Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Different incubation tasks in insight problem solving: evidence for unconscious analytic thought

Abstract This paper explores the effect of different types of incubation task (visual, numerical and verbal) with various levels of attentional focus and cognitive effort (non-demanding, low-demanding and high-demanding) on the resolution of insight problems. The most effective was found to be the low-demanding task (regardless of its nature), which although requiring attentional focus, leaves resources available for the unconscious analytical restructuring process, obtaining a high percentage of success in solving the problem shortly after completion of the incubation task. Overall findings support the hypothesis of Unconscious Analytic Thought (UAT), according to which the restructuring required in insight problem solving implies a covert thinking process that includes a relevant, analytic and goal-oriented search. The findings are discussed in the light of UAT and are compared with the main theories of insight in problem solving.
A Bi-Directional Dual-Input Dual-Output Converter for Voltage Balancer in Bipolar DC Microgrid

Bipolar DC microgrids (BDCMGs) have several issues related to the voltage and require numerous converters to supply power to both poles. To solve these issues, a bidirectional dual-input dual-output (DIDO) converter is proposed for the voltage balancer in BDCMG. The DIDO converter has dual-input sources and a dual-output port connected to the grid. Additionally, the DIDO converter simultaneously performs independent bidirectional power control and voltage balancing control. Based on the input voltages, this paper proposes modulation methods for three cases. The modulation method of the second case has a wide operating range and low balancing current ripple without increasing the switching frequency. Moreover, only voltage balancer mode without active input sources is proposed, considering the intermittent source. Therefore, it can operate as a voltage balancer under all conditions. The voltage balancing performance of the three cases was analyzed. Finally, the proposed modulation and control method of the DIDO converter were verified through experimental results.
Important Food Sources of Fructose-Containing Sugars and Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Controlled Trials

Background: Fructose providing excess calories in the form of sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs) increases markers of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Whether this effect holds for other important food sources of fructose-containing sugars is unclear. To investigate the role of food source and energy, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of controlled trials of the effect of fructose-containing sugars by food source at different levels of energy control on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) markers. Methods and Findings: MEDLINE, Embase, and the Cochrane Library were searched through 7 January 2022 for controlled trials ≥7-days. Four trial designs were prespecified: substitution (energy-matched substitution of sugars for other macronutrients); addition (excess energy from sugars added to diets); subtraction (excess energy from sugars subtracted from diets); and ad libitum (energy from sugars freely replaced by other macronutrients). The primary outcome was intrahepatocellular lipid (IHCL). Secondary outcomes were alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST). Independent reviewers extracted data and assessed risk of bias. The certainty of evidence was assessed using GRADE. We included 51 trials (75 trial comparisons, n = 2059) of 10 food sources (sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs); sweetened dairy alternative; 100% fruit juice; fruit; dried fruit; mixed fruit sources; sweets and desserts; added nutritive sweetener; honey; and mixed sources (with SSBs)) in predominantly healthy mixed weight or overweight/obese younger adults. Total fructose-containing sugars increased IHCL (standardized mean difference = 1.72 [95% CI, 1.08 to 2.36], p < 0.001) in addition trials and decreased AST in subtraction trials with no effect on any outcome in substitution or ad libitum trials. There was evidence of influence by food source with SSBs increasing IHCL and ALT in addition trials and mixed sources (with SSBs) decreasing AST in subtraction trials. The certainty of evidence was high for the effect on IHCL and moderate for the effect on ALT for SSBs in addition trials, low for the effect on AST for the removal of energy from mixed sources (with SSBs) in subtraction trials, and generally low to moderate for all other comparisons. Conclusions: Energy control and food source appear to mediate the effect of fructose-containing sugars on NAFLD markers. The evidence provides a good indication that the addition of excess energy from SSBs leads to large increases in liver fat and small important increases in ALT while there is less of an indication that the removal of energy from mixed sources (with SSBs) leads to moderate reductions in AST. Varying uncertainty remains for the lack of effect of other important food sources of fructose-containing sugars at different levels of energy control.
A Cluster of Five Deaths Due to Methanol Toxicity After Apparent Hand Sanitizer Ingestion in the Setting of Chronic Alcoholism

Methanol toxicity and its associated pathologies have been widely studied, however, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an increase in methanol toxicity due to apparent consumption of contaminated hand sanitizer. We report a cluster of five deaths and one presumed death due to the apparent consumption of hand sanitizer, contaminated with methanol, in the setting of chronic alcoholism. The deaths occurred in Coconino County, Arizona, over a four-and-a-half-month period (June-October 2020), before and during a Food and Drug Administration recall of contaminated hand sanitizer. Methanol-related deaths are relatively uncommon in Coconino County, with only one methanol associated death (source of ingestion unknown) occurring over the previous five years.
The effects of silver and copper nanoparticles and selenium on Salmo trutta hatchlings

With the increase of nanotechnology applications, the risk of environmental adverse effects has emerged. It is known that nanoparticles (NPs) can induce oxidative stress, cause organ and DNA damage, or increase mortality rate in organisms, especially aquatic organisms. The present study aimed to investigate the potential genotoxicity of selenium, several nanoelements of copper, and a commercial product containing ionic silver colloids on Salmo trutta hatchlings based on the use of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) approach and assess in a second step whether the addition of selenium and NPs of copper and silver improves PCR precision and efficiency. Sea trout eggs were incubated in NPs solutions. Before presenting the results, PCR analysis and agarose gel electrophoresis were made. DNA of hatchlings from the eggs incubated in copper NPs were less degraded than those incubated in silver colloids or selenium, and in the second phase of the study, a PCR product was only generated for samples incubated in selenium (Se). In agarose gel electrophoresis of isolates containing copper compounds, products were obtained in all samples, except for those containing 0.125 and 1.0 nM of Cu, and 0.25 and 1.0 nM of CuZnFe2O4 and CuFe2O4. It has been shown that genotoxic effects of tested NPs vary in a concentration‐dependent manner. Copper compounds did not interfere with PCR efficiency, except for CuFe2O4, which improved product quality in all tested concentrations. Presented results give an opportunity for further studies on the effects of NPs on PCR reaction and genotoxicity.
The Incidence of Clinical Covid-19 Infection in Patients Undergoing Radiotherapy During the Two First Waves in a University Hospital in Iran

Background and Objective: During the COVID-19 epidemic, concerns about cancer patients undergoing radiotherapy have increased because of the numerous hospital visits, which may increase the risk of contracting COVID-19. We aimed to investigate the incidence of COVID-19 among patients visiting our radiation oncology department during the first and second peaks of the epidemic. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, we included all patients who underwent radiotherapy from November 2019 to September 2020. We contacted the patients and asked if they had COVID-19 during this time and how they were diagnosed. Clinical signs and a positive PCR test were acceptable as COVID-19 diagnostic criteria. We also gathered cancer and treatment status data from the patients’ records in the ward medical library. This study was approved by the institutional review board and ethics committee (code: IR.TUMS.VCR.REC.1399.104). Results: During the study period, 687 patients were admitted to our radiation oncology ward. The patients’ median age was 55 (IQR: 44-65), of whom 424 (61.7%) were females. Twenty-three (3.3%) patients developed COVID-19, 15 (65.2%) of whom were diagnosed with clinical symptoms and 8 (34.8%) with PCR. Twelve and 11 patients contracted COVID-19 in the first and second epidemic peaks, respectively. Even though no patients with skin cancer or sarcomas of the bone or soft tissue contracted COVID-19, the highest frequency of COVID-19 was seen among patients with intrathoracic or lung cancer with 38 times the odds of patients with head and neck cancer to develop COVID-19. Highly susceptible patients were those with hematologic and upper gastrointestinal (GI) and gynecologic cancers, respectively. We found a significant association between intrathoracic (mainly lung) cancers and infection with COVID-19 (P-value = 0.02). Conclusion: Patients undergoing intrathoracic cancer radiotherapy are at a higher risk of developing COVID-19. We believe these patients should be prioritized in cancer patients’ screening, case-finding, or vaccination programs.
SaRA: A Tool for Safe Human-Robot Coexistence and Collaboration through Reachability Analysis

Current safety mechanisms implementing industry standards for human-robot coexistence separate humans and robots through caging. Other approaches allowing humans to enter the workspace of manipulators do not provide formal safety guarantees. Thus, this study aims to facilitate the widespread adoption of collaborative robots by presenting SaRA, an extensible tool that performs set-based reachability analysis and formally guarantees safety. Our experimental results show that the set-based prediction of a human can be computed in a few microseconds, using SaRA, allowing for real-time consideration of many surrounding humans in an environment.
Plane Spiral OAM Mode-Group Orthogonal Multiplexing Communication Using Partial Arc Sampling Receiving Scheme

A variety of novel orbital angular momentum (OAM)-based communication or sensing systems have attracted much attention over the past decade, the superiority is brought about by nothing other than its orthogonality or vorticity. Plane spiral OAM (PSOAM) mode-group (MG) technique as a reconfigurable beamforming method can be used for building a multiple-in-multiple-out (MIMO) system to achieve the reduction in subchannel correlation, which benefits from the spiral phase distribution within the mainlobe. However, the demultiplexing process still depends on the MIMO algorithm, in which the receiver complexity is same as the conventional MIMO systems. In this article, a PSOAM MG orthogonal multiplexing communication link at the X-band using partial arc sampling receiving (PASR) scheme has been demonstrated experimentally. The MG channels have a good isolation of about 15 dB, and the existing performance can ensure the reliable 16-QAM wireless transmission. Besides, a real-time dual-channel video transmission experiment has been carried out to verify the channel isolation caused by MG’s orthogonality intuitively. More importantly, the demultiplexing procedure using the PASR scheme can be implemented by simple analog phase shifting operation with a lower receiver complexity compared with the conventional MIMO systems.
Development of a Wood Plastic Composite Extruder

Wood plastic composites (WPC) is the recycling of wood flour and plastic into new products like particle boards, floor tiles and other structural building applications. An extruding machine is developed at the workshop of Agricultural and Environmental Engineering Department of The Federal University of Technology, Akure, Ondo State to handle the production of these products. The major components of the machine include the melting/mixing chamber, the extruding chamber, the frame and the discharging chamber. The working principle of the machine is by allowing the recycled shredded plastic to melt at 200°C before adding the wood flour and mixed thoroughly. This is now fed into the extruding chamber at same temperature which further kneads the mixture into slurry before discharging it into a mould of dimension 150 mm × 80 mm × 70 mm. The machine is powered by 10 Hp three phase electric motor. Specimen produced is now hot-pressed at 120°C to a thickness of 13mm and allowed to cool before removal. The machine had a throughput of 0.78 kg/hr and functional efficiency of 86%. The total production cost as at the time of fabrication is Three Hundred and Fifteen Thousand Naira Only (N 315,000). It is recommended for small and medium scale entrepreneurs.
Design of KAIST HOUND, a Quadruped Robot Platform for Fast and Efficient Locomotion with Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Optimization of a Gear Train

This paper introduces a design method for an efficient and agile quadruped robot. A mixed-integer optimization formulation including the number of gear teeth is derived to obtain the optimal gear ratio that minimizes cost for a running-trot with the target speed of 3 m/s. With the inclusion of integer constraints related to the number of gear teeth, detailed design considerations of gear trains can be included in the optimization process. Thermal dissipation of the motor controller is also taken into account in the optimization to consider heat generation during high-speed running. KAIST Hound, a 45 kg robot, designed with the obtained design parameters has successfully demonstrated a 3 m/s running-trot using a nonlinear model predictive controller (NMPC). Furthermore, the robot has proved its robustness by the demonstration of additional experiments such as 22° slope climbing, 3.2 km walking, and traversing a 35 cm obstacle.
A HPLC-ESI-Q-ToF-MS Method for the Analysis of Monomer Constituents in PHGG, Gum Arabic And Psyllium Husk Prebiotic Dietary Fibre Supplements

ABSTRACT “Soluble” type dietary fibre contains polysaccharides with monomer constituents that play a major role in lowering the glycemic index of food (“low-GI”) and improving colonic health through gut microbiome fermentation. Soluble fibres such as partially hydrolysed guar gum (PHGG), gum Arabic and psyllium husk are of particular interest in gastrointestinal research, exploring their effects in motility disorders such as gastroparesis, constipation, diarrhea and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is important. The primary aim of this research was to develop a rapid pre-column derivatized HPLC-ESI-Q-ToF-MS method for the identification and quantification of monomer sugar constituents in commercial dietary fibre supplements of PHGG, gum Arabic and psyllium husk. Polysaccharides in the samples were hydrolysed and derivatized using 1-phenyl-3-methyl-5-pyrazolone (PMP). A rapid 21 min HPLC-ESI-Q-ToF-MS method separated nine different PMP-labelled monomer sugars. Five different sugars (i.e., Galactose, Arabinose, Rhamnose, Mannose and Xylose) were identified and quantified. Standard curve linearity was excellent (R2 > 0.999), with good intra-laboratory precision (< ±5% SD for concentrations, ≤ ±0.02 min peak shifting for retention times). The average three-level (50%, 75% and 100%) spiking recoveries for the analytes was acceptable (96.22–109.49%). Positive scanning mode ESI-MS/MS was used to generate [M + H]+ precursor ions and three (m/z) product ion fragments to provide identity confirmation. The concentrations of monomer sugars in gum Arabic and psyllium husk dietary fibres were consistent with literature reports. In PHGG, the concentration of galactose was unexpectedly higher than mannose, indicating that the commercial hydrolysis process of guar gum during PHGG manufacturing affected monomer composition. The method presented here provides the basis for the standardisation and labelling of commercial PHGG, gum Arabic and psyllium husk supplements. Future research will need to explore the monomer variability in other prebiotic soluble fibres and their efficacy in the production of beneficial short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) in the colonic environment.
A Novel Optimization Approach Applied to Multi-Pass Turning Process

Optimization of turning process is a non-linear opt imization with constrains and it is difficult for t he conventional optimization algorithms to solve this problem. The purpose of present study is to demonstrate the potential of Imperialist Competitiv e Algorithm (ICA) for optimization of multipass turning process. This algorithm is inspired by competition mechanism among imperialists and colonies, in contrast to evolutionary algorithmstha t perform the exploration and exploitation in the solution space aiming to efficiently find near opti mal solutions using a finite sequence of instructions. To validate the proposed approach, th e results of ICA were finally compared with Genetic Algorithm (GA). Based on the results; ICA ha s demonstrated excellent capabilities such as simplicity, accuracy, faster convergence and better global optimum achievement. The outcome shows the success of ICA in optimizing the machinin g process indicating that data analysis method developed in this work can be effectively applied t o optimize machining processes.
Success, Failure, and Information: How Households Respond to Energy Conservation Goals

This paper investigates how households respond to repeated energy conservation goals. I track households’ program participation and electricity use decisions across successive annual energy conservation challenges offered by a large electrical utility company. I find that households’ decisions whether to re-enroll in the program and attempt a subsequent goal are highly sensitive to their success or failure in achieving their energy conservation goal but not to the financial incentive to continue participating or to their level of past effort. This suggests that households are either responding to the emotional and normative aspects of success and failure or are substantially inattentive to information that is provided directly to them. I also find that households’ electricity use reduces each year they participate yet rebounds when they stop participating.
Transport and Weathering of Large Limestone Blocks on Hillslopes in Heterolithic Sedimentary Landscapes

Geomorphic transport laws that describe the movement of material across landscapes generally hide the role of lithological and climatic boundary conditions behind proportionality terms. The geomorphic community aims to characterize the role of these boundary conditions and include them in mechanistic transport laws. A more detailed mechanistic understanding is needed for hillslopes formed in heterolithic rock that weathers into weak regolith and hard blocks, such as in hogbacks. The properties of such blocks may determine both the process and rate of their transport downslope. We focused on soil mantled hillslopes in the Flint Hills of Kansas in the United States, where we studied the role of block shape and size under a limestone cliff that breaks up approximately into equal amounts of cubic and tile‐shaped clasts. Based on previous studies on the transport of rock clasts, we hypothesized that cubic and tile‐shaped blocks should be transported differently, leading to different distributions of size and orientation with increasing distance from the cliff. Block shape does have significant influence over how soil collects and is stored on the hillslope near blocks. Yet, few cubic blocks appear to be transported through tumbling in contrast with assumptions in recent modeling work. We found complex relationships between block size and distance from the cliff face and we propose that this is due to weathering via fragmentation. This process produces discrete smaller fragments from a larger parent block. We suggest that at least in Kansas both cubic and tile‐shaped blocks are transported primarily by creep processes.
Prevalence of HPV genotypes and assessment of their clinical relevance in laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma in a northeastern state of Brazil—a retrospective study

Background A high prevalence and incidence of head and neck tumors make Brazil the country with the third-highest number of cases of these malignant neoplasms. The main risk factors are smoking and alcohol consumption; however, cases related to the human papillomavirus (HPV) have tripled in number, demonstrating a changing disease profile. Studies have reported the prevalence of HPV in laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC) to vary between 8% and 83%. The role of HPV as an important causative factor in LSCC remains unclear. Methods This retrospective study included 82 patients with LSCC diagnosed between 2014 and 2019 at two oncology hospitals in São Luís, Brazil. Sociodemographic and clinical data, and the histopathologic characteristics of the tumors, were collected directly from medical records. Genetic material was extracted from paraffin-embedded samples using nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and automated sequencing for HPV detection and genotyping. The results by social and clinicopathologic variables were then compared using the chi-squared test and multivariate analysis. Results Sociodemographic analysesdemonstrated that most patients were men (87.8%), brown-skinned (75.6%), and resident in the state capital (53.7%). They generally had a poor education status (53.7%), having only an elementary school education (completed/incomplete), and 51.2% were self-employed in occupations such as farming or fishing. Smoking and alcohol consumption habits were observed in approximately half the patients. With respect to clinical characteristics, 39% of patients exhibited T1/T2 staging, 51.2% had no distant metastasis, and 30.5% had lymph node invasion. HPV DNA was detected in half the samples (50%), with the high oncogenic type 16 being the most prevalent. There was no significant relationship observed between the economic, educational, occupational with the HPV LSCC in the presented data, although multivariate analysis demonstrated that HPV DNA was more likely to be present in T3–T4 tumors (p = 0.002).