Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Advances in Diagnosis of Schistosomiasis: Focus on Challenges and Future Approaches

Abstract Schistosomiasis is the second most devastating parasite prevalent in the tropical region of the world, posing significant public health impacts in endemic areas. Presently, several disease mitigation measures have shown a decline in transmission of the infection rate in risk localities using mass drug administration (MDA) of school-based or community-wide treatments. Despite all the endeavors made, the decline in transmission of infection rate has not been attained in the entire medicated segment of the population. Perhaps the current challenges of control of the disease appear to be strongly associated with a lack of appropriate diagnostic tools. It’s well known that the current diagnosis of schistosomiasis greatly relies on conventional methods. On the other hand, minor symptoms of schistosomiasis and low sensitivity and specificity of diagnostic methods are still unresolved diagnostic challenges to clinicians. Numerous scholars have reviewed various diagnostic methods of schistosomiasis and attempted to identify their strengths and weaknesses, currently on function. As a result of the known limitations of the existing diagnostic tools, the need to develop new and feasible diagnostic methods and diagnostic markers is unquestionable for more precise detection of the infection. Hence, advances in diagnostic methods have been considered part of the solution for the control and eventual elimination strategy of the disease in endemic areas. As of today, easy, cheap, and accurate diagnostics for schistosomiasis are difficult to get, and this limits the concerted efforts towards full control of schistosomiasis. While looking for new diagnostic methods and markers, it is important to simultaneously work on improving the existing diagnostic methods for better results. This review tries to give new insights to the status of the existing diagnostic methods of schistosomiasis from conventional to modern via summarizing the strengths and limitations of the methods. It also tries to recommend new, sensitive and feasible diagnostic methods for future approaches.
Dual Reciprocity Boundary Element Method for Magnetohydrodynamic Flow Using Radial Basis Functions

A dual reciprocity boundary element method is given to obtain the solution in terms of velocity and induced magnetic field for the study of MHD (magnetohydrodynamic) flow through a rectangular duct having insulating walls. The equations are transformed to two types of nonlinear Poisson equations and the right-hand sides in these equations are approximated using combinations of two classes of radial basis functions (the value of the function and its normal derivatives are utilized for approximation). Computations are carried out for several values of the Hartman number (0 h M h 10) by using constant boundary elements. Comparisons are made for two types of formulations and for traditional and osculatory type approximations of the right-hand side functions. It is found that osculatory interpolation gives better results than traditional interpolation and the type of the Poisson equation, which contains derivative of the unknown function, is better than the other type, which contains unknown function only. The results for velocity and induced magnetic field are illustrated by some selected graphs.
High-power and narrow-linewidth tunable distributed-reflector laser

Deployment of digital coherent transmission technologies to metro networks drives the use of higher-order modulation formats such as PDM-16QAM and downsizing of optical transceivers. A narrow-linewidth (<300 kHz) tunable laser with high output power (>+17 dBm) is very attractive for such purposes, not only because it can compensate for the modulation loss increase caused by a high-peak-to-average ratio of the electrical driving signal of higher-order modulation formats, but also because it can be shared between transmitter and receiver saving the foot-print and power dissipation. This paper reviews the Tunable Distributed Amplification — Chirped Sampled Grating — Distributed Reflector (TDA-CSG-DR) laser being developed for metro application.
ARCH tests and quantile regressions

We consider a test based on quantile regressions to verify the presence of conditional heteroskedasticity. The test does not rely on distributional assumptions of the errors, nor on a function describing the pattern of heteroskedasticity. It compares the slope coefficients of the regressions computed at different quantiles. Under homoskedasticity, different regression quantiles yield parallel hyperplanes, and the slope coefficients are not significantly different from one quantile to the other. This is not the case when heteroskedasticity occurs. A Monte Carlo study is implemented in order to verify the behavior of this class of tests for conditional heteroskedasticity based on quantile regressions.
Vascular Normalization Was Associated with Colorectal Tumor Regression upon Anti-PD-L1 Combinational Therapy

Anti-PD-L1 therapy exhibits durable efficacy, but only in a small fraction of cancer patients. The immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (TME) is a crucial obstacle that impedes cancer immunotherapy. Here, we found that anti-PD-L1 therapy coupled with CD4+ T cell depletion induced colorectal tumor regression and vascular normalization, while monotherapy only retarded tumor growth without affecting the tumor vasculature. Moreover, simultaneous PD-L1 blockade and CD4+ T cell depletion eradicated intratumoral PD-L1+ lymphoid and myeloid cell populations, while additively elevating the proportions of CD44+CD69+CD8+, central memory CD44+CD62L+CD8+, and effector memory CD44+CD62L−CD8+ T cells, suggesting a reduction in immunosuppressive cell populations and the activation of CD8+ T cells in the TME. Moreover, anti-PD-L1 therapy reduced the proportions of intratumoral PD-L1+ immune cells and suppressed tumor growth in a CD8+ T cell dependent manner. Together, these results suggest that anti-PD-L1 therapy induces tumor vascular normalization and colorectal tumor regression via CD8+ T cells, which is antagonized by CD4+ T cells. Our findings unveil the positive correlation of tumor regression and vascular normalization in colorectal tumor models upon anti-PD-L1 therapy, providing a potential new strategy to improve its efficacy.
Rain-induced crosspolarisation and raindrop canting

A discussion is given on the effect of wind on raindrops. It is shown that wind in itself cannot be a cause of raindrop canting. Vertical wind gradients are shown to produce a horizontal force on the drops, resulting in a canting angle. Calculations, based on a general model for wind gradients between 10 and 200 m for strong winds, show that canting angles of several degrees are possible.
Application of Linear ODE as Auxiliary Equation to the Nonlinear Evolution Equation

In this article, simplified Modified Camassa-Holm (SMCH) equation is investigated to construct some new analytical solutions via the improved (G’/G)-expansion method. Second order linear ordinary differential equation is used with constant coefficients in the method. As a result, some new travelling wave solutions are obtained through the hyperbolic function, the trigonometric function and the rational forms. If parameters take specific values, the solitary waves are derives from the travelling waves. Furthermore, some of the solutions are presented in the figures with the aid of commercial software Maple.
A Submersible Particle Image Velocimetry System for Turbulence Measurements in the Bottom Boundary Layer

Abstract This paper introduces an oceanic particle image velocimetry (PIV) system that has been under development at The Johns Hopkins University over the past three years. PIV maps two components of the instantaneous velocity distribution within a selected sample area by recording the motion of microscopic tracer particles illuminated by a pulsed laser sheet. The primary purpose of this instrument, in its current configuration, is to directly measure the Reynolds stresses, velocity profile, vorticity, and turbulent spectra in the bottom boundary layer of the coastal ocean. Due to the basic principles of PIV, the validity of these measurements is independent of any of the usual assumptions about the nature of the flow, such as the existence of a log layer in the velocity profile, a constant stress layer, or an inertial subrange in the turbulence spectra. In addition, at scales up to those of a single image, the analysis does not require the use of the Taylor hypothesis. The primary focus of this paper is .
Moving object detection in complex background for a moving camera

A moving object detection algorithm with sparse motion field estimation, motion classification and pixel-wise segmentation is proposed. Firstly, sparse motion field is recovered by fast corner detection and tracking. The corners that belong to the same motion pattern are classified according to their motion consistency, then, the resulting corner group is used to reconstructed scene image, and the foreground corners are identified by getting rid of the group with the least reconstruction error. Finally, optimal dense segmentation of the foreground is performed by using graph cuts, the energy function of which integrates corner motion, local color distribution and image edges. The proposed method is tested on the dataset of real complex scenarios and its effectiveness is demonstrated in the results.
Interpretation of high‐speed flows in the plasma sheet

Pursuing an idea suggested by Pontius and Wolf, the authors propose that the {open_quotes}bursty bulk flows{close_quotes} are {open_quotes}bubbles{close_quotes} in the Earth`s plasma sheet. Specifically, they are flux tubes that have lower values of pV{sup 5/3} than their neighbors, where p is the thermal pressure of the particles and V is the volume of a tube containing one unit of magnetic flux. Whether they are created by reconnection or some other mechanism, the bubbles are propelled earthward by a magnetic buoyancy force, which is related to the interchange instability. Most of the major observed characteristics of the bursty bulk flows can be interpreted naturally in terms of the bubble picture. They propose a new {open_quotes}stratified fluid{close_quotes} picture of the plasma sheet, based on the idea that bubbles constitute the crucial transport mechanism. Results from simple mathematical models of plasma sheet transport support the idea that bubbles can resolve the pressure balance inconsistency, particularly in cases where plasma sheet ions are lost by gradient/curvature drift out the sides of the tail or bubbles are generated by reconnection in the middle plasma sheet. 23 refs., 8 figs., 1 tab.
A Large-Scale Proteomics Resource of Circulating Extracellular Vesicles for Biomarker Discovery in Pancreatic Cancer

Pancreatic cancer has the worst prognosis of all common tumors. Earlier cancer diagnosis could increase survival rates and better assessment of metastatic disease could improve patient care. As such, there is an urgent need to develop biomarkers to diagnose this deadly malignancy earlier. Analyzing circulating extracellular vesicles (cEVs) using liquid biopsies offers an attractive approach to diagnose and monitor disease status. However, it is important to differentiate EV-associated proteins enriched in patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) from those with benign pancreatic diseases such as chronic pancreatitis and intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm (IPMN). To meet this need, we combined the novel EVtrap method for highly efficient isolation of EVs from plasma and conducted proteomics analysis of samples from 124 individuals, including patients with PDAC, benign pancreatic diseases and controls. On average, 912 EV proteins were identified per 100{micro}L of plasma. EVs containing high levels of PDCD6IP, SERPINA12 and RUVBL2 were associated with PDAC compared to the benign diseases in both discovery and validation cohorts. EVs with PSMB4, RUVBL2 and ANKAR were associated with metastasis, and those with CRP, RALB and CD55 correlated with poor clinical prognosis. Finally, we validated a 7-EV protein PDAC signature against a background of benign pancreatic diseases that yielded an 89% prediction accuracy for the diagnosis of PDAC. To our knowledge, our study represents the largest proteomics profiling of circulating EVs ever conducted in pancreatic cancer and provides a valuable open-source atlas to the scientific community with a comprehensive catalogue of novel cEVs that may assist in the development of biomarkers and improve the outcomes of patients with PDAC.
New Approach to the SIR Inversion Problem: From the 1905-1906 Plague Outbreak in the Isle of Bombay to the 2021-2022 Omicron Surges in New York City and Los Angeles County

We describe a novel approach to recovering the underlying parameters of the SIR dynamic epidemic model from observed data on case incidence or deaths. We formulate a discrete-time approximation to the original continuous-time model and search for the parameter vector that minimizes the standard least squares criterion function. We show that the gradient vector and matrix of second-order derivatives of the criterion function with respect to the parameters adhere to their own systems of difference equations and thus can be exactly calculated iteratively. Applying our new approach, we estimate four-parameter SIR models on two types of datasets: (1) daily reported cases of COVID-19 during the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron/BA.1 surges of December 2021 - March 2022 in New York City and Los Angeles County; and (2) weekly deaths from a plague outbreak on the Isle of Bombay during December 1905 - July 1906, originally studied by Kermack and McKendrick in their now-classic 1927 paper. The estimated parameters from the COVID-19 data suggest a duration of persistent infectivity beyond that reported in small-scale clinical studies of mostly symptomatic subjects. The estimated parameters from the plague data suggest that the Bombay outbreak was in fact driven by pulmonic rather than bubonic plague.
Over one year of survival difference between distinct cohorts of glioblastoma patients

Understanding the differences in outcomes based on study and patient characteristics can inform better research designs and improve the interpretation of translational glioblastoma studies. This study compared the clinical features and median overall survival (mOS) of 2,203 patients from two genomic cohorts (The Cancer Genome Atlas [TCGA] and the Chinese Glioma Genome Atlas [CGGA]) and two consecutive regional cohorts (Hong Kong [HK] and Southeast [SE] Scotland) with histologically confirmed glioblastoma. Differences in clinical characteristics reflected the distinct patient selection criteria for surgery. While the mOS were similar, the mOS of those who completed temozolomide chemoradiotherapy were 35.2 months in SE Scotland, 22.2 in HK, and 14.1 in the TCGA cohort. Survival functions were comparable in the multivariable survival analysis. Our findings highlight how a lack of clinical data impedes the translational value of research. Therefore, there is a need to develop common data elements to derive meaningful conclusions.
Correlation between growth dynamics and dielectric properties of epitaxial BaTiO3 films

We report on the effect of the substrate temperature on the growth dynamics and dielectric properties of BaTiO3 epitaxial films on Nb:SrTiO3 (001) substrates. By real-time reflection high energy electron diffraction analysis, we quantitatively estimated the adatoms surface diffusivity as a function of temperature. The increase of the substrate temperature promotes surface diffusion, which reflects in the improvement of BaTiO3 ferroelectric properties up to 680 °C. Above this temperature, Ba re-evaporation occurs, leading to a rapid deterioration of the dielectric and ferroelectric properties. This work shed light on thermally activated physical mechanisms which determine the ferroelectric properties of BaTiO3 films.
Bayesian Detection of Multiple Change Points in a Piecewise Linear Function

When consecutive data follows diﬀerent distributions(depending on the time interval) change-point detection infers where the changes occur ﬁrst and then ﬁnds further inferences for each sub-interval. In this paper, we investigate the Bayesian detection of multiple change points. Utilizing the reversible jump MCMC, we can explore parameter spaces with unknown dimensions. In particular, we consider a model where the signal is a piecewise linear function. For the Bayesian inference, we propose a new Bayesian structure and build our own MCMC algorithm. Through the simulation study and the real data analysis, we veriﬁed the performance of our method.
SarS Is a Repressor of Staphylococcus aureus Bicomponent Pore-Forming Leukocidins

Staphylococcus aureus is a successful pathogen that produces a wide range of virulence factors that it uses to subvert and suppress the immune system. These include the bicomponent pore-forming leukocidins. ABSTRACT Staphylococcus aureus is a successful pathogen that produces a wide range of virulence factors that it uses to subvert and suppress the immune system. These include the bicomponent pore-forming leukocidins. How the expression of these toxins is regulated is not completely understood. Here, we describe a screen to identify transcription factors involved in the regulation of leukocidins. The most prominent discovery from this screen is that SarS, a known transcription factor which had previously been described as a repressor of alpha-toxin expression, was found to be a potent repressor of leukocidins LukED and LukSF-PV. We found that inactivating sarS resulted in increased virulence both in an ex vivo model using primary human neutrophils and in an in vivo infection model in mice. Further experimentation revealed that SarS represses leukocidins by serving as an activator of Rot, a critical repressor of toxins, as well as by directly binding and repressing the leukocidin promoters. By studying contemporary clinical isolates, we identified naturally occurring mutations in the sarS promoter that resulted in overexpression of sarS and increased repression of leukocidins in USA300 bloodstream clinical isolates. Overall, these data establish SarS as an important repressor of leukocidins and expand our understanding of how these virulence factors are being regulated in vitro and in vivo by S. aureus.
Loss of alpha-like MeV fusion products from TFTR

A detailed comparison between the observed and expected loss of alpha-like MeV fusion products in TFTR is presented. The D-D fusion products (mainly the 1 MeV triton) were measured with a 2-D imaging scintillation detector. The expected first-orbit loss was calculated with a simple Lorentz orbit code. In almost all cases the measured loss was consistent with the expected first-orbit loss model. Exceptions are noted for small major radius plasmas and during strong MHD activity.
Low-amplitude variations detected by CoRoT in the B8IIIe star HD 175869

Context. The origin of the short-term variability in Be stars remains a matter of controversy. Pulsations and rotational modulation are the components of the favored hypothesis. Aims. We present our analysis of CoRoT data of the B8IIIe star HD 175869 observed during the first short run in the center direction (SRC1). Methods. We review both the instrumental effects visible in the CoRoT light curve and the analysis methods used by the CoRoT Be team. We applied these methods to the CoRoT light curve of the star HD 175869. A search for line-profile variations in the spectroscopic data was also performed. We also searched for a magnetic field, by applying the LSD technique to spectropolarimetric data. Results. The light curve exhibits low-amplitude variations of the order of 300 μmag with a double wave shape. A frequency within the range determined for the rotational frequency and 6 of its harmonics are detected. The main frequency and its first harmonic exhibit amplitude variations of a few days. Other significant frequencies of low-amplitude from 25 to a few μmag are also found. The analysis of line profiles from ground-based spectroscopic data does not detect any variation. In addition, no Zeeman signature was found. Conclusions. Inhomogeneities caused by stellar activity in or just above the photosphere are proposed to produce the photometric variability detected by CoRoT in the Be star HD 175869. The hypothesis that non-radial pulsations are the origin of these variations cannot be excluded.
On Holographic RG Flows

A study of holographic renormalization group (RG) flows is discussed in the framework of supergravity and string theories. Some RG flow solutions are found in N = 4 Chern-Simons gauged supergravity in three dimensions. The resulting solutions describe vev flows, driven by a vacuum expectation value (vev) of a relevant operator or a vev of a marginal operator, in a dual two dimensional field theory. In the minimal six dimensional supergravity, RG flow solutions, describing two dimensional vev flows driven by a vev of a marginal operator, in the presence of Yang-Mills instantons are found. The solutions describe RG flows between N = (4, 0) SCFTs and have an interpretation in term of transitions between Yang-Mills vacua with different winding numbers. We also propose an interpretation in term of D1/D5 branes in type I string theory. The flow with a single instanton can be thought of as an uplifted three dimensional solution. The corresponding reduction ansatz of the (1,0) six dimensional supergravity on the SU(2) group manifold giving rise to the N = 4 Yang-Mills gauged supergravity in three dimensions with SU(2) × G gauge group is given. Additionally, the equivalence between the reduced theory and N = 4 Chern-Simons (SU(2) n T3)× (G×TdimG) gauged supergravity is explicitly shown. The solution with multi-instanton back ground is generalized to the case in which the Yang-Mills instantons are turned on on an asymptotically locally Euclidean (ALE) space. The corresponding solution then involves both Yang-Mills and gravitational instantons and describes RG flows from N = 2 two dimensional CFT in the UV to N = 4 CFT in the IR. Furthermore, we extend the analysis to RG flows in four dimensional field theories by studying flow solutions in the framework of type IIB and type I′ string theories on the ALE space. In these solutions, the UV theory is an N = 2 quiver gauge theory. Field theory considerations of Higgsing the corresponding UV quiver gauge theory in the UV to the IR gauge theory, which can possibly be another quiver theory or N = 2, 4 SYM, are discussed along with their geometric interpretation.
SPIDR is required for homologous recombination during mammalian meiosis

Abstract Meiotic recombinases RAD51 and DMC1 mediate strand exchange in the repair of DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) by homologous recombination. This is a landmark event of meiosis that ensures genetic diversity in sexually reproducing organisms. However, the regulatory mechanism of DMC1/RAD51-ssDNA nucleoprotein filaments during homologous recombination in mammals has remained largely elusive. Here, we show that SPIDR (scaffold protein involved in DNA repair) regulates the assembly or stability of RAD51/DMC1 on ssDNA. Knockout of Spidr in male mice causes complete meiotic arrest, accompanied by defects in synapsis and crossover formation, which leads to male infertility. In females, loss of Spidr leads to subfertility; some Spidr−/− oocytes are able to complete meiosis. Notably, fertility is rescued partially by ablation of the DNA damage checkpoint kinase CHK2 in Spidr−/− females but not in males. Thus, our study identifies SPIDR as an essential meiotic recombination factor in homologous recombination in mammals.