Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Experimental Quality Assessment of Cellular Networks and their Utilization for UAV Services

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have attracted significant attention. Many potential applications are predicted to bring abundant business opportunities in the next decade thanks to the ubiquitous connectivity of the 4G and 5G cellular networks. Unlike terrestrial deployments, airborne infrastructures have diverse attributes, e.g., increased deployment flexibility, line-of-sight (LoS) connections, and controlled mobility. These attributes bring new research questions and challenges, including LoS dominant ground channels together with increased aerial-terrestrial network interference, the exploitation of the degree of freedom (DoF) provided by the UAV mobility, and the different and tighter quality of service (QoS) requirements for purposes of unmanned traffic management (UTM). Further challenges stem from existing infrastructure oriented towards service availability in low altitudes and low data transfer costs. A key challenge in this context is to achieve and guarantee sufficient service reliability in all altitudes where UTM is planned to be used. Obtained results from the measurement campaign at Twente airport indicate the performance of the 4G cellular network is stable and equals the terrestrial use cases up to 60 m of altitude. However, if the altitude increases more, the network performance degrades significantly. In detail, the analysis revealed the fact the performance drop is significant, especially for downlink transmissions (from ground to UAVs), as the strong interference and connection outages were observed in increased numbers.
Estudio de disponibilidad de señales de localización GPS/GSM

Los sistemas de localizacion globales ofrecen una disponibilidad limitada, por lo que no son utiles para cubrir los requerimientos de muchos servicios basados en la localizacion del usuario. Este proyecto ha estudiado las mejoras, en terminos de cobertura, de una solucion que aumenta la cobertura respecto a las existentes hasta el momento. Para la realizacion de un estudio innovador, previamente ha sido necesaria la evaluacion de las tecnologias de localizacion actuales. La solucion presentada se basa en la hibridacion del sistema Global Positioning System (GPS) con el sistema celular Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM).
LVPT: Lazy Velocity Pseudotime Inference Method

The emergence of RNA velocity has enriched our understanding of the dynamic transcriptional landscape within individual cells. In light of this breakthrough, we embarked on integrating RNA velocity with cellular pseudotime inference, aiming to improve the prediction of cell orders along biological trajectories beyond existing methods. Here, we developed LVPT, a novel method for pseudotime and trajectory inference. LVPT introduces a lazy probability to indicate the probability that the cell stays in the original state and calculates the transition matrix based on RNA velocity to provide the probability and direction of cell differentiation. LVPT shows better and comparable performance of pseudotime inference compared with other existing methods on both simulated datasets with different structures and real datasets. The validation results were consistent with prior knowledge, indicating that LVPT is an accurate and efficient method for pseudotime inference.
Transformer-based Speech Recognition Models for Oral History Archives in English, German, and Czech

This paper is a step forward in our effort to make vast oral history archives more accessible to the public and researchers by breaking down the decoding barriers between the knowledge encoded in the spoken testimonies and users who want to search for the information of their interest. We present new Transformer-based monolingual models suitable for speech recognition of oral history archives in English, German, and Czech. Our experiments show that although the all-purpose speech recognition systems have recently made tremendous progress, the transcription of oral history archives is still a challenging task for them; our tailored models significantly outper-formed larger public multilingual models and scored new state-of-the-art results on all tested datasets. Due to the 2-phase fine-tuning process, our models are robust and can be used for oral history archives of various domains. We publicly release our models within a public speech recognition service.
Concomitant Intubation with Minimal Cuffed Tube and Rigid Bronchoscopy for Severe Tracheo-Carinal Obstruction

Background: Our aim was to report on the use of an innovative technique for airway management utilizing a small diameter, short-cuffed, long orotracheal tube for assisting operative rigid bronchoscopy in critical airway obstruction. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the clinical data of 36 patients with life-threatening critical airway stenosis submitted for rigid bronchoscopy between January 2008 and July 2021. The supporting ventilatory tube, part of the Translaryngeal Tracheostomy KIT (Fantoni method), was utilized in tandem with the rigid bronchoscope during endoscopic airway reopening. Results: Indications for collateral intubation were either tumors of the trachea with near-total airway obstruction (13), or tumors of the main carina with total obstruction of one main bronchus and possible contralateral involvement (23). Preliminary dilation was necessary before tube placement in only 2/13 patients with tracheal-obstructing tumors (15.4%). No postoperative complications were reported. There was one case of an intraoperative cuff tear, with no further technical problems. Conclusions: In our experience, this innovative method proved to be safe, allowing for continuous airway control. It enabled anesthesia inhalation, use of neuromuscular blockage and reliable end-tidal CO2 monitoring, along with protection of the distal airway from blood flooding. The shorter time of the procedure was due to the lack of need for pauses to ventilate the patient.
Saving Energy and Improving Air Quality in Urban Heat Islands

Temperatures in urban areas have increased because solar energy is more strongly absorbed by additional roofs and pavements. Downtown Los Angles is now 2.5 Kelvin warmer than in the 1930s, which requires 1–1.5 GWe more electricity to cool buildings on summer days, costing an extra $100 million/year. Cool roof and pavement materials with increased reflectivity of 0.25 can lower surface temperatures by 10 K. If Los Angles urban temperatures could be reduced by 3 K, ozone concentrations could be reduced considerably.
Non-Invasive Measurement of Hepatic Fibrosis by Transient Elastography: A Narrative Review

Transient elastography by FibroScan® (Echosens, Paris, France) is a non-invasive method that can provide a reliable measurement of liver fibrosis through the evaluation of liver stiffness. Despite its limitations and risks, liver biopsy has thus far been the only procedure able to provide data to quantify fibrosis. Scientific evidence and clinical practice have made it possible to use FibroScan® in the diagnostic work-up of several liver diseases to monitor patients’ long-term treatment response and for complication prevention. For these reasons, this procedure is widely used in clinical practice and is still being investigated for further applications. The aim of this narrative review is to provide a comprehensive overview of the main applications of transient elastography in the current clinical practice.
A Protective Effect of Pirfenidone in Lung Fibroblast–Endothelial Cell Network via Inhibition of Rho-Kinase Activity

Pulmonary fibrosis is a life-threatening disease that has been attributed to several causes. Specifically, vascular injury is thought to be involved in the pathogenesis of fibrosis. The effects of the antifibrotic drug pirfenidone on angiogenesis have not been fully elucidated. This study aimed to investigate the effects of pirfenidone in human lung fibroblast–endothelial cell co-culture network formation and to analyze the underlying molecular mechanisms. Human lung fibroblasts were co-cultured with human umbilical vein endothelial cells to establish a co-culture network cell sheet. The influence of pirfenidone was evaluated for protective effect on the endothelial network in cell sheets stimulated with transforming growth factor β (TGF-β). Results indicated that TGF-β disrupted the network formation. Pirfenidone and Y27632 (Rho-associated coiled-coil containing protein kinase [Rho-kinase or ROCK] inhibitor) protected against the TGF-β–induced endothelial network disruption. TGF-β activated Rho-kinase signaling in cells composing the co-culture cell sheet, whereas pirfenidone and Y27632 inhibited these effects. In conclusion, TGF-β–induced Rho-kinase activation and disrupted endothelial network formation. Pirfenidone suppressed TGF-β–induced Rho-kinase activity in cell sheets, thereby enabling vascular endothelial cells networks to be preserved in the cell sheets. These findings suggest that pirfenidone has potential vascular network–preserving effect via inhibiting Rho-kinase activity in vascular injury, which is a precursor to pulmonary fibrosis.
Aerobic exercise prevents cardiomyocyte damage caused by oxidative stress in early cardiovascular disease by increasing vascularity while L-arginine supplementation prevents it by increasing activation of the enzyme nitric oxide synthase

L-Arginine and chronic exercise reduce oxidative stress. However, it is unclear how they affect cardiomyocytes during cardiovascular disease (CVD) development. The aim of this research was to investigate the possible effects of L-arginine supplementation and aerobic training on systemic oxidative stress and their consequences on cardiomyocytes during cardiometabolic disease onset caused by excess fructose. Wistar rats were allocated into four groups: control (C), fructose (F, 10% fructose in water), fructose training (FT; moderate running, 50-70% of the maximal velocity), and fructose arginine (FA; 880 mg/kg/day). Fructose was given for two weeks and fructose plus treatments for the subsequent eight weeks. Body composition, blood glucose, insulin, lipid profile, lipid peroxidation, nitrite, metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2) activity, left ventricle histological changes, microRNA-126, -195, and -146, eNOS, p-eNOS, and TNF-α expressions were analyzed. Higher abdominal fat mass, triacylglycerol level, and insulin level were observed in the F group, and both treatments reversed these alterations. Myocardial vascularization was impaired in fructose-fed groups, except in FT. Cardiomyocyte hypertrophy was observed in all fructose-fed groups. TNF-α levels were higher in fructose-fed groups than in the C group, and p-eNOS levels were higher in the FA than in the C and F groups. Lipid peroxidation was higher in the F group than in the FT and C groups. During CVD onset, moderate aerobic exercise reduced lipid peroxidation, and both training and L-arginine prevented metabolic changes caused by excessive fructose. Myocardial vascularization was impaired by fructose, and cardiomyocyte hypertrophy appeared to be influenced by pro-inflammatory and oxidative environments.
Scheduling Real-Time Wireless Traffic: A Network-Aided Offline Reinforcement Learning Approach

Real-time traffic has stringent requirements in terms of latency, and deadline guarantees on packet delivery play a vital role in real-time IoT applications. Deadline-aware wireless scheduling of real-time traffic has been a long-standing open problem, despite significant efforts using analytical methods. Departing from the conventional approaches, this work studies deadline-aware traffic scheduling by taking an offline reinforcement learning (RL) approach to train scheduling algorithms, ready to be used for online scheduling. To address the challenges therein, we propose a network-aided offline RL (NA-ORL) framework for deadline-aware scheduling, by making use of the fact that the network dynamics follows a well-defined physics model. Specifically, in NA-ORL the initialization of the scheduling policy is obtained through behavior cloning with a good model-based scheduling algorithm, and the network-aided actor–critic (A–C) method is utilized to train a better scheduling policy with carefully designed states and reward function, thanks to its nature of policy improvement. Building on NA-ORL, we further devise a network-aided offline meta-RL (NA-MRL) algorithm to deal with the nonstationary network dynamics. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that the proposed NA-ORL and NA-MRL algorithms can achieve better performance over adaptive mixing over nondominated links (AMIX-ND) and largest-deficit-first (LDF), in various scenarios for the deadline-aware wireless scheduling.
MILITARY LEADERSHIP AND LEADER PERFORMANCE: THE MEDIATING ROLE OF ORGANIZATIONAL MILITARY BEHAVIOR

This study aims to examine the effectiveness model of military leadership and organizational military behavior (OMB) on the organizational performance of the Indonesian National Armed Forces (TNI). This research uses descriptive and explanatory survey methods. The population in this study were 69 POMDAM and DENPOM units throughout Indonesia. The data collection technique uses cross-sectional techniques through Google Forms. The data analysis used is the Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Model. The findings of this study conclude: (1) the new concept has valid and reliable indicators; (2) military leadership and OMB significantly affect performance; (3) military leadership significantly affects organizational performance through OMB as mediation. Therefore, this research is expected to assist one of the crucial sectors in Indonesia and be considered in research in the military sector. Furthermore, the concepts and models in this study should be empirically tested in further research.
Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) Gluten-Free Bread: The Effect of Milling Conditions on the Technological Properties and In Vitro Bioaccessibility of Polyphenols and Minerals

The absence of gluten proteins in sorghum allows for the production of baked goods that are suitable for celiacs. Previous studies have shown that the milling process affects the performance of sorghum flour in baked products, especially those that are gluten-free (GF). This study aimed to explore the effects of mill type (impact and roller) on flour properties and GF bread quality by assessing the technological quality, antioxidant activity, and mineral content of the bread. All particle populations of flour obtained via both millings presented a bimodal distribution, and the volume mean diameter (D 4,3) ranged from 431.6 µm to 561.6 µm. The partially refined milled flour obtained via polishing and impact milling produced bread with a soft crumb, fewer but larger alveoli in the crumb, and a structure that did not collapse during baking, showing the best performance in bread quality. In the in vitro bread digestibility assay, the total polyphenol content and antioxidant activity decreased during the digestion steps. High mineral (Cu, Fe, Mn, and Zn) contents were also found in a portion of the bread (120 g) made with whole sorghum flour; however, their potential bioavailability was reduced in the presence of a higher amount of bran.
The Influence of Mother’s Employment, Family Income, and Expenditure on Stunting Among Children Under Five: A Cross-Sectional Study in Indonesia

Introduction It is widely acknowledged that the socioeconomic circumstances of a family income are correctly reflected in that family expenditures. The dietary habits of families are influenced by socioeconomic circumstances that may affect stunting. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the household economic predictor stunting (mother’s employment, family income, and family expenditure) in children under five. Methods This study used a cross-sectional design. Six districts and cities have been chosen as study areas based on the areas with the highest incidence of stunting in West Java, Indonesia. This study conducted specifically from October to December 2018. Data were examined using descriptive statistics (frequency distribution) and a Spearman Rank bivariate test. A logistic regression was employed to determine the elements that serve as predictors of stunting. Results A total of 731 women with children under five participated in the study. A bivariate analysis showed that mother’s employment had an association with stunting among children under five (p = 0.014). Meanwhile, family income and expenditure are not statistically significant associated with stunting (p > 0.05). A multivariate analysis showed that mother’s employment was a stunting predictor with odd ratio (OR) 1.810 (p = 0.017). The OR value means that mothers who do not work have a 1.810 chance for their children to experience stunting compared with mothers who have work. However, family income and expenditure have negative projected values (p = 0.580 and p = 0.398, respectively). Conclusion Children under five who are stunted are potentially predictive with mothers’ employment, with a chance is higher in mother who do not work. However, family income and expenditure are not predictive of stunting.
CFTNet: Complex-valued Frequency Transformation Network for Speech Enhancement

It is widely known that the presence of multi-speaker babble noise greatly degrades speech intelligibility. However, suppressing noise without creating artifacts in human speech is challenging in environments with a low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and even more so if noise is speech-like such as bab-ble noise. Deep learning-based systems either enhance the magnitude response and reuse distorted phases or enhance the complex spectrogram. Frequency transformation block (FTB) has emerged as a useful architecture to implicitly capture harmonic correlation which is especially important for people with hearing loss (hearing aid/ cochlear implant users). This study proposes a complex-valued frequency transformation network (CFTNet) for speech enhancement, which leverages both a complex-valued U-Net and FTB to capture sufficient low-level contextual information. The proposed system learns a complex transformation matrix to accurately recover speech in the time-frequency domain from a noisy spectrogram. Experimental re-sults demonstrate that the proposed system can achieve significant improvements in both seen and unseen noise over state-of-art networks. Furthermore, the proposed CFTNet can suppress highly nonstationary noise without creating musical artifacts commonly observed in conventional enhancement meth-ods.
Proactive Damage Prevention from Zero-Day Ransomwares

As most of the existing crypto ransomwares being computer viruses, detecting zero-day ransomwares before they cause any damage is hard while any malicious encryption of production data is fatal especially to those who rely on their computer systems for their commercial uses. We propose a proactive solution (PDPZR) that does not depend on prior detections. Instead, our solution eliminates the risks from zero-day crypto ransomwares using a backup-based approach. Our contributions in this work are two-fold. We first identified the two essential requirements for backup-based solutions to be safe and effective: (1) immediate backup for every update to production data and (2) an algorithm to truncate unnecessary good old backup copies, which is not an easy task where attackers possibly use “data obfuscation” to avoid detections. We assess the potential of the proposed solution using simulation experiments. Our simulation experiments show that PDPZR will eliminate the risk of damages especially from zero-day ransomwares while it keeps the length of a backup list under control. We observed that PDPZR reduced the length of a backup list by more than 50% in a heavy update load, while we observed that the list length grew in linear. Under heavy updates, different protection scrums kicked in at different phases in the amount of updates to dynamically and adaptively prevent uncontrolled increases in the length of a backup list. These results suggest that PDPZR will be a safe and effective proactive damage prevention from zero-day ransomwares.
Prosody Modeling with 3D Visual Information for Expressive Video Dubbing

The automatic video dubbing task is proposed to meet personal and industrial demands for dubbing. Current methods mostly focus on duration matching and overlook the synchronization of prosody, and thus lack expressiveness. In this paper, we introduce visual prosody modeling to promote expressiveness for video dubbing, defined as the expression and head pose in 3D space, which has the advantages of 1) high relevance to the tone and stress of utterances; 2) more accurate than 2D images; 3) disentanglement from irrelevant factors such as speaker identity. We propose a 3D-VD (3D Video Dubber) system to incorporate visual prosody, utilizing a visual-text step-wise aligner to con-trol the generated prosody. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms previous methods that only consider 2D face images in terms of naturalness, lip-speech alignment, and synchronization of visual and auditory prosody. The case study demonstrates the correlation between expression and pitch.
Multiplication of Indian Chir Pine Seedling by Cuttings in Nursery Beds

Multiplication of Indian Chir pine ( Pinus roxburghii Sargent) cuttings was studies in the nursery beds 5 percent IBA-talc with 10 percent sucrose, 5 percent capaf and 25 peccent perhydroxybenzoic acid (phenol) resulted in 57.13 percent rooting and 91 67 percent callusing of non-rooted cuttings compared to 7.14 percent rooting and 35.35 percent callusing in control. IBA at low concentrations (one percent) induced higher rooting when side shoots of seedlings were gridled at base and auxin powder formulation rubbed at gridled and finally covered with black tape. Cuttings planted around earthen backed water filled pots have further improved rooting both quantitatively and qualitatively. Many cuttings developed a strong main ront similar to tap root in seedlings.
Growing cities from within: urban agriculture in inner Brisbane

This paper proposes a new way to integrate urban planning and design of our cities with multifunctional agriculture through the development of local infrastructure solutions in response to food production and energy, land, water supply pressures as part of a climate change adaptation strategy. This paper lays the groundwork for a new way of structuring cities with particular emphasis on the potential to place urban agriculture at the heart of the community. A pilot study demonstrates how this can happen through the retrofit of the inner city Brisbane neighbourhoods situated in the historical catchment of Western Creek.
Managing biodiversity for food and nutrition security in West Africa: building on indigenous knowledge for more sustainable livelihoods.

The West African subregion holds a rich and varied biodiversity which continues to play an important role in the food security and nutrition of both rural and urban populations. While in many cases the healthy components in West African food traditions are still found in the lives and cooking pots of rural households there is an overall trend of food crops and edible species part of traditional food systems being neglected and underutilized. Cheap imported food staples global markets and sociocultural changes are placing Africas indigenous food crops and animal resources at a distinct disadvantage. Local agricultural biodiversity must be managed to optimized the nutritional and health benefits in traditional foods. We at IPGRI are not suggesting an exclusive focus on local biodiversity as the sole way of addressing urgent food and nutrition challenges but rather that agricultural biodiversity can engender dietary diversity and promote healthier diets. It is a cost-effective and empowering way of enhancing the effectiveness and sustainability of other nutrition and health interventions that target the rural and urban poor. (excerpt)