bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Association of HLA gene polymorphism with susceptibility, severity, and mortality of COVID‐19: A systematic review
Authors: Deb Paroma , Zannat Kaniz‐e‐ , Talukder Shiny , Bhuiyan Amirul Huda , Jilani Md. Shariful Alam , Saif‐Ur‐Rahman K. M.
Published: January 2022

HLA is crucial for appropriate immune responses in several viral infections, as well as in severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus‐2 (SARS CoV‐2). The unpredictable nature of Coronavirus Disease 19 (COVID‐19), observed in both inter‐individual and inter‐population level, raises the question, to what extent the HLA, as part of host genetic factors, contribute to disease susceptibility and prognosis. We aimed to identify significant HLAs, those were investigated till now, for their association with COVID‐19. Three databases were searched (PubMed, Cochrane library, and Web of Science) and articles published between January 2020 and May 2021 were included for in‐depth analysis. Two separate teams including four observers independently extracted the summary data, with discrepancies resolved by consensus. This study is registered with PROSPERO (CRD42021251670). Of 1278 studies identified, 36 articles were included consisting of 794,571 participants. Countries from the European region appeared in the highest number of studies and vice versa for countries from South East Asia. Among 117 significantly altered alleles, 85 (72.65%) were found to have a positive correlation with COVID‐19 and 33 (27.35%) alleles were observed having a negative correlation. HLA A*02 is the most investigated allele (n = 18) and showed contradictory results. Non‐classical HLA E was explored by only one study and it showed that E*01:01 is associated with severity. Both in silico and wet lab data were considered and contrasting results were found from two approaches. Although several HLAs depicted significant association, nothing conclusive could be drawn because of heterogeneity in study designs, HLA typing methods, and so forth. This systematic review shows that, though HLAs play role in COVID‐19 susceptibility, severity, and mortality, more uniformly designed, interrelated studies with the inclusion of global data, for use in evidence‐based medicine are needed.
The novel HLA‐B*51:328 allele identified by sequencing‐based typing in a Chinese individual
Authors: Liu Dong , Zheng Zhong‐zheng , An Lin , Du Ke‐ming , Zhang Ji
Published: January 2022

HLA‐B*51:328 differs from HLA‐B*51:01:01:01 in exon 2 at position 241 by a single non‐synonymous mutation.
Nursing knowledge of people with paresis of voluntary muscles: a living scoping review protocol
Authors: Neves Hugo , Parente Paulo , Gomes João , Queirós Carmen , Sousa Joana , Parola Vítor , Sousa Paula , Brito Alice , Paiva e Silva Antónia , Morais Ernesto Jorge , Cardoso Alexandrina , Cruz Ines , Machado Natália , Oliveira Fernando , Bastos Fernanda , Pereira Filipe , Prata Paula , Paiva e Silva Abel , Sequeira Carlos , Sousa Paulino
Published: January 2022

Objective:

This review aims to continuously map the nursing knowledge about people with paresis of voluntary muscles in any context of care.

Introduction:

Muscle paresis is a condition that significantly impacts quality of life. Nurses have a crucial role in managing this condition, particularly paresis of voluntary movement muscles. However, nursing knowledge about patients with paresis of voluntary muscles is dispersed, hampering the integration of evidence within the structure of information systems. Mapping how the nursing process components are identified is the first step in creating a Nursing Clinical Information Model for this condition, capable of integrating evidence into information systems.

Inclusion criteria:

This scoping review will consider studies focusing on the nursing process regarding people with paresis of voluntary muscles in all care contexts. The review will include quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods study designs, systematic reviews, clinical guidelines, dissertations, and theses.

Methods:

The review process will follow JBI's scoping review guidance, as well as the Cochrane Collaboration's guidance on living reviews. Screening of new literature will be performed regularly, with the review being updated according to new findings. The search strategy will map published and unpublished studies. The databases to be searched will include MEDLINE, CINAHL, Scopus, JBI Evidence Synthesis, and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials. Searches for unpublished studies will include OpenGrey and Repositorios Científicos de Acesso Aberto de Portugal. Studies published in English and Portuguese from 1975 will be considered for inclusion.

Registration:

Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/d7c9g/
Congruence of stock production and assessment areas? An historical perspective on Canada’s iconic Northern cod
Authors: Rose George A. , Rowe Sherrylynn
Published: January 2022

Fisheries management requires spatially congruent production and assessment areas. Canada’s Northern cod (Gadus morhua), initially considered a stock complex distributed from northern Labrador to the northern Grand Bank, had its northern boundary reduced to southern Labrador in the early 1970s. Spatial incongruence has resulted in spawning stock biomass (SSB) and recruitment (R) between historical and recent eras. To investigate temporal changes, four stanzas of SSB and R were derived from statistical Perron breaks. In stanza 1, the 1960s, spawning off northern Labrador coincided with higher SSB and R than in following stanzas from the 1970s onward. SSB–R relationships that include 1960s data do not represent potential production from a more southerly distributed stock. Loglinear models of R (density-dependent models did not improve fit) indicated SSB had greatest effect and, with indices of climate and south–north distribution, explained 86% of variance. Lack of density dependence suggests long-standing recruitment overfishing, making reference points problematic. SSB growth is suggested as an alternative management target. Rebuilding the Northern cod to historical abundance requires a full “portfolio” of spawning from northern Labrador to the Grand Bank (a remanaged 2+3KL stock). With a contracted range, lower production should be anticipated.
Neural Network Pruning by Recurrent Weights for Finance Market
Authors: Pei Songwen , Wu Yusheng , Guo Jin , Qiu Meikang
Published: January 2022

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and deep learning technology are applied in current financial market to rapidly promote the development of finance market and Internet economy. The continuous development of neural networks with more hidden layers improves the performance but increases the computational complexity. Generally, channel pruning methods are useful to compact neural networks. However, typical channel pruning methods would remove layers by mistake due to the static pruning ratio of manual setting, which could destroy the whole structure of neural networks. It is difficult to improve the ratio of compressing neural networks only by pruning channels while maintaining good network structures.

Therefore, we propose a novel neural Networks Pruning by Recurrent Weights (
NPRW
) that can repeatedly evaluate the significance of weights and adaptively adjust them to compress neural networks within acceptable loss of accuracy. The recurrent weights with low sensitivity are compulsorily set to zero by evaluating the magnitude of weights, and pruned network only uses a few significant weights. Then, we add the regularization to the scaling factors on neural networks, in which recurrent weights with high sensitivity can be dynamically updated and weights of low sensitivity stay at zero invariably. By this way, the significance of channels can be quantitatively evaluated by recurrent weights. It has been verified with typical neural networks of LeNet, VGGNet, and ResNet on multiple benchmark datasets involving stock index futures, digital recognition, and image classification. The pruned LeNet-5 achieves the 58.9% reduction amount of parameters with 0.29% loss of total accuracy for Shanghai and Shenzhen 300 stock index futures. As for the CIFAR-10, the pruned VGG-19 reduces more than 50% FLOPs, and the decrease of network accuracy is less than 0.5%. In addition, the pruned ResNet-164 tested on the SVHN reduces more than 58% FLOPs with relative improvement on accuracy by 0.11%.
WarVictimSampo 1914–1922: A National War Memorial on the Semantic Web for Digital Humanities Research and Applications
Authors: Rantala Heikki , Jokipii Ilkka , Ikkala Esko , Hyvönen Eero
Published: January 2022

This article presents the semantic portal and Linked Open Data service
WarVictimSampo
1914–1922 about the war victims, battles, and prisoner camps in the Finnish Civil and other wars in 1914–1922. The system is based on a database of the National Archives of Finland and additional related data created, compiled, and linked during the project. The system contains detailed information about some 40,000 deaths extracted from several data sources and data about over 1,000 battles of the Civil War. A key novelty of
WarVictimSampo
1914–1922 is the integration of ready-to-use Digital Humanities visualizations and data analysis tooling with semantic faceted search and data exploration, which allows, e.g., studying data about wider prosopographical groups in addition to individual war victims. The article focuses on demonstrating how the tools of the portal, as well as the underlying SPARQL endpoint openly available on the Web, can be used to explore and analyze war history in flexible and visual ways.
WarVictimSampo
1914–1922 is a new member in the series of “Sampo” model-based semantic portals. The portal is in use and has had 23,000 users, including both war historians and the general public seeking information about their deceased relatives.
Exact and Practical Pattern Matching for Quantum Circuit Optimization
Authors: Iten Raban , Moyard Romain , Metger Tony , Sutter David , Woerner Stefan
Published: January 2022

Quantum computations are typically performed as a sequence of basic operations, called quantum gates. Different gate sequences, called quantum circuits, can implement the same overall quantum computation. Since every additional quantum gate takes time and introduces noise into the system, it is important to find the smallest possible quantum circuit that implements a given computation, especially for near-term quantum devices that can execute only a limited number of quantum gates before noise renders the computation useless. An important building block for many quantum circuit optimization techniques is pattern matching: given a large and small quantum circuit, we would like to find all maximal matches of the small circuit, called a
pattern
, in the large circuit, considering pairwise commutation of quantum gates. In this work, we present the first classical algorithm for pattern matching that provably finds all maximal matches and is efficient enough to be practical for circuit sizes typical for near-term devices. We demonstrate numerically

1

that combining our algorithm with known pattern-matching-based circuit optimization techniques reduces the gate count of a random quantum circuit by ∼ 30% and can further improve practically relevant quantum circuits that were already optimized with state-of-the-art techniques.
GREENHOME: A Household Energy Consumption and CO
2
Footprint Metering Environment
Authors: Vargas-Solar Genoveva , Khalil Maysaa , Espinosa-Oviedo Javier A. , Zechinelli-Martini José-Luis
Published: January 2022

This article presents the GREENHOME environment, a toolkit providing several data analytical tools for metering household energy consumption and CO
2
footprint under different perspectives. GREENHOME enables a multi-perspective analysis of household energy consumption and CO
2
footprint using and combining several variables through various statistics and data mining algorithms. To test GREENHOME, the article reports on experiments conducted for modelling and forecasting energy consumption and CO
2
footprint in the context of the Triple-A European project.
Verification of Strain-Induced Fast Ionic Conduction in Thin-Film Electrolyte Via Experimental and Computational Study
Authors: Ahn Junsung , Ji Ho Il , Kim Hyoungchul , Son Ji-Won , Jang Ho Won , Lee Jong-Ho
Published: January 2022

Epitaxial strain engineering in nanostructured oxides has attracted great attention to various energy storage and conversion devices requiring fast ionic conduction, such as solid-oxide fuel cells (SOFCs), catalytic membranes, and electrochemical sensors. Recently, remarkable enhancement of ionic conductivity has been achieved by the epitaxial strain in ultra-thin epitaxial and multi-layered films.1-3 However, the strain engineering still has some lack of understanding of how much enhancement can be achieved by strain, and how to maximize the strain in nanostructured oxides. Herein, for the reliable and effective strain engineering for fast ionic conduction, strain effect on oxygen ion conductivity of thin films (Gd0.2Ce0.8O1.9-δ (100) : GDC) was investigated through both experimental study and density functional theory (DFT) calculations.

We measured the oxygen ion conductivity of GDC films grown in island growth mode on Nb-doped SrTiO3 (STO) substrate. According to the conductivity measurement via electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), the activation energy for oxygen ion migration in out-of-plane direction was reduced with increase of film thickness. Furthermore, through careful strain analysis using high-resolution X-ray diffraction (HR-XRD) and strain mapping in transmission electron microscopy (TEM), the intrinsic tensile strain along column boundaries (CB) was found to be more predominant than the epitaxial strain formed at the film-substrate interface, thereby more strong tensile strain was observed in a thicker film having higher CB density. This general tendency of the activation energy change with respect to tensile strain was also verified by atomic-scale simulation in a highly doped CeO2 structure. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first experimental and theoretical verification to show the critical role of intrinsic strain on fast ion conduction in thin film electrolyte. From this presentation, you will get a great inspiration to the strain-induced fast ionic conduction in oxide thin films to improve the availability of various energy devices.

References

S. Schweiger, M. Kubicek, F. Messerschmitt, C. Murer, and J. L. M. Rupp, ACS Nano
8, 5032 (2014).

S. Sanna, V. Esposito, J. W. Andreasen, J. Hjelm, W. Zhang, T. Kasama, S. B. Simonsen, M. Christensen, S. Linderoth, and N. Pryds, Nat. Mater.
14, 500 (2015)

A. Fluri, D. Pergolesi, V. Roddatis, A. Wokaun, and T. Lippert, Nat. Commun.
7, 10692 (2016)
In Situ Measurement of Strain and Stress Evolution in Lithium Iron Phosphate Electrodes during Electrochemical Cycling
Authors: Çapraz Ömer Özgür , Lundberg Kimberly E. , White Scott R. , Gewirth Andrew A , Sottos Nancy R.
Published: January 2022

Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries have been widely commercialized in portable electronics. However, adoption of lithium-ion batteries in more demanding applications such as electric vehicles and renewable energy storage has been hindered by capacity loss and poor performance. Although there has been enormous progress on the advancement of high capacity anode materials such as silicon, the current stage of the cathode performance is a limiting factor for the development of higher performance Li-ion batteries. Lithium iron phosphate, LiFePO4, (LFP) is a promising candidate material because it is inexpensive, environmentally friendly and has a high theoretical capacity (170 mAh g-1). Unfortunately, LFP suffers from mechanical degredations and surface instabilities that lead to capacity fade. In this work, we investigate in situ stress and strain generation in LFP composite electrodes during battery charging – discharging. Repeated lithiation and delithiation cause continuous stress and strain evolution in the electrode due to lithium intercalation and the interaction between electrode and electrolyte species. Electrodes are constrained on substrate for stress measurements, whereas free-standing electrodes are fabricated for strain measurements. Digital image correlation (DIC) is utilized to measure in situ strain generation, whereas beam curvature technique is employed to monitor in situ stress evolution in the electrode. Electrodes are cycled between 2.6 to 4.4 V at different scan rates in various electrolytes. Strain and stress derivatives are calculated with respect to applied potential. The derivatives provide remarkable information about the evolution of surface stress and structural changes in the electrode due to phase transformations. Electrochemical stiffness is calculated by combining stress and strain. Changes in stiffness during electrochemical cycling reveal underlying mechanisms governing stress and strain evolution in the LFP electrode.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported as part of the Center for Electrochemical Energy Science (CEES), an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences.”
Modeling the Mechano-Chemical Coupling in a Compressed PEMFC MEA with Metallic Bipolar Plates
Authors: Zhang Heng , Xiao Liusheng , Sui Pang-Chieh , Djilali Ned
Published: January 2022

Metallic bipolar plates are desirable for the automotive applications of PEMFCs because they offer excellent mechanical properties over the graphite-based bipolar plates. The flow channel configuration using metallic bipolar plates also enhances a stack’s power density. Modeling and simulation of the mechanical behavior of metallic bipolar plates under compression and the impact of mechanical stress-strain on the transport/electrochemical reactions in the membrane electrode assembly (MEA) are reported in this paper. A two-dimensional MEA model with metallic bipolar plates is developed. A two-stage approach with one-way coupling is employed to study the effects of mechanical stress-strain on transport/electrochemistry, namely, solid mechanics of the model is first solved, followed by the solution of coupled heat and mass transport over the deformed geometry obtained from the solid mechanics solution. The transport equations solved include the conservation of mass, species/charged species, and energy. Transport properties such as the porosity, permeability and contact resistance of the MEA components are either obtained from published works or expressed as functions of strain in the model, which are derived from numerical reconstruction of the materials. Furthermore, membrane degradation reactions are modeled as a function of stress to gain insight to the mechano-chemical coupling in the MEA. The comprehensive model was solved using Multiphysics COMSOL software v.5.3.

Figure 1 shows the model with typical distributions of von Mises stress over the computational domain (note different scales of stress in the bipolar plates and the MEA), which are obtained by solving solid mechanics of the model. The stress and strain information of the solid mechanics solution as well as the deformed geometry are subsequently passed to the coupled heat and mass transport solution procedure to compute the distributions of species, potentials, and temperature. The present model establishes a platform to numerically investigate the interplay between mechanical responses and transport/electrochemistry in the MEA.

Figure 1
GCN-ETA: High-Efficiency Encrypted Malicious Traffic Detection
Authors: Zheng Juan , Zeng Zhiyong , Feng Tao
Published: January 2022

Encrypted network traffic is the principal foundation of secure network communication, and it can help ensure the privacy and integrity of confidential information. However, it hides the characteristics of the data, increases the difficulty of detecting malicious traffic, and protects such malicious behavior. Therefore, encryption alone cannot fundamentally guarantee information security. It is also necessary to monitor traffic to detect malicious actions. At present, the more commonly used traffic classification methods are the method based on statistical features and the method based on graphs. However, these two methods are not always reliable when they are applied to the problem of encrypted malicious traffic detection due to their limitations. The former only focuses on the internal information of the network flow itself and ignores the external connections between the network flows. The latter is just the opposite. This paper proposes an encrypted malicious traffic detection method based on a graph convolutional network (GCN) called GCN-ETA, which considers the statistical features (internal information) of network flows and the structural information (external connections) between them. GCN-ETA consists of two parts: a feature extractor that uses an improved GCN and a classifier that uses a decision tree. Improving on the traditional GCN, the effect and speed of encrypted malicious traffic detection can be effectively improved and the deployment of the detection model in the real environment is increased, which provides a reference for the application of GCN in similar scenarios. This method has achieved excellent performance in experiments using real-world encrypted network traffic data for malicious traffic detection, with the accuracy, AUC, and F1-score exceeding 98% and more than 1,300 flows detected per second.
Joint Radar-Communication Relying on NLFM-MSK Design
Authors: Ma Hao , Wang Jun , Sun Xin , Hou TianWei , Jin WenXin
Published: January 2022

The existing joint radar-communication (JRC) based on linear frequency modulation (LFM) is imperfect because of high autocorrelation sidelobe and poor nearby target detection performance. This paper proposes a JRC signal based on the non-LFM (NLFM) wave by using minimum shift keying (MSK). Then, this paper analyzes the performance of ambiguity function (AF) characteristics, detection probability, time-frequency characteristics, and communication rate for the proposed JRC signal. It is concluded that the proposed JRC signal has both excellent radar and communication characteristics. Under the condition of low data volume, the simulation results illustrate that (i) compared with the existing LFM-MSK signal, our JRC signal’s sidelobe level of the time AF is significantly lower; the range resolution is improved significantly; (ii) the proposed JRC signal has no loss on velocity resolution and detection probability; and (iii) the proposed JRC signal has excellent time-frequency characteristics.
Apresentação
Authors: Macedo Tânia Celestino de
Published: January 2022

Este número da Revista África encerra um ciclo da publicação editada pelo Centro de Estudos Africanos da Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas da Universidade de São Paulo desde 1978.
On how not to write about being colonized
Authors: Depelchin Jacques
Published: January 2022

The objective of this essay is to assess the impact of Jan Vansina’s and Cheikh Anta Diop’s work on how African history
has been constructed since 1960. This is only the beginning of a longer project related to framing “history” as such through “African history”.
The intellectual framework (or starting point) of the essay is provided by Fanon’s call to arms in his conclusion to The Wretched of The Earth.
His call to arms was not violence, for the sake of violence. It was a call for “stopping to pay tribute to Europe”.
In the name of humanity, he called for moving away from imitation. Fanon’s understanding of Africa did not come from a study and/or understanding of African psychiatry.
African history, as seen by Jan Vansina and his students, has been constructed in the manner of “paying tribute to Europe”, as if there was no other way to understand
African history but through the intellectual and theoretical lenses borrowed from European intellectual history. This can be seen by looking at the work of two major
figures: Jan Vansina , on the one hand, and, on the other, Cheikh Anta Diop. The title of this essay has been inspired by the title of Vansina’s latest book:
Being Colonized (2010) that provides clues to how he understood colonization through his own research among the Bakuba. Besides using research data
that had been collected in the 1950s (during Belgian colonial rule), Vansina assumes that his familiarity with the Bakuba puts him in a privileged position
to understand colonization from their perspective. This is not different from the perspective of the missionaries and/or goodhearted Europeans who, as
Fanon pointed out, speaks about humanity wile slaughtering it wherever they met it.
Batavian Pero and Germanic *perō ‘pear’
Authors: Mees Bernard
Published: January 2022

The Batavian name Pero is best understood as a derivative of Germanic *perō ‘pear’. Names that also feature the root per- are recorded from other parts of the Roman Empire in connection with Germanic speakers and seem to reflect the influence of pear growing in the Roman provinces. This influence was so great that the name of the p-rune also appears to have been derived from *perō ‘pear’. The early Germanic names Pero, Uxperus and Gamuxperus seem to represent occupation names, and are consistent with archaeobotanical evidence for the development of pear cultivation in the Germanic-speaking provinces of the Empire.
Taxonomic review of the genus Hydria Hübner, 1822 (Lepidoptera, Geometridae, Larentiinae) in the Middle East, with description of three new species and one new subspecies
Authors: STADIE DIRK , FIEBIG RALF , RAJAEI HOSSEIN
Published: January 2022

The species of the genus Hydria in the Middle East are revised. The revision is based on morphological examination and genetic data (DNA-barcode). Additionally, information on the habitat preference, pre-imaginal stages and biology of the species are given as much as available. Three species (H. gernoti sp. n., H. schachti sp. n., H. loebeli sp. n.) and one subspecies (Hydria cervinalis taurica ssp. n.) are described as new to science. The taxonomic status of Hydria hyrcana (Staudinger, 1871) as bona species could be confirmed. The East African species, Hydria relicta (Herbulot. 1953) comb. n., is transferred from genus Rheumaptera to Hydria. Wing pattern and genitalia structures of all discussed species are illustrated.
New species and records of Tullbergiidae (Collembola, Poduromorpha) from Xinjiang province, Northwest China
Authors: GAO YAN , BU YUN
Published: January 2022

The Tullbergiidae of Xinjiang Province, Northwest China were studied from this region for the first time. Six species belonging to four genera are identified from 260 specimens. A new species Multivesicula zhengi sp. nov. is described and illustrated, two new Chinese records Wankeliella intermedia Potapov & Stebaeva, 1997 and Mesaphorura critica Ellis, 1976 are redescribed and photographed based on new materials. In addition, Mesaphorura pacifica Rusek, 1976, Mesaphorura yosii (Rusek, 1967) and Paratullbergia qilianensis Bu & Gao, 2019 are also recorded in Xinjiang for the first time. Multivesicula zhengi sp. nov. is characterized by the pseudocelli formula as 11/122/11111, seta px on Abd. IV is present, and sensillum p3 on Abd. V is weakly differentiated. The new species can be distinguished from all congeners by the body chaetotaxy and the pseudocellus formula.
Book review: Deana Heath, Colonial Terror: Torture and State Violence in Colonial India
Authors: Maurya Prashant
Published: January 2022

Deana Heath, Colonial Terror: Torture and State Violence in Colonial India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), xi + 223 pp.
Sex-specific association of sleep duration with subclinical indicators of metabolic diseases among asymptomatic adults
Authors: Huang Lili , Long Zichong , Xu Gang , Chen Yiting , Li Rong , Wang Yanlin , Li Shenghui
Published: January 2022

Background

Accumulating evidence suggests sleep duration may be involved in metabolic regulation. However, studies regarding the association with the early stage of the metabolic disease are limited, and the findings were inconsistent.

Methods

A study among 4922 asymptomatic adults was conducted based on a Chinese national survey in 2009. The early stage of metabolic diseases was evaluated using three proxies: triglyceride to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol ratio (TG/HDL-C), the product of triglyceride and fasting glucose (TyG), and lipid accumulation product (LAP). Multivariable linear and logistic regression models were used to explore the associations of sleep duration with the three indicators.

Results

The linear regression models revealed that, among females, sleep duration <7 h per day, compared with 7-9 h, was associated with an increased value of LAP and TyG by 25.232% (95%CI: 10.738%, 41.623%) and 0.104 (95%CI: 0.024, 0.185), respectively, in the crude model. The effects were attenuated but remained significant for LAP (11.405%; 95%CI: 1.613%, 22.262%). Similarly, the logistic regression models further found that sleep duration <7 h per day could increase the risk of elevated LAP (OR: 1.725, 95CI%:1.042, 2.856) after adjusting for multiple covariates. By contrast, no associations were found among males.

Conclusions

Short sleep duration was associated with subclinical indicators of metabolic diseases, and females were more susceptible to the association.
Growth factors and chromogranin A in intra-abdominal adhesions of children
Authors: Pilmane Māra , Zariņa Kaiva Zīle , Ābola Zane
Published: January 2022

Pathogenesis of adhesions is still unclear and does not give a clear response whether the morphopathogenetic mechanisms of congenital and acquired adhesions in children are different or not. Thus, we searched for the appearance and distribution of growth factors, their receptors and chromogranins in adhesions of children in the ontogenetic aspect. Tissues were obtained from 17 children of group 1 (1 day to 3 years old) and 10 children of group 2 (10 to 16 years old). Visibly intact peritoneum was obtained from teenagers of group 2 and used as control tissue. Routine staining and immunohistochemistry for insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1), insulin-like growth factor 1 receptor (IGF IR), transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β), hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), chromogranin A (CgA) was applied. Statistical analysis included semi-quantitative evaluation of immunopositive structures, Wilcoxon signed-rank test and Wilcoxon rank sum test for comparison of data. The results showed patchy fibrosis with round-shaped fibroblasts, neoangiogenesis and inflammation. Adhesions in group 1 demonstrated various appearance of IGF, IGF IR, few to moderate number of TGF-β-, HGF- and moderate number of CgA-containing cells. In both groups, fibroblasts predominated among actively expressing cells. Group 2 showed moderate to numerous IGFI and HGF positive cells, while IGF IR- and TGF-β-containing cells were numerous. Intact peritoneum showed variable TGF-β, CgA, and few to moderate HGF, IGFI, IGF IR cells. In conclusion, an increase in IGFI, IGF IR, TGF-β and HGF characterises the acquired (“aged”) adhesions. Fibroblasts are most active in adhesion formation with the increase of cellular activity during the aging of children and adhesions. Fibroblasts with changes in shape stimulate further development of disease via intensive CgA expression.
Antibacterial, Sperm Immobilization and Spermicidal Activities of Bacteriocins Produced by Vaginal Lactobacilli
Authors:   Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, 50200 Thailand, Sookkhee Siriwoot , Manonuek Sarawuth ,   Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, 50200 Thailand, Apichartpiyakul Chatchawann ,   Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, 50200 Thailand, Sakonwasun Choompone ,   Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, 50200 Thailand
Published: January 2022

Abstract Lactobacillus bacteriocin is an interesting compound playing a dual spermicidal/bacteriocidal role so that this compound can be developed as an agent that can be able to replace the unsafety chemical, nonoxynol-9. The present study aimed to investigate the antibacterial, sperm immobilization, and spermicidal activities of bacteriocins that were produced from vaginal lactobacilli. Nine of 932 cell-free supernatants exhibited potent antibacterial activities against the standard bacterial strains and the pathogenic Niesseria gonorrhoeae. Ion exchange-purified bacteriocins B84/7 F2 demonstrated the lowest minimum inhibitory concentration and the highest bacteriocin activity against the tested pathogens. The isolate B84/7 was then identified as Lactobacillus crispatus. The rapid killing activity was exerted within 15 minutes after being exposed to the tested bacteria, and also significantly inhibited the exponential growth of the tested pathogen. Among 48 semen of volunteers, the median time of sperm immobilization of ion-exchange purified B84/7 F2 bacteriocin (18.70 mg/mL) was 30.42 seconds. Within 60 seconds, spermicidal activities of the partial fractionated and ion-exchange purified B84/7 F2 at the undiluted concentration were 83.67 and 80.75%, respectively. Its activity will significantly decline at pH > 8.0 or after being treated with alkaline and proteolytic enzymes. Two peptide bands of this bacteriocin were 7.08, and 8.81 kDa after being detected on a tricine SDS-PAGE gel. In-depth characteristics of this bacteriocin should be further investigated regarding the mode of action and purification. These findings can be applied to develop as the protecting agent of sexually transmitted infections especially gonorrhea, and unwanted pregnancy. Keywords: Antibacterial activity, Bacteriocins, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Sperm immobilization, Spermicidal activity, Vaginal lactobacilli
Mobile Arts for Peace (MAP) at Home: Digital art-based mental health provision in response to COVID-19
Authors: Breed Ananda , Uwihoreye Chaste , Ndushabandi Eric , Elliott Matthew , Pells Kirrily
Published: January 2022

This article will provide an example of how the ‘Mobile Arts for Peace (MAP): Online psychosocial support through the arts in Rwanda’ project used digital art-based workshops to facilitate social and community cohesion and mental health provision. During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an increased need for psychosocial support due to the economic and social pressures of lockdown and yet many individuals had less access to mental health provision. While many mental health services around the world went online, there was still a gap between the Global South and Global North in terms of digital literacy, access to smart phones and computers, and the variation between psychosocial support through individual vs. collective healing alongside Indigenous and traditional vs. western psychosocial approaches. Implications for the use of art-based digital methods as a tool for mental health provision during and after the wake of the pandemic are explored.
Inventing the Pandemic Lifestyles: Bicycle Tourism during COVID-19
Authors: Sujibto B. J. , Arba'atun Mira
Published: January 2022

The COVID-19 outbreak has harshly accelerated existing future of social life and changed how people approach and act toward it, including in the aspect of sport and tourism, that can be claimed to have created the pandemic's new social orders. This article, in essence, examines the cycling meanings and experiences of Yogyakarta’s cyclists in both individual and communal contexts during the pandemic. Having been categorized as an active sport which supports social and physical distance campaigns, the shift of meaning of cycle tourism both to increase immune system and to enjoy sightseeing at once is applied to critically explain the way people understand the cycling itself. In line with the motivational aspects, the meaning of cycling has shown fascinating facts shifted from regular sport to be more valuable due to disruptions during the pandemic. By applying qualitative descriptive methods, this research conducted observations and interviews with cyclists and cycling communities. This article shows two findings. First, the shift of meaning and awareness of cycling is considered as a pandemic sport because of a compatibility with its health protocols and as a sustainable tourism sector; and second, the emergence of cycle tourism as a pandemic lifestyle shaped constantly with social narratives of a pandemic. The psychological aspects have also become additional notes explained by this article.
The Integration of Sister Village Functions in Mount Merapi Disaster Management during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Authors: Widati Widati , Sakina Aulia Widya , Adiwirahayu Anastasia
Published: January 2022

This article examines the integration of the sister village program in the emergency response to the Mount Merapi disaster during the COVID-19 pandemic using the analysis of the AGIL functions- Adaptation (A), Goal attainment (G), Integration (I), and Latency (L). This study uses a descriptive narrative method. Primary and secondary data were collected through interviews, observations, documentation and FGDs in order to support and strengthen the results. The study findings show that according to the functionalism perspective, the condition of Nggargomulyo Village and Tamanagung Village people which are bound by the MoU sister village still has not shown harmonization. The community involvement of Tamanagung Village actively in the management of the evacuation is relatively low. Whereas community involvement in the sister village program is the basic principle of achieving the goals of this village fraternity cooperation. This condition resulted in the people of Ngargomulyo Village finding its difficult to adapt to the new refugee situation during the COVID-19 pandemic. This affects the program integration process and the functioning of the system, both internally and externally, because the program has not yet been institutionalized within the community. For this reason, it is necessary to refresh the role and function of the sister village as the main instrument in overseeing the disaster management system in Magelang Regency related to being integrative and sustainable.
The Role of Job Engagement in Achieving Organizational Excellence: A Field Study at the Iraqi Residency Affairs Directorate
Authors: AL-Zobaidy Abdul Mahdi Kadhim Jasim , Al-Joufi Dr. Alyaa Saeed Abbas
Published: January 2022

The current research aims to define the role of job engagement in achieving organizational excellence, as the job engagement variable, depending on the (Rich, 2010) model, included the dimensions (cognitive engagement, emotional engagement, physical engagement), while organizational excellence the researcher relied on the model (Baldrige, 2011- 2012) dimensions (organization leadership, strategic planning, customer focus, information and method of analysis, human resources, operations management, business results),These variables have been studied in the Directorate of Residency Affairs, which is one of the specialized directorates in the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, and the research was relied on the questionnaire as a main tool for measurement and data collection, relying on the method of random sample in its distribution, as it included (45) questions, as well as the method of the personal interview. To support the results of the questionnaire and achieve the greatest degree of realism in data collection, the sample included (206) individuals out of a total of (400) and were selected according to the sample calculation formula (Stephen Thompson) and were distributed directly to the respondents as (190) were retrieved and the number of the questionnaires were valid for analysis. Statistical (180) questionnaires, and in order to analyze the research data, the researcher used ready-made statistical programs (SPSS v.25 AMOS v.25), and among the most important statistical methods used in the analysis are "Alpha Cronbach scale, Spearman-Brown correlation coefficient, confirmatory factor analysis, the mean." Arithmetic, standard deviation, coefficient of variation, relative importance, Pearson correlation coefficient, simple regression coefficient, multiple linear regression. The research reached a number of results and recommendations, including that the Iraqi Residency Affairs Directorate showed interest in organizational excellence, so it directed job engagement to enhance it well in addition to directing emotional absorption, cognitive engagement and physical engagement directly to improve the required organizational excellence, as these results were in conformity with the hypotheses, Where there is a statistically significant relationship between job engagement and organizational excellence.
Building Flexible Drone Networks based on SDN
Authors: Wafi Ahmed Z. , Al-Salih Ahmed M. , Abdullah Alharith A.
Published: January 2022

In the bygone years, Drone or also known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technology has developed very quickly and has been vastly used in martial operations, medicinal rescue, ecological monitoring, and other fields. the programmability of Drone and self-leading are being the key point of future transportation and safety. Simultaneously, Software-Defined Networks (SDN) the upcoming widespread, trustworthy, and flexible networking for the future. The programmability and center control system of the SDN network It the most important features. that resource management and power-consuming is the main problem faced in the Drone environment. In this paper, we design a Drones network based on Software Defined Network (SDN) to solve these problems. moreover, simulation the proposed network in OMNET++ simulation tool. The proposed system was evaluated based on Throughput, Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), Data Drop Rate, End to End Delay Time, Packet Losses, and Drone Power Consumption. The results show enhancement in network performance through the results obtained.
Detection of Depression among Social Media Users with Machine Learning
Authors: M Senthil Raja , L Arun Raj , A Arun
Published: January 2022

Mental illnesses are a significant and growing public health concern. They have the potential to tremendously affect a person’s life. Depression, in particular, is one of the major reasons for suicide. In recent times, the popularity of social media websites has burgeoned as they are platforms that facilitate discussion and free-flowing conversation about a plethora of topics. Information and dialogue about subjects like mental health, which are still considered as a taboo in various cultures, are becoming more and more accessible. The objective of this paper is to review and comprehensively compare various previously employed Natural Language Processing techniques for the purpose of classification of social media text posts as those written by depressed individuals. Furthermore, pros, cons, and evaluation metrics of these techniques, along with the challenges faced and future directions in this area of research are also summarized.
Design of Modified Adaptive PID Controller for Lower Limb Rehabilitation Robot based on Grey Wolf Optimization Algorithm
Authors: Sabah Noor , Hameed Ekhlas , AL-Huseiny Muayed S
Published: January 2022

The traditional Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller is a feedback control loop that is commonly used in industrial control systems with fixed parameters, whereas the adaptive PID (APID) controller is based on the analysis of traditional PID controllers. It utilizes an online parameter adjustment method built on the state of the system resulting in better system adaptability. In this paper, the APID controller that is suggested by (Ebel, 2011) is used firstly to control a 2-degree of freedom (DOF) lower limb rehabilitation robot. The structure of this controller is then modified to perform a Modified Adaptive PID (MAPID) control in order to improve the efficiency of APID controller and hence improve the performance of the rehabilitation robot. The parameters of APID and the suggested MAPID controllers are optimized by using Grey Wolf Optimization (GWO) algorithm. Linear and non-linear desired trajectories are used to test the performance of the controlled rehabilitation robot. Simulation results show that the obtained performance of the rehabilitation robot is more efficient with the MAPID than with the APID having no overshoot and very small steady state error. The controller has settling time of (0.463) and (0.851) seconds, and rise time of (0.485) and (0.752) seconds respectively for link1 and link2.
Administrative Transparency and its Impact on Reducing Levels of Job Alienation: An Analytical Research of the Opinions of a Sample of Workers in Al-Muthanna Governmental Cement Plant
Authors: Ali Adnan Rheem Nour , Abdul-Hassan Muthana Tawfeeq , Matrood Sabeeh Nadhim
Published: January 2022

The research aims at testing the relationship between administrative transparency as an independent variable in the level of organizational alienation of the employees of the studied organization as a dependent variable through the study and analysis of the opinions of a sample of workers in the Muthanna Cement Plant. For the purpose of identifying statistical differences between both research variables and reaching a set of conclusions and drafting recommendations, a questionnaire was drafted that included 33 items and collected data from 245 respondents from the various departments representing the study community and then collecting and analyzing the data and test the hypotheses using SPSS software through the use of descriptive statistic methods (percentages, arithmetic means, variance, materiality, simple correlation coefficient, simple linear regression). The research found that the existence of a relationship, an association and an influence with high p-values of administrative transparency in reducing the levels of organizational alienation and creating a climate of work through publicity in procedures and reasons for making decisions and issuing clear instructions will contribute in reducing the culture of confidentiality and monopoly of information. The most important thing recommended by the research is the need for senior management to identify the most important practical concepts that are needed to be clarified for working individuals in order to reduce administrative routine and clarify decisions and instructions and discuss them with all administrative levels in the organization and that could possibly contribute in enhancing the levels of employees’ job satisfaction in a way that can directly affect to reduce their levels of organizational alienation.
Fingerprint Identification System Using Half Smoothing Filters
Authors: Abdulkader Zaid A.
Published: January 2022

Fingerprints have been significantly utilized for enormous security systems for their high-level accuracy. They even have been used effectively in smartphone devices for payment in addition to the security purpose. In this paper we propose a new finger print recognition method based on ridge and valley features in finger print images. These features extracted by rotating Gaussian semi _filters. The novelty of this finger print approach based on the mixing of directional filters and differences of Gaussian filter ideas. We obtain a new ridge/valley detector enabling very precise detection of ridge/valley points. This method conducted on different fingerprints database images, the proposed method achieves recognition accuracy rate of more than 99% for three fingerprint image datasets ATVS, LivDet2009, and LivDet2011.