Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The semi‐direct aerosol effect: Impact of absorbing aerosols on marine stratocumulus

Aerosols that absorb solar radiation may lead to a decrease of low‐cloud cover and liquid‐water path (LWP), leading to a positive radiative forcing. A large‐eddy model was used to investigate this ‘semi‐direct effect’ for marine stratocumulus and examine the dependency on the vertical distribution of the aerosol. In this study, the aerosols influenced clouds by directly altering the short‐wave heating rate (the semi‐direct effect), but did not interact with the cloud microphysics (i.e. indirect aerosol effects are excluded). Absorbing aerosols within the boundary layer (BL) decreased LWP by 10 g m−2, leading to a positive semi‐direct forcing. Even for mildly absorbing aerosols (mid‐visible single‐scattering albedo of 0.96), the semi‐direct forcing was three times stronger, and opposite in sign, to the aerosol direct forcing. The semi‐direct forcing was found to be proportional to aerosol single‐scattering co‐albedo (tested to a value of 0.12). Conversely, with the absorbing aerosol layer above the cloud, the LWP increased by 5 to 10 g m−2, leading to a negative semi‐direct forcing. Absorbing aerosols located in the BL heat the cloud layer, enhancing the daytime decoupling and thinning of the stratocumulus layer. Absorbing aerosols immediately above the BL increased the contrast in potential temperature across the inversion, leading to a lower cloud‐top entrainment rate. With aerosol both within and above the BL, the semidirect forcing was positive but half the magnitude of that experienced when aerosol was only in the BL. As marine stratocumulus covers about 20% of the globe, the semi‐direct effect could significantly influence the radiative forcing by absorbing aerosols. Copyright © 2004 Royal Meteorological Society
Detection of Selection Signatures in Anqing Six-End-White Pigs Based on Resequencing Data

As a distinguished Chinese indigenous pig breed that exhibits disease resistance and high meat quality, the Anqing six-end-white (AQ) pig represents a valuable germplasm resource for improving the quality of the pig breeding industry. In this study, 24 AQ pigs that were distantly blood-related and 6 Asian Wild Boar (AWB) were selected for 10× deep-genome resequencing. The signatures of the selection were analyzed to explore the genetic basis of their germplasm characteristics and to identify excellent germplasm-related functional genes based on NGS data. A total of 49,289,052 SNPs and 6,186,123 indels were detected across the genome in 30 pigs. Most of the genetic variations were synonym mutations and existed in the intergenic region. We identified 275 selected regions (top 1%) harboring 85 genes by applying a crossover approach based on genetic differentiation (FST) and polymorphism levels (π ratio). Some genes were found to be positively selected in AQ pigs’ breeding. The SMPD4 and DDX18 genes were involved in the immune response to pseudorabies virus (PRV) and porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV). The BCL6 and P2RX6 genes were involved in biological regulation of immune T cells and phagocytes. The SLC7A4 and SPACA4 genes were related to reproductive performance. The MSTN and HIF1A genes were related to fat deposition and muscle development. Moreover, 138 overlapping regions were detected in selected regions and ROH islands of AQ pigs. Additionally, we found that the QTLs with the most overlapping regions were related to back fat thickness, meat color, pH value, fatty acid content, immune cells, parasitic immunity, and bacterial immunity. Based on functional enrichment analysis and QTLs mapping, we conducted further research on the molecular genetic basis of germplasm traits (disease resistance and excellent meat quality). These results are a reliable resource for conserving germplasm resources and exploiting molecular markers of AQ pigs.
Hardware Implementations for Voice Activity Detection: Trends, Challenges and Outlook

Voice Activity Detection (VAD) is a technique used to identify the presence of human voice in an audio signal. It is implemented as an always-on component in most speech processing applications. As speech is absent most of the time, this component typically dominates the overall average power consumption of the system (excluding microphone). The widespread usage in speech applications and the need for ultra low power VAD have led to a plethora of algorithms and implementations in the hardware domain, necessitating a comprehensive study and analysis to understand (real-time) requirements, different design parameters, testing strategies, but also to identify design trends, challenges and guidelines for future implementations and testing of VAD devices. A scoping review was conducted to identify the articles for hardware implementations of VAD from January 2010 - December 2021, the results of which are presented in this article. The results highlight a big design space being used for VAD along with a lack of standard testing methodology and usage of application-dependent performance metrics. An increased usage of filter-based feature extractors along with neural-network-based classifiers is observed. Due to lack of standardisation, no other trends can be established from the results. A set of rules and guidelines are therefore provided to facilitate the future development and benchmarking of VADs.
Compressed Video Quality Assessment for Super-Resolution: a Benchmark and a Quality Metric

We developed a super-resolution (SR) benchmark to analyze SR capabilities to upscale compressed videos. The dataset for the benchmark was collected using video codecs of 5 different compression standards. We assessed 17 state-of-the-art SR models using our benchmark and evaluated their ability to preserve scene context and their robustness to compression artifacts. To get an accurate perceptual ranking of SR models, we conducted a crowd-sourced side-by-side comparison of SR results. We also analyzed the results of the benchmark and developed an objective quality assessment metric based on existing best-performing objective metrics. Our metric outperforms other video quality metrics by Spearman correlation with subjective scores for the task of upscaling compressed videos.
Active graphene plasmonics for terahertz device applications

This paper reviews recent advances in graphene active plasmonics for terahertz (THz) device applications. Two-dimensional plasmons in graphene exhibit unique optoelectronic properties and mediate extraordinary light–matter interactions. It has been discovered theoretically that when the population of Dirac fermionic carriers in graphene are inverted by optical or electrical pumping, the excitation of graphene plasmons by the THz photons results in propagating surface plasmon polaritons with giant gain in a wide THz range. Furthermore, when graphene is patterned into a micro- or nanoribbon array by grating metallization, the structure acts as an active THz plasmonic amplifier, providing a superradiant plasmonic lasing with a giant gain at the plasmon modes in a wide THz frequency range. These new findings can lead to the creation of new types of plasmonic THz emitters and lasers operating even at room temperature.
Evaluation of the New SingularityTM Air versus Ambu® Aura GainTM: A Randomized, Crossover Mannequin Study

Background: This randomised crossover mannequin study aimed to compare the insertion time for the newly developed SingularityTM Air and the Ambu® AuraGainTM. The SingularityTM Air includes a bendable tube in order to allow optimal passform. Methods: Fifty anaesthetists with a minimum of 100 supraglottic airway device insertions were recruited and randomly assigned to start either with the SingularityTM Air or with the Ambu® AuraGainTM. Participants watched a tutorial video the day before the assessment and received a standardized introduction immediately before the assessment. The primary outcome was the time for successful insertion. Secondary parameters were the overall insertion success rate, the numbers of insertion attempts (maximum three), the glottic view through a flexible bronchoscope, and the success rate for gastric tube insertion. Results: Fifty participants were eventually recruited and randomly assigned to insert both devices according to the randomization. The insertion time was 24 s for SingularityTM Air as compared to 20 s for Ambu® AuraGainTM (p < 0.001). Overall insertion rate was 92% for the SingularityTM Air as compared to 100% for the Ambu® AuraGainTM (p could not be derived as one variable is a constant). The primary insertion success rate was better for the Ambu® AuraGainTM than for the SingularityTM Air (94% versus 68%; p: 0.002, respectively). Conclusion: The time for successful insertion and the insertion success rate for the newly developed SingularityTM Air is inferior to that for the Ambu® AuraGainTM.
Ureterolithiasis in Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) Patients Treated with Single-Use Ureteroscope: A Case Report

Case series Patient: Two patients Final Diagnosis: Urolithiasis Symptoms: Recurrent back pain • recurrent intermittent right lumbar pain and discomfort Medication: — Clinical Procedure: — Specialty: Urology Objective: Unusual clinical course Background: The number of HIV-positive patients is increasing worldwide. Such patients with upper urinary tract stones have been treated primarily with flexible ureteroscopy. Case Reports: Two patients with HIV and upper urinary tract stones were treated with a single-use digital flexible uretero-scope between July 2021 and January 2022. Both cases were treated by transurethral ureteroscope lithotripsy with a Guangzhou Redpine single-use digital flexible ureteroscope. This is also the first reported case of using a disposable ureteral flexible scope to manage a patient with upper urinary tract stones in combination with HIV. The holmium laser power was set to 0.2–0.6j/20–50 Hz for fragmentation and 1.0–1.5j/10–20 Hz for the dusting of the stones. Renal stones larger than 1 cm were dusted to around 1 cm first, and then a lithotripsy basket was used to remove them. The f5 Polaris Ultra ureteral stent was implanted during the procedure. The operations went smoothly. Four weeks after surgery, CT scans revealed a 4 mm stone remnant in one case, and the ureteral stent was removed in both cases. After 3 months, a kidney, ureter, and bladder X-ray revealed no stones remaining in the case that had earlier shown a 4 mm stone residual. In both cases, the stone composition was made up of calcium oxalate monohydrate and calcium oxalate dihydrate stones. Conclusions: A single-use flexible ureteroscope has a proven clinical benefit in treating HIV-combined upper urinary tract stones. After the operations, there were no urinary infections, bleeding, or other complications in either patient.
Fecal Microbiota Transplantation and Other Gut Microbiota Manipulation Strategies

The gut microbiota is composed of bacteria, archaea, phages, and protozoa. It is now well known that their mutual interactions and metabolism influence host organism pathophysiology. Over the years, there has been growing interest in the composition of the gut microbiota and intervention strategies in order to modulate it. Characterizing the gut microbial populations represents the first step to clarifying the impact on the health/illness equilibrium, and then developing potential tools suited for each clinical disorder. In this review, we discuss the current gut microbiota manipulation strategies available and their clinical applications in personalized medicine. Among them, FMT represents the most widely explored therapeutic tools as recent guidelines and standardization protocols, not only for intestinal disorders. On the other hand, the use of prebiotics and probiotics has evidence of encouraging findings on their safety, patient compliance, and inter-individual effectiveness. In recent years, avant-garde approaches have emerged, including engineered bacterial strains, phage therapy, and genome editing (CRISPR-Cas9), which require further investigation through clinical trials.
Projection of US adult obesity trends based on individual BMI trajectories

Adult obesity has been increasing in the United States since the 1980s. For the cohorts now in young adulthood, the future prevalence of obesity depends on current prevalence and future increase in weight. In order to investigate the future of obesity, we pooled 92,615 body-mass index (BMI) measures from 26,337 adults interviewed and examined by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), aged between 25 and 55 in years 1998-2018. We applied functional data analysis to probabilistically reconstruct individual BMI trajectories. We found that the prevalence of obesity at age 55 is expected to reach 58% (95% uncertainty interval [UI], 54%-61%) for females born in 1984-1988 and 57% (95% UI, 53%-61%) for males born in the same cohort. The prevalence of severe obesity at age 55 will increase rapidly in both sexes. Time spent being obese will increase, e.g. for females from 10.7 years (95% UI, 10.4–10.9 years) in the 1964-68 cohort to 14.7 years (95% UI, 14.2-15.3 years) in the 1984-88 birth cohort. Although obesity prevalence may level off in the coming decades, higher prevalence of severe obesity as well as longer durations of obesity are therefore expected to increase the burden of this disease.
Study of thermal decomposition mechanism of the Fe/sub 17/Sm/sub 2/N/sub 3/ phase

We studied the high temperature decomposition mechanism for the Fe/sub 17/Sm/sub 2/N phase using several different experimental techniques, as thermomagnetic and thermogravimetric analyses. Our results show that the decomposition occurs in a two step scheme. In the first reaction we hare the formation of SmN and a solid solution of nitrogen in iron. In the second step, this solid solution degases, and we observe the evolution of nitrogen over a broad temperature range.
Novel noninvasive identification of patient‐specific epileptic networks in focal epilepsies: Linking single‐photon emission computed tomography perfusion during seizures with resting‐state magnetoencephalography dynamics

Single‐photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) during seizures and magnetoencephalography (MEG) during the interictal state are noninvasive modalities employed in the localization of the epileptogenic zone in patients with drug‐resistant focal epilepsy (DRFE). The present study aims to investigate whether there exists a preferentially high MEG functional connectivity (FC) among those regions of the brain that exhibit hyperperfusion or hypoperfusion during seizures. We studied MEG and SPECT data in 30 consecutive DRFE patients who had resective epilepsy surgery. We parcellated each ictal perfusion map into 200 regions of interest (ROIs) and generated ROI time series using source modeling of MEG data. FC between ROIs was quantified using coherence and phase‐locking value. We defined a generalized linear model to relate the connectivity of each ROI, ictal perfusion z score, and distance between ROIs. We compared the coefficients relating perfusion z score to FC of each ROI and estimated the connectivity within and between resected and unresected ROIs. We found that perfusion z scores were strongly correlated with the FC of hyper‐, and separately, hypoperfused ROIs across patients. High interictal connectivity was observed between hyperperfused brain regions inside and outside the resected area. High connectivity was also observed between regions of ictal hypoperfusion. Importantly, the ictally hypoperfused regions had a low interictal connectivity to regions that became hyperperfused during seizures. We conclude that brain regions exhibiting hyperperfusion during seizures highlight a preferentially connected interictal network, whereas regions of ictal hypoperfusion highlight a separate, discrete and interconnected, interictal network.
INNOVARE Ciencia y Tecnología

Introduction . Twitter has become a medium for citizens to express in politics, transmitting feelings and opinions of users through tweets. Analyzing this data allows to discover trends and turning points in political criteria. The study aim was to develop an automatic sentiment analysis process in Honduran political tweets, through supervised machine learning techniques. Methods . A collection of 1,800 Honduran political tweets was carried out through filters based in users and hashtags in the period from January to September 2022, followed by a manual tweet tagging. The following techniques of natural language processing were applied: Bag of Words (BOW) and term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF). The considered methods were: linear SVM, logistic regression and multinomial Naïve Bayes (MNB). The performance metrics used to compare classifiers were a term frequency (F1-score), accuracy and time (training and validation). Results . The selected model was the MNB due to its higher F1-score (62.48%) and shorter training time, while linear SVM obtained 61.80% and logistic regression 61.34%. The final performance of the MNB with new tweets was an F1-score of 63.37%. Conclusion . For the data set presented, it was found that the best classifier was MNB. However, the performance gap between classifiers is small, which implies that preprocessing optimizations and larger scale data collection should be considered.
Simplified fine-motion planning in generalized contact space

A methodology is presented for planning fine motions for assembly operations in the presence of position, velocity, and model uncertainty. A nominal assembly motion plan, computed without regard to the effects of uncertainty, is provided a priori. The critical points where collisions and jamming are likely to occur are first identified in the nominal trajectory. The configuration space of the assembly is then linearized about each critical point, producing local hyperpolyhedral contact spaces that provide simplified motion planning domains in which to synthesize piecewise-linear trajectories. The hyperpolyhedral contact spaces are constructed with extra dimensions, one for each toleranced assembly part parameter. A heuristic search is performed in these generalized contact spaces to select a fine-motion trajectory that can be executed in the presence of position, velocity and model uncertainty without deviating from a predictable sequence of contact states. A hybrid control strategy is then generated for traversing each contact state in the sequence. <<ETX>>
Object Detection Networks For Localization And Classification Of Intracranial Hemorrhages

: Intracranial hemorrhages represent life-threatening brain injuries. This paper presents two state-of-the-art object detection systems (Faster R-CNN and YOLO v2) which are trained to localize and classify hemorrhages in axial head CT slices by providing labelled rectangular bounding boxes. Publicly available datasets of head CT data and ground truth bounding boxes are used to evaluate and compare the performance of both detectors. The Faster R-CNN shows better results by achieving an average Jaccard coefﬁcient of 58.7 %.
The effect of diagonal scaling on projected gradient methods for bound constrained quadratic programming problems

We examine the effect of diagonal scaling on the projected gradient method of More and Toraldo [SIAM J. Optimization 1, (1991), pp. 93-114] when the constraints are bound constraints and the quadratic form is positive definite. It is shown that scalings causes the method to visit fewer faces and to minimize the function more quickly. Numerical results are given with the journal bearing problem and some dense matrix bound constrained problems
Optical fiber affinity biosensor based on localized surface plasmon resonance

A highly sensitive micrometer-sized optical fiber affinity biosensor is reported based on the localized surface plasmon resonance in gold nanoparticles adsorbed at an endface of an optical fiber. This sensor probes the affinity between biological molecules in real time without any labeling of the analyte. The highest resolution of 10−5 in refractive index units is demonstrated with a red-light-emitting diode used as a light source. This value corresponds to an adsorption amount of 10−12g∕mm2 in the case of the affinity measurement. This sensitivity is similar to that of the conventional surface plasmon resonance biosensors that use attenuated total reflection optics.
Microbubble Transport in Turbulent Channel Flow

Microbubble transport in fully developed turbulent channel flow is investigated using an Eulerian-Lagrangian approach. The carrier-phase flow is computed using Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) or Large Eddy Simulation (LES) of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. Lagrangian particle tracking is employed for a dispersed phase comprised of small, rigid spheres of negligible density compared to the carrier-phase flow and obeying an equation of motion in which the forces used to predict the motion of the bubble are drag, pressure gradient, and added mass. In general, DNS and LES yield similar predictions of the carrier phase flow and dispersed-phase properties. The bubble Stokes number is varied over a range for which the dispersed phase essentially follows the carrier flow to larger values for which strong segregation of the microbubbles into coherent vortical structures occurs. In general, simulation results show that microbubble response is not a monotonic function of the Stokes number. The most significant structure in the concentration field occurs for Stokes numbers close to the turbulence timescales in the buffer layer. More than 2/3 of the microbubble population in the buffer layer resides in coherent structures that occupy approximately 1/3 of the computational volume.Copyright © 2003 by ASME
The Relationship between Ownership Identity, Ownership Concentration, and Firm Performance: Evidence from China By Krishna Reddy

- This study compares the performance of stateowned firms, local government SOEs, and privately-owned firms in China. Using panel data comprising 13,273 firm-year observations for the period 2005-2012 and OLS, 2SLS, and difference-in-difference regression, we report that the identity of the largest shareholder does matter. Our results show that the listed, central government-owned SOEs’ operating costs are similar to those of local government owned SOEs and privately-owned firms. Our results suggest that ownership concentration matters in China, that is, central government shareholding is an important determinant of state owned firms’ performance. The policy implication of this study is that helping-hand and protectionist policies have helped stateowned firms to prosper in by creating an uncompetitive market and ineffective legal infrastructure.
STRUCTURAL PROPERTIES OF METHANOL-POLYAMIDOAMINE DENDRIMER SOLUTIONS

We used small angle x-ray scattering to study interparticle structural properties of polyamidoamine starburst dendrimers (PAMAM, with an ethylenediamine central core) in methanol solutions. We have explored the intensity profiles for solutions of starbursts of different generations $(g=2,3.5,4)$ at various concentrations. We find from the measured spectra that the half-integer generation, $g=3.5,$ is characterized by pronounced interparticle correlations also in the very dilute regime. By means of a simple statistical-mechanical model, widely used in charged complex fluids (proteins and ionic micellar solutions), we calculate in this latter case the dendrimer-dendrimer structure factor $S(q). $ The results obtained give clear indication of a partial ionization process which involves the carboxylate $({\mathrm{COO}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}}{\mathrm{Na}}^{+})$ terminal groups of the dendrimer. The calculated macroion charge number, independent of the solution concentration, is ${Z}_{0}\ensuremath{\simeq}6. $