Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Aortic Pulse Wave Velocity as a Measure of Cardiovascular Risk in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: Two-Year Follow-Up Data from the ARCADE Study

Background and objectives: Cardiovascular (CV) disease is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Patients with COPD have increased arterial stiffness, which may predict future CV risk. However, the development of arterial stiffness in COPD has not yet been studied prospectively. The Assessment of Risk in Chronic Airways Disease Evaluation (ARCADE) is a longitudinal study of CV risk and other comorbidities in COPD. The aims of this analysis were to explore factors associated with aortic pulse wave velocity (aPWV) at baseline and to describe the progression of aPWV in patients with COPD and comparators over two years. Materials and methods: At baseline, 520 patients with COPD (confirmed by spirometry) and 150 comparators free from respiratory disease were assessed for body composition, blood pressure, aPWV, noninvasive measures of cardiac output, inflammatory biomarkers, and exercise capacity. This was repeated after two years, and mortality cases and causes were also recorded. Results: At baseline, aPWV was greater in COPD patients 9.8 (95% confidence interval (CI) 9.7–10) versus comparators 8.7 (8.5–9.1) m/s (p < 0.01) after adjustments for age, mean arterial pressure (MAP), and heart rate. Mean blood pressure was 98 ± 11 in COPD patients and 95 ± 10 mmHg in comparators at baseline (p = 0.004). After two years, 301 patients and 105 comparators were fully reassessed. The mean (95% CI) aPWV increased similarly in patients 0.44 (0.25–0.63) and comparators 0.46 (0.23–0.69) m/s, without a change in blood pressure. At the two-year follow-up, there were 29 (6%) deaths in COPD patients, with the majority due to respiratory causes, with an overall dropout of 43% of patients with COPD and 30% of comparators. Conclusions: This was the first large longitudinal study of CV risk in COPD patients, and we confirmed greater aPWV in COPD patients than comparators after adjustments for confounding factors. After two years, patients and comparators had a similar increase of almost 0.5 m/s aPWV.
A Geo-Social Characterization of Health Impact from Air Pollution in Mexico Valley

The impact of the air pollution phenomenon has been long studied, but most often with a fragmented approach, without closely looking at the relationship between different components that characterize it, such as sensor-based data, health data from institutional databases, and data on how it is perceived by human beings in social media. The research developed in this study introduces an integrated methodological framework that analyses sensor data on air pollution distributed in space and time, combined with health data and social data narratives that reflect how different communities perceive this phenomenon in space and time; exploring how these different heterogeneous sources can be combined to better understand the impact of air pollution phenomena at the large-city level in the Valley of Mexico. We introduce a Spatio-temporal data integration and mining framework that aims to discover trends and insights regarding the distribution of the impact of an air pollution phenomenon in terms of human health and perception. The main peculiarity of our methodological framework is the integration of different large data sources by combining a series of methods: NLP (topic modeling), data mining (data cubes, unsupervised learning, and clustering), and GIS capabilities (spatial interpolation, choropleth maps) that together provide a better understanding of the quantitative and qualitative patterns emerging at a different spatial scale and temporal granularity. Overall, this shows how social data, when combined with quantitative data, can provide a better understanding of the impact of a given phenomenon, such as air pollution.
Exploring standardisation, monitoring and training of medical devices in assisted vaginal birth studies: protocol for a systematic review

Introduction Assisted vaginal birth (AVB) can markedly improve maternal and neonatal outcomes arising from complications in the second stage of labour. Historically, both forceps and ventouse devices have been used to assist birth; however, they are not without risk and are associated with complications, such as cephalohaematoma, retinal haemorrhage and perineal trauma. As new devices are developed to overcome the limitations of existing techniques, it is necessary to establish their efficacy and effectiveness within randomised controlled trials (RCTs). A major challenge of evaluating complex interventions (ie, invasive procedures/devices used to assist vaginal birth) is ensuring they are delivered as intended. It can be difficult to standardise intervention delivery and monitor fidelity, and account for the varying expertise of clinicians (accoucher expertise). This paper describes the protocol for a systematic review aiming to investigate the reporting of device standardisation, monitoring and training in trials evaluating complex interventions, using AVB as a case study. Methods and analysis Relevant keywords and subject headings will be used to conduct a comprehensive search of MEDLINE, Embase, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature and ClinicalTrials.gov, for RCTs and pilot/feasibility studies evaluating AVB. Abstracts will be screened and full-text articles of eligible studies reviewed for inclusion. Information relating to the following categories will be extracted: standardisation of device use (ie, descriptions of operative steps, including mandatory/flexible parameters), monitoring of intervention delivery (ie, intervention fidelity, confirming that an intervention is delivered as intended) and accoucher expertise (ie, entry criteria for participation, training programmes and previous experience with the device). Risk of bias of included studies will be assessed. Ethics and dissemination Ethical approval is not required because primary data will not be collected. Findings will be disseminated by publishing in a peer-reviewed journal and presentations at relevant conferences.
Mayfly Taylor Optimisation-Based Scheduling Algorithm with Deep Reinforcement Learning for Dynamic Scheduling in Fog-Cloud Computing

Fog computing domain plays a prominent role in supporting time-delicate applications, which are associated with smart Internet of Things (IoT) services, like smart healthcare and smart city. However, cloud computing is a capable standard for IoT in data processing owing to the high latency restriction of the cloud, and it is incapable of satisfying needs for time-sensitive applications. The resource provisioning and allocation process in fog-cloud structure considers dynamic alternations in user necessities, and also restricted access resources in fog devices are more challenging. The global adoption of IoT-driven applications has led to the rise of fog computing structure, which permits perfect connection for mobile edge and cloud resources. The effectual scheduling of application tasks in fog environments is a challenging task because of resource heterogeneity, stochastic behaviours, network hierarchy, controlled resource abilities, and mobility elements in IoT. The deadline is the most significant challenge in the fog computing structure due to the dynamic variations in user requirement parameters. In this paper, Mayfly Taylor Optimisation Algorithm (MTOA) is developed for dynamic scheduling in the fog-cloud computing model. The developed MTOA-based Deep Q-Network (DQN) showed better performance with energy consumption, service level agreement (SLA), and computation cost of 0.0162, 0.0114, and 0.0855, respectively.
Strain-relieved Ba0.6Sr0.4TiO3 thin films for tunable microwave applications

This article discusses tunable dielectric thin films, with particularly emphasis on strain-relieved and defect-reduced tunable dielectric thin films that significantly reduce dielectric loss at microwave frequencies. Ba0.6Sr0. 4TiO3 (BST) thin films (∼0.3 μm thick) were deposited onto (100) MgO single crystalline substrates by pulsed laser deposition at 750 °C and 200 mTorr O2 with a nominal 600-A-thick BST buffer layer. These films were observed to be strain relieved and show better dielectric properties by exhibiting a significantly high dielectric Q(=1/tan δ>100) while retaining a useful dielectric tuning (=[C(0)–C(23 V/μm)]/C(0)>20%, where C is the film capacitance) at 8 GHz compared to strained BST thin films. The BST buffer layer could be composed of any porous BST phase with randomly oriented grains between a nearly amorphous phase and a fully crystalline phase. A further increase in the dielectric Q was observed in strain-relieved BST thin films mixed with MgO and strain-relieved BST thin films dop.
EXPECTATIVAS E DIFICULDADES DOS ESTÁGIOS SUPERVISIONADOS DOCENTE REMOTO: PERCEPÇÃO DE PROFESSORES EM FORMAÇÃO

O estágio supervisionado é uma etapa fundamental na formação docente, sendo período de aplicação dos conhecimentos teóricos, bem como é momento propicio àexperimentar, sob orientação, o cotidiano das escolas da educação básica, assim como participar do planejamento e organização de aulas e conhecer as situações reais dentro de sala. Todo esse contexto precisou ser remodelado devido à COVID-19, cujas atividades educacionais presenciais precisaram ser interrompidas, sendo ofertada por meio do ensino remoto emergencial.Diante desse cenário, esta investigação intenciona compreender as expectativas e dificuldades sobre o desenvolvimento dos estágios supervisionadosremotona percepção de professores em formação. A pesquisa, descritiva e de abordagem qualitativa, foi realizada com 57 licenciandos(as) de Biologia. Os dados foram coletados por meio de um formulário online e, posteriormente, analisados seguindo-se orientações da análise de conteúdo de Gibbs (2009). Pode-se perceber que que para 72% dos estagiários a expectativa em relação aos estágios foram atendidas ou superadas. Contudo a ausência de contato direto com os discentes (68,4%), a falta de retorno dos alunos com as atividades propostas (45,6%)e a não participação dos discentes devido a falta de internet (45,6%) foram dificuldades encontradas.Assim, apesar dos contratempos encontrados durante o percurso do estágio supervisionado, de modo remoto, novas aprendizagem se apresentaram, ressignificando a prática docente.
Thematic structure in syntax

This important monograph summarizes, rethinks, and extends a decade of the author's work on therole assignments -- the ways in which the roles implied by verbs of a given type play out in terms of position and other syntactic functions. The study of theta roles and the locality of theta-role assignment leads into many interesting areas of linguistic theory, such as scope, the ECP, X-bar theory, binding theory, and the weak crossover condition; Williams's reconstruction thus offers a systematic integration of a remarkably wide range of syntactic phenomena. Williams starts by outlining a theory of the clause,specifically, of the distribution of Nominative Case and Tense. He then develops a formalism for the notion of"external argument" that is used throughout the rest of the book. Subsequent chapters review the issues surrounding the syntactic expression of the subject-predicate relationship, extend the notion of external argument to include NP movement, and reanalyze the verb movement constructions as deriving from the calculus of theta roles rather than movement. The last chapter distinguishes referential dependence and coreference, showing that a general Leftness condition governs the former, while the binding theory restated in terms of theta relations governs the latter.
A Survey on IoT-Enabled Home Automation Systems: Attacks and Defenses

With recent advances in communication technologies and Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructures, home automation (HA) systems have emerged as a new promising paradigm that provides convenient smart-home services to users. However, there exist various security risks during the deployment and application of HA systems, which pose severe security threats to users. On the one hand, traditional IoT security threats (e.g., device intrusion, protocol vulnerabilities, and so on) are inherent to HA systems. On the other hand, as the core of HA systems, the Trigger-Action Programming (TAP) model organizes cloud platforms, local hubs, and smart devices through user-customized rules, but the complex interactions involved bring new challenges to the security of HA systems. These two kinds of security issues have attracted widespread attention from both academia and industry, and explorations on both attack and defense have been made. However, there is not yet a survey that provides a summary of the overall HA systems’ security research. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art literature on HA system security from aspects of attack and defense. We first give a brief introduction to the HA system architecture and present a general workflow of HA systems. Then, we review and classify the relevant attacks based on the HA architecture, with an explicit analysis of vulnerabilities exploited by these attacks. We further elaborate on the security requirements of HA systems and provide detailed descriptions and comparisons of existing defenses methods. Finally, we conclude with a thorough discussion of open issues for future research.
Influence of Water Content Level on Partial Discharge Inception Voltage for Capacitively Graded Oil-Paper Insulation

Capacitively graded oil-paper insulation is still the most widespread and typically used insulation type for high voltage instrument transformers and bushings. As such, it is highly susceptible to water content within the paper. All manufacturers have the tendency to reduce this content to lowest possible values. The purpose of this research is to show how different water content levels influence the insulation properties of such types of insulation, by measuring the partial discharge inception voltage levels and tanδ. A numerous AC voltage tests were carried out at different temperatures. The results show a clear influence of the initial water content and operating temperature of the apparatus to the partial discharge inception voltage.
Sur l'estimation semi paramétrique robuste pour statistique fonctionnelle

Dans cette these, nous nous proposons d'etudier quelques parametres fonctionnels lorsque les donnees sont generees a partir d'un modele de regression a indice simple. Nous etudions deux parametres fonctionnels. Dans un premier temps nous supposons que la variable explicative est a valeurs dans un espace de Hilbert (dimension infinie) et nous considerons l'estimation de la densite conditionnelle par la methode de noyau. Nous traitons les proprietes asymptotiques de cet estimateur dans les deux cas independant et dependant. Pour le cas ou les observations sont independantes identiquement distribuees (i.i.d.), nous obtenons la convergence ponctuelle et uniforme presque complete avec vitesse de l'estimateur construit. Comme application nous discutons l'impact de ce resultat en prevision non parametrique fonctionnelle a partir de l'estimation de mode conditionnelle. La dependance est modelisee via la correlation quasi-associee. Dans ce contexte nous etablissons la convergence presque complete ainsi que la normalite asymptotique de l'estimateur a noyau de la densite condtionnelle convenablement normalisee. Nous donnons de maniere explicite la variance asymptotique. Notons que toutes ces proprietes asymptotiques ont ete obtenues sous des conditions standard et elles mettent en evidence le phenomene de concentration de la mesure de probabilite de la variable fonctionnelle sur des petites boules. Dans un second temps, nous supposons que la variable explicative est vectorielle et nous nous interessons a un modele de prevision assez general qui est la regression robuste. A partir d'observations quasi-associees, on construit un estimateur a noyau pour ce parametre fonctionnel. Comme resultat asymptotique on etablit la vitesse de convergence presque complete uniforme de l'estimateur construit. Nous insistons sur le fait que les deux modeles etudies dans cette these pourraient etre utilises pour l'estimation de l'indice simple lorsque ce dernier est inconnu, en utilisant la methode d'M-estimation ou la methode de pseudo-maximum de vraisemblance, qui est un cas particulier de la premiere methode.
A coalgebraic perspective on minimization, determinization and behavioural metrics

Coalgebra offers a unified theory of state based systems, including infinite streams, labelled transition systems and deterministic automata. In this paper, we use the coalgebraic view on systems to derive, in a uniform way, abstract procedures for checking behavioural equivalence in coalgebras, which perform (a combination of) minimization and determinization in the system. First, we show that for coalgebras on categories equipped with factorization structures, there exists an abstract procedure for equivalence checking. For instance, when considering epi-mono factorizations in the category of sets and functions, this procedure corresponds to the usual (coalgebraic) minimization algorithm and two states are behaviourally equivalent iff they are mapped to the same state in the minimized coalgebra. Second, motivated by several examples, we consider coalgebras on categories without suitable factorization structures: under certain conditions, it is possible to apply the above procedure after transforming coalgebras with reflections. This transformation can be thought of as some kind of determinization. Finally, we show that the result of the procedure also induces a pseudo-metric on the states, in such a way that the distance between each pair of states is minimized.
Mass Spectrometric-Based Proteomics for Biomarker Discovery in Osteosarcoma: Current Status and Future Direction

Due to a lack of novel therapies and biomarkers, the clinical outcomes of osteosarcoma patients have not significantly improved for decades. The advancement of mass spectrometry (MS), peptide quantification, and downstream pathway analysis enables the investigation of protein profiles across a wide range of input materials, from cell culture to long-term archived clinical specimens. This can provide insight into osteosarcoma biology and identify candidate biomarkers for diagnosis, prognosis, and stratification of chemotherapy response. In this review, we provide an overview of proteomics studies of osteosarcoma, indicate potential biomarkers that might be promising therapeutic targets, and discuss the challenges and opportunities of mass spectrometric-based proteomics in future osteosarcoma research.
The rise of fiber electronics.

As a new direction of applied chemistry, fiber electronics allow configuration changes from three to two dimensions and then to one dimension in electronic devices. The resulting fiber devices have unique properties, such as ultraflexibility, tissue adaptability and weavability, enabling their use in a variety of applications, particularly in various emerging fields related to implantable devices and wearable systems. Here, we summarize the different types of fiber electrode materials based on the one-dimensional configuration and their distinctive interfaces, various devices and promising applications and highlight the remaining challenges and future directions.
Physiological evolution during adaptive radiation: A test of the island effect in Anolis lizards

Phenotypic evolution is often exceptionally rapid on islands, resulting in numerous, ecologically diverse species. Although adaptive radiation proceeds along various phenotypic axes, the island effect of faster evolution has been mostly tested with regard to morphology. Here, we leveraged the physiological diversity and species richness of Anolis lizards to examine the evolutionary dynamics of three key traits: heat tolerance, body temperature, and cold tolerance. Contrary to expectation, we discovered slower heat tolerance evolution on islands. Additionally, island species evolve toward higher optimal body temperatures than mainland species. Higher optima and slower evolution in upper physiological limits are consistent with the Bogert effect, or evolutionary inertia due to thermoregulation. Correspondingly, body temperature is higher and more stable on islands than on the American mainland, despite similarity in thermal environments. Greater thermoregulation on islands may occur due to ecological release from competitors and predators compared to mainland environments. By reducing the costs of thermoregulation, ecological opportunity on islands may actually stymie, rather than hasten, physiological evolution. Our results emphasize that physiological diversity is an important axis of ecological differentiation in the adaptive radiation of anoles, and that behavior can impart distinct macroevolutionary footprints on physiological diversity on islands and continents.
The influence of parsimony and randomness on complexity growth in Tierra

The issue of how to create open-ended evolution in an artificial system is one the open problems in artificial life. This paper examines two of the factors that have some bearing on this issue, using the Tierra artificial life system. {\em Parsimony pressure} is a tendency to penalise more complex organisms by the extra cost needed to reproduce longer genotypes, encouraging simplification to happen. In Tierra, parsimony is controlled by the \verb+SlicePow+ parameter. When full parsimony is selected, evolution optimises the ancestral organism to produce extremely simple organisms. With parsimony completely relaxed, organisms grow larger, but not more complex. They fill up with ``junk''. This paper looks at scanning a range of \verb+SlicePow+ from 0.9 to 1 to see if there is an optimal value for generating complexity. Tierra (along with most ALife systems) use pseudo random number generators. Algorithms can never create information, only destroy it. So the total complexity of the Tierra system is bounded by the initial complexity, implying that the individual organism complexity is bounded. Biological systems, however, have plenty of sources of randomness, ultimately dependent on quantum randomness, so do not have this complexity limit. Sources of real random numbers exist for computers called {\em entropy gatherers} -- this paper reports on the effect of changing Tierra's pseudo random number generator for an entropy gatherer.
Salud mental en pandemia: Experiencia de la Unidad de Atención de Salud de la Universidad de Santiago de Chile

La Unidad de Atención de Salud de la VRAE, es la encargada del bienestar psicológico de la comunidad universitaria. Profesionales del Programa de Salud Mental -psiquiatría, medicina general en salud mental, terapia ocupacional y psicología-, son los que brindan este servicio de manera gratuita. Aunque, el deterioro de la salud mental venia en aumento desde hace un tiempo a la fecha, esta se vio agudizada durante la pandemia por SARS-CoV-2. Debido al alto impacto en la salud mental, no sólo se transformó la atención presencial por atención remota, sino que también se reforzaron todos los servicios ofrecidos usando estrategias que permitieran responder a la alta demanda de nuestros usuarios. Esto permitió dar respuesta a la totalidad de las solicitudes de atención con tiempos de espera muy por debajo del promedio nacional, y con buena percepción por parte de los usuarios. Esto nos deja tranquilos para enfrentar los nuevos desafíos que se presenten en el futuro, mejorando la calidad de vida de nuestra comunidad universitaria.