Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Analytical Method of Electromagnetic Wave Scattering by a Highly Conductive Sphere in a Lossless Medium with Low-Frequency Dipolar Excitation

The current research involves an analytical method of electromagnetic wave scattering by an impenetrable spherical object, which is immerged in an otherwise lossless environment. The highly conducting body is excited by an arbitrarily orientated time-harmonic magnetic dipole that is located at a reasonable remote distance from the sphere and operates at low frequencies for the physical situation under consideration, wherein the wavelength is much bigger than the size of the object. Upon this assumption, the scattering problem is formulated according to expansions of the implicated magnetic and electric fields in terms of positive integer powers of the wave number of the medium, which is linearly associated to the implied frequency. The static Rayleigh zeroth-order case and the initial three dynamic terms provide an excellent approximation for the obtained solution, while terms of higher orders are of minor significance and are neglected, since we work at the low-frequency regime. To this end, Maxwell’s equations reduce to a finite set of interrelated elliptic partial differential equations, each one accompanied by the perfectly electrically conducting boundary conditions on the metal sphere and the necessary limiting behavior as we move towards theoretical infinity, which is in practice very far from the observation domain. The presented analytical technique is based on the introduction of a suitable spherical coordinated system and yields compact fashioned three-dimensional solutions for the scattered components in view of infinite series expansions of spherical harmonic modes. In order to secure the validity and demonstrate the efficiency of this analytical approach, we invoke an example of reducing already known results from the literature to our complete isotropic case.
Blockchain and IoT Technology in Transformation of Education Sector

— Technology has impacted every field of life, and Education sector is no exception. It has seen seismic changes off-late. The traditional classroom teaching-learning process involved teachers and students using the black-board approach. But the past years have seen a change in dynamics of this process. Technology has crept in and has profoundly changed it for better. On one hand, when traditional classrooms had teachers, students and books as players, the current classroom has teachers, students, robots, e-books, laptops and books as the players. Today’s classrooms have enabled the teaching-learning process cross boundaries in the form of e-lectures and tutorials. Massive amount of Information is readily available for the process. Also, a shift from “Teacher-centric” to “Student Centric” can be seen in the current scenario. Several technologies have been key-players in revolutionizing the education sector, but the focus of this paper is concentrated in exploiting the applications of Blockchain and IoT in the sector and identifying the areas where they prove to be beneficial. An extensive literature survey shall be done to understand and identify how these technologies are a solution to major educational problems. The teaching learning process needs to be understood with respect to various parameters: change in process, change in players, change in outcomes derived, and others. The associated challenges shall also be identified. A detailed analysis of these enables us to conclude that these technologies, can revolutionize the education sector for better in future, particularly Blockchain is young, but owing to the benefits derived from it, fur - ther research and adoption shall for surely change the teaching-learning process.
A Decisive Metaheuristic Attribute Selector Enabled Combined Unsupervised-Supervised Model for Chronic Disease Risk Assessment

Advanced predictive analytics coupled with an effective attribute selection method plays a pivotal role in the precise assessment of chronic disorder risks in patients. Traditional attribute selection approaches suffer from premature convergence, high complexity, and computational cost. On the contrary, heuristic-based optimization to supervised methods minimizes the computational cost by eliminating outlier attributes. In this study, a novel buffer-enabled heuristic, a memory-based metaheuristic attribute selection (MMAS) model, is proposed, which performs a local neighborhood search for optimizing chronic disorders data. It is further filtered with unsupervised K-means clustering to remove outliers. The resultant data are input to the Naive Bayes classifier to determine chronic disease risks' presence. Heart disease, breast cancer, diabetes, and hepatitis are the datasets used in the research. Upon implementation of the model, a mean accuracy of 94.5% using MMAS was recorded and it dropped to 93.5% if clustering was not used. The average precision, recall, and F-score metric computed were 96.05%, 94.07%, and 95.06%, respectively. The model also has a least latency of 0.8 sec. Thus, it is demonstrated that chronic disease diagnosis can be significantly improved by heuristic-based attribute selection coupled with clustering followed by classification. It can be used to develop a decision support system to assist medical experts in the effective analysis of chronic diseases in a cost-effective manner.
Systematic Review of Existing Stroke Guidelines: Case for a Change

Methods We systematically searched for guideline recommendation on the day-to-day use of peripheral inflammatory markers such as NLR published in the English language between January 1, 2005, and October 2020. Any other evidence of system biology-based approach or recommendation was explored within the selected guidelines for this scoping review. Only the latest guideline per writing group was selected. Each guideline was analyzed independently by 2 to 4 authors to determine clinical scenarios explained/given, scientific evidence used, and recommendations presented in the context of system biology. Results The scoping review found 2,911 titles at the beginning of the search. Final review included with 15 guidelines. Stroke-related organizations wrote sixty-five percent of the guidelines while national ministries wrote a fewer number of guidelines. We were primarily interested in recommendations for acute management in AIS published in the English language. Fifteen eligible guidelines were identified from 15 different countries/regions. None of the guidelines recommended the routine use of peripheral markers of inflammation, such as NLR, among their acute assessment and management recommendations. None of the existing guidelines explored the system biology approach to one of the most complex diseases affecting the human brain, stroke. Conclusions This systematic review has identified a significant evidence-practice gap in all existing national stroke guidelines published in English medium as of October 2020. These guidelines included the only current “living stroke guidelines,” stroke guidelines from Australia with a real opportunity to modernize the living stroke guidelines with systems biology approach, and provide 2020 vision towards better stroke care globally. Investigation of complex disease such as stroke is best served through a systems biology approach. One of the easiest places to start is simple blood tests such as total white cell count and NLR. Systems biology approach point us towards simple tools such immune-inflammatory index (SII) and serial systemic immune inflammatory indices (SSIIi) which should pave the way for the stroke physician community address the challenges in systems biology approach in stroke care. These challenges include translating bench research to the bedside, managing big data (continuous pulse, blood pressure, sleep, oxygen saturation, progressive changes in NLR, SII, SSIIi, etc.). Working with an interdisciplinary team also provides a distinct advantage. Recent adoption of historic WHO-IGAP calls for immediate action. The 2022 World Brain Day campaign on Brain Health for All is the perfect opportunity to raise awareness and start the process.
Cancer Stem Cells in Breast Cancer: an Overview

Wright et al. (2008) shown that breast CSC positive for Prominin 1 (CD133) a cell-surface glycoprotein with two large glycosylated extracellular loops and five transmembrane domains were capable to form breast tumors with as few as 100 cells, similar to CD44+/ CD24-/low CSCs, while those negative for CD133 were incapable to generate new tumors in mouse xenograft models. CSCs positive for CD133 also express stem cell genes, show drug resistance and have the ability to form mammospheres [9]. Taken together, these findings regarding CD133 lead to the consideration of CD133 as a cancer stem cell marker candidate. Other markers, like BMI1, are being studied as potential stem cell markers due to their role in cell growth, proliferation and self-renewal of cancer stem cells [10]. Despite the large number of publications in CSC field, additional studies are fundamental. It is important identify other reliable markers capable of isolating the CSCs in order to identify new therapies that can reduce and even eradicate breast CSCs.
Cigarette smoke toxin hydroquinone and misfolding pancreatic lipase variant cooperatively promote endoplasmic reticulum stress and cell death

Mutation-induced protein misfolding of pancreatic secretory enzymes and consequent endoplasmic reticulum stress can cause chronic pancreatitis. A recent study revealed that cigarette smoke also increases the risk of the disease through endoplasmic reticulum stress. Here, we investigated the cumulative cellular effect of the G233E misfolding human pancreatic lipase variant and hydroquinone; a main toxic constituent of cigarette smoke, using mammalian cell lines. We found that hydroquinone reduces cell viability on a dose-dependent manner through programmed cell death, and diminishes lipase secretion without affecting its expression. Interestingly, hydroquinone decreased the viability more markedly in cells expressing the G233E lipase variant, than in cells producing wild-type lipase. The more substantial viability loss was due to increased endoplasmic reticulum stress, as demonstrated by elevated levels of X-box binding protein 1 mRNA splicing and immunoglobulin binding protein, NAD(P)H:quinone oxidoreductase 1 and C/EBP homologous protein expression. Unresolved endoplasmic reticulum stress, and especially up-regulation of the pro-apoptotic transcription factor C/EBP homologous protein were likely responsible for the increased cell death. Our observations demonstrated that the combination of hydroquinone and misfolding pancreatic lipase variant promote increased levels of endoplasmic reticulum stress and cell death, which may predispose to chronic pancreatitis.
Changes in intensification of religious involvement during the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland

Introduction The emergence of the virus Sars-CoV-2, and subsequent COVID-19 pandemic, caused a global threat to public health. In such challenging and worrying situations it can be expected that people will seek comfort in religion. However, before the pandemic there were never such wide world disruptions of religious practice–because of social distancing regulations, religiosity cannot be practiced in the same way as it was before the pandemic. Methods Two anonymous online surveys were conducted of adult Poles, one during the second wave (N = 1072; November 2020) and one during the third wave of the pandemic (N = 1080; April 2021). The survey samples of participants reflected the Polish population structure in terms of age, sex, size of place of residence, education, and province. Results Participation in institutional religious practices fell threefold to 11.9% during the pandemic, as compared to pre-pandemic times (31.2%). The number of people who did not go to church at all increased from 23.1% to 57.0%. Between the second and third waves, there was a small return to regular practice (from 10.1% to 14.1%). Based on the subjective assessment of the amount of time devoted to prayer, fewer people reporting an increase (10.6%) than a decrease (20.1%) in religious commitment during the pandemic. Logistic regressions showed that an increase in religious commitment can be predicted by older age, more frequent participation in religious practices before the pandemic, and higher life satisfaction. A decrease in religious commitment can be predicted by younger age, less frequent participation in religious practices before the pandemic, and greater number of children in the household. Conclusion Our research indicates a deintensification of religious practices during the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland. The pandemic has accelerated process of polarization of Polish religiosity.
Focus issue introduction: advanced solid-state lasers

: This joint issue of Optics Express and Optical Materials Express features 28 state-of-the-art articles written by authors who participated in the international “Advanced Solid State Lasers” conference, held in Boston November 4–8, 2018. This review provides a summary of these articles that cover the spectrum of solid state lasers from materials research to sources and from design innovation to applications.
Y OUR BRAIN ON NARRATION

The study of the brain mechanisms involved in narrative production and comprehension has made signiﬁcant progress in the last decade. The paper reviews some of the available evidence, focusing on functional imaging studies aimed to assess brain activity in normal subjects, while they listen to narratives or watching movies. The complex brain networks engaged by these complex tasks extend beyond the classical language areas, by involving the right hemisphere and hippocampal structures. These results provide initial insights into the mechanisms involved in narrative cohesion, situation model construction and distinction/integration of narrative elements.
ArticleThiol redox regulation of plant β-carbonic anhydraseAnna Dreyer1

β-carbonic anhydrases (βCA) accelerate the equilibrium formation between CO2 and carbonate. Two plant βCA isoforms are targeted to the chloroplast and represent abundant proteins in the range of > 1% of chloroplast protein. While their function in gas exchange and photosynthesis is well-characterized in carbon concentrating mechanisms of cyanobacteria and plants with C4photosynthesis, their function in plants with C3-photosynthesis is less clear. The presence of conserved and surface-exposed cysteinyl residues in the βCA-structure urged to the question whether βCA is subject to redox regulation. Activity measurements revealed reductive activation of βCA1, whereas oxidized βCA1 was inactive. Mutation of cysteinyl residues decreased βCA1 activity, in particular C280S, C167S, C230S, and C257S. High concentrations of dithiothreitol or low amounts of reduced thioredoxins (TRXs) activated oxidized βCA1. TRX-y1 and TRX-y2 most efficiently activated βCA1, followed by TRX-f1 and f2 and NADPH-dependent TRX reductase C (NTRC). High light irradiation did not enhance βCA activity in wildtype Arabidopsis, but surprisingly in βca1 knockout plants, indicating light-dependent regulation. The results assign a role of βCA within the thiol redox regulatory network of the chloroplast.
Role of Twin Studies in Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine

of asthma [8]. A Danish twin study has shown that the individual variation in asthma symptom severity is weakly influenced by genetic factors (24%), and environmental factors explain the main part of the variation [9]. A Puerto Rican recently published twin study demonstrated an increasing contribution of genetic influence and decreasing contribution of shared environmental effects to liability for physician-diagnosed asthma and asthma medication use between ages 1 and 3 years [10]. Not only cross-sectional, but also longitudinal twin studies can be performed which contribute to the knowledge of the age related expression of genes in any respiratory traits, such as asthma [8]. Intermediate phenotypes of asthma, elevated levels of exhaled nitric oxide and airway hyper responsiveness is also heritable in 60% and 30%, respectively [11].
Intelligent Insulin Pens A luxurious instrument or an essential gadget ? — A qualitative study

Insulin pens were first introduced in 1985. Since their introduction, insulin pens have been remarkable for their simplicity and accuracy. They have played a major role in the Multiple Dose Injection therapy (MDI). Until today, insulin pens, along with insulin pumping therapy, have been considered the only two reliable methods for external insulin delivery. Nevertheless, there has been always a wide gap between the two from the technological perspective. While pumps were enhancing through the utilization of several technologies, insulin pens have not had any major upgrades for a long period. Just recently, a couple of specialized diabetes companies have just introduced new types of intelligent insulin pens to the diabetes market. In this paper, we gave a brief introduction about the intelligent insulin pens technologies, and then we drew some general technological comparison between insulin pens and pumping equipments. In addition, we wanted to evaluate the current status of intelligent insulin pens technology among diabetic community, we went through a number of case studies among patients and obtained some feedback from their sides. We summarized the results from the case studies, and then we followed that by some discussions regarding the current technologies and our future vision for intelligent insulin pens. We believe that rather than focusing only on the development of intelligent insulin pens itself, we suggest that developers should give more focus on utilizing current ubiquitous technologies (i.e., smart devices, cloud computing, wearable computing, etc.). The main focus should aim on creating applications that can ease the diabetic management mission, and promote a better diabetic patients' compliance. Keywords—Electronic Medicine; Diabetes Mellitus; Insulin Therapy; Ubiquitous Computing; Cloud Computing
COPD: Long Term Lung Function Decline, Utilization of Care and Quality of Life in Modified GOLD stage 1

Background: Little is known on the long term outcomes of individuals with mild COPD, as defined by the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD). Methods: A population cohort of 6671 randomly selected adults without asthma was stratified into categories of modified GOLD-defined COPD (pre-bronchodilator spirometry). Further stratification was based on the presence or absence of respiratory symptoms. After 11 years, associations between baseline categories of COPD and FEV 1 decline, respiratory care utilization, and quality of life as measured by the SF-36 questionnaire, were examined after controlling for age, sex, smoking and educational status. Results: At baseline, modified GOLD criteria were met by 610 (9.1%) participants from whom 519 (85.1%) had stage 1 COPD. At follow-up, individuals with symptomatic stage 1 COPD (n=224) had faster FEV 1 decline (-9 ml/yr [CI95% -13; -5]), increased respiratory care utilization (OR 1.6 [CI95% 1.0 ; 2.6]) and lower quality of life compared to asymptomatic subjects with normal lung function (n=3627, reference group). By contrast, asymptomatic stage 1 COPD subjects (n=295) had no significant differences in FEV 1 decline (-3 ml/yr [CI95% -7; +1]), respiratory care utilization (OR 1.05 [CI95% 0.63 ;1.73]) or quality of life scores when compared to the reference group. Conclusions: In population-based studies, respiratory symptoms are of major importance for predicting long-term clinical outcomes in COPD subjects with mild obstruction. Population studies that are based on spirometry only may misestimate the prevalence of clinically relevant COPD.
Metadata of the chapter that will be visualized in SpringerLink

Commercial software is available for performing video bioinformatics analysis on cultured cells. Such software is convenient and can often be used to create suitable protocols for quantitative analysis of video data with relatively little background in image processing. This chapter demonstrates that CL-Quant software, a commercial program produced by DRVision, can be used to automatically analyze cell spreading in time-lapse videos of human embryonic stem cells (hESC). Two cell spreading protocols were developed and tested. One was professionally created by engineers at DRVision and adapted to this project. The other was created by an undergraduate student with 1 month of experience using CL-Quant. Both protocols successfully segmented small spreading colonies of hESC, and, in general, were in good agreement with the ground truth which was measured using ImageJ. Overall the professional protocol
Topological edge states in bichromatic photonic crystals: supplementary material

in a three-dimensional system made up of several layers in the z direction. The upper and lower layers are assumed to be homogeneous, whereas the remaining layers include a periodic patterning of the dielectric function in the xy plane, so that the global system is periodic in two dimensions. Calculations of finite-size structures are carried out by assuming a sufficiently large supercell. For a fixed two-dimensional crystalline momentum k in the first Brillouin zone, the magnetic field is expanded over a basis of orthonormal modes:
Functional morphology of the hindlimb of fossilized pygmy hippopotamus from Ayia Napa (Cyprus)

We studied the functional morphology of the postcranial skeleton of the endemic hippopotamus Phanourios minor, derived from the Upper Pleistocene site of Ayia Napa. The deposit, which consists of a hard limestone substrate on which the species moved, has yielded a great abundance of hippopotamus material, making the Ayia Napa locality one of the most important paleontological sites in Cyprus. The immigration of the large‐sized mainland Hippopotamus to Cyprus led to the emergence of a new insular species with its main characteristic being the extremely reduced body size. In this study, all the hindlimb elements of the Cypriot hippo are described in detail and compared with those of the modern species, with the extant Hippopotamus amphibius being considered similar to the possible ancestor of P. minor. In some cases, the morphological comparison is reinforced using bones of other extinct insular and mainland hippos. Additionally, we provided a functional analysis of the hindlimb joints, suggesting specific locomotor habits for the species. The anatomical examination reveals that the elements in P. minor are robust with marked muscular insertion areas resembling those found in Hippopotamus. However, there are also similarities with Choeropsis liberiensis in certain morphofunctional traits. P. minor adapted to slow but powerful locomotion with remarkable stabilization, particularly in the zeugopodium and the autopodium. The knee was less mobile in the craniocaudal direction compared with that in recent hippos, while the abduction–adduction movements of the thigh were advanced. The pes presented good mobility in the sagittal plane and limitation in transversal movements. Thus, P. minor displayed modifications to its limbs, influenced by the mountainous island environment and the body size reduction, resulting in specialized locomotion, which was different from that of extant hippopotamuses.