Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Aortic Wall Thickness as a Surrogate for Subclinical Atherosclerosis in Familial and Nonfamilial Hypercholesterolemia: Quantitative 3D Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study and Interrelations with Computed Tomography Calcium Scores, and Carotid Ultrasonography

We aimed to compare the extent of subclinical atherosclerosis in the ascending and descending aortas by measuring wall area and thickness using 3D cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (aAWAI and dAWAI) in patients with asymptomatic familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) and nonfamilial hypercholesterolemia (NFH). We also aimed to establish the interrelations of CMR parameters with other subclinical atherosclerosis measurements, such as calcium scores, obtained using computed tomography in coronary arteries (CCS) and ascending and descending aorta (TCSasc and TCSdsc), as well as the carotid intima-media thicknesses (cIMT) using ultrasonography. A total of 60 patients with FH (29 men and 31 women), with a mean age of 52.3 ± 9.6 years, were analyzed. A subclinical atherosclerosis assessment was also performed on a group consisting of 30 age- and gender-matched patients with NFH, with a mean age of 52.5 ± 7.9 years. We found the ascending and descending aortic wall areas and thicknesses in the FH group to be significantly increased than those of the NFH group. A multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that a positive FH mutation value was a strong predictor of high aAWAI and dAWAI independent of the LDL cholesterol level. Correlations across CMR atherosclerotic parameters, calcium scores, and cIMT in the FH and NFH groups, were significant but low. Most of the atherosclerosis tests with high results belonged to the FH group. We found that patients with documented heterozygous FH had a higher atherosclerosis burden in the aorta compared to patients with severe hypercholesterolemia without FH gene mutation. Atherosclerosis is not severe in asymptomatic patients with FH, but is more pronounced and also more diffuse than in patients with NFH. The etiology of hypercholesterolemia, and not just cholesterol levels, plays a significant role in determining the degree of subclinical atherosclerosis.
A Spiral-like Acquisition Strategy for 3D Huygens' Principle Based Microwave Imaging

This paper focuses on executing a novel methodology to achieve imaging time reduction via 3D imaging algorithm based on Huygens principle using a microwave imaging device (MammoWave). Specifically, a three-layer cylindrical phantom with a 3D structured inclusion has been fabricated with varying dielectric properties. Various spiral-like (along z-axis) measurement scenarios have been considered to investigate the possibility of measurement time reduction. In the first scenario, we have performed measurements in spiral-like configuration-I at multiple planes along the z-axis, while for the second scenario we have applied spiral configuration-II in an alternate way in terms of receiving points. We found that the proposed spiral-like measurement scenarios may lead to a measurement time saving of 50%, with a lower S/C ratio (decrease of maximum 3.2 dB) and slightly higher error (approximately 3.5%) in inclusion dimensional analysis and localization.
Rejection of Urban Sedentism: Settlement Transitions in Southeast Hungarian Prehistory

The Great Hungarian Plain provides a unique opportunity for exploring the many variables of social, economic and environmental change over time. My project focuses on one of these variables; the changes in settlement organisation circa 4800-4500 BC. During this period, people appear to have shifted from living in large, densely-packed villages to smaller dispersed farmsteads, and my research examines this phenomenon through geochemistry. My time in Hungary not only allowed me to pursue my research. Through collaboration with Hungarian prehistorians, I gained a new perspective on the difficulties facing my colleagues here. I also gained new friends and colleagues, and I look forward to continuing research projects here. Introduction
War and Rumors of War. The Evidential Base for the Recognition of Warfare in Prehistory

The identification of the occurence and results of warfare in the archaeological records of prehistoric societies has always been fraught with difficulties. This study investigates this prickly area through the development of a series of correlates, resulting in testable models which can be applied to the archaeological record. Correlates include causal correlates, such as climatic deterioration, or demographic rise; preparatory correlates, such as appearance of fortifications or proliferation of weaponry; functional correlates, such as burned sitesor unburied bodies/weapons trauma; and relative correlates, such as change in subsistence or trading practice. It is based on three case studies - the Middle Thames Region in the Later Bronze Age, Gallica Belgica, and the Salt River Area, Arizona, c.1250-c.1450 AD.
Assessing wind farms projects with the use of multicriteria methods and stakeholders analysis

The use of wind potential and the protection of biodiversity are two conflicting aspects that arise in the development of wind energy projects, generating conflicts between different stakeholders. The aim of this study is to develop a methodology for assessing the suitability of existing wind farms in mountainous areas with the combined use of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method and Stakeholders Analysis. The application is carried out in the Regional Unit of Ioannina. Twelve assessment criteria have been considered in the analysis and fourteen selected stakeholders have participated in their pairwise comparisons. Four different alternative scenarios are formulated based on the power/interest matrix of stakeholder mapping. The prioritization of the existing wind farms is finally carried out with the use of TOPSIS method for each alternative scenario. The results showed that, for two scenarios the ideal wind farm is located in Variko, while for the other two, the ideal wind farm is located in Katara. The proposed methodology is able to promote spatial energy planning, emphasize the key components of the decision problem, and award participating decisions through a multi-stakeholder traceable and transparent assessment procedure.
Development of Simvastatin-Loaded Particles Using Spray Drying Method for Ex Tempore Preparation of Cartridges for 2D Printing Technology

In this work, a spray drying method was developed to produce drug/polymer (simvastatin/polycaprolactone) microparticles that have the potential to be used as a pre-formulation for ex tempore preparation of 2D printing cartridges. An experimental model was designed with the process parameters set to predict the smallest particle size required for successful 2D printing. Three different types of particles (lactose, nanocellulose/lactose, calcium silicate) were produced, and the average size of the dry particles varied depending on the sampling location (cyclone, collection vessel). The encapsulation efficiency of simvastatin was highest with nanocellulose/lactose from the collection vessel. The one-month stability of simvastatin in the particles showed low content, but the addition of ascorbic acid as an antioxidant increased the chemical stability of the drug. Interestingly, the addition of antioxidants decreased the stability of simvastatin in the calcium silicate particles from the collection vessel. Dispersion of the particles in three different propylene glycol and water mixtures (10/90, 50/50, and 90/10% (v/v)), representing a printable ink medium with three different viscosity and surface tension properties, showed that nanocellulose/lactose was the most suitable antiadhesive in terms of dispersed particle size (˂1 µm). After one month of storage, the dispersed particles remained in the same size range without undesirable particle agglomeration.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CHATBOTS – A HELP OR HINDRANCE TO COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATION

Recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot systems have gained significant coverage over the past few months across all subject disciplines and educational levels. Emergent technologies such as Chat GPT from Microsoft and BARD from Google have demonstrated extraordinary use of machine learning to enable detailed responses with high-utility for simple text-based queries. Students at all levels are broadly aware of the significance of such systems in providing an apparently easy route to homework solutions, with associated concerns from educators. While many consider such systems to be a threat to educational practices, others have embraced the technology, exploring these capabilities to support and enhance learning and development. The work detailed in this paper considers the use of Chat GPT in suggesting solutions to simple programming problems, typically used when leaning to develop software. Problem specifications from current programming assignments in year 1 of an undergraduate computing degree program are considered in the context of this system, over a range of input fragments and compared against utility of output (functionality and correctness of generated code). Responses generated from Chat GPT for a problem specification are considered alongside current student work and submitted to a blind assessment process. Results indicate that for simple problems, a significant proportion of code generated through Chat GP produces a fairly high utility, although amendments are required in all cases to enable testing. In many cases, text directly lifted from a problem specification provided enough material for Chat GPT to generate a reasonable response, although increased complexity resulted in reduced utility. The paper provides an overview analysis of initial experimentation and results, focusing specifically on how such systems could potentially benefit the novice programmer.
Preparation of Amino-Functionalized Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide)-Based Microgel Particles

Responsive cationic microgels are a promising building block in several diagnostic and therapeutic applications, like transfection and RNA or enzyme packaging. Although the direct synthesis of cationic poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAm) microgel particles has a long history, these procedures typically resulted in low yield, low incorporation of the cationic comonomer, increased polydispersity, and pure size control. In this study, we investigated the possibility of the post-polymerization modification of P(NIPAm-co-acrylic acid) microgels to prepare primary amine functionalized microgels. To achieve this goal, we used 1-ethyl-3-(3-(dimethylamino)propyl)carbodiimide hydrochloride (EDC) mediated coupling of a diamine to the carboxyl groups. We found that by controlling the EDC excess in the reaction mixture, the amine functionalization of the carboxyl functionalized microgel could be varied and as much as 6–7 mol% amine content could be incorporated into the microgels. Importantly, the reaction was conducted at room temperature in an aqueous medium and it was found to be time efficient, making it a practical and convenient approach for synthesizing primary amine functionalized PNIPAm microgel particles.
Brain networks of mathematically gifted adolescents based on directed transfer function and partial directed coherence

The study on the structural connectivity and functional connectivity of the brain networks of mathematically gifted adolescents found that mathematically gifted brains exhibited cognitive neural features that are different from average adolescents and beneficial for task processing in the aspects of activation in task-related brain areas, information interaction between hemispheres, and network connection reorganization. In this paper, we adopted directed transfer function (DTF) and partial directed coherence (PDC) to analyze the effective connectivity of mathematically gifted adolescents from electroencephalography (EEG) data. The information flow patterns of the brain networks during the deductive reasoning task were analyzed and the group differences in the information flow of the fronto-parietal network were compared at the θ-band and γ-band. The empirical results demonstrated that the mathematically gifted brain exhibited more information transfer between distant nodes and more information flow from the prefrontal lobe to other brain regions in both DTF and PDC directed networks, ensuring the excellent task performance of mathematically gifted adolescents.
Pharmacological Thromboprophylaxis in People with Hemophilia Experiencing Orthopedic Surgery: What Does the Literature Say in 2023?

This narrative review of the literature, consisting of papers found in PubMed and The Cochrane Library published up to 31 July 2023, analyzed those that were deemed to be closely related to the title of this paper. It was encountered that the peril of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) in people with hemophilia (PWH) after orthopedic surgery is very small, such that pharmacological thromboprophylaxis is not necessary in most cases. The hemophilia literature states that the use of pharmacological thromboprophylaxis should only be performed in PWH undergoing major orthopedic surgery (total-knee arthroplasty, total-hip arthroplasty, ankle arthrodesis) who have additional venous thromboembolism (VTE) risk factors, such as old age, prior VTE, varicose veins, general anesthesia, cancer, factor V (Leiden) mutation, overweight, and treatment with the oral contraceptive pill (in females with von Willebrand’s illness). If we notice various risk factors for VTE in PWH who experience orthopedic surgery, theoretically, we should perform the identical type of pharmacological thromboprophylaxis advised for non-hemophilia patients: low-molecular weight heparins (LMWHs), such as enoxaparin (40 mg subcutaneous/24 h); or direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs), either thrombin inhibitors (dabigatran, 150 mg oral/12 h) or activated factor X (FXa) inhibitors (rivaroxaban, 20 mg oral/24 h; apixaban, 5 mg oral/24 h), or subcutaneous fondaparinux (2.5 mg/24 h subcutaneously). However, the review of the literature on hemophiliac patients has shown that only a few authors have used pharmacological prophylaxis with LMWH (subcutaneous enoxaparin) for a short period of time (10–14 days) in some patients who had risk factors for VTE. Only one group of authors used a low dose of DOAC in the dusk after the surgical procedure and the next day, specifically in individuals at elevated risk of VTE and elevated risk of bleeding after the surgical procedure.
Recent Advances in Optical Sensing for the Detection of Microbial Contaminants

Microbial contaminants are responsible for several infectious diseases, and they have been introduced as important potential food- and water-borne risk factors. They become a global burden due to their health and safety threats. In addition, their tendency to undergo mutations that result in antimicrobial resistance makes them difficult to treat. In this respect, rapid and reliable detection of microbial contaminants carries great significance, and this research area is explored as a rich subject within a dynamic state. Optical sensing serving as analytical devices enables simple usage, low-cost, rapid, and sensitive detection with the advantage of their miniaturization. From the point of view of microbial contaminants, on-site detection plays a crucial role, and portable, easy-applicable, and effective point-of-care (POC) devices offer high specificity and sensitivity. They serve as advanced on-site detection tools and are pioneers in next-generation sensing platforms. In this review, recent trends and advances in optical sensing to detect microbial contaminants were mainly discussed. The most innovative and popular optical sensing approaches were highlighted, and different optical sensing methodologies were explained by emphasizing their advantages and limitations. Consequently, the challenges and future perspectives were considered.
THE CAVE OF REFUGE, HAKUMA HORST, KALAPANA, PUNA DISTRICT, HAWAI'I

The Cave of Refuge is part of a once-larger lava tube system formed on the southern flank of the Kilauea volcano 10,000 to 1500 B.P. It was truncated by two NE-SW striking high-angle faults along which a block less than 200 m wide, the Hakuma Horst, in Kalapana (Puna District, Island of Hawaii) was lifted up. The cave system, 206 m long, consists of three tributary arms, the junction of which has largely collapsed. Into the breakdown a narrow entrance passage, 11 m long, has been built that allowed defense of the cave against intruders. Another, larger breakdown pit gives access to a small hall that probably has been used for dwelling. The system has six openings, one of which is in the fault face overlooking the Pacific. The system may soon be overrun by the ongoing Pu'u 'O'o-Kupaianaha eruption and should be studied archaeologically in detail before it is lost forever.
Listeria Occurrence in Conventional and Alternative Egg Production Systems

Listeria continues to be a persistent foodborne pathogen that is responsible for human cases of listeriosis when contaminated food products are consumed. Human subjects considered to be most susceptible include the elderly, immunocompromised, and pregnant women. Listeria is characterized as a saprophytic organism with the capability of responding and adapting to constantly changing environments because it possesses multiple stress response mechanisms to overcome varying temperatures, salt concentrations, and pH, among others. Primary foods and food products associated with listeriosis include dairy products and ready-to-eat meats such as turkey products. Historically, chicken eggs have not been identified as a primary source of Listeria, but the potential for contamination during egg production and processing does exist. Listeria species have been isolated from egg-processing plant equipment and are presumed to occur in egg-processing plant environments. Whether Listeria is consistently disseminated onto eggs beyond the egg-processing plant is a risk factor that remains to be determined. However, research has been conducted over the years to develop egg wash solutions that generate combinations of pH and other properties that would be considered inhibitory to Listeria. Even less is known regarding the association of Listeria with alternative egg production systems, but Listeria has been isolated from pasture flock broilers, so it is conceivable, given the nature of the outdoor environments, that layer birds under these conditions would also be exposed to Listeria and their eggs become contaminated. This review focuses on the possibility of Listeria occurring in conventional and alternative egg-laying production and processing systems.
Comparative Dynamic Pulmonary Function Tests Between Apparently Healthy Young Adult Offspring of Asthmatic and Non-asthmatic Parents: A Pilot Study

Background While the hereditary component of asthma has been established, its influence on early respiratory function changes in otherwise healthy offspring remains to be explored. Dynamic lung function tests assess airflow in and out of the lungs, providing valuable insights into respiratory health and detecting potential airflow limitations. This study aimed to compare the dynamic lung functions between offspring of asthmatic and non-asthmatic parents. Methodology A case-control design was employed comprising 30 cases (offspring of asthmatic parents) and 30 controls (offspring of non-asthmatic parents). Lung function parameters including forced vital capacity (FVC), forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1), FEV1/FVC ratio, forced expiratory flow between 25% and 75% of the FVC (FEF 25-75%), and maximum mid-expiratory flow at 50% of the FVC (Vmax 50%) were measured. Statistical analysis was conducted to compare the parameters between cases and controls using the unpaired t-test. Results The mean age of controls was 20.46 ± 2.82 years and the cases was 19.83 ± 1.41 years. The study revealed that cases exhibited lower FEV1 and Vmax 50% values compared to controls, indicating potential airflow limitations and altered mid-exhalation flow rates in the offspring of asthmatic parents. While trends were observed in FVC, FEV1/FVC ratio, and FEF 25-75%, these differences were not statistically significant. Conclusions The findings suggest a potential association between parental asthma and altered lung function parameters, specifically in FEV1 and Vmax 50%, among their offspring. These early respiratory function changes underscore the potential impact of hereditary factors on lung health. Healthcare professionals should take parental asthma into account when evaluating lung functions. This may lead to earlier detection and intervention. Further investigation is warranted to elucidate the underlying mechanisms and long-term implications of these findings.
Ultra-Thin Chips for High-Performance Semi-Transparent Flexible Electronics

Silicon-based ultra-thin chips (UTCs), with thickness below $50\ \mu\mathrm{m}$, are needed to meet high-performance (fast communication, computing etc.) requirements of several emerging applications such as robotics, internet of things etc. Below $10\ \mu\mathrm{m}$ thickness the UTCs are translucent and can offer new solutions for flexible opto-electronics applications. In this work, we present semi-transparent (44% to 67% transmittance under the visible spectrum) UTCs obtained from bulk silicon wafers, using a combination of mechanical lapping and chemical etching. The optimised thinning process leads to UTCs with extremely low thickness (as low as $\sim 2\mu\mathrm{m})$. To demonstrate the reliability of the proposed work, the optimised process has been adopted to realise UTCs with Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors. The systematic electrical characterisation shows negligible changes between devices before and after thinning the Si wafer substrate. This study can potentially open avenues for manufacturing high performance semi-transparent flexible electronics.
Multimodal Biological Knowledge Graph Completion via Triple Co-Attention Mechanism

Biological Knowledge Graphs (BKGs) can help to model complex biological systems in a structural way to support various tasks. Nevertheless, the incompleteness problem may limit the performance of existing BKGs, which still deserves new methods to reveal the missing relations. Though great efforts have been made to knowledge graph completion, existing methods are not easy to be adapted to the multimodal biological information such as molecular structures and textual descriptions. To this end, we propose a novel co-attention-based multimodal embedding framework, named CamE, for the multimodal BKG completion task. Specifically, we design a Triple Co-Attention (TCA) operator to capture and highlight the same semantic features among different modalities. Based on TCA, we further propose two components to handle multimodal fusion and multimodal entity-relation interaction, respectively. One is the multimodal TCA fusion module to achieve a multimodal joint representation for each entity in the BKG. It aims to project different modal information into a common space by capturing the same semantic features and overcoming the modality gap. The other is the relation-aware interactive TCA module to learn interactive representation by modelling the deep interaction between multimodal entities and relations. Extensive experiments on two real-world multimodal BKG datasets demonstrate that our method significantly outperforms several state-of-the-art baselines, including 10.3% and 16.2% improvement w.r. t MRR and Hits@1 metrics over its best competitors on public DRKG-MM dataset.