Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Protective Role of Kelulut Honey against Toxicity Effects of Polystyrene Microplastics on Morphology, Hormones, and Sex Steroid Receptor Expression in the Uterus of Rats

Background: Microplastics (MPs) are an emerging global pollutant. Previous studies have revealed that chronic exposure to MPs can affect animal and human reproductive health, particularly by impairing the reproductive system’s normal functions, which may increase the risk of infertility in both males and females. Kelulut honey (KH), an excellent source of antioxidants, has been used to counteract the disruptive effects of Polystyrene microplastics (PS-MPs) in the rat uterus. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the potential protective effects of Kelulut honey against PS-MPs-induced uterine toxicity in pubertal rats. Methods: Prepubertal female Sprague Dawley rats were divided into four groups (n = 8): (i) normal control group (NC: treated with deionized water), MPs-exposed group (M: exposed to PS-MPs at 2.5 mg/kg), (iii) Kelulut honey group (DM: pretreated with 1200 mg/kg of KH 30 minutes before they were administered with PS-MPs at 2.5 mg/kg), and (iv) Kelulut honey control group (DC: only treated with KH at 2.5 mg/kg). The rats were treated orally once daily for six consecutive weeks. Results: Uterine abnormalities in PS-MPs-exposed rats were significantly improved after concurrent treatment with Kelulut honey. Morphology improvement was observed and luminal epithelial cells seemed thicker with more goblet cells, glandular cells had a more regular and circular shape, stromal cell increased in size, interstitial gaps between stromal cells expanded, and the myometrium layer was thicker. Kelulut honey treatment also effectively normalized the suppressive effect of PS-MPs on the expression and distribution of sex steroid receptors (ERα and ERβ), as well as the level of serum gonadotropin (LH and FSH) and sex steroid (estradiol and progesterone) hormones. Conclusion: Kelulut honey can protect the female reproductive system against the disruptive effects of PS-MPs. The phytochemical properties of Kelulut honey might be responsible for these beneficial benefits. However, future studies are warranted to identify the mechanisms involved.
Enhanced second-harmonic generation in coupled microcavities based on all-silicon photonic crystals

The enhancement of second-harmonic generation ~SHG! in one-dimensional coupled photonic-crystal microcavities ~CMC! formed from mesoporous silicon is observed. Peaks in the angular spectrum of the secondharmonic intensity are correlated with angular positions of the split CMC modes and caused by combination of the resonant enhancement of the fundamental radiation and constructive interference of the second-harmonic fields induced in the microcavity spacers. The shape of the SHG resonances is shown to be dependent on the variation of the electromagnetic coupling between the microcavities controlled by reflectivity of the intermediate distributed Bragg reflector.
Facilitators and Barriers to Providing Clinical Education Experiences Through the Lens of Clinical Stakeholders

Introduction. Although the provision of clinical education (CE) experiences affords many benefits to clinical stakeholders, little published literature exists regarding the factors influencing decisions of site coordinators of CE (SCCE), clinical administrators, and clinical instructors (CI) to provide CE. Review of Literature. Site coordinators of CE and CIs navigate workplace expectations while making decisions about their engagement in CE experiences. The purpose of this study was to determine clinical stakeholders’ perceptions of facilitators and barriers to the provision of CE experiences for entry-level Doctor of Physical Therapy students. Subjects. This study used survey data from a previous study on perspectives related to payment for CE experiences. The survey questions analyzed included responses provided by 501 clinical administrators, 445 SCCEs, and 657 CIs. Methods. Retrospective analysis of survey data included frequencies and percentages of responses for nominal and categorical data. Open-ended survey questions underwent content analysis to identify overarching concepts and subordinate categories. Results. Clinicians are most motivated to serve as CIs by “enjoyment of teaching” (274, 49.4%) and a sense of “professional responsibility” (147, 26.5%). Site coordinators of CEs indicated that the top challenges faced in soliciting CIs were the ability to manage challenging students (347, 69.0%), lack of experience serving as a CI (227, 63.4%), ability to maintain productivity standards (220, 61.5%), and clinician burnout (219, 61.2%). Although all participants agreed that their organization promotes a culture of teaching, clinical administrators agreed at a higher percentage than SCCEs (97.8% vs 94.3%, respectively). Discussion and Conclusion. Clinical instructors identified values and benefits that were, at times, in contrast to the organizational culture. The discrepancies in perceptions among stakeholders that were uncovered by this research provide a unique lens that has not been addressed in the literature to date. To provide meaningful support for CIs, it is imperative that directors of CEs, clinical administrators, and SCCEs clearly understand the perceptions of the CI.
Image Perspective Transformations—Urban Scenes

This paper discusses a technique for converting digitized oblique low-altitude aerial photography to gray level imagery as seen from other viewing perspectives. The technique makes use of one- and two-camera perspective transformations. Inputs to these transformations are camera model information and a stick figure representation of the scene. The required camera model information is extracted from the imagery in conjunction with limited map data. Three-dimensional stick figure models are constructed interactively using the camera model and the digitized photograph. The perspective transformations are applied to the gray level image, pixel-by-pixel, and hidden surface corrections are performed to produce the new perspective views. The resulting images maintain the noise and resolution qualities of the original digitized imagery.
The Use of Posterior Predictive P-Values in Testing Goodness-of-Fit

In this article, we introduce two goodness-of-fit tests for testing normality through the concept of the posterior predictive p-value. The discrepancy variables selected are the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) and Berk-Jones (BJ) statistics and the prior chosen is Jeffreys’ prior. The constructed posterior predictive p-values are shown to be distributed independently of the unknown parameters under the null hypothesis, thus they can be taken as the test statistics. It emerges from the simulation that the new tests are more powerful than the corresponding classical tests against most of the alternatives concerned.
An interactive motion perception tool for kindergarteners (and vision scientists)

We implement Adelson and Bergen's spatiotemporal energy model with extension to three-dimensional (x–y–t) in an interactive tool. It helps gain an easy understanding of early (first-order) visual motion perception. We demonstrate its usefulness in explaining an assortment of phenomena, including some that are typically not associated with the spatiotemporal energy model.
Role of Cumulus Congestus in Tropical Cyclone Formation in a High-Resolution Numerical Model Simulation

AbstractThe role of cumulus congestus (shallow and congestus convection) in tropical cyclone (TC) formation is examined in a high-resolution simulation of Tropical Cyclone Fay (2008). It is found that cumulus congestus plays a dominant role in moistening the lower to middle troposphere and spinning up the near-surface circulation prior to genesis, while deep convection plays a key role in moistening the upper troposphere and intensifying the cyclonic circulation over a deep layer. The transition from the tropical wave stage to the TC stage is marked by a substantial increase in net condensation and potential vorticity generation by deep convection in the inner wave pouch region.This study suggests that TC formation can be regarded as a two-stage process. The first stage is a gradual process of moisture preconditioning and low-level spinup, in which cumulus congestus plays a dominant role. The second stage commences with the rapid development of deep convection in the inner pouch region after the air colum.
Noise-Canceling Technologies for Smartphone Cameras: Self-Image in the Age of Anxiety

Abstract Noise-canceling technologies for smartphone cameras allow individuals to control and customize their self-images. These technologies that are used to automatically eliminate unwanted visual noise, such as excessive grain or lighting issues, skin imperfections, and teeth stains, are now widely used on smartphones to transform a noisy photograph into a “clean” and “ideal” image. In this paper, the author conducts a critical analysis of (1) the increasing popularity of these technologies through their application in smartphone cameras; (2) their active involvement in the construction of users’ ideal self-images; and (3) their contribution to increased instances of visual phobias, obsessions, anxieties, and irritation.
Novel integrated three-port DC/DC converter for different operating modes between renewable energy, electrolyser and fuel cell/battery

Due to the slow dynamic power-regulation characteristics of the electrolyser (EL), a novel integrated three-port DC/DC converter topology based on a phase-shifted full-bridge converter and dual active-bridge converter is proposed in this paper. Especially, the proposed converter can achieve a fast auxiliary response to the EL. This topology has the features of single-stage conversion, high system integration and compatibility with multiple operation modes. The operational principles and a hybrid modulation scheme of the proposed converter are analysed in detail. In addition, the power-transmission characteristics of each port and the soft-switching range are researched. On these bases, six operation modes suitable for a hydrogen energy-storage system are designed. The simulation and a 2-kW scaled-down experimental prototype are established to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed topology in different operation modes.
Bayesian change-point problem using Bayes factor with hierarchical prior distribution

Abstract We consider the hierarchical Bayesian models of change-point problem in a sequence of random variables having either normal population or skew-normal population. Further, we consider the problem of detecting an influential point concerning change point using Bayes factors. Our proposed models are illustrated with the real data example, the annual flow volume data of Nile River at Aswan from 1871 to 1970. The result using our proposed models indicated the largest influential observation in the year 1888 among outliers. We have shown that it is useful to measure the influence of observations on Bayes factors. Here, we consider omitting single observation as well.
Dedicated Instruction Set for Pattern-Based Data Transfers: An Experimental Validation on Systems Containing In-Memory Computing Units

In-memory computing (IMC) aims at solving the performance gap between CPU and memories introduced by the memory wall. However, general-purpose IMC does not consider the optimization of data transfers for patterns, such as stencils and convolutions. This article proposes a new instruction set architecture (ISA) and a novel pattern encoding for IMC to transfer and organize data streams in order to perform efficiently computation. This instruction set is implemented on the data-locality management unit (DMU) as a subset of the computational SRAM (C-SRAM) ISA. A programming model to interact with the DMU at language level is also presented in this article. This DMU ISA is evaluated on six applications run on three different system nodes. These system nodes are based on existing RISC-V cores and range from embedded to high-performance computing domain. Experiments show on average a speed-up of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times 8.81$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, an energy reduction factor of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times 6.81$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, and an improvement of the number of operations per cycle of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times 4.59$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, for the C-SRAM architecture integrating the proposed ISA of the DMU compared to a reference implementation on embedded systems. Results also show an improvement of the number of operations per cycle of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times 2.99$ </tex-math></inline-formula> compared to a reference implementation on all system nodes.
On the Susceptibility of Cold Tropical Cirrus to Ice Nuclei Abundance

AbstractNumerical simulations of cirrus formation in the tropical tropopause layer (TTL) during boreal wintertime are used to evaluate the impact of heterogeneous ice nuclei (IN) abundance on cold cloud microphysical properties and occurrence frequencies. The cirrus model includes homogeneous and heterogeneous ice nucleation, deposition growth/sublimation, and sedimentation. Reanalysis temperature and wind fields with high-frequency waves superimposed are used to force the simulations. The model results are constrained by comparison with in situ and satellite observations of TTL cirrus and relative humidity. Temperature variability driven by high-frequency waves has a dominant influence on TTL cirrus microphysical properties and occurrence frequencies, and inclusion of these waves is required to produce agreement between the simulated and observed abundance of TTL cirrus. With homogeneous freezing only and small-scale gravity waves included in the temperature curtains, the model produces excessive ice con.
Unruly topologies in two-dimensional quantum gravity

A sum over histories formulation of quantum geometry could involve sums over different topologies as well as sums over different metrics. In classical gravity a geometry is a manifold with a metric, but it is difficult to implement a sum over manifolds in quantum gravity. In this difficulty, motivation is found for including in the sum over histories, geometries defined on more general objects than manifolds-unruly topologies. In simplicial two-dimensional quantum gravity a class of simplicial complexes is found to which the gravitational action can be extended, for which sums over the class are straightforwardly defined, and for which a manifold dominates the sum in the classical limit. The situation in higher dimensions is discussed.
Stability conditions for integral delay systems

In this paper we consider a special class of integral delay systems arising in several stability problems of time‐delay systems. For these integral systems we derive stability and robust stability conditions in terms of Lyapunov–Krasovskii functionals. More explicitly, after providing the stability conditions we compute quadratic functionals and apply them to derive exponential estimates for solutions, and robust stability conditions for perturbed integral delay systems. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Core Variation of a Non-Newtonian Fluid in an Annular Cylinder

The objective of the paper is to investigate the variation of core thickness of a non-Newtonian fluid in an annular cylinder at the entrance region. It is derived numerically, with no prior assumptions on the form of the Velocity profile. The thickness of the core is examined at each cross section of annuli for various values of Bingham number and aspect ratio by applying mass balance equation. The effect of various parameters on the flow rate are obtained graphically. The examination incorporates Bingham plastic fluids, Casson and Herschel-Bulkley fluid. The administering equations are solved using an iterative procedure by converting non-linear algebraic equation, expressing the variation in pressure in terms of core thickness obtained using the mass balance equation and plug core velocities along the boundary layers. The core thickness is obtained numerically by solving this equation using an iterative procedure. MATLAB programming tool has been employed to get the graphical variation of core thickness for different values of aspect ratio. The comparisons have been made between the obtained results and the results of Casson and Herschel-Bulkley fluids. Also, we find excellent agreement between our numerical results and the results available in literature.
Perturbation bounds for the stationary probabilities of a finite Markov chain

This paper discusses perturbation bounds for the stationary distribution of a finite indecomposable Markov chain. Existing bounds are reviewed. New bounds are presented which more completely exploit the stochastic features of the perturbation and which also are easily computable. Examples illustrate the tightness of the bounds and their application to bounding the error in the Simon–Ando aggregation technique for approximating the stationary distribution of a nearly completely decomposable Markov chain.
An Image Steganography Algorithm for Hiding Data Based on HDWT, LZW and OPAP

Image steganography is the art of information hiding, which embeds a secret data into a cover image. However, high capacity of secret data and high quality of stego image are key issues in image steganography. In this paper, an image steganography technique based on Haar Discrete Wavelet Transform (HDWT), Lempel Ziv Welch (LZW) algorithm and Optimal Pixel Adjustment Process (OPAP) is proposed. The HDWT is used to increase the robustness of stego image against attacks. To increase the hidden capacity, LZW algorithm is performed on the secret message. The OPAP is then applied to reduce the embedding error between the cover image and stego image. The experimental results are evaluated by four standard images as covers, and with two types of secret messages. The results demonstrate high visual quality of stego image with large Hidden Capacity (HC) of secret data compared with recent techniques
Conceptualization of Stress-Related Disorders and PTSD by Cognitive Behavior Therapists

Background: Many people experience stressful life events like social conflicts, accidents, or physical violence. Some develop post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD) thereafter. A diagnostic problem is the differentiation between causal stressful events, occasional causes, pseudo-causes or retrospective reinterpretations. This study investigates how often the diagnosis PTSD is mentioned in outpatient behavioral therapy patients, and which causes, findings, and therapeutic measures are reported. Patients and Method: In 1,480 behavioral therapy case reports the assignment of the diagnosis PTSD was explored. Cases with PTSD (N = 106) were compared with other cases without PTSD (N = 95). Results: In 7.16% the diagnosis PTSD was given. In both groups 90% reported earlier stressful experiences. In only 17% of the PTSD cases an “extraordinary threat of catastrophic proportions” was reported. In a quarter, the trauma assumption was based only on therapist or patient suggestions. Dissociative symptoms or intrusion were described only in the PTSD cases. Discussion: The data suggest that (a) almost all patients report stressful experiences, (b) the diagnosis of PTSD is given only in a limited number of patients, (c) in PTSD cases, intrusion and dissociation are reported only in a minority of cases, and (d) in PTSD cases, the full spectrum of exposure techniques is mentioned. Conclusion: Stress-associated disorders need precise description and differentiation.
A Lightweight Dynamic Storage Algorithm With Adaptive Encoding for Energy Internet

Reliable data storage is crucial to the production, transmission, transaction, consumption, and analysis of an Energy Internet (EI). Whereas mainstream distributed data storage seems to be a plausible solution, the existing methods suffer from a tradeoff between the storage overhead (incurred by the replicas of data encodings for lossless recovery) and the communication latency (due to the spiking network traffic resulting from massive queries of data replicas across devices). To balance this tradeoff, we propose a Lightweight Dynamic Storage Algorithm based on Adaptive Encoding (LDSA-AE) approach for EI data storage. Our key idea is to classify the data into active and inactive categories, where the active data are most likely to be accessed and thus corrupted in high frequencies. As such, wherever the active data are housed, the replicas of them can be proactively allocated into a set of nearby devices. The main challenges are to realize the classification in real-time and to tailor encoding methods for the active and inactive separately in correspondence to their own characteristics. To overcome these, our LDSA-AE 1) proposes a novel density-based clustering algorithm to tackle performance data classification in an online and unsupervised fashion and 2) leverages Minimum Density RAID-6 (MDR) code and Cauchy Reed-Solomon (CRS) code for active and inactive data encodings, respectively, striving to ensure data storage with low overhead, low latency, high reliability, and high throughput at once. A theoretical analysis substantiates the viability and effectiveness of our proposed LDSA-AE approach. We also prototype our LDSA-AE on a real-world server testbed, and the empirical study suggests the superiority of our approach over the state-of-the-art distributed storage schemes for EI in terms of storage overhead, repair throughput, and reliability.
Comments on ‘Adiabatic shock capturing in perfect gas hypersonic flows’

Some comments are provided on the shock‐capturing techniques and stabilization parameters used in a recent paper (B.S. Kirk, Int. J. Numer. Meth. Fluids 2009; DOI: 10.1002/fld.2195) in conjunction with the SUPG formulation of compressible flows. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Endotoxemia in Acute Heart Failure and Cardiogenic Shock: Evidence, Mechanisms and Therapeutic Options

Acute heart failure and cardiogenic shock are frequently occurring and deadly conditions. In patients with those conditions, endotoxemia related to gut injury and gut barrier dysfunction is usually described as a driver of organ dysfunction. Because endotoxemia might reciprocally alter cardiac function, this phenomenon has been suggested as a potent vicious cycle that worsens organ perfusion and leading to adverse outcomes. Yet, evidence beyond this phenomenon might be overlooked, and mechanisms are not fully understood. Subsequently, even though therapeutics available to reduce endotoxin load, there are no indications to treat endotoxemia during acute heart failure and cardiogenic shock. In this review, we first explore the evidence regarding endotoxemia in acute heart failure and cardiogenic shock. Then, we describe the main treatments for endotoxemia in the acute setting, and we present the challenges that remain before personalized treatments against endotoxemia can be used in patients with acute heart failure and cardiogenic shock.