Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bioimpedance spectro-tomography system using binary multifrequency excitation

To operate also as a tomography device, a versatile multiplexer (unit B in fig.1) was developed on the bases of a cross-point switch CD22M3494 from Intersil [4]. The cross-point switch allows switch over analog signals from any of its input pins to any of its output pins. All the 16 inputs/output pins are bi-directional for passing through both excitation and response signals. The order of Figure 3: Time interval 1 ms
Basic Principles Of Wastewater Treatment

Basic Principles of Wastewater Treatment is the second volume in the series Biological Wastewater Treatment, and focusses on the unit operations and processes associated with biological wastewater treatment. The major topics covered are: * microbiology and ecology of wastewater treatment * reaction kinetics and reactor hydraulics * conversion of organic and inorganic matter * sedimentation aeration The theory presented in this volume forms the basis upon which the other books of the series are built. About the series: The series is based on a highly acclaimed set of best selling textbooks. This international version is comprised by six textbooks giving a state-of-the-art presentation of the science and technology of biological wastewater treatment. Other titles in the series are: Volume 1: Wastewater Characteristics, Treatment and Disposal; Volume 3: Waste Stabilisation Ponds; Volume 4: Anaerobic Reactors; Volume 5: Activated Sludge and Aerobic Biofilm Reactors; Volume 6: Sludge Treatment and Disposal
Sources génétiques et environnementales de la transmission familiale dans un échantillon de la population basque. I. Le somatotype anthropométrique

Nous avons etudie un echantillon transversal de 354 individus (105 peres, 105 meres, 70 fils et 74 filles) de 105 familles nucleaires residant au Pays Basque (Espagne). L'objectif de cette etude a ete l'estimation des composantes transmissibles et non transmissibles qui agissent sur la ressemblance familiale pour les trois composantes du somatotype anthropometrique de Heath-Carter (1967). L'analyse a ete relaisee par une analyse path et les donnees standardisees pour chaque generation et sexe ont ete ajustees a un modele BETA d'analyse path sans effets sexuels. Elle permettait de separer les composantes transmissibles (biologique et culturelle) et non transmissibles (environnementales) de la variance phenotypique observee dans la descendance biscaienne. Les resultats ont permis d'accepter le modele general de transmission familiale avec 99% de vraisemblance pour les 3 variables. De plus, les modeles reduits proposant une transmission familiale sans homogamie sociale entre les epoux (u = 0), la non influence de l'environnement partage par les enfants (b = 0) et le modele sans effets environnementaux (c = y = 0) sur le phenotype des trois variables ont ete acceptes. Le modele le plus parcimonieux, construit sur la base de ces trois derniers, a ete accepte pour la mesomorphie et l'ectomorphie et rejete pour l'endomorphie (p ≤ 0,01). La composante transmissible total de la variance (t2) expliquait 84% de la variation phenotypique observee dans la descendance biscaienne pour l'endomorphie et 25% pour les deux autres variables. Ces estimations etaient beaucoup plus elevees que celles de la litterature pour l'endomorphie et legerement plus petites pour les deux autres composantes somatotypiques. Cependant, il faut tenir compte que ces estimations sont specifiques a chaque population.
Entrepreneurial Practices in Eco-Innovation: Circular Challenges Related to the Tomato Textile Project in the Netherlands

Values such as circularity, local production, and the use of more environmental-friendly materials have started to reshape various domestic industries. Because of the social and environmental challenges that the Textile & Clothing industry faces, solutions proper to slow fashion practices are gaining importance. The present chapter presents a case study of a local production network that roots in the maker movement and experiments with various aspects of circular practices, to develop new material: the Tomato Textile project. Based on ethnography and action research methods, the challenges of entrepreneurial practices in eco-innovation are identiﬁed and discussed.
Restoration Ecology: Are We Making an Impact?

I f you visit the Restoration Ecology site on Blackwell Synergy (http://www. blackwell-synergy.com/loi/rec), you will find a text box that states ‘‘Increased Impact Factor! Submit your manuscript to this highly cited journal today! ’’ with the number 1.612 flashing in the middle. The journal Editorial Office and our publishers are, indeed, excited that our impact factor has shown a marked increase over the past three years after a period of decline. However, discussions with people in the Society for Ecological Restoration International (SERI), including Keith Bowers, immediate past president of the organization, made it clear to me that practicing restoration ecologists probably have limited understanding of what journal impact factors are, why theymight be important, and why academics and publishers find them so fascinating. The term ‘‘impact factor’’ suggests that the measure is supposed to indicate some sort of effect that the journal is having. What sort of effect and on whom or what? I want to explore this question here and examine why impact factors are important in some ways but almost irrelevant in others. First, let us clarify what an impact factor is, how it is calculated, and how it is used. Impact factor is a quantitative tool for ranking, evaluating, categorizing, and comparing journals (http://scientific.thomson.com/free/essays/journalcitationreports/impactfactor/). The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) in Philadelphia runs the process, and only journals listed with ISI are analyzed. The impact factor for a journal is calculated based on the immediate past three-year period and is equivalent to the average number of times published papers are cited (i.e., referred to in other refereed publications) up to two calendar years after publication (including the calendar year in which it was published). For example, the 2006 impact factor for a journal is calculated as follows:
Pathogen decay or growth in anaerobic digesters: a question with no possible answer? Elements of understanding for non-microbiologists

The goal of this contribution is to analyze the relevance of measuring anaerobic digestion effectiveness to the elimination of pathogens. Elements such as the variation in abiotic and biotic conditions, indicators and measurement tools are analyzed in light of experimental data. We conclude that measuring the effectiveness of anaerobic digesters in eliminating pathogens seems an unrealistic challenge. We recommend measuring the pathogen risk only though analyzing the presence of pathogens in the digestate, and not via the decontamination efficiency of the process.
A promising nucleic acid therapy drug: DNAzymes and its delivery system

Based on the development of nucleic acid therapeutic drugs, DNAzymes obtained through in vitro selection technology in 1994 are gradually being sought. DNAzymes are single-stranded DNA molecules with catalytic function, which specifically cleave RNA under the action of metal ions. Various in vivo and in vitro models have recently demonstrated that DNAzymes can target related genes in cancer, cardiovascular disease, bacterial and viral infection, and central nervous system disease. Compared with other nucleic acid therapy drugs, DNAzymes have gained more attention due to their excellent cutting efficiency, high stability, and low cost. Here, We first briefly reviewed the development and characteristics of DNAzymes, then discussed disease-targeting inhibition model of DNAzymes, hoping to provide new insights and ways for disease treatment. Finally, DNAzymes were still subject to some restrictions in practical applications, including low cell uptake efficiency, nuclease degradation and interference from other biological matrices. We discussed the latest delivery strategy of DNAzymes, among which lipid nanoparticles have recently received widespread attention due to the successful delivery of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine, which provides the possibility for the subsequent clinical application of DNAzymes. In addition, the future development of DNAzymes was prospected.
Using reinforcement learning to improve drone-based inference of greenhouse gas fluxes

Accurate mapping of greenhouse gas fluxes at the Earth’s surface is essential for the validation and calibration of climate models. In this study, we present a framework for surface flux estimation with drones. Our approach uses data assimilation (DA) to infer fluxes from drone-based observations, and reinforcement learning (RL) to optimize the drone’s sampling strategy. Herein, we demonstrate that an RL-trained drone can quantify a CO2 hotspot more accurately than a drone sampling along a predefined flight path thattraverses the emission plume. We find that information-based reward functions can match the performance of an error-based reward function that quantifies the difference between the estimated surface flux and the true value. Reward functions based on information gain and information entropy can motivate actions that increase the drone’s confidence in its updated belief, without requiring knowledge of the true surface flux. These findings provide valuable insights for further development of the framework for the mapping of more complex surface flux fields.
Analytical Formulation of Fiber Nonlinear Noise Statistics in the Presence of Polarization Dependent Loss

Fiber nonlinearity has been considered as one of the main burdens to further boost the system capacity. In polarization multiplexing (Pol-Mux) systems, fiber nonlinearity induced noise is significantly affected by the polarization dependent loss (PDL), which is random and modelled via the time-consuming Monte Carlo simulations. A statistical study is carried out for this phenomenon based on a stochastic differential equation (SDE) approach. Ordinary differential equations (ODEs) are derived for the average values of the random terms, which significantly reduces the computational efforts. The average nonlinear noise power, the power variance, the correlation between the noise terms and the correlation variance are computed by the model and comparison is conducted with the results by the Monte Carlo simulation in combined with the GN model and the SSFM algorithm. Excellent agreement between the results is observed.
Comparative protein structure modeling

Functional characterization of a protein sequence is one of the most frequent problems in biology. This task is usually facilitated by accurate three-dimensional (3D) structure of the studied protein. Three-dimensional structure of natural proteins is guided by two distinct sets of principles operating on vastly different time scales: the laws of physics and the theory of evolution. Each of the two sets of principles that apply to the natural protein sequences gave rise to a class of protein structure prediction methods (Figure 1)(Fiser et al., 2002).
Chemically Mediated Interactions between Plants and Other Organisms

1. Plant Detection of Pathogens. - 2. Biochemical Aspects of Plant-Microbe and Microbe-Microbe Interactions in Soil. - 3. Biochemical Responses of Plants to Fungal Attack. - 4. Allelopathy - An Overview. - 5. Plant Allelochemicals: Linkages Between Herbivores and Their Natural Enemies. - 6. Brementown Revisited: Interactions Among Allelochemicals in Plants. - 7. Multifaceted Chemically Based Resistance in Plants. - 8. Pheromonal Communication Between Plants. - 9. Adaptation to Resource Availability as a Determinant of Chemical Defense Strategies in Woody Plants.
Photosensitizers for Photodynamic Therapy of Brain Cancers—A Review

On average, there are about 300,000 new cases of brain cancer each year. Studies have shown that brain and central nervous system tumors are among the top ten causes of death. Due to the extent of this problem and the percentage of patients suffering from brain tumors, innovative therapeutic treatment methods are constantly being sought. One such innovative therapeutic method is photodynamic therapy (PDT). Photodynamic therapy is an alternative and unique technique widely used in dermatology and other fields of medicine for the treatment of oncological and nononcological lesions. Photodynamic therapy consists of the destruction of cancer cells and inducing inflammatory changes by using laser light of a specific wavelength in combination with the application of a photosensitizer. The most commonly used photosensitizers include 5-aminolevulinic acid for the enzymatic generation of protoporphyrin IX, Temoporfin—THPC, Photofrin, Hypericin and Talaporfin. This paper reviews the photosensitizers commonly used in photodynamic therapy for brain tumors. An overview of all three generations of photosensitizers is presented. Along with an indication of the limitations of the treatment of brain tumors, intraoperative photodynamic therapy and its possibilities are described as an alternative therapeutic method.
Editorial: Immune checkpoint inhibitors in cancer: balancing the benefits with the side effects?

COPYRIGHT © 2023 Gomes-Lima, Zhou and Quandt. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. TYPE Editorial PUBLISHED 11 September 2023 DOI 10.3389/fendo.2023. 1268402
HM-PCGC: A Human-Machine Balanced Point Cloud Geometry Compression Scheme

Point cloud compression has various purposes in different application scenarios, such as requiring visual fidelity in human vision tasks and pursuing semantic fidelity in machine vision tasks. To accommodate these diverse requirements, we propose a Human-Machine balanced point cloud geometry compression scheme (HM-PCGC) which considers the characteristics of various tasks. Our proposed scheme starts from a pre-trained, lightweight point cloud compression backbone and employs a Learned Semantic Mining module to aggregate multi-tasks features. By leveraging the aggregated features, HM-PCGC is able to retain the geometry and semantic properties of the point clouds during compression. To better balance between the signal distortion and semantic distortion, we integrated a multi-task learning mechanism during the training phase. Our approach is extensively evaluated and analyzed, and the results demonstrate its superiority over state-of-the-art traditional and deep learning based point cloud codecs for both signal reconstruction and machine vision tasks.
Deep-Learning-Based High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound Lesion Segmentation in Multi-Wavelength Photoacoustic Imaging

Photoacoustic (PA) imaging can be used to monitor high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) therapies because ablation changes the optical absorption spectrum of the tissue, and this change can be detected with PA imaging. Multi-wavelength photoacoustic (MWPA) imaging makes this change easier to detect by repeating PA imaging at multiple optical wavelengths and sampling the optical absorption spectrum more thoroughly. Real-time pixel-wise classification in MWPA imaging can assist clinicians in monitoring HIFU lesion formation and will be a crucial milestone towards full HIFU therapy automation based on artificial intelligence. In this paper, we present a deep-learning-based approach to segment HIFU lesions in MWPA images. Ex vivo bovine tissue is ablated with HIFU and imaged via MWPA imaging. The acquired MWPA images are then used to train and test a convolutional neural network (CNN) for lesion segmentation. Traditional machine learning algorithms are also trained and tested to compare with the CNN, and the results show that the performance of the CNN significantly exceeds traditional machine learning algorithms. Feature selection is conducted to reduce the number of wavelengths to facilitate real-time implementation while retaining good segmentation performance. This study demonstrates the feasibility and high performance of the deep-learning-based lesion segmentation method in MWPA imaging to monitor HIFU lesion formation and the potential to implement this method in real time.
Effects of Denture Treatment on Salivary Metabolites: A Pilot Study

Symptoms of oral discomfort such as dry mouth are common in older people wearing dentures. Such symptoms are mainly treated symptomatically. Many of these symptoms are related to saliva, and associations with salivary volume have been reported. Although denture treatment improves symptoms by increasing the amount of saliva, the effects on salivary components remain unclear. This study aimed to investigate the effects of denture treatment on salivary metabolite changes based on salivary metabolome analyses. We enrolled 21 patients requiring denture treatment. At the first visit, and after completion of denture treatment, saliva outflow was measured under resting and stimulated conditions, samples for salivary metabolite analysis were collected, and masticatory efficiency was tested. In all participants, masticatory efficiency increased after denture treatment. Moreover, the amounts of resting and stimulated saliva were increased. Using salivary metabolome analysis, 61 salivary metabolites were detected. Substantial concentration changes were observed for 4 and 21 metabolites in resting and stimulated saliva, respectively. The four metabolites common to both saliva tests had significantly lower concentrations after treatment. These results suggest that the improvement in masticatory function by dentures is related not only to salivary secretion volume, but also to salivary metabolite composition.
Health-related quality of life in Danish patients with hereditary angioedema.

Hereditary angioedema (HAE) is a rare, but potentially life-threatening disease characterised by attacks of swellings. It is caused by a lack of functioning C1 esterase inhibitor (C1INH). The oedema is usually located to the face, extremities or abdominal mucosa, but may involve the larynx. Although rare, the laryngeal attacks are particularly dreaded due to the risk of asphyxiation. It is known that HAE can have substantial impact on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) (1, 2). Today, Danish HAE patients have access to several modalities of treatment including intravenously administered C1INH concentrate (3). Patients are offered training in self-injection if they suffer from frequent and/ or severe attacks. The aim of this study was to investigate HRQoL in Danish HAE patients. METHODS The study was carried out in 2009 at the Danish HAE Comprehensive Care Centre, Odense University Hospital. Twenty-seven Danish HAE patients filled out The Short Form (36) Health Survey , version 2 (SF-36v2) and a clinical questionnaire. Patients were asked about number and locations of attacks within the last 6 months, age of onset, types of treatment and ability to do self-injection. Danish population norms for SF-36v2 were not available, it was recommended by the producers to compare to the US population norms (4). To examine if there was any correlation between disease severity and score in SF-36v2, a clinical severity score recently developed by Bygum et al. (5) was used. Patients were divided into 3 groups based on disease severity, and for each group median scores in SF-36v2 were calculated. We also examined whether scores in SF-36v2 were related to self-injection with C1INH concentrate by calculating median scores for the self-injecting and non-self-injecting subgroup, respectively. RESULTS Fig. 1 outlines the SF-36v2 mean score reported for 8 specific dimensions. In all dimensions but one, HAE patients rate equally to or higher than the general population. The relation between disease severity and median scores in SF-36v2 is illustrated with a box and whiskers plot (Fig. 2). In all dimensions there is no statistically significant difference in median score between the 3 severity groups (p > 0.05 in Kruskall-Wallis test). In the study, 25 patients had C1INH concentrate at home and 11 were able to do self-injection. In the dimension General health the self-injecting subgroup scored lower than the non-self-injecting subgroup (median Mann Whitney U rank-sum test). Otherwise there was no difference between the 2 groups. Nor did we find any …
Analytical modeling of temperature and power dependent photoluminescence (PL) spectra of InAs/GaAs quantum dots

In order to theoretically analyze the Photoluminescence (PL) spectra and its dependence on temperature and power, we have calculated the electronic band structure of self-assembled InAs/GaAs Quantum Dots (QDs) with a temperature dependent 8 band k·p Hamiltonian by including the effects of strain. The transition energies for the ground state and the first excited state are calculated using a mathematical model, which takes into account the effect of both homogeneous and inhomogeneous broadening, caused due to carrier scattering processes and QD size variation, respectively. Our proposed analytical model describes the origin of bimodal peak in the PL spectra and its correlation with the transition energies for different temperatures by considering the temperature induced intrinsic carrier concentration and carrier relaxation time. The applicability of the derived expression is validated using the experimental data of single layer InAs/GaAs QDs grown using Stranski-Krastanov growth mode. In addition to this, the simplicity of the model and its various useful aspects including computation of temperature dependent electronic band profiles and complete PL spectra make it a potential tool to study the optoelectronic properties of QD heterostructures.In order to theoretically analyze the Photoluminescence (PL) spectra and its dependence on temperature and power, we have calculated the electronic band structure of self-assembled InAs/GaAs Quantum Dots (QDs) with a temperature dependent 8 band k·p Hamiltonian by including the effects of strain. The transition energies for the ground state and the first excited state are calculated using a mathematical model, which takes into account the effect of both homogeneous and inhomogeneous broadening, caused due to carrier scattering processes and QD size variation, respectively. Our proposed analytical model describes the origin of bimodal peak in the PL spectra and its correlation with the transition energies for different temperatures by considering the temperature induced intrinsic carrier concentration and carrier relaxation time. The applicability of the derived expression is validated using the experimental data of single layer InAs/GaAs QDs grown using Stranski-Krastanov growth mode. In addition to this,.