Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spatial and temporal distribution characteristics of traffic accident for highway vehicle queue tail

Based on the traffic flow data of recurrent congestion section on highway,the cumulative occupancy method was used to draw the fluctuating curve of traffic flow occupancy,which was used to judge the trajectory of vehicle queue tail at congestion section.The relations among occupancy,mileage position and time interval were analyzed.The inflection point of cumulative occupancy curve was determined.For the queue propagating and dissipating processes,the relations between traffic accident frequencies and temporal and sptial distances were analyzed,and the distribution features were statistically studied.Analysis result shows that when vehicle temporally and spatially approaches the queue tail,the occurrence frequency of traffic accident obviously increases,and the temporal distance and spatial distance follow the normal distribution centered on the queue tail.Normal distribution curves in different driving directions have no significant differences,but have significant differences between congestion propagation and dissipation processes.The developed joint normal distribution model of traffic accident occurring probability can be used to predict the traffic accident risks in the vicinity of queue tail,and to provide the theoretical foundation for applying dynamic traffic control for improving highway safety.2 tabs,12 figs,19 refs.
Bacteria as Important Degraders in Waterlogged Archaeological Woods

An electron microscopic study of archaeological woods from different sites and of different ages revealed that the woods had been attacked by erosion bacteria, tunneling bacteria and soft rot fungi. Bacterial erosion appeared to be most widespread and was present independently as well as together with tunneling and soft rot attacks. Thus, in many instances bacterial erosion was the only type of microbial attack present. This work recognizes the important role bacteria play generally, and erosion bacteria particularly, in the deterioration of waterlogged archaeological woods.
An overview of emerging trends in consumer e-waste disposal behavior in the context of carbon neutrality

E-waste is a complicated toxic waste that causes additional carbon emissions during disposal. In the perspective of carbon neutrality, responsible and efficient e-waste management is a worldwide concern. Nevertheless, any successful E-waste management strategy depends on the consumption and disposal habits of the general public. We made the effort to perform a thorough analysis of the global environment & identify the methods used by users of various countries to deal of the electronic trash while keeping in mind the particularities of each user’s disposal behavior and consciousness in each location. We notice considerable disparities in consumer disposal habits for e-waste both “across” and “within” wealthy and developing nations. The study goes on to discuss the complications in the system for managing e-waste in particular light of the numerous related connotations that have an impact on consumer disposal behavior and knowledge. Therefore, in order to develop E-waste management policies and effectively to solve current E-waste situation, a particular country may benefit from learning from worldwide experiences on consumers’ E-waste disposal behavior and knowledge.
BEM Solutions for 2D and 3D Dynamic Problems in Mindlin's Strain Gradient Theory of Elasticity

A Boundary Element Method (BEM) for solving two (2D) and three dimensional (3D) dynamic problems in materials with microstructural effects is presented. The analysis is performed in the frequency domain and in the context of Mindlin’s Form II gradient elastic theory. The fundamental solution of the differential equation of motion is explicitly derived for both 2D and 3D problems. The integral representation of the problem, consisting of two boundary integral equations, one for displacements and the other for its normal derivative is exploited for the proposed BEM formulation. The global boundary of the analyzed domain is discretized into quadratic line and quadrilateral elements for 2D and 3D problems, respectively. Representative 2D and 3D numerical examples are presented to illustrate the method, demonstrate its accuracy and efficiency and assess the gradient effect on the response.
The relationship between teacher autonomy support and student mathematics achievement: a 3-year longitudinal study

Abstract According to self-determination theory, teachers’ autonomy support is an effective approach to motivate students to learn. Longitudinal studies are necessary to clear up the relation between students’ perception of teacher autonomy support and students’ achievement in mathematics. The present study investigated the effect of teachers’ autonomy support on students’ maths achievement over three years using a longitudinal survey in Chinese elementary schools. Structural equation modelling was employed to explore the complex mechanism of autonomy-supportive teaching on students’ mathematics achievement. The results show that teachers’ autonomy support can satisfy students’ psychological needs, which can enhance their motivation and ultimately positively related with their mathematics achievement. It is worth noting that the students’ satisfaction of psychological needs for autonomy and intrinsic motivation have not only a direct effect but also lagged effect. These findings have theoretical and practical significance for mathematics teaching.
Initiatives in Urban Greening: analysis of attitudes towards a voluntary-assisted urban residential road verge-planting program

ABSTRACT City road verges often represent existing green space and provide opportunities for ecological enhancement. Urban greenspace improvement initiatives at the residential verge scale require genuine community support and engagement for success. We examined a community-based voluntary assisted verge greening program designed to enhance greenspace connectivity using native plants in a local municipality in Perth, Western Australia. A social survey of verge-greening program participants and non-participants was conducted to understand factors associated with community involvement. Results indicated general resident support for the program, where both groups viewed the program objectives positively. However, non-participants were less convinced, than participants, of the likelihood that the verge greening program would achieve its aims and the merits of some aims. This paper provides insight into a voluntary community engagement tool for developing urban green space connectivity and enhancing natural values at the residential roadside verge level.
Improved Resting-State Functional MRI Using Multi-Echo Echo-Planar Imaging on a Compact 3T MRI Scanner with High-Performance Gradients

In blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD)-based resting-state functional (RS-fMRI) studies, usage of multi-echo echo-planar-imaging (ME-EPI) is limited due to unacceptable late echo times when high spatial resolution is used. Equipped with high-performance gradients, the compact 3T MRI system (C3T) enables a three-echo whole-brain ME-EPI protocol with smaller than 2.5 mm isotropic voxel and shorter than 1 s repetition time, as required in landmark fMRI studies. The performance of the ME-EPI was comprehensively evaluated with signal variance reduction and region-of-interest-, seed- and independent-component-analysis-based functional connectivity analyses and compared with a counterpart of single-echo EPI with the shortest TR possible. Through the multi-echo combination, the thermal noise level is reduced. Functional connectivity, as well as signal intensity, are recovered in the medial orbital sulcus and anterior transverse collateral sulcus in ME-EPI. It is demonstrated that ME-EPI provides superior sensitivity and accuracy for detecting functional connectivity and/or brain networks in comparison with single-echo EPI. In conclusion, the high-performance gradient enabled high-spatial-temporal resolution ME-EPI would be the method of choice for RS-fMRI study on the C3T.
Assessment of Gliomas’ Grade of Malignancy and Extent of Resection Using Intraoperative Flow Cytometry

Simple Summary Intraoperative Flow Cytometry (iFC) is a new technique that can help assess the malignancy grade, diagnose tumor type, and evaluate resection margins during solid tumor surgery. This study focuses on the role of iFC in grading gliomas and evaluating resection margins. iFC can analyze tissue samples within 5–6 min and was utilized to evaluate samples from patients with gliomas who underwent surgery over an 8-year period. The study found that high-grade gliomas had a significantly higher tumor index than low-grade gliomas. A cut-off value of 17% in the tumor index was identified as being able to accurately differentiate low- from high-grade gliomas. All low-grade gliomas were diploid, while 22 high-grade gliomas were aneuploid. iFC was also able to verify the presence of malignant tissue in every case when evaluating glioma margins. The study concludes that iFC is a promising intraoperative technique for glioma grading and resection margin assessment. Abstract Background: Intraoperative Flow Cytometry (iFC) is a novel technique for the assessment of the grade of malignancy and the diagnosis of tumor type and resection margins during solid tumor surgery. Herein, we set out to analyze the role of iFC in the grading of gliomas and the evaluation of resection margins. Material and Methods: iFC uses a fast cell cycle analysis protocol (Ioannina Protocol) that permits the analysis of tissue samples within 5–6 min. Cell cycle analysis evaluated the G0/G1 phase, S-phase, mitosis, and tumor index (S + mitosis phase fraction) and ploidy status. In the current study, we evaluated tumor samples and samples from the peripheral borders from patients with gliomas who underwent surgery over an 8-year period. Results: Eighty-one patients were included in the study. There were sixty-eight glioblastoma cases, five anaplastic astrocytomas, two anaplastic oligodendrogliomas, one pilocytic astrocytoma, three oligodendrogliomas and two diffuse astrocytomas. High-grade gliomas had a significantly higher tumor index than low grade gliomas (median value 22 vs. 7.5, respectively, p = 0.002). Using ROC curve analysis, a cut-off value of 17% in the tumor index could differentiate low- from high-grade gliomas with a 61.4% sensitivity and 100% specificity. All low-grade gliomas were diploid. From the high-grade gliomas, 22 tumors were aneuploid. In glioblastomas, aneuploid tumors had a significantly higher tumor index (p = 0.0018). Twenty-three samples from glioma margins were evaluated. iFC verified the presence of malignant tissue in every case, using histology as the gold standard. Conclusion: iFC constitutes a promising intraoperative technique for glioma grading and resection margin assessment. Comparative studies with additional intraoperative adjuncts are necessary.
Propagation de l'incertitude dimensionnelle dans le problème de l'ajustement d'ellipses. Application à la reconnaissance automatique de formes elliptiques dans les images

L'ajustement d'une ellipse sur des donnees 2D est un tres vieux sujet en estimation et en RDF, qui a donne lieu a de nombreuses etudes [2,6,10,15,16,21] et en suscite encore aujourd'hui [12,17,19,24]. D'une facon systematique, ces travaux se sont appuyes sur la representation algebrique de la conique pour etablir leur critere de minimisation. Un peu moins etudiee [5], la representation polaire de l'ellipse constitue une alternative plus couteuse car elle necessite l'optimisation de sa parametrisation. D'une representation necessitant au plus 5 parametres a une autre definie par 5 + N (N etant le nombre de donnees), le choix semble evident. Cependant, nous proposons dans cet article de nouvelles idees sur la question. Tout d'abord, nous montrons que l'estimation separee des parametres et de la parametrisation de l'ellipse permet de simplifier le probleme en aboutissant respectivement a une inversion directe pour les premiers et a la recherche des racines d'un polynome du 4 ieme ordre pour la seconde. Nous montrons egalement que la parametrisation est « porteuse » de l'information dimensionnelle de l'ellipse et qu'en la « perturbant » correctement dans le processus de minimisation il est possible de forcer la solution a rester dans un espace parametrique preetabli. Ce resultat nouveau permet de fournir une solution sans biais dimensionnel meme dans un contexte fortement bruite et incomplet. Une enveloppe de confiance est ensuite estimee assurant a la fois un encadrement plus large de la solution et le role de filtre pour la recherche des segments voisins candidats potentiels pour affiner l'estimation. Enfin, nous proposons une strategie de regroupement/ajustement suivie d'une phase de decision floue constituant ainsi un schema robuste de detection de formes elliptiques dans les images.
Simulation research of port competitiveness based on system dynamics

It is an urgent problem for Chinese large and medium-sized ports to improve their competitiveness. With the method of system dynamics and the software Vensim-PLE, the simulation model of port competitiveness is constructed to explore the internal factors influencing mechanism and development trend of port competitiveness. By constructing causality diagram and system flow diagram, the paper analyzes the influence mechanism of related factors on port competitiveness. Taking Nanjing Port as the specific research object, it predicts the change trend of cargo throughput and other related variables and port competitiveness. Then it designs four simulation schemes to improve the port competitiveness of Nanjing Port ,and compares the improvement effects of different schemes. Finally, it puts forward some countermeasures and suggestions to improve port competitiveness.
Passive Exoskeletons to Enhance Workforce Sustainability: Literature Review and Future Research Agenda

The human-centered workplace design philosophy and the operator 5.0 concepts are gaining ground in modern industries moving through the personalization of the operators’ workplace for improving workforce well being and capabilities. In such a context, new assistive technologies, such as passive exoskeletons, are good candidates to be wisely adopted in manufacturing and logistics systems. A growing interest in these devices has been detected over the last years, both from an academic and company perspective, with an increasing number of design solutions and tests according to their field of application. Aiming to investigate the current state of the art, we propose a literature review focused on passive exoskeletons for manufacturing and logistics (M&L) systems. We categorize the exoskeletons assessment in relation to the M&L tasks in which they are applied to give the reader an easy and direct insight into the exoskeleton performance in real settings. Further, the impact of the exoskeleton deployment from an efficiency perspective and its cost-effectiveness evaluation are provided. Finally, a maturity heat map is proposed to track the maturity level of different exoskeletons by focusing on a set of scientific and industrial domains. A discussion and a future research agenda are also provided by focusing on the managerial implications of investing in these devices.
COVID‐19 Policy Interventions and Fertility Dynamics in the Context of Pre‐Pandemic Welfare Support

This paper focuses on nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to explain fertility dynamics during the pandemic, while considering countries' institutional context. We argue that containment policies disrupted people's lives and increased their uncertainty more in countries with weak welfare support systems, while health‐related and economic support NPIs mitigated such disruptions much more there, as they were less expected by citizens. We estimate monthly "excess” crude birth rates (CBRs) and find that countries with low public support—Southern Europe, East Asia, and Eastern Europe—experienced larger decreases and less of a rebound in CBRs than countries with histories of high public spending—Western, Central, and Northern Europe. However, in low support countries, NPIs are much more strongly associated with excess CBRs—containment NPIs more negatively and health and economic support NPIs more positively—with the exception of the one‐month lag of containment NPIs, for which the opposite holds. When putting these coefficients into broader perspective, our findings suggest that the actual implementation of all NPIs taken together mitigated fertility declines. This is especially the case for low public support countries, whereas one might have seen a birth decline even in high support countries if the NPIs were not implemented. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Population & Development Review is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)
Unraveling the Oncogenic Potential of VAV1 in Human Cancer: Lessons from Mouse Models

VAV1 is a hematopoietic signal transducer that possesses a GDP/GTP nucleotide exchange factor (GEF) that is tightly regulated by tyrosine phosphorylation, along with adapter protein domains, such as SH2 and SH3. Research on VAV1 has advanced over the years since its discovery as an in vitro activated oncogene in an NIH3T3 screen for oncogenes. Although the oncogenic form of VAV1 first identified in the screen has not been detected in human clinical tumors, its wild-type and mutant forms have been implicated in mammalian malignancies of various tissue origins, as well as those of the hematopoietic system. This review article addresses the activity of human VAV1 as an overexpressed or mutated gene and also describes the differences in the distribution of VAV1 mutations in the hematopoietic system and in other tissues. The knowledge accumulated thus far from GEMMs expressing VAV1 is described, with the conclusion that GEMMs of both wild-type VAV1 and mutant VAV1 do not form tumors, yet these will be generated when additional molecular insults, such as loss of p53 or KRAS mutation, occur.
Traveling wave solutions of Lotka–Volterra type two predators‐one prey model

In this work, we consider a model with one basal resource and two species of predators feeding by the same resource. There are three non‐trivial boundary equilibria. One is the saturated state EK of the prey without any predator. Other two equilibria, E1 and E2, are the coexistence states of the prey with only one species of predators. Using a high‐dimensional shooting method, the Wazewski' principle, we establish the conditions for the existence of traveling wave solutions from EK to E2 and from E1 to E2. These results show that the advantageous species v2 always win in the competition and exclude species v1 eventually. Finally, some numerical simulations are presented, and biological interpretations are given. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Use or Misuse of Albumin in Critical Ill Patients

Since 1940 albumin has been used worldwide and is widely available commercially since this time. However, a meta-analysis in 1998 challenged the use of albumin and identified a trend toward higher mortality in critically ill patients who had received albumin. Since then, many studies including multicenter randomized controlled trials have been carried out investigating the safety and efficacy of albumin treatment in different patient cohorts. In this context, patient cohorts that benefit from albumin were identified. However, particularly in non-liver patients, the use of albumin remains controversial. In our comprehensive review, we would like to highlight the most important studies in the recent 20 years and therefore offer an evidence-based outlook for the use of albumin for patients treated in the ICU.
Fusion attention-ASPP and context semantic for complex scene semantic segmentation

Semantic segmentation is widely used in remote sensing data extraction and classification. Existing semantic segmentation networks focus on capturing contextual information in many different ways, simply fusing features at different levels, and ultimately improving the accuracy of semantic segmentation. However, low-level semantic features lack spatial context guidance, and high-level semantic features tend to encode large objects with coarse spatial details, making segmentation results prone to losing fine details. In this paper, we analyze the advantages and disadvantages of different levels of feature maps, and enhance the feature representation from two aspects to solve this problem. On the one hand, inspired by the architectural idea of atrous spatial pyramic pooling (ASPP), we adjust the structure of ASPP module and add the attention module to ASPP, and a new Attention-ASPP(AASPP) module is constructed in this paper. On the other hand, feature information such as boundary contours is enhanced by channel attention modeling, thereby improving local detail representation. Comprehensive experimental results show that our model framework achieves excellent segmentation performance on two public datasets, WHU building dataset and ISPRS Potsdam dataset.
Detection of Putative Virulence Genes alr, goiB, and goiC in Mycoplasma hominis Isolates from Austrian Patients

In Mycoplasma hominis, two genes (alr and goiB) have been found to be associated with the invasion of the amniotic cavity, and a single gene (goiC) to be associated with intra-amniotic infections and a high risk of preterm birth. The syntopic presence of Ureaplasma spp. in the same patient has been shown to correlate with the absence of goiC in M. hominis. The aim of our study was to investigate the presence of alr, goiB, and goiC genes in two groups of M. hominis isolates collected from symptomatic and asymptomatic male and non-pregnant female patients attending an Outpatients Centre. Group A consisted of 26 isolates from patients with only M. hominis confirmed; group B consisted of 24 isolates from patients with Ureaplasma spp. as the only co-infection. We extracted DNA from all M. hominis isolates and analysed the samples for the presence of alr, goiB, and goiC in a qPCR assay. Additionally, we determined their cytotoxicity against HeLa cells. We confirmed the presence of the alr gene in 85% of group A isolates and in 100% of group B isolates; goiB was detected in 46% of the samples in both groups, whereas goiC was found in 73% of group A and 79% of group B isolates, respectively. It was shown that co-colonisation with Ureaplasma spp. in the same patient had no effect on the presence of goiC in the respective M. hominis isolate. We did not observe any cytotoxic effect of the investigated isolates on human cells, regardless of the presence or absence of the investigated genes.