Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ancient mitogenomes unravel massive genetic diversity loss during near extinction of Alpine ibex

Population bottlenecks can have dramatic consequences for the health and long-term survival of a species. A recent bottleneck event can also largely obscure our understanding of standing variation prior to the contraction. Historic population sizes can be modeled based on extant genomics, however uncertainty increases with the severity of the bottleneck. Integrating ancient genomes provides a powerful complement to retrace the evolution of genetic diversity through population fluctuations. Here, we recover 15 high-quality mitogenomes of the once nearly extinct Alpine ibex spanning 8601 ± 33 BP to 1919 CE and combine these with 60 published modern genomes. Coalescent demography simulations based on modern genomes indicate population fluctuations matching major climatic change over the past millennia. Using ancient genomes, we show that mitochondrial haplotype diversity has been reduced to a fifth of the pre-bottleneck diversity with several highly differentiated mitochondrial lineages having co-existed historically. The main collapse of mitochondrial diversity coincided with human settlement expansions in the Middle Ages. The near extinction severely reduced the mitochondrial diversity. After recovery, one lineage was spread and nearly fixed across the Alps due to recolonization efforts. Contrary to expectations, we show that a second ancestral mitochondrial lineage has survived in an isolated population further south. Our study highlights that a combined approach integrating genomic data of ancient, historic and extant populations unravels major long-term population fluctuations.
Correlation of Respiratory Aerosols and Metabolic Carbon Dioxide

Respiratory aerosols from breathing and talking are an important transmission route for viruses, including severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Previous studies have found that particles with diameters ranging from 10 nm to 145 μm are produced from different regions in the respiratory system and especially smaller particles can remain airborne for long periods while carrying viral RNA. We present the first study in which respiratory aerosols have been simultaneously measured with carbon dioxide (CO2) to establish the correlation between the two concentrations. CO2 concentrations are easily available through low-cost sensors and could be used to estimate viral exposure through this correlation, whereas source-specific aerosol measurements are complicated and not possible with low-cost sensors. The increase in both respiratory aerosols and CO2 was linear over ten minutes in a 2 m3 chamber for all participants, suggesting a strong correlation. On average, talking released more particles than breathing, with 14,600 ± 16,800 min−1 (one-σ standard deviation) and 6210 ± 5630 min−1 on average, respectively, while CO2 increased with 139 ± 33 ppm min−1 during talking and 143 ± 29 ppm min−1 during breathing. Assuming a typical viral load of 7×106 RNA copies per mL of oral fluid, ten minutes of talking and breathing are estimated to produce 1 and 16 suspended RNA copies, respectively, correlating to a CO2 concentration of around 1800 ppm in a 2 m3 chamber. However, viral loads can vary by several orders of magnitude depending on the stage of the disease and the individual. It was therefore concluded that, by measuring CO2 concentrations, only the number and volume concentrations of released particles can be estimated with reasonable certainty, while the number of suspended RNA copies cannot.
Design and implementation of control system for magnetic suspension device

The purpose of this thesis was to gain more knowledge and experience in the areas of modeling, dynamics, and applied control theory. A single-axis magnetic suspension device originally designed by Professor David Trumper for classroom demonstrations was chosen to improve the understanding of the previously mentioned topics. The dynamics of these types of systems provide interesting control challenges due to the nonlinear nature of its dynamics. As a result, designing of a control system for this device required the understanding and experimentation of two nonlinear controls techniques: linearization of the plant around an operating point, and feedback linearization. A combination of electromagnetic theory and experimentation was used to model the suspension actuator, and two different controllers were designed and implemented using the different controls methods. Thesis Supervisor: David L. Trumper Title: Associate Professor
Role of Oxytocin and Vasopressin in Neuropsychiatric Disorders: Therapeutic Potential of Agonists and Antagonists

Oxytocin (OT) and vasopressin (AVP) are hypothalamic neuropeptides classically associated with their regulatory role in reproduction, water homeostasis, and social behaviors. Interestingly, this role has expanded in recent years and has positioned these neuropeptides as therapeutic targets for various neuropsychiatric diseases such as autism, addiction, schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety disorders. Due to the chemical-physical characteristics of these neuropeptides including short half-life, poor blood-brain barrier penetration, promiscuity for AVP and OT receptors (AVP-R, OT-R), novel ligands have been developed in recent decades. This review summarizes the role of OT and AVP in neuropsychiatric conditions, as well as the findings of different OT-R and AVP-R agonists and antagonists, used both at the preclinical and clinical level. Furthermore, we discuss their possible therapeutic potential for central nervous system (CNS) disorders.
Cinobufagin Exerts Anticancer Activity in Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma Cells through Downregulation of ANO1

Anoctamin1 (ANO1), a calcium-activated chloride channel, is frequently overexpressed in several cancers, including oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). OSCC is a highly aggressive cancer and the most common oral malignancy. ANO1 has been proposed as a potential candidate for targeted anticancer therapy. In this study, we performed a cell-based screening to identify novel regulators leading to the downregulation of ANO1, and discovered cinobufagin, which downregulated ANO1 expression in oral squamous cell carcinoma CAL-27 cells. ANO1 protein levels were significantly reduced by cinobufagin in a dose-dependent manner with an IC50 value of ~26 nM. Unlike previous ANO1 inhibitors, short-term (≤10 min) exposure to cinobufagin did not alter ANO1 chloride channel activity and ANO1-dependent intestinal smooth muscle contraction, whereas long-term (24 h) exposure to cinobufagin significantly reduced phosphorylation of STAT3 and mRNA expression of ANO1 in CAL-27 cells. Notably, cinobufagin inhibited cell proliferation of CAL-27 cells expressing high levels of ANO1 more potently than that of ANO1 knockout CAL-27 cells. In addition, cinobufagin significantly reduced cell migration and induced caspase-3 activation and PARP cleavage in CAL-27 cells. These results suggest that downregulation of ANO1 by cinobufagin is a potential mechanism for the anticancer effect of cinobufagin in OSCC.
Digital pulse compression via fast convolution

The mathematical structure of the digital ambiguity function for a matched filtered linear FM (LFM) waveform is derived as a function of time-bandwidth product, sampling rate, and arbitrary delay and frequency shifts. It is found to be well behaved for sampling rates equal to or greater than the swept signal bandwidth, provided that time sidelobes are controlled using standard frequency domain weighting techniques. A digital convolution processor comprised of cascaded pipeline fast Fourier transforms (FFT's) is presented as a viable architecture for real-time filtering of moderately high bandwidth LFM signals, and tradeoffs among radix, pipeline clock rate, and convolutional efficiency are discussed. It is found that a modified floating-point computational scheme performs well in such a context and is especially useful if a large signal dynamic range must be accommodated. A radix-4 4096-point design example is considered and the effects of quantization and finite register length arithmetic upon the digital ambiguity function are demonstrated via simulation. It is found that input data, FFT coefficients, reference filter coefficients, and intermediate results can be represented with mantissas of modest bit length.
Text Mining for Type of Research Classification

Abstract This project brought together undergraduate students in Computer Science with librarians to mine abstracts of articles from the Texas A&M University Libraries’ institutional repository, OAKTrust, in order to probe the creation of new metadata to improve discovery and use. The mining operation task consisted simply of classifying the articles into two categories of research type: basic research (“for understanding,” “curiosity-based,” or “knowledge-based”) and applied research (“use-based”). These categories are fundamental especially for funders but are also important to researchers. The mining-to-classification steps took several iterations, but ultimately, we achieved good results with the toolkit BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers). The project and its workflows represent a preview of what may lie ahead in the future of crafting metadata using text mining techniques to enhance discoverability.
General purpose bidirectional optical backplane bus

We report for the first time a bi-directional optical backplane bus for a high performance system containing nine multi-chip module (MCM) boards. The backplane bus reported herein employs arrays of multiplexed polymer-based waveguide holograms in conjunction with a waveguiding plate within which 16 substrate guided waves for 72 (8 X 9) cascaded fanouts are generated. Data transfer of 1.2 Gbit/sec at 1.3 micrometers wavelength is demonstrated for a single bus line with 72 cascaded fanouts. Packaging-related issues such as transceiver size and misalignment are embarked upon to provide a reliable system with a wide bandwidth coverage. The backplane bus demonstrated is for general-purpose and, therefore, compatible with such IEEE standardized buses as VMEbus, Futurebus, and FASTBUS, and can function as a backplane bus in existing computing environments and significantly reduce the bottlenecks that accompany electrical interconnects.
A Review on Text Steganography Techniques

There has been a persistent requirement for safeguarding documents and the data they contain, either in printed or electronic form. This is because the fabrication and faking of documents is prevalent globally, resulting in significant losses for individuals, societies, and industrial sectors, in addition to national security. Therefore, individuals are concerned about protecting their work and avoiding these unlawful actions. Different techniques, such as steganography, cryptography, and coding, have been deployed to protect valuable information. Steganography is an appropriate method, in which the user is able to conceal a message inside another message (cover media). Most of the research on steganography utilizes cover media, such as videos, images, and sounds. Notably, text steganography is usually not given priority because of the difficulties in identifying redundant bits in a text file. To embed information within a document, its attributes must be changed. These attributes may be non-displayed characters, spaces, resized fonts, or purposeful misspellings scattered throughout the text. However, this would be detectable by an attacker or other third party because of the minor change in the document. To address this issue, it is necessary to change the document in such a manner that the change would not be visible to the eye, but could still be decoded using a computer. In this paper, an overview of existing research in this area is provided. First, we provide basic information about text steganography and its general procedure. Next, three classes of text steganography are explained: statistical and random generation, format-based methodologies, and linguistics. The techniques related to each class are analyzed, and particularly the manner in which a unique strategy is provided for hiding secret data. Furthermore, we review the existing works in the development of approaches and algorithms related to text steganography; this review is not exhaustive, and covers research published from 2016 to 2021. This paper aims to assist fellow researchers by compiling the current methods, challenges, and future directions in this field.
EVALUATION OF PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL IN PT. XYZ

Managing employee’s performance is imperative and it cannot be done if the employee’s potential and their ability to perform are not measured. Performance appraisal is a management tool that tries to count the employee’s performance. The term performance appraisal refers to the process by which an individual’s work performance is assessed. Research objective is to evaluate the performance appraisal in PT. XYZ. Performance appraisal is a process in which organizations evaluate or assess employee performance. Performance appraisals are employed to determine who needs what training, and who will be promoted, demoted, retained, or fired. Populations of this research are employee of PT X with 6 respondents. Sample of this research is the employees of PT. XYZ in East Dumoga stock point. Result, the implementation of performance appraisal in PT. XYZ is goes well. It can be seen by employees’ positive perception. Although, performance appraisal in PT. XYZ still need some improvement to minimize possibility of error by giving employee a direct access to their performance appraisal result and develop a formal procedure in order to accommodate employee to appeal appraisal result that they consider inaccurate or unfair. Keywords: human resource management, performance appraisal
A Real-Time System For Abusive Network Traffic Detection

Abstract : Abusive network traffic--to include unsolicited e-mail, malware propagation, and denial-of-service attacks--remains a constant problem in the Internet. Despite extensive research in, and subsequent deployment of, abusive-traffic-detection infrastructure, none of the available techniques addresses the problem effectively or completely. The fundamental failing of existing methods is that spammers and attack perpetrators rapidly adapt to and circumvent new mitigation techniques. Analyzing network traffic by exploiting transport-layer characteristics can help remedy this and provide effective detection of abusive traffic. Within this framework, we develop a real-time, online system that integrates transport layer characteristics into the existing SpamAssassin tool for detecting unsolicited commercial e-mail (spam). Specifically, we implement the previously proposed, but undeveloped, SpamFlow technique. We determine appropriate algorithms based on classification performance, training required, adaptability, and computational load. We evaluate system performance in a virtual test bed and live environment and present analytical results. Finally, we evaluate our system in the context of SpamAssassin's auto-learning mode, providing an effective method to train the system without explicit user interaction or feedback.
Resonance Analysis and Vibration Reduction Optimization of Agricultural Machinery Frame—Taking Vegetable Precision Seeder as an Example

In order to solve the problem of vigorous vibration of agricultural machinery frames, taking a vegetable precision seeder as an example, the concept of vibration reduction was proposed. The modal analysis of the frame was carried out, and the accuracy of the finite element model was verified by comparing the modal test of multipoint input and multipoint output (MIMO) and simulation results. Additionally, the main frequency of engine vibration was the main excitation source of frame resonance. According to the modal shapes, it was proposed to increase the fixed beam structure and to carry out simulation tests. The time-domain signal of the maximum deformation position in the first-order vibration mode was measured, and the vibration spectrum analysis maps before and after optimization were obtained by Fourier transform. A field experiment showed that the seeding quality of the whole machine was significantly improved after optimization. This study provides a reference for the analysis of vibration characteristics and the vibration reduction design of the agricultural machinery equipment.
PENERAPAN METODE ASSOCIATION RULE MENGGUNAKAN ALGORITMA APRIORI UNTUK MENGIDENTIFIKASI POLA PENYAKIT RADANG SENDI

Ada lima besar peringkat penyakit yang terdiagnosa oleh UPT Puskesmas Margorejo kabupaten Pati, yaitu radang sendi, influenza, ispa, darah tinggi dan radang lapisan perut (gastritis). Penyakit Radang Sendi menjadi peringkat pertama selama dua tahun berturut-turut. Untuk mengatasi masalah seperti penyuluhan tentang dampak dan bahaya penyakit radang sendi, memperkirakan ketersediaan obat, dan dalam melakukan perkiraan kebutuhan tenaga medis dokter ahli bidang penyakit persendian diperlukan pengolahan data rekam medis untuk mengidentifikasi dan menemukan pola penyakit radang sendi. Pengolahan data dengan aplikasi data mining Association Rule dengan Algoritma Apriori diharapkan mampu untuk mengidentifikasi tentang pola penyakit terutama Radang Sendi. Aplikasi yang dikembangkan dibatasi pada 4 (empat) atribut saja yaitu umur, jenis kelamin, pekerjaan dan gejala. Dari hasil pengolahan data, yaitu umur 45, jenis kelamin laki-laki, pekerjaan petani, dengan gejala kaku persendian dengan nilai support 21 % dan Confident 3 % dari total 4824 kasus penyakit radang sendi yang sering diderita oleh pengunjung dan dapat diartikan, pengunjung yang didiagnosa penyakit radang sendi yang berumur 45 berjenis kelamin laki-laki dan memiliki pekerjaan petani kemungkinan 3% pengunjung tersebut mempunyai gejala kaku persendian. Kata Kunci : Association Rule, Algoritma Apriori, Radang Sendi.
Which Usability Assessment for Digital Therapeutics and Patient Support Programs?

Computer systems can significantly affect the health of their users in both positive and negative ways. In past decades, this finding led the scientific community to create medical devices, primarily based on the effects of the hardware of computer systems. More recently, clinical trials have allowed the validation of new digital therapies, in which the active ingredient is not from biochemistry: it is an algorithm, implemented as a software. Digital Therapeutics (DTx) and Digital Patient Support Programs (DSx) are the names of the two class of digital applications used for this type of interventions. As for other critical software impacting the security and safety of human beings, the quality of DTx and DSx is of paramount relevance. Because of this reason and the unique requirements and constraints associated with the clinical trials adopted to validate each new therapy, specific evaluation techniques are needed to help clinicians and researchers develop new DTxs and support their continuous improvement. To this end, we discuss a flexible method for evaluating DTxs and DSxs. The proposed method incorporates the International Measurement System (IMS) scale and the Mobile Application Rating Scale (MARS) in a framework derived from a simplified version of phase III clinical trials. The method was co-designed by IT experts, health professionals and patients to ensure due rigor while including, from the outset, aspects of privacy, confidentiality, ease of use and sustainability. An example of the application of the proposed approach to a real DSx is discussed in the second part of the paper.
Minorities as citizens: The legal advocacy of language rights by the Hungarian minority in Romania

Funding information European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, Grant/Award Number: 842553 Abstract This article investigates the assertion of language rights through legal mobilization by the Hungarian minority in Romania, thus examining this emergent kind of mobilization aimed at the claiming of rights, often rights recognized by law, but not enforced in practice. This incongruity between rights on paper and their execution provokes interethnic rivalry for the visibility of language and culture, in which the exclusive ownership of sovereignty is marked by the dominance of national language in physical spaces coined as ‘linguistic territoriality’ (Cserg} o, 2007), fostering parallel, monolingual public spheres. Applying Rancière's theory to the case of the Hungarian minority in Romania, it is argued that civil society activists' legal mobilization initiatives are a manifestation of ‘politics’ in the Rancièreian sense as they challenge the distribution of public spaces along ethnic lines through pushing forward their integrative vision of the same spaces—thus ‘seeking the litigious distribution of places and roles’ (Rancière, 2003, p. 201).
Effects of high-intensity interval training, resistance training, or combined training on the ideal cardiovascular health metrics in adults with metabolic syndrome criteria : A secondary analysis of the cardiometabolic HIIT-RT study

We aimed to investigate whether 12 weeks of high-intensity interval training (HIIT), resistance training (RT), combined training (CT=HIII+RT), or nutritional guidance (NG) induced improvements in metabolic syndrome (MetS) risk factors and ideal cardiovascular health (CVH) in sedentary and overweight adults. Methods: This secondary analysis derives from the Cardiometabolic HIIT-RT study (ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT02715063). The study included a total of 51 sedentary subjects aged 30–50 years. Subjects with abdominal obesity or excess weight, and who identified as being willing and almost immediately available were enrolled. Parameters linked to CVH such as anthropometric and body composition, cardiovascular indices, and cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) were assessed. Results: After the intervention, HIIT, RT and CT improved maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max) and muscular strength, but HIIT elicited the largest improvements for VO2max (effect size=0.579) and RT for muscular strength (effect size=0.625). Only the NG group had an increase in the percentage of the pre-value in the healthy diet metric, whereas the HIIT and CT groups had an improvement in VO2max. The HIIT and RT groups had a 33.4% (P = 0.032) and 41.6% (P = 0.020) increase in >5 metrics, respectively. Conclusion: Both the HIIT and RT programs increased the ideal CVH metrics, supporting the positive effect of both exercise training programs on CVH in sedentary and overweight adults.
Antioxidant Effects of Protocatechuic Acid and Protocatechuic Aldehyde: Old Wine in a New Bottle

Phenolic compounds are naturally present as secondary metabolites in plant-based sources such as fruits, vegetables, and spices. They have received considerable attention for their antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-carcinogenic properties for protection against many chronic disorders such as neurodegenerative diseases, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer. They are categorized into various groups based on their chemical structure and include phenolic acids, flavonoids, curcumins, tannins, and quinolones. Their structural variations contribute to their specific beneficial effects on human health. The antioxidant property of phenolic compounds protects against oxidative stress by up-regulation of endogenous antioxidants, scavenging free radicals, and anti-apoptotic activity. Protocatechuic acid (PCA; 3,4-dihydroxy benzoic acid) and protocatechuic aldehyde (PAL; 3,4-dihydroxybenzaldehyde) are naturally occurring polyphenols found in vegetables, fruits, and herbs. PCA and PAL are the primary metabolites of anthocyanins and proanthocyanidins, which have been shown to possess pharmacological actions including antioxidant activity in vitro and in vivo. This review aims to explore the therapeutic potential of PCA and PAL by comprehensively summarizing their pharmacological properties reported to date, with an emphasis on their mechanisms of action and biological properties.