Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Marketing of Mexican cycads (Zamiaceae) in Atlixco, Puebla: An exploratory study

Resumen Las cicadas mexicanas son plantas de larga vida con alto potencial ornamental, debido a lo cual han sido objeto de extraccion de sus poblaciones silvestres con fines de comercializacion. Dicha extraccion junto con otras presiones como la destruccion de su habitat, han desencadenado la proteccion de sus poblaciones silvestres por leyes nacionales e internacionales, por lo que en Mexico son consideradas como una prioridad para su conservacion biologica. Su propagacion en viveros con fines comerciales y de reforestacion es recomendable, y coincide con la necesidad de realizar estudios de mercado que brinden informacion para vincular la produccion- comercializacion bajo una dinamica sustentable . El presente es un estudio de tipo exploratorio, descriptivo y transversal referente a la comercializacion de cicadas mexicanas ( Zamiaceae ) en Atlixco, Puebla. Se visitaron 107 viveros de junio 2012 a marzo de 2013; se administraron encuestas a 383 consumidores(as) potenciales de plantas ornamentales y 13 comercializadores(as) de cicadas. Se identifico la venta de estas en 57% de viveros, y 40.9% de ellos tenian a la venta 4 especies mexicanas:
Texture Region Growing Based Upon a Structural Model of Texture

In this paper the problem of texture boundary formation is approached by a region growing technique that is based upon a structural model of texture. Region growing is based upon similarities among texture elements and upon the spatial proximities of these elements. The region grower itself is a global algorithm that makes use of a minimal spanning tree of what is called the associated texture graph of a texture. A primary advantage of the method is that the texture regions are self-organizing in the sense that no artificial windows need be superimposed over the source textures. While the region described in this paper uses extrema-based texture elements, the application to other types of elements is straightforward.
Comparison of Three Plot Selection Methods for Estimating Change in Temporally Variable, Spatially Clustered Populations.

Monitoring population numbers is important for assessing trends and meeting various legislative mandates. However, sampling across time introduces a temporal aspect to survey design in addition to the spatial one. For instance, a sample that is initially representative may lose this attribute if there is a shift in numbers and/or spatial distribution in the underlying population that is not reflected in later sampled plots. Plot selection methods that account for this temporal variability will produce the best trend estimates. Consequently, I used simulation to compare bias and relative precision of estimates of population change among stratified and unstratified sampling designs based on permanent, temporary, and partial replacement plots under varying levels of spatial clustering, density, and temporal shifting of populations. Permanent plots produced more precise estimates of change than temporary plots across all factors. Further, permanent plots performed better than partial replacement plots except for high density (5 and 10 individuals per plot) and 25% - 50% shifts in the population. Stratified designs always produced less precise estimates of population change for all three plot selection methods, and often produced biased change estimates and greatly inflated variance estimates under sampling with partial replacement. Hence, stratification that remains fixed across time should be avoided when monitoring populations that are likely to exhibit large changes in numbers and/or spatial distribution during the study period. Key words: bias; change estimation; monitoring; permanent plots; relative precision; sampling with partial replacement; temporary plots.
Two-Dimensional Near-Field Focusing Folded Reversely Fed Leaky-Wave Antenna Array With High Radiation Efficiency

This paper presents a 2-D near-field focusing (NFF) substrate-integrated-waveguide (SIW) leaky-wave antenna (LWA) array with high radiation efficiency. In most of the existing 2-D NFF antenna arrays, the required quadratic phase and balanced amplitude distribution are achieved by the use of the transverse topology with a complex feeding network or the simple radial topology with high polarization loss. Here, a folded reversely fed LWA with transverse polarization is proposed to achieve natural balanced radiation with a sample series-fed network. Meanwhile, the width of the single linear LWA is complementary with the reversely fed topology. In this case, the SIW with a stepped width is applied to achieve a quasi-uniform slot distribution and to avoid the spurious radiation. Then, all reversely fed linear LWAs are connected by the meander-line structure, which can simplify the feeding network and enhance the radiation efficiency. The limitation of the NFF LWA in radiation efficiency is broken. The 2-D focusing principle and the design process of the proposed antenna are presented in this paper. As an example, a 2-D focusing SIW LWA array operated at 35 GHz with an 80% radiation efficiency is fabricated and measured.
Optimized electroacupuncture treatment for female stress urinary incontinence: study protocol for a multi-center randomized controlled trial

Background Stress urinary incontinence (SUI) is a common condition that can severely affect women’s life quality. Electroacupuncture (EA) has been proved to be an optional treatment for SUI, but the tolerance of EA becomes a factor affecting efficiency, which should not be ignored and needs to be solved urgently. The purpose of this study is to find out whether the use of alternating acupoints combination can solve this problem or not and provide an optimization of EA treatment for female SUI. Methods This multi-center randomized controlled trial will enroll 360 patients with SUI. They will be randomly assigned to one of the three groups—sacral acupoints group (sacral group), abdominal acupoints group (abdominal group), or alternating acupoints group (alternating group)—at a 1:1:1 ratio. The patients will receive 18 sessions of EA treatment and will be followed up for 48 weeks after the treatment. The primary outcome measure of the study is the change of urine leakage at week 6. The secondary outcomes include the incontinence episode frequency (IEF), International Consultation on Incontinence Questionnaire-Short Form (ICIQ-SF), severity of SUI, patient self-evaluation of therapeutic effects, weekly usage of urine pads, ultrasonography of pelvic floor, specialty therapies for SUI, evaluation of discomfort during EA treatment, patient acceptability evaluation and adverse events related to intervention. Discussion This trial is specifically designed to offer an optimized EA treatment for female SUI, aiming to enhance their quality of life. Clinical trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov, identifier ID:NCT05635669.
Comparative genomics and DNA methylation analysis of Pseudomonas aeruginosa clinical isolate PA3 by single-molecule real-time sequencing reveals new targets for antimicrobials

Introduction Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P.aeruginosa) is an important opportunistic pathogen with broad environmental adaptability and complex drug resistance. Single-molecule real-time (SMRT) sequencing technique has longer read-length sequences, more accuracy, and the ability to identify epigenetic DNA alterations. Methods This study applied SMRT technology to sequence a clinical strain P. aeruginosa PA3 to obtain its genome sequence and methylation modification information. Genomic, comparative, pan-genomic, and epigenetic analyses of PA3 were conducted. Results General genome annotations of PA3 were discovered, as well as information about virulence factors, regulatory proteins (RPs), secreted proteins, type II toxin-antitoxin (TA) pairs, and genomic islands. A genome-wide comparison revealed that PA3 was comparable to other P. aeruginosa strains in terms of identity, but varied in areas of horizontal gene transfer (HGT). Phylogenetic analysis showed that PA3 was closely related to P. aeruginosa 60503 and P. aeruginosa 8380. P. aeruginosa's pan-genome consists of a core genome of roughly 4,300 genes and an accessory genome of at least 5,500 genes. The results of the epigenetic analysis identified one main methylation sites, N6-methyladenosine (m6A) and 1 motif (CATNNNNNNNTCCT/AGGANNNNNNNATG). 16 meaningful methylated sites were picked. Among these, purH, phaZ, and lexA are of great significance playing an important role in the drug resistance and biological environment adaptability of PA3, and the targeting of these genes may benefit further antibacterial studies. Disucssion This study provided a detailed visualization and DNA methylation information of the PA3 genome and set a foundation for subsequent research into the molecular mechanism of DNA methyltransferase-controlled P. aeruginosa pathogenicity.
COMPARISON OF PRE DICLOFENAC AND PARACETAMOL COMBINATION ON POSTOPERATIVE PAIN AFTER ELECTIVE ABDOMINAL SURGERY UNDER GENERAL ANAESTHESIA

Background: integral parts of anaesthesia & to achieve that with a minimal resource is a challenging task. Today many multimodal methods drugs are used to manage postoperative pain. Hence we took this study to assess the postoperative pain relief with pre paracetamol and Methods: for elective abdominal surgery & they were randomised into two groups, group A & group B. Group A received inj. Paracetamol 1gm IV and inj. Diclofenac 75 mg IM, whereas group 100 mg IV 1 hour prior to induction of anaesthesia. Numerical Rating Scale was used to assess the postoperative analgesia in the postoperative period until the request for next analgesia dose by the pat our study showed p value of < 0.001 which was significant. The pain free duration was longer in group B (paracetamol and tramadol) with 150+12.5 min as compared to group A with 110+10 min. combieffectively alleviate the postoperative pain but the paracetamol significantly increase postoperative analgesia as compared to the paracetamol diclofenac.
Conceptual Foundations of Audit: Quality, Independence, Efficiency, Signaling and Competition

Independent external audit of financial reports of public organizations is mandatory in many jurisdictions in the world. Regulatory regimes attempt to maintain and enhance the effectiveness of audits so they can serve their fundamental purpose of facilitating capital investments through more informative financial reports. Regulations seek to improve the effectiveness of financial reporting by promoting audit quality and competition in the audit market, and by restricting managers and auditors from taking actions which may lower the information quality. In this paper, by using two examples of South Korea and U.S., we analyze the five conceptual foundations of audit: (1) various aspects and meanings attached to audit quality; (2) the challenges of ensuring the reality and appearance of auditor independence; (3) efficiency of resources deployed in audit; (4) the consequences of regulatory restrictions on financial reporting and audit options exercised by companies when they deprive managers of stronger companies of the opportunity to credibly signal their strength through conservative reporting; and (5) the value and the multifarious consequences of promoting competition in the audit market. Our analysis of the definition of audit quality, and the approaches to independence, efficiency, signaling, and competition provides potentially useful material for regulatory policy.
The Toronto Concussion Study: a prospective investigation of characteristics in a cohort of adults from the general population seeking care following acute concussion, 2016–2020

Purpose There is limited research regarding the characteristics of those from the general population who seek care following acute concussion. Methods To address this gap, a large cohort of 473 adults diagnosed with an acute concussion (female participants = 287; male participants = 186) was followed using objective measures prospectively over 16 weeks beginning at a mean of 5.1 days post-injury. Results Falls were the most common mechanism of injury (MOI) (n = 137, 29.0%), followed by sports-related recreation (n = 119, 25.2%). Male participants were more likely to be injured playing recreational sports or in a violence-related incident; female participants were more likely to be injured by falling. Post-traumatic amnesia (PTA) was reported by 80 participants (16.9 %), and loss of consciousness (LOC) was reported by 110 (23.3%). In total, 54 participants (11.4%) reported both PTA and LOC. Male participants had significantly higher rates of PTA and LOC after their injury compared to their female counterparts. Higher initial symptom burden was associated with a longer duration of recovery for both male and female participants. Female participants had more symptoms and higher severity of symptoms at presentation compared to male participants. Female participants were identified to have a longer recovery duration, with a mean survival time of 6.50 weeks compared to 5.45 weeks in male participants (p < 0.0001). A relatively high proportion of female and male participants in this study reported premorbid diagnoses of depression and anxiety compared to general population characteristics. Conclusion Although premorbid diagnoses of depression and/or anxiety were associated with higher symptom burden at the initial visit, the duration of symptoms was not directly associated with a pre-injury history of psychological/psychiatric disturbance. This cohort of adults, from the general population, seeking care for their acute concussion attained clinical and functional recovery over a period of 4–12 weeks.
Annotation of L2 English Speech for Developing and Evaluating End-to-End Spoken Grammatical Error Correction

A challenge for automated spoken language assessment and feedback is the lack of high quality manually annotated L2 learner corpora, even for a common language like English. At the same time the popularity of end-to-end systems, which integrate speech recognition (ASR) with downstream tasks, has increased. This paper describes the annotation of a corpus that supports end-to-end system evaluation for Spoken Grammatical Error Correction (SGEC). There raises a number of challenges. This is further complicated as the annotation is preferably able to handle evaluation and development of individual modules, such as ASR, disfluency detection and GEC, combinations of these modules, as well as the final end-to-end system. A detailed description of the process used to annotate data from the Linguaskill Speaking test, a multi-level test for candidates from CEFR levels below A1 to C1 and above, is given. An example of how the corpus has been used to evaluate an advanced SGEC system is presented.
Multi-Sensors Space and Time Dimension Based Intrusion Detection System in Automated Vehicles

Recent developments in intelligence technologies have led to an explosion in the use of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs). Unfortunately, these autonomous vehicles face an increasing risk of vulnerability due to various attacks. Vehicle intrusion detection mechanisms are widely employed to mitigate the threats. Although some works have addressed this issue, few works consider situations that the attack detection may be fooled via simultaneous attacking multiple sensors. In this article, we propose a novel intrusion detection system integrated Space Dimension Model and Time Dimension Model based on sensor data fusion for countering both independent attack and confederate attack in automated vehicles. In Space Dimension Model, the correlations of multivariate in-vehicle sensor data among multiple sensors are utilized as the input of our optimized convolutional neural network (CNN) model. Especially, we construct vehicle state matrices to characterize the underlying correlation of data between each sensor and other sensors, and then input them into our network for classification. To describe the abrupt deviation caused by anomalous multivariate sensor data itself, we design Time Dimension Model to capture the sensor behaviors of vehicle state vectors at adjacent time by utilizing the Mahalanobis distance (MD) metric. Extensive empirical studies based on a real-world vehicular dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of our integrated anomaly detection mechanisms by a comparative analysis with two detection models that consider only Space Dimension and Time Dimension respectively. The method can outperform the related work under different scenarios 1) with the gain of up to 3.01% in accuracy and 3.04% in F1 score; 2) with ability of defending against confederate attack effectively.
Autoreconfigurable Circular Polarization Antenna for Enhanced RFID Coverage

An autoreconfigurable circular polarization (Auto-RCP) antenna is proposed for enhanced radio frequency identification (RFID) coverage. It consists of a high-efficiency rectifier, directional coupler, circularly polarized antenna, and autopolarization reconfiguration circuit. During the reader operation, the rectifier samples the reader's power signal to generate a pair of control signals synchronized with the duty cycle. This pair of signals drives an RF switch to exchange the circular polarization between pulses. In this way, autoswitching functionality between left-hand circular polarization and right-hand circular polarization is achieved, eliminating the need for manual adjustment or programmable control. To demonstrate the proof-of-the concept, a prototype validates performance through simulation and measurement. Compared to the fixed counterparts, at certain distance, the Auto-RCP antenna achieves 30% higher RFID tag detection rates and improves 30% detection rate beyond in operational power range. The Auto-RCP antenna provides robust, adaptable wireless connectivity between RFID readers and tags, enhancing functionality for current and emerging RFID applications in a cost-effective package.
Editorial: Delivery systems in biologics-based therapeutics

Innovation Center of Nanomedicine, Kawasaki Institute of Industrial Promotion, Kawasaki, Japan, Institute for Materials Chemistry and Engineering, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan, Molecular Bionics Laboratory, Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST), Barcelona, Spain, Key Laboratory of Nano BioInterface, Division of Nanobiomedicine, Suzhou Institute of Nano-Tech and Nano-Bionics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Suzhou, China
Beat the rich? Employee voice inhibitors at the crossroads of market and privilege

Abstract Control-oriented HRM, performance appraisal dissatisfaction, and reputation concern are found to have a “muzzling effect” on teachers, partly through leader-member exchange. Does this effect vary with the level of (a) marketization, and (b) school popularity and privilege? These questions are examined using survey data from Norwegian upper secondary school teachers (N = 1055), and analyzed with path analysis and bootstrapping. Results support some, but not all, hypotheses. Analyses show that the inhibiting effects of performance appraisal dissatisfaction and reputation concern on employee voice are stronger in the highly marketized school field of Oslo than in schools in other areas, and vary with marketization level. The inhibiting effect of reputation concern on voice is stronger in privileged than in marginalized schools and varies with the level of privilege. No such patterns for the inhibiting effects of control-oriented HRM and PA dissatisfaction are found. The findings indicate that reputation management theory takes center stage, as voice is regarded as a reputation management tool. Institutional logics are too found to be crucial when understanding the results. Implications are tied to reputation concerns, leading to a stronger muzzling effect on teachers in marketized areas than elsewhere, and in privileged schools as compared to marginalized schools. This calls for caution with regard to differing marketization and privilege levels in school settings.
Insulin signaling and its application

The discovery of insulin in 1921 introduced a new branch of research into insulin activity and insulin resistance. Many discoveries in this field have been applied to diagnosing and treating diseases related to insulin resistance. In this mini-review, the authors attempt to synthesize the updated discoveries to unravel the related mechanisms and inform the development of novel applications. Firstly, we depict the insulin signaling pathway to explain the physiology of insulin action starting at the receptor sites of insulin and downstream the signaling of the insulin signaling pathway. Based on this, the next part will analyze the mechanisms of insulin resistance with two major provenances: the defects caused by receptors and the defects due to extra-receptor causes, but in this study, we focus on post-receptor causes. Finally, we discuss the recent applications including the diseases related to insulin resistance (obesity, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and cancer) and the potential treatment of those based on insulin resistance mechanisms.
On the Interval Generalized Coupled Matrix Equations

In this work, the interval generalized coupled matrix equations \begin{equation*} \sum_{j=1}^{p}{{\bf{A}}_{ij}X_{j}}+\sum_{k=1}^{q}{Y_{k}{\bf{B}}_{ik}}={\bf{C}}_{i}, \qquad i=1,\ldots,p+q, \end{equation*} are studied in which ${\bf{A}}_{ij}$, ${\bf{B}}_{ik}$ and ${\bf{C}}_{i}$ are known real interval matrices, while $X_{j}$ and $Y_{k}$ are the unknown matrices for $j=1,\ldots,p$, $k=1,\ldots,q$ and $i=1,\ldots,p+q$. This paper discusses the so-called AE-solution sets for this system. In these types of solution sets, the elements of the involved interval matrices are quantified and all occurrences of the universal quantifier $\forall$ (if any) precede the occurrences of the existential quantifier $\exists$. The AE-solution sets are characterized and some sufficient conditions under which these types of solution sets are bounded are given. Also some approaches are proposed which include a numerical technique and an algebraic approach for enclosing some types of the AE-solution sets.
Prevalence and Associated Factors of Medication Non-Adherence in CRS Patients following Endoscopic Sinus Surgery

This study aimed to evaluate factors that may predispose patients to not adhere to prescribed medication after endoscopic sinus surgery (ESS) and to compare SNOT-22 scores at 0–12 months post-operatively between adherent and non-adherent patients. CRS patients who underwent ESS between 2012 and 2016 were recruited to this retrospective cohort study. Adherence was assessed through a questionnaire and review of medical notes. Ninety-four participants were included (61% male, mean age 60). Of those, 66% did not adhere to their prescribed post-operative CRS medication timing or dosage. The most common reason for non-adherence was improvement of symptoms (17%), followed by deterioration of symptoms (11%) and side effects (10%). Post-operative SNOT-22 scores were lowest for non-intentionally non-adherent (NINA) participants with a mean of 10.5 [95% CI: 7.47–13.5], compared to 25.0 for intentionally non-adherent (INA) [95% CI: 17.6–32.4] and 17.7 for adherent patients [95% CI: 13.7–21.7], p = 0.01. This study identifies that almost two-thirds of patients are not compliant with CRS medications after ESS. NINA participants reported lower post-operative SNOT-22 scores compared to INA and adherent participants. Future studies should focus on educating patients to continue with medications post-operatively despite an initial improvement in symptoms.