing methylation data in our cohort with over 16 500 samples. Methylation quantitative trait loci (meQTL) analysis was performed by integrating methylation profiles with genome-wide genotyping data. Results In addition to the previously reported epigenetic signature in interferon-regulated genes, we observed hypomethylation in the promoter region of the miR-17-92 cluster in patients with lupus. Members of this microRNA cluster play an important role in regulating T cell proliferation and differentiation. Expression of two microRNAs in this cluster, miR-19b1 and miR-18a, showed a significant positive correlation with lupus disease activity. Among miR-18a target genes, TNFAIP3, which encodes a negative regulator of nuclear factor kappa B, was downregulated in lupus CD4+ T cells. MeQTL identified in lupus patients showed overlap with genetic risk loci for lupus, including CFB and IRF7. The lupus risk allele in IRF7 (rs1131665) was associated with significant IRF7 hypomethylation. However, <1% of differentially methylated CpG sites in patients with lupus were associated with an meQTL, suggesting minimal genetic contribution to lupus-associated epigenotypes. Conclusion The lupus defining epigenetic signature, characterised by robust hypomethylation of interferon-regulated genes, does not appear to be determined by genetic factors. Hypomethylation of the miR-17-92 cluster that plays an important role in T cell activation is a novel epigenetic locus for lupus.
Adaptive Illumination Based Depth Sensing Using Deep Superpixel and Soft Sampling Approximation

Dense depth map capture is challenging in existing active sparse illumination based depth acquisition techniques, such as LiDAR. Various techniques have been proposed to estimate a dense depth map based on fusion of the sparse depth map measurement with the RGB image. Recent advances in hardware enable adaptive depth measurements resulting in further improvement of the dense depth map estimation. In this paper, we study the topic of estimating dense depth from depth sampling. The adaptive sparse depth sampling network is jointly trained with a fusion network of an RGB image and sparse depth, to generate optimal adaptive sampling masks. Deep learning based superpixel sampling and soft sampling approximation are applied. We show that such adaptive sampling masks can generalize well to many RGB and sparse depth fusion algorithms under a variety of sampling rates (as low as 0.0625%). The proposed adaptive sampling method is fully differentiable and flexible to be trained end-to-end with upstream perception algorithms.
Sequential Information Design: Markov Persuasion Process and Its Efficient Reinforcement Learning

In today's economy, it becomes important for Internet platforms to consider the sequential information design problem to align its long term interest with incentives of the gig service providers (e.g., drivers, hosts). This paper proposes a novel model of sequential information design, namely the Markov persuasion processes (MPPs), in which a sender, with informational advantage, seeks to persuade a stream of myopic receivers to take actions that maximize the sender's cumulative utilities in a finite horizon Markovian environment with varying prior and utility functions. Planning in MPPs thus faces the unique challenge in finding a signaling policy that is simultaneously persuasive to the myopic receivers and inducing the optimal long-term cumulative utilities of the sender. Nevertheless, in the population level where the model is known, it turns out that we can efficiently determine the optimal (resp. ε-optimal) policy with finite (resp. infinite) states and outcomes, through a modified formulation of the Bellman equation that additionally takes persuasiveness into consideration. Our main technical contribution is to study the MPP under the online reinforcement learning (RL) setting, where the goal is to learn the optimal signaling policy by interacting with with the underlying MPP, without the knowledge of the sender's utility functions, prior distributions, and the Markov transition kernels. For such a problem, we design a provably efficient no-regret learning algorithm, the Optimism-Pessimism Principle for Persuasion Process (OP4), which features a novel combination of both optimism and pessimism principles. In particular, we obtain optimistic estimates of the value functions to encourage exploration under the unknown environment, and additionally robustify the signaling policy with respect to the uncertainty of prior estimation to prevent receiver's detrimental equilibrium behavior. Our algorithm enjoys sample efficiency by achieving a sublinear √T-regret upper bound. Furthermore, both our algorithm and theory can be applied to MPPs with large space of outcomes and states via function approximation, and we showcase such a success under the linear setting.
Analysing Security and Privacy Threats in the Lockdown Periods of COVID-19 Pandemic: Twitter Dataset Case Study

The COVID-19 pandemic era will be remembered as a uniquely disruptive period that altered the lives of billions of citizens globally, resulting in new-normal for the way people live and work. With the coronavirus pandemic, businesses, governments, and educational institutes adapted to the “work or study from home” operating model that has not only transformed our online lives but has also exponentially increased the use of cyberspace. Concurrently, there has been a huge spike in the usage of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter during the COVID-19 lockdown periods. These lockdown periods have resulted in a set of new cybercrimes, thereby allowing attackers to victimise users of social media platforms in times of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. The threats range from running phishing campaigns and malicious domains to extracting private information about victims for malicious purposes. To this end, it is vital to analyse the impact of drastic transformations that were taken during lockdown periods on the security and privacy of users. This research paper performs a large-scale study to investigate the impact of lockdown periods during COVID-19 pandemic on the security and privacy of social media users. We analyse 10.6 Million COVID-related tweets from 533 days of data crawling and investigate users’ security and privacy behaviour in three different periods (i.e., before, during, and after lockdown). Our study shows that users unintentionally share more personal identifiable information when writing about the pandemic situation (e.g., sharing building name, nearby coronavirus testing location) in their tweets. The privacy risk reaches to 100% if a user posts three or more sensitive tweets about the pandemic. We investigate the number of suspicious domains shared in social media during different phases of the pandemic. Our analysis reveals an increase in the number of suspicious domains during the lockdown compared to other lockdown phases. We observe that IT, Search Engines , and Businesses are the top three categories that contain suspicious domains. Our analysis reveals that adversaries’ strategies to instigate malicious activities change with the country’s pandemic situation.
ReorientBot: Learning Object Reorientation for Specific-Posed Placement

Robots need the capability of placing objects in arbitrary, specific poses to rearrange the world and achieve various valuable tasks. Object reorientation plays a crucial role in this as objects may not initially be oriented such that the robot can grasp and then immediately place them in a specific goal pose. In this work, we present a vision-based manipulation system, ReorientBot, which consists of 1) visual scene understanding with pose estimation and volumetric reconstruction using an onboard RGB-D camera; 2) learned waypoint selection for successful and efficient motion generation for reorientation; 3) traditional motion planning to generate a collision-free trajectory from the selected waypoints. We evaluate our method using the YCB objects in both simulation and the real world, achieving 93% overall success, 81% improvement in success rate, and 22% improvement in execution time compared to a heuristic approach. We demonstrate extended multi-object rearrangement showing the general capability of the system.