Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
RPM‐loaded compact dual‐band circularly polarized antenna for GNSS application

In this letter, a miniaturized high gain dual‐band circularly polarized antenna is proposed for the global satellite navigation system application. Centrosymmetric radiation structure with I‐shape branches helps improve the performance of the antenna in the low frequency within a limited area. The reflective phase modulation (RPM) surface with double zero‐reflection‐phase frequency points is analyzed and is used to lower the antenna profile. The bandwidth of the antenna is filtered assisted by the RPM surface. The composite left/ right hand transmission line is used in the feed network to balance the phase difference among the four feeding ports in the bandwidth. Simulation and measurement results show that the VSWR of the antenna is blow 1.5, the boresight AR is less than 3 dB, and the boresight gain is larger than 4.9 dBic in the double working band (1.164–1.279 GHz and 1.579–1.616 GHz).
Measuring organizational information security awareness in South Africa

ABSTRACT Information is a valuable resource that organization may utilize in the current business environment. It is critical to comprehend the importance of information protection, as it safeguards the lifeline of the organization. All employees within organization should be aware of the organizational information security culture. Organizations should promote an information security awareness culture, so as to secure data as part of their critical infrastructure. Organizations should monitor and measure information security awareness levels among employees, with a number of international instruments. However, the validity of those instruments has not yet been determined in the South African context. As a consequence, the aim of this article is to validate one internationally accepted measurement instrument – the Human Aspects of Information Security-Questionnaire (HAIS-Q) in South Africa. The research sought to determine employees’ awareness levels, in order to make recommendations aimed at improving awareness in organizations. A survey was conducted whereby the data from 356 respondents were collected across industries, with a web-based questionnaire. To determine the factor structure of the scale under investigation, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and Cronbach’s alpha was used to establish the internal reliability of the HAIS-Q. T-tests and ANOVAs were used to identify significant differences between demographic groups.
One Molecule for Mental Nourishment and More: Glucose Transporter Type 1—Biology and Deficiency Syndrome

Glucose transporter type 1 (Glut1) is the main transporter involved in the cellular uptake of glucose into many tissues, and is highly expressed in the brain and in erythrocytes. Glut1 deficiency syndrome is caused mainly by mutations of the SLC2A1 gene, impairing passive glucose transport across the blood–brain barrier. All age groups, from infants to adults, may be affected, with age-specific symptoms. In its classic form, the syndrome presents as an early-onset drug-resistant metabolic epileptic encephalopathy with a complex movement disorder and developmental delay. In later-onset forms, complex motor disorder predominates, with dystonia, ataxia, chorea or spasticity, often triggered by fasting. Diagnosis is confirmed by hypoglycorrhachia (below 45 mg/dL) with normal blood glucose, 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography, and genetic analysis showing pathogenic SLC2A1 variants. There are also ongoing positive studies on erythrocytes’ Glut1 surface expression using flow cytometry. The standard treatment still consists of ketogenic therapies supplying ketones as alternative brain fuel. Anaplerotic substances may provide alternative energy sources. Understanding the complex interactions of Glut1 with other tissues, its signaling function for brain angiogenesis and gliosis, and the complex regulation of glucose transportation, including compensatory mechanisms in different tissues, will hopefully advance therapy. Ongoing research for future interventions is focusing on small molecules to restore Glut1, metabolic stimulation, and SLC2A1 transfer strategies. Newborn screening, early identification and treatment could minimize the neurodevelopmental disease consequences. Furthermore, understanding Glut1 relative deficiency or inhibition in inflammation, neurodegenerative disorders, and viral infections including COVID-19 and other settings could provide clues for future therapeutic approaches.
M-CAMP™: A cloud-based web platform with a novel approach for species-level classification of 16S rRNA microbiome sequences

The M-CAMP™ (Microbiome Computational Analysis for Multiomic Profiling) Cloud Platform was designed to provide users with an easy-to-use web interface to access best in class microbiome analysis tools. This interface allows bench scientists to conduct bioinformatic analysis on their samples and then download publication-ready graphics and reports. The core pipeline of the platform is the 16S-seq taxonomic classification algorithm which provides species-level classification of Illumina 16s sequencing. This algorithm uses a novel approach combining alignment and kmer based taxonomic classification methodologies to produce a highly accurate and comprehensive profile. Additionally, a comprehensive proprietary database combining reference sequences from multiple sources was curated and contains 18056 unique V3-V4 sequences covering 11527 species. The M-CAMP™ 16S taxonomic classification algorithm was validated on 52 sequencing samples from both public and in-house standard sample mixtures with known fractions. Compared to current popular public classification algorithms, our classification algorithm provides the most accurate species-level classification of 16S rRNA sequencing data.
Wellness tourism from consumers’ perspective – An exploratory analysis

This paper summarizes the perspectives of health and wellness tourism consumers, to better understand the factors that influence this tourism product. A quantitative approach was adopted to collect primary data through the application of an online survey to effective and potential health and wellness tourism consumers between January and April 2021. Results show that growing number of consumers tend to value health and wellness tourism as a holistic experience, in which not only products specifically related to health and wellness treatments are of particular importance, but also activities related to leisure, recreation and culture. This paper provides a basis of research and analysis for global wellness and tourism industry stakeholders. The aim is to help the industry understand consumer behaviour and preferences in the traveller’s process of choosing a destination for a wellness vacation. This is achieved by predicting wellness tourism trends and developments, by acknowledging the gaps in the research available for understanding wellness tourism and reflecting the experience economy perspective in the sector.
Epidural oscillating field stimulation increases axonal regenerative capacity and myelination after spinal cord trauma

Oscillating field stimulation (OFS) with regular alterations in the polarity of electric current is a unique, experimental approach to stimulate, support, and potentially guide the outgrowth of both sensory and motor nerve fibers after spinal cord injury (SCI). In previous experiments, we demonstrated the beneficial effects of OFS in a 4-week survival period after SCI. In this study, we observed the major behavioral, morphological, and protein changes in rats after 15 minutes of T9 spinal compression with a 40 g force, followed by long-lasting OFS (50 µA), over a 8-week survival period. Three groups of rats were analyzed: rats after T9 spinal compression (SCI group); SCI rats subjected to implantation of active oscillating field stimulator (OFS + SCI group); and SCI rats subjected to nonfunctional OFS (nOFS + SCI group). Histopathological analysis of spinal tissue indicated a strong impact of epidural OFS on the reduction of tissue and myelin loss after SCI in the segments adjacent to the lesion site. Quantitative fluorescent analysis of the most affected areas of spinal cord tissue revealed a higher number of spared axons and oligodendrocytes of rats in the OFS + SCI group, compared with rats in the SCI and nOFS + SCI groups. The protein levels of neurofilaments (NF-l), growth-associated protein-43 (marker for newly sprouted axons), and myelin basic protein in rats were signifiantly increased in the OFS + SCI group than in the nOFS + SCI and SCI groups. This suggests a supporting role of the OFS in axonal and myelin regeneration after SCI. Moreover, rats in the OFS + SCI group showed great improvements in sensory and motor functions than did rats in the nOFS + SCI and SCI groups. All these findings suggest that long-lasting OFS applied immediately after SCI can provide a good microenviroment for recovery of damaged spinal tissue by triggering regenreative processes in the acute phase of injury.
Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) System: Genetics and Association with Bacterial and Viral Infections

The human leukocyte antigen (HLA) system is one of the most crucial host factors influencing disease progression in bacterial and viral infections. This review provides the basic concepts of the structure and function of HLA molecules in humans. Here, we highlight the main findings on the associations between HLA class I and class II alleles and susceptibility to important infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, leprosy, melioidosis, Staphylococcus aureus infection, human immunodeficiency virus infection, coronavirus disease 2019, hepatitis B, and hepatitis C in populations worldwide. Finally, we discuss challenges in HLA typing to predict disease outcomes in clinical implementation. Evaluation of the impact of HLA variants on the outcome of bacterial and viral infections would improve the understanding of pathogenesis and identify those at risk from infectious diseases in distinct populations and may improve the individual treatment.
Leverage estimation for multi-output neural networks

The article deals with the problem of computing the leverages for multi-output neural networks. The leverages can be subsequently used for determining which learning examples have the strongest influence on the model. Therefore computing them may provide researchers with important insights about the constructed model. More specifically they can be used to detect over fitting. A step by step algorithm for computing the Jacobian matrix and the leverages is presented, along with an example application to a synthetic problem.
Timing of laparoscopic cholecystectomy in patients with non-severe biliary pancreatitis

Introduction In patients with acute biliary pancreatitis (ABP), cholecystectomy is mandatory to prevent further biliary events, but the precise timing of laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) for non-severe disease remain a subject of ongoing debate. Aim To prove which method – early or delayed LC – is the method of choice in the non-severe disease by examining rates of gallstone-related complications, dissection difficulty, conversion rate, morbidity, mortality, and length of hospital stay. Material and methods We retrospectively analysed the data of patients diagnosed with non-severe ABP, who were followed and underwent LC in our department. Patients who met the inclusion criteria were divided in to the early (< 2 weeks) and the delayed groups (> 2 weeks). Results The patients in the early and delayed groups (n = 43/39) were similar in terms of demographic characteristics, comorbidities, and severity of biliary pancreatitis. The mean time to surgery was 1.7 vs. 6.5 weeks in the early and late groups, respectively. Patients in the delayed group had a 17.9% readmission rate. The causes were acute pancreatitis (10.2%), cholangitis, and cholecystitis. The conversion and the difficult dissection rates were 11.6% vs. 12.8% and 13.95% vs. 20.51% in the early and delayed groups, respectively. Mortality was not observed in the groups. Morbidity rates were 4.6% vs. 5%, and mean length of hospital stay was 10 vs. 17 days in the early and delayed groups, respectively. Conclusions Delayed LC increases the rate of biliary events and early LC does not increase the operative difficulty or morbidity in patients with ABP.
Cooperativas, Altruismo y Compromiso Político: contribuciones para el debate latinoamericano sobre Economía Solidaria

A menudo, los estudiosos latinoamericanos de la economía solidaria tras anua línea divisoria entre las pequeñas y las grandes cooperativas. Las primeras son presentadas como organizaciones solidarias, orientadas a lograr una amplia gama de objetivos política y socialmente deseables; las segundas como empresas motivadas por el lucro, únicamente guindadas por los imperativoscomerciales del mercado. El presente artículo cuestiona esta visión. Tomando como marco de referencia la experiencia del cooperativismo de crédito en Argentina, se argumenta que el aumento de la dimensión y de la complejidad de una cooperativa no necesariamente afecta sus fundamentos solidarios o su compromiso político. El artículo también destaca las diferentes lógicas dela cooperación, alertando sobre la necesidad de evitar el uso del término “capitalista” para referirse a aquellas cooperativas que están fundadas sobre el principio dela racionalidad instrumental.
BRAF, NRAS, KIT, TERT, GNAQ/GNA11 Mutation Profile and Histomorphological Analysis of Anorectal Melanomas: A Clinicopathologic Study

Objective: Primary anorectal melanomas (AMs) are uncommon neoplasms with aggressive behavior. Molecular profile and clinicopathologic features of AMs are still not well established. In this study, we aimed to investigate BRAF, NRAS, KIT, TERT, and GNAQ/GNA11 mutation status and clinicopathologic features of AMs. Material and Method: All diagnostic slides of 15 AMs were reviewed. Histopathological and follow-up information were documented. Mutations in exon 15 of the BRAF gene; exons 2 and 3 of the NRAS gene; exons 9, 11, 13, 17, and 18 of the KIT gene; and exons 4 and 5 of the GNAQ/GNA11 genes and mutations in the promoter region of the TERT gene (chr.5, 1,295,228C>T and 1,295,250C>T) were analyzed. Results: BRAF(V600E) and KIT(V555I and K642E) mutations were observed in one (7%) and two cases (14%), respectively. NRAS, TERT and GNAQ/GNA11 mutations were not detected. The mean age was 65. Patients presented with rectal mass, rectal bleeding, pain, and weight loss. 73% of the lesions were macroscopically polypoid. The most common tumor cell type was epithelioid. Mean tumor thickness was 10.4 mm. One third of the cases lacked pigmentation. In situ melanoma was present in one third of the cases. Among 14 patients with follow-up data, 12 succumbed to disease. The mean overall survival was 36 months. Conclusion: AMs are uncommon tumors with dismal survival, usually occurring in the elderly in various gross and microscopic appearances. In terms of molecular profile, BRAF and KIT mutations are rarely detected. Profiling of larger cohorts is required to elucidate the pathogenesis and to identify potential molecular indicators that may contribute to the development of individualized targeted therapies.
RSTC: A New Residual Swin Transformer For Offline Word-Level Writer Identification

Writer identification has steadily progressed in recent decades owing to its widespread application. Scenarios with extensive handwriting data such as page-level or sentence-level have achieved satisfactory accuracy, however, word-level offline writer identification is still challenging owing to the difficulty of learning good feature representations with scant handwriting data. This paper proposes a new Residual Swin Transformer Classifier (RSTC), comprehensively aggregating local and global handwriting styles and yielding robust feature representations with single-word images. Local information is modeled by the Transformer Block through interacting strokes. Global information is featurized by holistic encoding using the Identity Branch and Global Block. Moreover, the pre-training technique is exploited to transfer reusable knowledge learned from a task similar to writer identification, strengthening the model’s representation of handwriting features. The proposed method is tested on the IAM and CVL benchmark datasets and achieves state-of-the-art performance, which demonstrates RSTC’s superior modeling capability on word-level writer identification.
Content Media Retrieval using Virtual Network Functions in Multi‐access Edge Computing architecture

The mobile traffic grows every year. Resource requirements of mobile applications, as processing power and storage capacity, transformed the architecture of cellular networks into a centralized infrastructure, the C‐RANs. On the other hand, providing resources close to base stations, as the multi‐access edge computing suggests, allows an immediate processing for delay sensitive applications. In this work, we formulate as a mixed integer linear programming the retrieval of media contents through caches acting as virtual network functions. The optimization model minimizes both the media contents' retrieval cost and the number of instantiated virtual network functions. Results show that the characteristic that has most impact on caching is the high throughput between the node that stores the virtual network function images and the virtualized environment that hosts the image, where up to 70% of the requests are satisfied. When caches have low storage capacity and incurs high transferring delay cost for deployment, the most important characteristic is the throughput distribution between the virtualized environment and the base stations.
Automated Machine Learning (AutoML): an overview of opportunities for application and research

ABSTRACT The wider adoption of AI and machine learning (ML) applications has been limited by the high costs of infrastructure and scarcity of ML experts and data scientists. To address some of these concerns, automated ML (AutoML) systems have been developed alongside cloud computing platforms to mitigate some of the constraints in the wider adoption of ML technologies, including by small and medium size organizations. In this paper, we introduce AutoML, identify some of the fundamental steps in model development, and currently available operationalizations of these systems, before concluding with an outline of potential research opportunities for IS researchers in the field.
Novel thermoelectric generator systems for harvesting electrical energy from highly varying and high-peak temperature sources

Presented in this paper is the development of a novel class of heat energy harvesting systems that are designed to generate electrical energy from sources with highly varying temperatures that can be significantly higher than thermoelectric generators (TEG) can withstand. This class of TEG-based heat energy harvesters are designed to: (a) apply a constant temperature gradient to TEGs of the system while heat source temperature is varying and can be significantly higher than TEGs can withstand (thus, the total energy output is maximized); and (b) provides a passively operated switching mechanism for the protection of TEGs from overheating.
Unraveling the Mysteries of Mental Illness With Psilocybin

Current medications have not been effective in reducing the prevalence of mental illness worldwide. The prevalence of illnesses such as treatment-resistant depression has increased despite the widespread use of a broad set of psychopharmaceuticals. Transcranial magnetic stimulation and ketamine therapy are making great strides in improving treatment-resistant depression outcomes but they have limitations. New psychotherapeutics are required that specifically target the underlying cellular pathologies leading to neuronal atrophy. This neuronal atrophy model is supplanting the long-held neurotransmitter deficit hypothesis to explain mental illness. Interest in psychedelics as therapeutic molecules to treat mental illness is experiencing a 21st-century reawakening that is on the cusp of a transformation. Psilocybin is a pro-drug, found in various naturally occurring mushrooms, that is dephosphorylated to produce psilocin, a classic tryptamine psychedelic functional as a 5-hydroxytryptamine 2A receptor agonist. We have focused this review to include studies in the last two years that suggest psilocybin promotes neuronal plasticity, which may lead to changes in brain network connectivity. Recent advancements in clinical trials using pure psilocybin in therapy suggest that it may effectively relieve the symptoms of depression in patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder and treatment-resistant depression. Sophisticated cellular and molecular experiments at the systems level have produced evidence that demonstrates psilocybin promotes neuritogenesis in the mouse brain - a mechanism that may address the root cause of depression at the cellular level. Finally, studies with psilocybin therapy for major depressive disorder suggest that this ancient molecule can promote functionally connected intrinsic networks in the human brain, resulting in durable improvements in the severity of depressive symptoms. Although further research is necessary, the prospect of using psilocybin for the treatment of mental illness is an enticing possibility.
Factors influencing the risk attitude of vegetable farmers in Kerala

Vegetables play a major role by providing nutritional, economic security and producing higher returns per unit area. But vegetable farmers have to face diverse kinds of climate, biological, price and financial risks. An important factor in understanding the behavioural and managerial decisions of farmers is to understand their attitude towards risk. This study investigated the risk attitude of vegetable farmers in special agricultural zones, socio-economic characteristics of farmers and identified the factors which influences the risk attitude. A survey was conducted by involving 270 respondents from 6 agro ecological units. Purposive as well as simple random sampling techniques were adopted for the study. The data were collected with the help of structured interview schedule and processed into frequency, percentage, correlation analysis to draw the conclusion. Results showed that majority of the farmers were in medium risk attitude category and the factors such as area under vegetable cultivation, education, annual income, irrigation potential, extension participation, social participation and innovative proneness were positively and significantly related with the risk attitude of vegetable farmers.
ANALISIS EFEKTIVITAS BELAJAR SISWA DALAM PEMBELAJARAN ONLINE DI MASA PANDEMI COVID-19

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui efektivitas belajar siswa melalui metode pembelajaran daring pada masa pandemi covid-19 di kelas V SD Inpres Bumi Sagu. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian kualitatif deskripsi dengan metode studi analisis. Subjek dalam penelitian ini adalah seluruh siswa kelas V SD Inpres Bumi Sagu dengan jumlah total 24 siswa yang terdiri dari 13 siswa laki-laki dan 11 siswa perempuan. Penelitian ini adalah studi analisis dimana peneliti ingin melihat bagaimana guru dan siswa memanfaatkan pembelajaran daring selama masa pandemi di kelas V SD Inpres Bumi Sagu. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa pembelajaran daring dilakukan setiap hari dengan presentase 83.33% menjawab sering, dan 16.67% menyatakan jarang. Terkait dengan penyampaian tujuan pembelajaran oleh guru, 75% siswa menjawab selalu, dan 25% menjawab jarang, sementara untuk penggunaan internet dalam pembelajaran 70.83% siswa menjawab sering, dan 29.17% menjawab jarang. Berdasarkan hasil ini dapat disimpulkan bahwa pembelajaran daring bahwa pembelajaran daring di kelas V SDN Bumi Sagu sangat efektif karena persentase jawaban sering dari komponen pertanyaan mendapatkan respons di atas 50%.