Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Understanding the Mechanisms of Action and Effects of Drugs of Abuse

Aim. Drug abuse and addiction are major public health concerns, with millions of people worldwide affected by the negative consequences of drug use. To better understand this complex issue, a review was conducted to examine the mechanisms of action and effects of drugs of abuse, including their acute and chronic effects, the symptoms of abstinence syndrome, as well as their cardiovascular impacts. Methods. The analyzed data were obtained after surveying an electronic database, namely PubMed, with no time limit, grey literature sources, and reference lists of relevant articles. Results. The review highlights the different categories of drugs of abuse, such as opioids, stimulants, depressants, hallucinogens, and cannabis, and discusses the specific ways that each drug affects the brain and body. Additionally, the review explores the short-term and long-term effects of drug abuse on the body and mind, including changes in brain structure and function, physical health problems, and mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety. In addition, the review explores the effects of drug abuse on cardiovascular health, focusing on electrocardiogram changes. Moreover, the analysis of relevant literature also highlighted possible genetic susceptibility in various addictions. Furthermore, the review delves into the withdrawal symptoms that occur when someone stops using drugs of abuse after a period of chronic use. Conclusion. Overall, this review provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of knowledge on drug abuse and addiction. The findings of this review can inform the development of evidence-based prevention and intervention strategies to address this critical public health issue.
Discrepancy in parameter constraints for LTB models using BAO and SNIa

In the present work we constrain three different profiles of a Lemaître–Tolman–Bondi model using supernovae type Ia and baryon acoustic oscillation data. We use two distinct parameter estimation approaches, namely, the χ2 and the complete Likelihood functional. It has been argued that these two approaches are not equivalent and indeed our analysis shows a specific example of their departure. The combined analysis of BAO + SNIa offers a stringent test for these models. In addition, we improve common practice in the literature by carefully calibrating the supernovae in the appropriate inhomogeneous background dynamics. We address subtle issues in order to propagate the primordial BAO scale to the present epoch.
Relation between quiet-time low energy particle fluxes and chromospheric activity

The relation of quiet-time fluxes of 0.3-8 MeV/n protons and helium nuclei with parameters of solar activity is studied over 3 solar cycles using IMP 8 and SOHO data. Quiet periods were selected requiring a) 1 MeV proton intensity should not exceed 10−1 protons/cm s sr MeV at least for 2 days; b) no flare above soft X-ray class C1 should be observed during that period and one day before. Positive correlation is found between quiet-time fluxes and the background X-ray and radio emission 10.7 cm fluxes. The closest correlation is found between particle fluxes and the value of the MgII core-to-wing ratio (the MgII index) i.e. a measure of chromospheric activity. During the 21 and 23 SC minima both the particle fluxes and the MgII index are found to be lower than their corresponding values at the 22 SC minimum revealing the influence of 22-year magnetic solar cycle. During other phases of solar activity the lowest particle fluxes were preceded (or were observed simultaneously) by the lowest values of the MgII index. These intervals also exhibited lower values of the H/He ratio than other quiettime periods. Our previous studies indicated that at 1 AU the quiet-time particle fluxes are of solar (predominantly flare) origin throughout the solar cycle except minimum. A possible assumption is that the lowest particle fluxes originate from small active processes in the solar chromosphere and/or in the quiet low corona.
A primary study on the degradation of low-density polyethylene treated with select oxidizing agents and starch

Polyethylene has become an integral part of our contemporary lives. The neoteric versatile nature of polyethylene is used in constructing various applications. Out of the plastic waste discarded, 60% of the plastic waste enters landfills. The polyethylene discarded in the soil and water on exposure to the environment forms macroplastics (>2.5 cm), mesoplastics (5 mm - 2.5 cm) and microplastics (<5 mm). Microplastics in the water and soil are observed to have lethal and ecotoxicological effects on aquatic and terrestrial organisms. They enter the food chain and permeate into the food that one eats. In order to address this impending concern, the present study aimed to treat plastics to form a degradable, safe and earthy material. The dissolved polyethylene was treated with starch and was made to react with oxidizing agents such as hydrogen peroxide, nitric acid and acetic acid to lower its inert ability to withstand its degradation. The effect of starch and oxidizing agents on dissolved low density polyethylene was subsequently analysed. The analysis of treated polyethylene showed a decrease in its crystallinity percentage by 6.19 and an increase in its functional groups on reaction with solvent trichloroethylene made to react with starch and oxidizing agents. In the present research, tests were conducted to obtain the various methods that can be utilized to reverse the inert ability of polyethylene. The prevailing recycling model that uses antioxidation techniques is counterproductive since it was found that such techniques appeared to make the polyethylene more resistant to further degradation. In this study, the polyethylene was dissolved in the solvents, such as xylene and trichloroethylene, to make the polyethylene more susceptible to reactants and hence a viable model for treating polyethylene.
Feeling of hand deformation as a monkey's hand: an experiment on a visual body with discomfort and its algebraic analysis

While there are many studies in which body ownership can be transferred to a virtual body, there are few experimental studies of how subjects feel about their own bodies being deformed since a real body cannot be deformed. Here, we propose such an experimental setup, in which a twisted hand is diagonally viewed from behind, which is called a “monkey's hand. ” Although the subject cannot see the thumb hidden behind his or her arm, he or she feels that the monkey's hand has an ambiguous thumb that functionally never exists but structurally exists. This ambiguity is consistent with experimental results on proprioceptive drift, by which the deformation of the hand is measured. The ambiguity of the presence and absence of the thumb is finally analyzed with a specific algebraic structure called a lattice. This can help us understand disownership as being different from the absence of ownership.
Research on Small Sample Apple Defect Classification Method Based on Siamese Network

To address the issue of collecting a vast amount of labeled samples in traditional deep learning methods for apple defect classification, a metric learning-based method (Siamese Network model) is proposed in this paper for apple defect classification with few samples for training. Two ResNet-18 sub-networks with shared weights are used as feature extractors, and two apple images are formed into a sample pair at a time and input into the sub-network to obtain their respective high-dimensional feature vector representations, the Euclidean distance between them is calculated and the classes they belong to is determined based on the similarity. The dataset used for the experiments contains 550 labeled apple images (two categories: defective and non-defective), 330 images are allocated for training, 110 for validation, and 110 for testing. The results show that Siamese Network achieves better results than many classical models with few-sample datasets, with an accuracy of 91.82% and an AUC value of 0.984 on the test set, which validates the effectiveness of the method in this paper for apple defect classification with few samples.
Statistics of dice throw at the elementary level

In my thesis I explore the randomness of game of dice. In theoretical part I explain some basic concepts of probability and statistics and in the experimental part I describe 5 different experiments, first of which was performed by primary school pupils. Based on a large number of dice throws they produce interesting frequency distribution of the results. The remaining 4 experiments are primary school ready, but were carried out by myself. By throwing fair and weighted die I explore probability of distribution of outcomes. I compare chi squared test of measured and theoretical distributions and then assess the fairness of individual dice. I conclude that that number of calculated throws and quality of manufacture of the dice influence the end result greatly. I also show that we get closer and closer to Gaussian distribution curve when we increase the number of dice thrown.
The Cactus (Opuntia ficus-indica) Cladodes and Callus Extracts: A Study Combined with LC-MS Metabolic Profiling, In-Silico, and In-Vitro Analyses

Opuntia ficus-indica (OF) phytochemicals have received considerable attention because of their health benefits. However, the structure-activity relationship between saponin and flavonoid antioxidant compounds among secondary metabolites has rarely been reported. In a molecular docking study, selected compounds from both Opuntia ficus-indica callus (OFC) and OF ethanol extract were found to be involved in Toll-like receptor 4 and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathways. High affinity was specific for MAPK, and it was proposed to inhibit the oxidative and inflammatory responses with poricoic acid H (−8.3 Kcal/mol) and rutin (−9.0 Kcal/mol). The pro-inflammatory cytokine factors at a concentration of 200 μg/mL were LPS-stimulated TNF-α (OFC 72.33 ng/mL, OF 66.78 ng/mL) and IL-1β (OFC 49.10 pg/mL, OF 34.45 pg/mL), both of which significantly decreased OF (p < 0.01, p < 0.001). Taken together, increased NO, PGE2, and pro-inflammatory cytokines were significantly decreased in a dose-dependent manner in cells pretreated with OFC and the OF extract (p < 0.05). These findings suggest that OFC and OF have important potential as natural antioxidant, anti-inflammatory agents in health-promoting foods and medicine.
A fictitious domain approach based on a viscosity penalty method to simulate wave/structure interaction

ABSTRACT This work presents an original numerical model for a free surface flow interacting with a spring-block system. The formulation is based on the fictitious domain approach and a penalty method on viscosity to describe the rigid solid motion. The incompressible Navier–Stokes equations are solved in the whole domain and the free surface and the body contour are captured using a volume of fluid method. To describe the rigid body motion, a single degree of freedom model, able to represent translation or rotation, is embedded in the code. The discrete equations are written in a well-known finite volume framework over Cartesian grids. In such a context, the external spring and damping forces are represented as body forces in the solid region. The proposed strategy is tested in a sloshing damping system. The numerical results are compared with experimental data obtained within the present study. Finally, the method is used to simulate a wave energy converter system as an illustration of a rotational case.
TBR Analysis in Reverse-Mode Automatic Differentiation

The automatic generation of adjoints of mathematical models that are implemented as computer programs is receiving a increased attention in the scientific and engineering communities. Reverse-mode Automatic Differentiation (AD) is of particular interest for large-scale optimization problems. It allows for the computation of gradients at a small constant multiple of the cost for evaluating the objective function itself, that is independent of the number of input parameters. Source-to-source transformation tools for AD are available to generate adjoint codes based on the adjoint version of every statement, built by applying simple differentiation rules. A reversal of the control flow of the original program becomes necessary. To guarantee correctness, certain values that are computed and overwritten in the original program must be made available in the adjoint program. They can be determined by performing a static data flow analysis, the so-called TBR analysis. Overestimation of this set must be kept minimal to get efficient adjoint codes.For many real-world applications, this efficiency is compulsory to apply a source-to-source transformation such as AD.
Evaluation of Melody Similarity Measures

Similarity in music is a concept with significant impact on ethnomusicology studies, music recommendation systems, and music information retrieval systems such as Shazam and SoundHound. Various computer-based melody similarity measures have been proposed, but comparison and evaluation of similarity measures is inherently difficult due to the subjective and application-dependent nature of similarity in music. In this thesis, we address the diversity of the problem by defining a set of music transformations that provide the criteria for comparing and evaluating melody similarity measures. This approach provides a flexible and extensible method for characterizing selected facets of melody similarity, because the set of music transformations can be tailored to the user and to the application. We demonstrate this approach using three music transformations (transposition, tempo rescaling, and selected forms of ornamentation) to compare and evaluate several existing similarity measures, including String Edit Distance measures, Geometric measures, and N-Gram based measures. We also evaluate a newly implemented distance measure, the Beat and Direction Distance Measure, which is designed to have greater awareness of the beat hierarchy and better responsiveness to ornamentation. Training and test data is drawn from music incipits from the RISM A/II collection, and ground truth is taken from the MIREX 2005 Symbolic Melodic Similarity task. i Our test results show that similarity measures that are responsive to music transformations generally have better agreement with human generated ground truth.
The Mission of the Contemporary University

: Mission is an important duty and task, and the mission of the university is the concrete embodiment and external form of “what kind of people the university cultivates”. Universities are the product of social development, and their missions are constantly diversified with the development of society. It is recognized that universities have the three major missions of “talent training, scientific research, and social service”, which are not innate to universities, but have been given in different historical periods. The mission of the University defines the direction of the university’s development and reflects the functions of the university. From cultivating talents to scientific research, and then expanding to serve the society, the evolution of university functions reflects the new requirements that social development constantly puts forward for higher education. With the expansion of the scale of schools and the influence of education marketization, China’s universities are violating the basic mission, and the goal is constantly moving closer to the market, so that university education is getting farther and farther away from the mission of the university, and returning to the essence of educating has become an urgent problem to be solved.
Factors Important in the Use of Fluorescent or Luminescent Probes and Other Chemical Reagents to Measure Oxidative and Radical Stress

Numerous chemical probes have been used to measure or image oxidative, nitrosative and related stress induced by free radicals in biology and biochemistry. In many instances, the chemical pathways involved are reasonably well understood. However, the rate constants for key reactions involved are often not yet characterized, and thus it is difficult to ensure the measurements reflect the flux of oxidant/radical species and are not influenced by competing factors. Key questions frequently unanswered are whether the reagents are used under ‘saturating’ conditions, how specific probes are for particular radicals or oxidants and the extent of the involvement of competing reactions (e.g., with thiols, ascorbate and other antioxidants). The commonest-used probe for ‘reactive oxygen species’ in biology actually generates superoxide radicals in producing the measured product in aerobic systems. This review emphasizes the need to understand reaction pathways and in particular to quantify the kinetic parameters of key reactions, as well as measure the intracellular levels and localization of probes, if such reagents are to be used with confidence.
Vital Signs for Pediatric Health: School Readiness.

Jennifer W. Kaminski, PhD, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities; Sandra Barrueco, PhD, University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Kelly J. Kelleher, MD, MPH, Nationwide Children’s Hospital; Kimberly Hoagwood, PhD, New York University Langone Health; Anne Edwards, MD, American Academy of Pediatrics; and Erin G. Fox, MPA, MPH, The Ohio State University
Activation of T-cells and Activity of Macrophages among Smokers with Leptospirosis: a Synergistic Dynamics in the Impairment of Human Immune System

: Continuous heavy rains along with poor road construction and sewage system had resulted in the frequent occurrence of floods in many areas of the Philippines. As a consequence, leptospirosis remains an infectious disease endemic in the Philippines with numerous cases reported as aftermaths of typhoons especially after heavy flooding. Leptospirosis is known for its invasiveness
Shape Description of 3D Objects by Curvature Spin Images Generated via Gaze Modeling

To realize a model-based 3D object recognition, we propose a feature extraction method and a shape descriptor using the geometric features. First, the feature extraction method based on a novel gaze modeling is proposed. In the modeling process, the surface model is independently estimated for a part of range data restricted by several gaze domains. Hence, since the features are independently extracted from each gaze domain, inconsistent or incorrect features may be obtained. Therefore a stochastic method that enables us to integrate such features by evaluating the reliability of each gaze model is introduced. Next a shape descriptor, curvature spin image, is proposed. The CSI is created based on the ratio of surface curvatures. The main contribution of this paper is experimental analysis of the use of CSIs with various tuning parameters.
Carbon and Water Fluxes of the Boreal Evergreen Needleleaf Forest Biome Constrained by Assimilating Ecosystem Carbonyl Sulfide Flux Observations

Gross primary production (GPP) by boreal forests is highly sensitive to environmental changes. However, GPP simulated by land surface models (LSMs) remains highly uncertain due to the lack of direct photosynthesis observations at large scales. Carbonyl sulfide (COS) has emerged as a promising proxy to improve the representation of GPP in LSMs. Because COS is absorbed by vegetation following the same diffusion pathway as CO2 during photosynthesis and not emitted back to the atmosphere, incorporating a mechanistic representation of vegetation COS uptake in LSMs allows using COS observations to refine GPP representation. Here, we perform ecosystem COS flux and GPP data assimilations to constrain the COS‐ and GPP‐related parameters in the ORCHIDEE LSM for boreal evergreen needleleaf forests (BorENF). Assimilating ecosystem COS fluxes at Hyytiälä forest increases the simulated net ecosystem COS uptake by 14%. This increase largely results from changes in the internal conductance to COS, highlighting the need to improve the representation of COS internal diffusion and consumption. Moreover, joint assimilation of ecosystem COS flux and GPP at Hyytiälä improves the simulated latent heat flux, contrary to the GPP‐only data assimilation, which fails to do so. Finally, we scaled this assimilation framework up to the boreal region and find that the joint assimilation of COS at Hyytiälä and GPP fluxes at 10 BorENF sites increases the modeled vegetation COS uptake up to 18%, but not GPP. Therefore, this study encourages the use of COS flux observations to inform GPP and latent heat flux representations in LSMs.
Exploring Key Biomarkers and Common Pathogenesis of Seven Digestive System Cancers and Their Correlation with COVID-19

Digestive system cancer and COVID-19 significantly affect the digestive system, but the mechanism of interaction between COVID-19 and the digestive system cancers has not been fully elucidated. We downloaded the gene expression of COVID-19 and seven digestive system cancers (oral, esophageal, gastric, colorectal, hepatocellular, bile duct, pancreatic) from GEO and identified hub differentially expressed genes. Multiple verifications, diagnostic efficacy, prognostic analysis, functional enrichment and related transcription factors of hub genes were explored. We identified 23 common DEGs for subsequent analysis. CytoHubba identified nine hub genes (CCNA2, CCNB1, CDKN3, ECT2, KIF14, KIF20A, KIF4A, NEK2, TTK). TCGA and GEO data validated the expression and excellent diagnostic and prognostic ability of hub genes. Functional analysis revealed that the processes of cell division and the cell cycle were essential in COVID-19 and digestive system cancers. Furthermore, six related transcription factors (E2F1, E2F3, E2F4, MYC, TP53, YBX1) were involved in hub gene regulation. Via in vitro experiments, CCNA2, CCNB1, and MYC expression was verified in 25 colorectal cancer tissue pairs. Our study revealed the key biomarks and common pathogenesis of digestive system cancers and COVID-19. These may provide new ideas for further mechanistic research.