Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The New Regionalism Approach

This introduction outlines the dramatically changed context and content of the renewed trend towards regionalism in the international system. We start by identifying some of the most relevant aspects of the latest wave, the ‘new regionalism’. The central concepts in the study of regionalism are both ambiguous and contested, and attempts are made at clarifying them. The concept of ‘regionness’ is central to the New Regionalism Approach (NRA), which is suggested as a broad, open-ended framework for analysing regionalisation in a multilevel and comparative perspective. Several specific theories and theoretical perspectives are needed for understanding the complexities of present day regionalism, and a distinction is here made between regional and world approaches. Another distinction is that between monodisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches. Finally, the future of the new regionalism, the possibility of a regionalised world order, is touched upon.
Gender differences in congenital heart defects: a narrative review

Background and Objective Congenital heart defects (CHD) represent the most frequent human birth defects, occurring in almost 1% of all live newborns. Understanding the effects of gender in the prevalence of CHD has a key role in defining personalized prevention, disease identification, prognosis definition and individualized therapeutic strategies. Recently, the attempt to achieve a holistic approach to patients with CHD cannot be separated from accounting for existing gender differences. The main aim of this narrative review is to provide an overview of gender differences in the epidemiology of CHD. Methods A standardized research through three electronic databases (PubMed/Scopus/Embase) was performed using a combination of keywords and Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms to include congenital heart diseases, gender difference(s), prevalence. Observational, prospective, population based and retrospective studies reporting gender differences in the prevalence of CHD were included. Conference abstracts were excluded as well as studies not written in English language and non-human studies. Further relevant papers were selected by hand-searching of the references list of selected articles. Key Content and Findings Search results returned 1,904 papers. Screening articles by title and abstracts resulted in 17 articles for full text review. Of these, 10 were included for analysis and additional 11 articles were included after hand searching review of reference lists. A total of 21 articles were included. Conclusions Our narrative review confirms that there is a significant gender variation in specific CHD subgroups. In particular, we summarized the evidence that there is a significantly greater risk for males to be born with severe CHD and for females with milder CHD subtypes. The etiology of the different distribution of CHD among genders is still under investigation and a deeper understanding of how gender influences the risk for CHD is warranted. In the future, a gender-based management of CHD should become an established medical approach.
The effect of NAC and Carnosine on alzheimers disease-related in vitro model through RAGE-AGE signaling pathway

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common dementia which found increasing with age. It involves neurodegeneration which leads to various abnormalities especially memory loss, inability to learn new things, lack of creativity, lack of decision making ability, lack of critical thinking, calculation inability, inability to live normal daily life, inability to recognize person, time and place, emotional disturbance, and difficulty to use language. Since AD has severe impact in various aspects on both the patients and their families, so we are interested to study the neurodegenerative mechanism when neuronal cells are under oxidative stress which will induce neuroinflammation through the binding of advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs) and its receptor (receptor for advanced glycation end products; RAGE) via NF-kB and MAPK signaling pathway and integration of oxidative stress. We found that upon exposure of the optimized AGEs, RAGE expression was increased. In response to this activation, accumulation of ROS was also enhanced. The activation of nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-? B) which is a primary transcription factor that plays an important role in regulating cellular responses was triggered. Hence, pro-inflammatory cytokines including IL1? , IL6 and TNF? were increased. In addition, increase in program cell death is likely to follow this activation. In this study, Fimbristylis ovata (F. ovata) (petroleum ether and methanol extract) 100 ? g/mL was found to be able to reduce superoxide radical. Moreover, F. ovata (dichloromethane and methanol extract) 100 ? g/mL, NAC, and Carnosine were found to decrease MAPK activation and cell apoptosis (p<0.05). In addition, F. ovata (petroleum ether, dichloromethane, and ethanol extract) and NAC were revealed to enhance NF? B translocation (p<0.05).
Analysis and ranking of the acoustic disturbance potential of petroleum-industry activities and other sources of noise in the environment of marine mammals in Alaska. Final report

The study compares the relative magnitudes and effects on marine mammals of noise from oil and gas industry activities with noise from other sources in Alaska OCS and coastal waters. The study procedure incorporates the receiver, source and path concepts generally used in acoustic analysis. The receiver characterization includes a review of marine mammal distribution in Alaska and a map of the distribution of each major species. Information on species sound production, hearing sensitivity (when known), and observed responses to noise sources is also included. The analysis of noise sources found in the Alaskan marine environment considers natural, industrial, transportation, and cultural sources. Acoustic transmission loss characteristics obtained from measurements and model predictions are used to estimate the effective ranges of the noise sources using available source level information. Information on species distribution was combined with information on source distribution, source level, and transmission loss to determine the most significant sources in terms of their acoustic range and the numbers of mammals potentially affected by developing a Standardized Noise Contribution Model species.
Multi-Channel Bin-Wise Speech Separation Combining Time-Frequency Masking and Beamforming

This paper presents a novel Blind Source Separation method that can handle convolutive mixtures that may be underdetermined. Our method combines TF masking and beamforming and exploits the source signals sparsity in the Time-Frequency (TF) domain. Remarkable performance can be achieved by TF masking-based methods, even in the underdetermined case, although they tend to generate unwanted artifacts at the level of the separated signals. Besides, beamforming techniques can achieve satisfactory performance only in the overdetermined and determined cases without distorting the estimated signals. By combining these two approaches, we can leverage their respective strengths. Firstly, we exploit the source signals sparsity in the TF domain to estimate probabilistic “bin-wise” masks by modeling the frequency observation vectors with a complex Gaussian Mixture Model and using an EM algorithm. However, due to the sensitivity of the EM algorithm to initialization, we propose properly selecting the initial values of the model parameters using Hermitian angles between the frequency observation vectors and a reference vector. Then, we utilize the estimated TF masks to estimate the Relative Transfer Functions of each source. Finally, we propose a new technique to obtain an estimate of the spatial images of the separated sources, which can be regarded as an underdetermined extension of the Linearly Constrained Minimum Power beamformer. Good performance was observed in test results for our method, both in the determined and underdetermined cases, compared to various existing methods with similar working hypotheses.
DETECTION OF BROKEN ROTOR BAR FAULT IN THE SQUIRREL CAGE INDUCTION MOTOR USING WAVELET PACKET ANALYSIS

The fault of broken rotor bars in a three phase induction motor is diagnosed by using the wavelet Packet analysis. In this paper Daubechies wavelet is selected as the wavelet base and the wavelet coefficient is obtained from the wavelet transform of current signal of the faulty induction motor. Tghe energy of wavelet components appear to be useful for detecting different electrical faults. In this paper we will study the problem of broken rotor bars
Antidiabetic Activity and Molecular Docking Analysis of Milky Mushroom (Calocybe indica) Grown on the Renewable Substrate

As part of the circular economy idea, rice straw without additives has been investigated as a way to turn agricultural waste into products with added value. The nutrients in the substrate, Calocybe indica yield, and biological effects were all calculated. In this investigation, the methanol extract was used. GCMS was examined to discover the necessary compounds present in fungi. A surplus of mushrooms was harvested, and it was discovered that the growth of mushrooms on the rice substrate took place in less than five days. At a humidity of 93%, biological efficiency was determined to be in the range of 54.5-130.9%. In vitro and molecular docking results for the antidiabetic showed good inhibitory properties. As a result, rice straw could be a productive and affordable growing medium for milky mushrooms.
Blind Polarization Demultiplexing of Shaped QAM Signals Assisted by Temporal Correlations

While probabilistic constellation shaping (PCS) enables rate and reach adaption with finer granularity [1] (Cho and Winzer, 2009), it imposes signal processing challenges at the receiver. Since the distribution of PCS-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signals tends to be Gaussian, conventional blind polarization demultiplexing algorithms are not suitable for them [2] (Johnson et al., 1998). It is known that independently and identically distributed (iid) Gaussian signals, when mixed, cannot be recovered/separated from their mixture. For PCS-QAM signals, there are algorithms such as [3] and [4] Dris et al. (2019) and Athuraliya et al. (2004) which are designed by extending conventional blind algorithms used for uniform QAM signals. In these algorithms, an initialization point is obtained by processing only a part of the mixed signal, which have non-Gaussian statistics. In this article, we propose an alternative method wherein we add temporal correlations at the transmitter, which are subsequently exploited at the receiver in order to separate the polarizations. We will refer to the proposed method as frequency domain (FD) joint diagonalization (JD) probability aware-multi modulus algorithm (pr-MMA), and it is suited to channels with moderate polarization mode dispersion (PMD) effects. Furthermore, we extend our previously proposed JD-MMA [5] (Bajaj et al., 2022) by replacing the standard MMA with a pr-MMA, improving its performance. Both FDJD-pr-MMA and JD-pr-MMA are evaluated for a diverse range of PCS (entropy <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal {H}$</tex-math></inline-formula>) of 64-QAM over a first-order PMD channel that is simulated in a proof-of-concept setup. A MMA initialized with a memoryless constant modulus algorithm (CMA) is used as a benchmark. We show that at a differential group delay (DGD) of 10% of symbol period T<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$_{\text{symb}}$</tex-math></inline-formula> and 18 dB SNR/pol., JD-pr-MMA successfully demultiplexes the PCS signals, while CMA-MMA fails drastically. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the newly proposed FDJD-pr-MMA is robust against moderate PMD effects by evaluating it over a DGD of up to 40% of T<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$_{\text{symb}}$</tex-math></inline-formula>. Our results show that the proposed FDJD-pr-MMA successfully equalizes PMD channels with a DGD up to 20% of T<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$_{\text{symb}}$</tex-math></inline-formula>.
Probing Microscale Structuring-Induced Phase Separation with Fluorescence Recovery Diffusion Dynamics in Poly(ethylene glycol) Solutions

Apart from biocompatibility, poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)-based biomedical constructs require mechanical tunability and optimization of microscale transport for regulation of the release kinetics of biomolecules. This study illustrates the role of inhomogeneities due to aggregates and structuring in the PEG matrix in the microscale diffusion of a fluorescent probe. Comparative analysis of fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) profiles with the help of diffusion half-time is used to assess the diffusion coefficient (D). The observations support a nontrivial dependence of diffusion dynamics on polymer concentration (volume fraction, φ) and that of fillers carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) and nanoclay bentonite (B). D values follow the Rouse scaling D ∼ φ–0.54 in PEG solutions. The diffusion time of the fluorescent probe in the PEG+bentonite matrix reveals the onset of depletion interaction-induced phase separation with an increase in bentonite concentration in the PEG matrix beyond 0.1 wt %. Beyond this concentration, structure factors obtained from prebleach FRAP images show a rapid increase at low Q. The two-phase system (PEG-rich and bentonite-rich) was characterized by the hierarchical structural topology of bentonite aggregates, and aggregate sizes were obtained at different length scales with phase contrast imaging, small-angle neutron scattering, and small-angle X-ray scattering. The microscale transport detection presented captures sensitively the commencement of phase separation in the PEG + bentonite matrix, as opposed to the PEG or PEG + CMC matrix, which are observed to be one-phase systems. This method of diffusion half-time and prebleach image analysis can be used for the fast, high-throughput experimental investigation of microscale mechanical response and its correlation with structuring in the polymer matrix.
Rings described by some special morphisms of modules

Abstract The category of morphisms of R-modules is an expansion of the category of R-modules. Using some special morphisms of modules such as phantom, -phantom, flat and absolutely pure morphisms, we give some new characterizations of left coherent rings, von Neumann regular rings, left semihereditary rings, left Noetherian rings, and right perfect rings.
Coco-LIC: Continuous-Time Tightly-Coupled LiDAR-Inertial-Camera Odometry Using Non-Uniform B-Spline

In this letter, we propose an efficient continuous-time LiDAR-Inertial-Camera Odometry, utilizing non-uniform B-splines to tightly couple measurements from the LiDAR, IMU, and camera. In contrast to uniform B-spline-based continuous-time methods, our non-uniform B-spline approach offers significant advantages in terms of achieving real-time efficiency and high accuracy. This is accomplished by dynamically and adaptively placing control points, taking into account the varying dynamics of the motion. To enable efficient fusion of heterogeneous LiDAR-Inertial-Camera data within a short sliding-window optimization, we assign depth to visual pixels using corresponding map points from a global LiDAR map, and formulate frame-to-map reprojection factors for the associated pixels in the current image frame. This way circumvents the necessity for depth optimization of visual pixels, which typically entails a lengthy sliding window with numerous control points for continuous-time trajectory estimation. We conduct dedicated experiments on real-world datasets to demonstrate the advantage and efficacy of adopting non-uniform continuous-time trajectory representation. Our LiDAR-Inertial-Camera odometry system is also extensively evaluated on both challenging scenarios with sensor degenerations and large-scale scenarios, and has shown comparable or higher accuracy than the state-of-the-art methods.
Stability of Sheet Flow of Water Beneath Temperate Glaciers and Implications for Glacier Surging

Abstract A mathematical model is presented for the stability of sheet flow of water beneath a temperate glacier. Enhanced viscous heat dissipation in thick parts of the sheet tends to make sheet flow unstable, the instability increasing as sheet thickness and pressure gradient increase. However, incipient channels may be destroyed as the glacier slides over protuberances on its bed. Quasi-stable sheet flow may be possible for sheets up to several millimeters in thickness, especially beneath glaciers that have relatively gentle surface slopes and slide at moderate to high speeds. Such water sheets may somewhat reduce the effective roughness of glacier beds, but probably not enough to allow surge initiation. Furthermore, the presence of numerous water-filled cavities at the glacier bed will tend to reduce the sheet thickness and lessen the degree of “lubrication” of the glacier bed by the water sheet.
MEDCLUB—starting line and first activities

The working group MEDCLUB, proposed by Fiorentino and Iacobellis (2005), is aimed at developing a wide range of activities dealing with Climate-Soil-Vegetation (CSV) interactions in Mediterranean basins. The goal of the project is to reduce uncertainty in predictions regarding hydrolog- ical extremes, soil water balance and ecosystem response to hydrological fluctuations. The research will focus on the controlling or dominant processes acting at basin or local scale that may allow model classification in terms of temporal and spatial scales, local climate, data requirements and type of application. In the present work, we briefly present the main framework of the project and its future perspective.
Editorial: New insights into synaptic plasticity in fear conditioning

COPYRIGHT © 2023 Crestani, Cicvaric and Yiu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Editorial: New insights into synaptic plasticity in fear conditioning
Preparedness of Disaster Management of Landslides in the livelihoods of Kulon Progo district

A landslide is one of the natural disasters that frequently appear during the rainy season. Society has confronted this natural disaster, and it is important to decrease the vulnerable impact at the household level. Preparedness refers to the effort made to expand awareness and readiness for handling the dangers and preventative actions related to them. The aim of the paper is to analyze the correlations between livelihoods and preparedness stages in a landslide disaster area in Kulon Progo. The independent variables are defined as human-, social-, physical-, natural-, and financial capital and transformation in structure and process. Preparedness is the dependent variable. The Chi-squared analysis was applied to answer the objective. The unit analysis of this study is households, and we collected 300 households based on stratified random sampling at the research site. Kulon Progo has been chosen since the geographical pattern is hilly. Households appear to have the average level of disaster management preparedness (37.3%). Based on the strengthening of relations, the belief in keeping away from bad behavior based on ancestors’ advice has the highest CC to preparedness phase (0.396) with χ² 55.554**. It found that belief and religiosity levels have a strong contingency correlation among household capitals.
Doubly High-Dimensional Contextual Bandits: An Interpretable Model for Joint Assortment-Pricing

Key challenges in running a retail business include how to select products to present to consumers (the assortment problem), and how to price products (the pricing problem) to maximize revenue or profit. Instead of considering these problems in isolation, we propose a joint approach to assortment-pricing based on contextual bandits. Our model is doubly high-dimensional, in that both context vectors and actions are allowed to take values in high-dimensional spaces. In order to circumvent the curse of dimensionality, we propose a simple yet flexible model that captures the interactions between covariates and actions via a (near) low-rank representation matrix. The resulting class of models is reasonably expressive while remaining interpretable through latent factors, and includes various structured linear bandit and pricing models as particular cases. We propose a computationally tractable procedure that combines an exploration/exploitation protocol with an efficient low-rank matrix estimator, and we prove bounds on its regret. Simulation results show that this method has lower regret than state-of-the-art methods applied to various standard bandit and pricing models. Real-world case studies on the assortment-pricing problem, from an industry-leading instant noodles company to an emerging beauty start-up, underscore the gains achievable using our method. In each case, we show at least three-fold gains in revenue or profit by our bandit method, as well as the interpretability of the latent factor models that are learned.
Speech-variation activities: Embracing momentary discomfort to gain confidence, attenuate anxiety, and paradoxically increase comfort during public speaking

Public speaking creates discomfort for many students. Instead of seeking to avoid this inevitable discomfort, six speech-variation activities explained in this paper are intentionally designed for, a little bit at a time, embracing momentary discomfort in public speaking. By embracing the inevitable discomfort of public speaking head-on in a fun and supportive environment, these speech-variation activities should help students gain confidence, attenuate anxiety, and paradoxically increase comfort during public speaking. Why these activities should be conducted, how they can be conducted with success, and whether students find the activities helpful or not are also discussed. Courses: Designed specifically for use in public-speaking courses, these speech-variation activities can also be used in any class that incorporates student presentations. Objectives: The ultimate goal of these activities is to have students, especially those who find public speaking a debilitating experience, increase confidence and reduce anxiety toward public speaking.