bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Association between pesticide exposure and obesity: A cross-sectional study of 20,295 farmers in Thailand
Authors: Noppakun Kajohnsak , Juntarawijit Chudchawal
Published: May 2022

Background: Obesity is a serious condition because it is associated with other chronic diseases which affect the quality of life. In addition to problems associated with diet and exercise, recent research has found that pesticide exposure might be another important risk factor. The objective of this study was to determine the association between pesticide exposure and obesity among farmers in Nakhon Sawan and Phitsanulok province, Thailand. 

Methods: This study was a population-based cross-sectional study. Data on pesticide use and obesity prevalence from 20,295 farmers aged 20 years and older were collected using an in-person interview questionnaire. The association was analysed using multivariable logistic regression, adjusted for its potential confounding factors. 

Results: Obesity was found to be associated with pesticide use in the past. The risk of obesity was significantly predicted by types of pesticides, including insecticides (OR = 2.10, 95% CI 1.00-4.38), herbicides (OR = 4.56, 95% CI 1.11-18.62), fungicides (OR = 2.12, 95% CI 1.34-3.36), rodenticides (OR = 2.55, 95% CI 1.61-4.05), and molluscicides (OR = 3.40, 95% CI 2.15-5.40). Among 35 surveyed individual pesticides, 22 were significantly associated with higher obesity prevalence (OR = 1.78, 95% CI 1.10-2.88 to OR = 8.30, 95% CI 2.54-27.19), including herbicide butachlor, 15 insecticides (two carbamate insecticides, five organochlorine insecticides, and eight organophosphate insecticides), and six fungicides. 

Conclusion: This study found obesity in farmers in Nakhon Sawan and Phitsanulok province, Thailand, to be associated with the long-term use of several types of pesticides. The issue should receive more public attention, and pesticide use should be strictly controlled.
Modelling sentiments based on objectivity and subjectivity with self-attention mechanisms
Authors: Ng Hu , Chia Glenn Jun Weng , Yap Timothy Tzen Vun , Goh Vik Tor
Published: May 2022

Background: The proliferation of digital commerce has allowed merchants to reach out to a wider customer base, prompting a study of customer reviews to gauge service and product quality through sentiment analysis. Sentiment analysis can be enhanced through subjectivity and objectivity classification with attention mechanisms.

Methods: This research includes input corpora of contrasting levels of subjectivity and objectivity from different databases to perform sentiment analysis on user reviews, incorporating attention mechanisms at the aspect level. Three large corpora are chosen as the subjectivity and objectivity datasets, the Shopee user review dataset (ShopeeRD) for subjectivity, together with the Wikipedia English dataset (Wiki-en) and Internet Movie Database (IMDb) for objectivity. Word embeddings are created using Word2Vec with Skip-Gram. Then, a bidirectional LSTM with an attention layer (LSTM-ATT) imposed on word vectors. The performance of the model is evaluated and benchmarked against classification models of Logistics Regression (LR) and Linear SVC (L-SVC). Three models are trained with subjectivity (70% of ShopeeRD) and the objectivity (Wiki-en) embeddings, with ten-fold cross-validation. Next, the three models are evaluated against two datasets (IMDb and 20% of ShopeeRD). The experiments are based on benchmark comparisons, embedding comparison and model comparison with 70-10-20 train-validation-test splits. Data augmentation using AUG-BERT is performed and selected models incorporating AUG-BERT, are compared.

Results: L-SVC scored the highest accuracy with 56.9% for objective embeddings (Wiki-en) while the LSTM-ATT scored 69.0% on subjective embeddings (ShopeeRD).  Improved performances were observed with data augmentation using AUG-BERT, where the LSTM-ATT+AUG-BERT model scored the highest accuracy at 60.0% for objective embeddings and 70.0% for subjective embeddings, compared to 57% (objective) and 69% (subjective) for L-SVC+AUG-BERT, and 56% (objective) and 68% (subjective) for L-SVC.

Conclusions: Utilizing attention layers with subjectivity and objectivity notions has shown improvement to the accuracy of sentiment analysis models.
How the study of digital footprints can supplement research in behavioral genetics and molecular psychology
Authors: Montag Christian , Dagum Paul , Hall Brian J. , Elhai Jon D.
Published: May 2022

Studies that apply digital phenotyping and mobile sensing strategies have increased in recent years enabling a better understanding of psychiatric and psychological conditions, as well as neurodegenerative disorders. Although in this context the study of so-called “digital biomarkers” is proliferating, few studies have actually linked digital footprints to biological variables (and when done, the primary focus lay on brain imaging data). It is well established that many psychological phenotypes such as personality, but also psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders, have a genetic basis – to a different heritability extent. Therefore, in the present opinion article we argue that it is of tremendous importance to also link the field of neurogenetics to the study of digital footprints, as the latter gives myriad insights into human life and in an objective way. The large field of behavioral genetics including the discipline of molecular psychology could profit greatly from focusing more on the actual study of behavior instead of solely relying on self-report data of study participants. In order to push this promising field forward, the present theoretical work presents three exemplary scenarios, highlighting where such a combination of digital and genetic data could be fruitful.
A STUDY OF THE INFLUENCE OF A PERSON’S SELF-CONCEPT ON THEIR INTERESTS AND FULFILLMENT IN VARIOUS SPHERES
Authors: Zvonareva Ntaliya A. , Kovalenko Roman K.
Published: May 2022

Purpose. To study the relationship between a person’s self-concept and their interests and fulfillment in the four spheres of life: communication, resources, cognition and power.

Work method/methodology. For this purpose, we used an originally authored methodology for the identification of personality types as per the A. Afanasyev's typology and a questionnaire that the authors designed to identify person's interests, preferences and desires, and calculated the point-biserial correlation coefficient.

Findings. The research ascertained a statistically significant correlation between person's perceptions of their potency and their interest in fulfilling in the four spheres of life: communication, resources, cognition and power. We found that there is a positive correlation between a person's self-esteem concerning the four spheres and a corresponding level of their ambition, as well as between the number of intrapersonal conflicts in a sphere and a strategy of these conflicts' resolution.

Application of the findings. The suggested psychoanalysis-based typology will benefit recruiters and other helping profession specialists, who will be able to quickly evaluate person's childhood experiences and their prospects for fulfillment in a given capacity.
FEATURES OF STUDENTS’ RESISTANCE IN RELATIONSHIP WITH EARLY DEADAPTIVE SCHEMAS
Authors: Kulikova Tatyana I.
Published: May 2022

Purpose. The article is devoted to the study of the presence of a connection between resilience and maladaptive schemas in students of different ages.

Method. Studying of the correlation between resilience and maladaptive schemas among students of different ages has been conducted on a sample of 67 students of Tula State Lev Tolstoy Pedagogical University students, aged 18 to 24, in the number of 67 people. As diagnostic material, the study uses Maddi’s Hardiness Survey; Young Schema Questionnaire “YSQ-S3R”. Methods of mathematical statistics include Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC). Correlation analysis has revealed the presence of strong inverse correlations between the resilience with maladaptive schemas “Vulnerability to Harm or Illness” and “Mistrust” (r=-0.578 and r=-0.499 at a significance level of p<0.01), “Subjugation” (r=-0.486), “Failure” (r=-0.443), “Unrelenting Standards” (r=-0.441), “Dependence/Incompetence” (r=-0.431) and “Defectiveness” (r=-0.424) at p<0.01.

Results. The study has shown that resilience is a dynamic process caused by the age-psychological characteristics of an individual, including early maladaptive patterns of behavior. This is evidenced by differences in the structure of resilience in different age groups, as well as an increase in the level of resilience from youth to youth.

Practical implications. The research materials can be used in the work of the psychological service of an educational organization. Understanding the detailed content of the process of becoming resilience contributes to the purposefulness of developmental and psychoprophylactic work.
DEVELOPMENT OF A TRAINING FOR THE FORMATION OF INFORMATION- PSYCHOLOGICAL STABILITY OF THE PERSONALITY OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
Authors: Meyerson Ayzek-Leyb S.
Published: May 2022

Introduction. The article is devoted to the development of a training program for the formation of information-psychological stability of the personality of university students. Transformational processes taking place in society contributed to the rapid information and communication development, which has its positive and negative sides for the development of the individual. Today, the negative impact that Internet technologies have on a person is already clearly visible, reducing his adaptive capabilities, destructively reducing the level of well-being and affecting the psychoemotional state. This contributes to the search for ways to form informational and psychological stability of the individual. Materials and methods. In the course of writing the article, a theoretical analysis of domestic and foreign scientific sources was used, the study of scientific articles and publications on the topic; methodological development and justification of the training program.

Research results. Approaches to understanding the concept of an informational secure environment and a person's resistance to negative informational impact have been systematized. The concept of psychological stability has been expanded, and the concept of information and psychological stability has been substantiated. The factors that determine psychological stability and structural elements that ensure the effectiveness of psychological stability are highlighted. On the basis of theoretical analysis and previously conducted research, a training program for the formation of information-psychological stability of university students has been developed, which will provide a sufficient level of formation of socio-cultural identity, safe information behavior, promote self-regulation and self-control; assimilation of norms of behavior in society.

Discussion and conclusions. Information and psychological stability focuses on the personal aspects of the perception of information coming from the external environment, in particular the Internet environment, and allows a person to rationally respond to social risks. In the course of the methodological analysis, it was determined that the optimal information-psychological stability can be formed through the development of socio-cultural identity, self-motivation, pro-social behavior, critical thinking, self-identification and positive self-attitude, tolerance in attitudes towards others.
DEVELOPING STUDENTS’ RESEARCH AND SELF-STUDY SKILLS: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Authors: Sergeeva Olga N.
Published: May 2022

Background. The context and the science tasks have changed recently which means that there is a need for an updated methodology to form and develop university students’ ability to do a research, i.e. to plan, carry out and present its’ results. Before we develop an educational program or a course that is aimed at developing this set of skills, it is important to break the whole process down into stages so that we could see the progress of a student doing a research at university who is getting more and more self-reliant from the start to the end of a project.

Materials and methods. The research was done by means of literature review and experience analysis in order to identify pedagogical and methodological background issues that underlie the process of mastering the research skills as part of the self-study competence at university.

Results. Based on the findings, we suppose that there are four stages; we called them the (1) Introductory (controlled) stage, (2) Forming (guided) stage, (3) Creative (free) stage, and (4) Independent (reflective-analytical) stage. All four stages smoothly follow one another stimulating and supporting students while they are involved in a research project till they are able to cope with it with the minimum support provided by a third party.

Conclusion. The developed scheme of the stages can also serve as a basis for the life-long learning afterwards. When a student masters this set of skills at all four levels, he or she is then capable of repeating the experience starting with the very first stage in another context in their home country or abroad – at another university, research organization, or in another field of research.
Incentive-Compatible Forecasting Competitions
Authors: Witkowski Jens , Freeman Rupert , Vaughan Jennifer Wortman , Pennock David M. , Krause Andreas
Published: May 2022

We initiate the study of incentive-compatible forecasting competitions in which multiple forecasters make predictions about one or more events and compete for a single prize. We have two objectives: (1) to incentivize forecasters to report truthfully and (2) to award the prize to the most accurate forecaster. Proper scoring rules incentivize truthful reporting if all forecasters are paid according to their scores. However, incentives become distorted if only the best-scoring forecaster wins a prize, since forecasters can often increase their probability of having the highest score by reporting more extreme beliefs. In this paper, we introduce two novel forecasting competition mechanisms. Our first mechanism is incentive compatible and guaranteed to select the most accurate forecaster with probability higher than any other forecaster. Moreover, we show that in the standard single-event, two-forecaster setting and under mild technical conditions, no other incentive-compatible mechanism selects the most accurate forecaster with higher probability. Our second mechanism is incentive compatible when forecasters’ beliefs are such that information about one event does not lead to belief updates on other events, and it selects the best forecaster with probability approaching one as the number of events grows. Our notion of incentive compatibility is more general than previous definitions of dominant strategy incentive compatibility in that it allows for reports to be correlated with the event outcomes. Moreover, our mechanisms are easy to implement and can be generalized to the related problems of outputting a ranking over forecasters and hiring a forecaster with high accuracy on future events.

This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, behavioral economics and decision analysis.

Funding: This work was supported by the European Research Council [Grant ERC StG 307036] and the National Science Foundation [Grant CCF-1445755].
Choice-Based Airline Schedule Design and Fleet Assignment: A Decomposition Approach
Authors: Yan Chiwei , Barnhart Cynthia , Vaze Vikrant
Published: May 2022

We study an integrated airline schedule design and fleet assignment model for constructing schedules by simultaneously selecting from a pool of optional flights and assigning fleet types to these scheduled flights. This is a crucial tactical decision that greatly influences airline profits. As passenger demand is often substitutable among available fare products (defined as a combination of an itinerary and a fare class) between the same origin–destination pair, we present an optimization approach that includes a passenger choice model for fare product selections. To tackle the formidable computational challenge of solving this large-scale network design problem, we propose a decomposition approach based on partitioning the flight network into smaller subnetworks by exploiting weak dependencies in network structure. The decomposition relies on a series of approximation analyses and a novel fare split problem to allocate optimally the fares of products that are shared by flights in different subnetworks. We present several reformulations that represent fleet assignment and schedule decisions and formally characterize their relative strengths. This gives rise to a new reformulation that is able to trade off strength and size flexibly. We conduct detailed computational experiments using two realistically sized airline instances to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. Under a simulated passenger booking environment with both perfect and imperfect forecasts, we show that the fleeting and scheduling decisions informed by our approach deliver significant and robust profit improvement over all benchmark implementations and previous models in the literature.
How Should Concurrent Arterial and Venous Thrombosis Associated With SARS-CoV-2 Infection Be Managed
Authors: Dimosiari Athina , Patoulias Dimitrios , Michailidis Theodoros , Dimitroulas Theodoros
Published: May 2022

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the cause of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), is associated with a high incidence of thrombotic complications involving both the arterial and the venous systems. However, concurrent arterial and venous thrombosis is extremely rare. Herein, we present the case of a 75-year-old male patient with severe COVID-19 who developed bilateral renal artery thrombosis and pulmonary embolism during the disease course. To our knowledge, this is the first such case described in the literature.
Photobiomodulation: a cultural nursing intervention for physical and psychological adaptation
Authors: Rosnani Rosnani , Setyowati Setyowati , Koestoer Raldi Artono , Widjaja Bernard Tirtomoeljono , Mediarti Devi , Arifin Hidayat
Published: May 2022

Background

Wellbeing among postpartum women needs to be assessed. This article aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of photobiomodulation near infrared as a cultural nursing intervention for postpartum women in Indonesia.

Methods

A research and development study design was undertaken from 2018 to 2020 in three stages to evaluate the effectiveness of photobiomodulation near infrared: a phenomenological study (n=20), a pre-experimental study (n=80) and a quasi-experimental design (n=90). Data were analysed using one-way ANOVA and a Kruskal–Wallis test.

Results

Three themes emerged from the qualitative study that focused on development tools. Photobiomodulation near infrared was developed to cover postpartum women's needs. Significant statistical differences were found in multiple outcome measures after implementing photobiomodulation near infrared.

Conclusions

Photobiomodulation near infrared is a promising intervention for postpartum mothers.
Implications of endotoxins in wound healing: a narrative review
Authors: Rippon Mark G , Westgate Samantha , Rogers Alan A
Published: May 2022

Bacterial toxins are thought to play a role in delayed wound healing in critically colonised and infected wounds. Endotoxins are released from Gram-negative bacteria when they are lysed by host phagocytic cells during an immune response, or by antimicrobial agents, potentially leading to a detrimental effect on the host tissues. Endotoxins can affect all aspects of the wound healing process, leading to delayed healing and contributing to wound chronicity. Release of endotoxins by bacteria can also have serious systemic effects (for example, septic shock) that can lead to high levels of patient mortality. This review summarises the role and implications on wound healing of bacterial endotoxins, describing the impact of endotoxins on the various phases of the wound healing response. There is a paucity of in vivo/clinical evidence linking endotoxins attributed to a wound (via antibiotic treatment) or their release from infecting bacteria with parameters of delayed wound healing. Future work should investigate if this link is apparent and determine the mechanism(s) by which such detrimental effects occur, offering an opportunity to identify possible treatment pathways. This paper describes the phenomenon of antimicrobial-induced endotoxin release and summarises the use of wound dressings to reduce wound bioburden without inducing microbial death and subsequent release of endotoxins, thus limiting their detrimental effects.
Development of a surgical wound assessment tool to measure healing and risk factors for delayed wound healing in Vietnam: a Delphi process
Authors: Do Hien Thi Thu , Edwards Helen , Finlayson Kathleen
Published: May 2022

Objective:

To identify items and develop a surgical wound assessment tool (SWAT) to measure progress in healing and early detection of risk factors for delayed healing in surgical wounds in patients in Vietnam.

Method:

The development process included two phases: (i) development of the initial SWAT based on evidence-based guidelines, results of a literature review and consultation with surgeons; and (ii) a Delphi process with wound care nurse experts to refine and provide consensus on a final version of the SWAT. Data collection took place between April–August 2017.

Results:

In phase one, 22 items were included and were evaluated by ten Vietnamese surgeons, with item-content validity index (I-CVI) scores of 1.00 in 17 out of 22 items. The remaining items had I-CVI ranking of 0.8 to 0.9. The overall scale-content validity index was 0.97. Eight more items were recommended for inclusion, increasing the total to 30 items. In phase two, 21 Vietnamese nurse wound care experts completed all three rounds of the Delphi process. After three rounds, 24 items out of 30 reached full consensus for the final tool.

Conclusion:

This study was the first step to confirm the content validity of the newly developed SWAT. Further development of the tool including the evaluation of validity and reliability was undertaken to strengthen the tool.
Charleston and Christchurch and the Politics of Postracial Forgiveness
Authors: Ghumkhor Sahar
Published: May 2022

This article explores the political work of forgiveness in a secular liberal West by examining the aftermath of two white supremacist violent events: the Charleston church attack in 2015 and the Christchurch mosque attacks in 2019. The article examines how the exaltation of forgiveness over anger after such events is symptomatic of what David Theo Goldberg (2015) calls the “postracial” turn which denies the structural harm of racism and privileges social unity at a time when racism bears its most violent face. What can be ascertained in centring forgiveness, and therefore the unifying figure of the victim of white supremacist violence, is how the postracial conceals the persistence of race as the secular investment and regulation in the articulation of religion in public life.
End-to-end service provisioning based on extended segment routing in multi-domain optical networks of F5G
Authors: Li Xin , Liu Yikai , Zhao Yongli , Li Yajie , Li Zhuotong , Rahman Sabidur , Zhang Jie
Published: May 2022

As the most important fabric of fixed networks, the optical network plays an important role in expanding network capacity and providing long distance communication. At present, the fixed network has entered a key era, i.e., the fifth-generation fixed network (F5G). As one of the main features of F5G, the full-fiber connection requires a tenfold to hundredfold increase in the number of connections, which means F5G will have tens of thousands of nodes and millions of connections. Large-scale networks are composed of multiple network domains connected to each other. The whole network can be subdivided according to network functional domain. To meet different service requirements, how to provision fast end-to-end service in a multi-domain scenario has become a key issue. In optical networks, lightpath establishment must precede service transmission. The latency of lightpath establishment includes lightpath establishment signaling latency and optical interleaving device configuration latency. The latter depends on equipment performance. Therefore, how to provision fast lightpath establishment signaling is a key problem. To reduce end-to-end service provisioning latency, we propose an extended-segment-routing-based fast service provisioning scheme for the first time, to our knowledge, which consists of two steps: signaling path acquisition and signaling provisioning. For the signaling path acquisition step, we propose an adaptive segment routing (ASR) algorithm that first performs service path calculation based on service requirements, then performs a label compression algorithm to obtain the signaling path represented by the minimum number of labels according to the service path. For the signaling provisioning step, we propose a fast-signaling provisioning (FSP) process that can realize fast signaling provisioning in both single-domain and multi-domain scenarios. The simulation results show that, (1) compared to the Dijkstra algorithm, the ASR algorithm achieves a lower blocking probability for service and a better label compression effect for reducing the number of labels representing the signaling path, and, (2) compared to the traditional distributed signaling provisioning process and centralized signaling provisioning process, the FSP process achieves lower end-to-end latency.
3D Stokes parameters for vector focal fields
Authors: Andreev A. V. , Shoutova O. A. , Trushin S. M. , Stremoukhov S. Yu.
Published: May 2022

The study is devoted to the application of the formalism of 3D Stokes parameters to the near-focal structured fields described with Richards–Wolf vector focusing theory. The distribution of the local polarization properties of these fields is characterized in the plane perpendicular to optical axes. The linear polarization parameter is explored, first tested by comparing basic loosely and tightly focused Gaussian beams and then, getting deeper insight into its descriptive capabilities, applied to different spatial modes. The distributions of the linear polarization parameter and directional cosines of polarization ellipses’ planes in the transverse plane are presented.
Sensitivity enhancement of a dispersive cavity with squeezed vacuum light injection
Authors: Chang Xiaoyang , Zhang Hao , Li Wenxiu , Han Peng , Zhou Yang , Huang Anping , Xiao Zhisong
Published: May 2022

The measurement sensitivity of a cavity could be enhanced for sensing applications in an anomalous dispersion condition. In this paper, we find that when injecting a squeezed vacuum light into a dispersive cavity, the sensitivity could be improved further, even beating the standard quantum limit at the detuning frequencies via controlling the dispersion condition. It is amazing that normal dispersion is superior to anomalous dispersion in improving the measurement sensitivity in the presence of a squeezed vacuum field. It implies this paper could be used to realize high-precision sensing applications.
Effects of substrate on cavity plasmon polaritons in monolayer MoS2 embedded in an asymmetric cavity
Authors: Guo Taiyang , Hou Lei , Xu Wen , Xiao Yiming , Ding Lan
Published: May 2022

The coupling between plasmons in two-dimensional materials and photons can be enhanced by a Fabry–Pérot (FP) cavity, leading to the formation of cavity plasmon polaritons (CPPs). In this work, we theoretically investigate the effects of substrate on CPPs in monolayer (ML) molybdenum disulfide (

M
o
S

2

) embedded in an asymmetric FP cavity. The optical conductivity of ML

M
o
S

2

used here is described by the Drude–Smith model, in which the substrate-induced electronic localization effect is considered. This effect has been experimentally demonstrated for chemical vapor deposition grown

M
o
S

2

in our recent work. Herein, the investigation shows the existence of three types of CPPs in this asymmetric plasmonic system. Meanwhile, we also demonstrate that the substrate can affect the properties of these modes through different mechanisms. These results not only can give us insight into the effects of substrate on plasmon polaritons but also remind us that the differences between the realistic optical parameters of

M
o
S

2

and the ideal ones cannot be neglected in many situations. Moreover, we hope this study can push forward the design and optimization of plasmonic devices based on

M
o
S

2

, such as sensors, attenuators, and detectors.
Characterization of Giles parameters for extended L-band erbium-doped fibers
Authors: Feng Hanlin , Jalilpiran Saber , Maes Frédéric , Wang Lixian , LaRochelle Sophie
Published: May 2022

In this study, we present theoretical and experimental uncertainty analysis of erbium-doped fiber (EDF) characterization to improve performance prediction of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) in the extended L-band. Through this uncertainty analysis, the optimal EDF lengths for absorption coefficient and emission coefficient characterization are determined to improve precision with a limited number of experimental steps. The uncertainty in the measured clustering ratio is also evaluated based on the uncertainty analysis of absorption and emission coefficients. To verify the accuracy of the Giles parameters determined from the EDF characterization, we compare simulation results, with calculated upper and lower uncertainties for the gain and noise figure (NF), to experimental measurements. The results show that the measured spectral gain and NF match well with the calculated value.
Memory efficient constrained optimization of scanning-beam lithography
Authors: Jidling Carl , Fleming Andrew J. , Wills Adrian G. , Schön Thomas B.
Published: May 2022

This article describes a memory efficient method for solving large-scale optimization problems that arise when planning scanning-beam lithography processes. These processes require the identification of an exposure pattern that minimizes the difference between a desired and predicted output image, subject to constraints. The number of free variables is equal to the number of pixels, which can be on the order of millions or billions in practical applications. The proposed method splits the problem domain into a number of smaller overlapping subdomains with constrained boundary conditions, which are then solved sequentially using a constrained gradient search method (L-BFGS-B). Computational time is reduced by exploiting natural sparsity in the problem and employing the fast Fourier transform for efficient gradient calculation. When it comes to the trade-off between memory usage and computational time we can make a different trade-off compared to previous methods, where the required memory is reduced by approximately the number of subdomains at the cost of more computations. In an example problem with 30 million variables, the proposed method reduces memory requirements by 67% but increases computation time by 27%. Variations of the proposed method are expected to find applications in the planning of processes such as scanning laser lithography, scanning electron beam lithography, and focused ion beam deposition, for example.
High-resolution ISAR imaging based on photonic receiving for high-accuracy automatic target recognition
Authors: Deng Anyi , Qian Na , Hua Shiyu , Wan Jun , Lv Zhenbin , Zou Weiwen
Published: May 2022

A scheme of high-resolution inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging based on photonic receiving is demonstrated. In the scheme, the linear frequency modulated (LFM) pulse echoes with 8 GHz bandwidth at the center frequency of 36 GHz are directly sampled with the photonic analog-to-digital converter (PADC). The ISAR images of complex targets can be constructed without detection range swath limitation due to the fidelity of the sampled results. The images of two pyramids demonstrate that the two-dimension (2D) resolution is 3.3 cm × 1.9 cm. Furthermore, the automatic target recognition (ATR) is employed based on the high-resolution experimental dataset under the assistance of deep learning. Despite of the small training dataset containing only 50 samples for each model, the ATR accuracy of three complex targets is still validated to be 95% on a test dataset with the equal number of samples.
Achieving high aspect ratio in plasmonic lithography for practical applications with sub-20 nm half pitch
Authors: Han Dandan , Wei Yayi
Published: May 2022

Plasmonic lithography, which exploits a bowtie nanoaperture (BNA) for the purpose of subwavelength near-field focusing, has the capability of high-resolution patterning. However, the ultra-small feature size is achieved at the price of sharply decay of the surface plasmon waves (SPWs) in the photoresist (PR) layer, which directly leads to some unfavorable patterning issues, such as non-uniformity and shallow pattern depth even over small exposure areas. In this work, a special hybrid plasmonic waveguide (HPW) patterning system, which is composed of the plasmonic BNA-PR layer-silver reflector, is designed to facilitate high spatial frequency selection and amplify the evanescent field in the PR layer. Theoretical calculations indicate that the antisymmetric coupled SPWs and plasmonic waveguide modes excited by the HPW structure can remove the exponential decay and ensure uniform exposure over the entire depth of the PR layer. Importantly, the hyperbolic decaying characteristic of the SPWs in the PR layer plays a noticeable role in the improvement of achievable resolution, depth-of-field, and line array pattern profile. It is worth to note that the uniform periodic patterns in sub-20 nm feature can be achieved with high aspect ratio. Additionally, further numerical simulation results are presented to demonstrate the achievement of spatial frequency selection of high-k mode in HPW structure by controlling the PR thickness and gap size. Our findings may provide a new perspective on the manufacture of surface nanostructures and broaden the potential promising applications of plasmonic lithography in nanoscale patterning.
Deep learning for signal clock and exposure estimation in rolling shutter optical camera communication
Authors: Jurado-Verdu Cristo , Guerra Victor , Rabadan Jose , Perez-Jimenez Rafael
Published: May 2022

In rolling shutter (RS)-based optical camera communication (OCC) links, selecting the appropriate camera’s exposure time is critical, as it limits the reception bandwidth. In long exposures, the pixels accumulate over time the incoming irradiance of several consecutive symbols. As a result, a harmful intersymbol interference corrupts the received signal. Consequently, reducing the exposure time is required to increase the reception bandwidth at the cost of producing dark images with impracticable light conditions for human or machine-supervised applications. Alternatively, deep learning (DL) equalizers can be trained to mitigate the exposure-related ISI. These equalizers must be trained considering the transmitter clock and the camera’s exposure, which can be exceptionally challenging if those parameters are unknown in advance (e.g., if the camera does not reveal its internal settings). In those cases, the receiver must estimate those parameters directly from the images, which are severely distorted by the exposure time. This work proposes a DL estimator for this purpose, which is trained using synthetic images generated for thousands of representative cases. This estimator enables the receiver operation under multiple possible configurations, regardless of the camera used. The results obtained during the validation, using more than 7000 real images, registered relative errors lower than 1% and 2% when estimating the transmitter clock and the exposure time, respectively. The obtained errors guarantee the optimal performance of the following equalization and decoding receiver stages, keeping bit error rates below the forward error correction limit. This estimator is a central component of any OCC receiver that operates over moderate exposure conditions. It decouples the reception routines from the cameras used, ultimately enabling cloud-based receiver architectures.
Real-time imaging of electromagnetic fields
Authors: Ma Liao , Leng Ning , Jin Ming , Bai Ming
Published: May 2022

The measurement and diagnosis of electromagnetic fields are important foundations for various electronic and optical systems. This paper presents an innovative optically controlled plasma scattering technique for imaging electromagnetic fields. On a silicon wafer, the plasma induced by the photoconductive effect is exploited as an optically controlled scattering probe to image the amplitude and phase of electromagnetic fields. A prototype is built and realizes the imaging of electromagnetic fields radiated from antennas from 870MHz to 0.2 terahertz within one second. Measured results show good agreement with the simulations. It is demonstrated that this new technology improves the efficiency of electromagnetic imaging to a real-time level, while combining various advantages of ultrafast speed, super-resolution, ultra-wideband response, low-cost and vectorial wave mapping ability. This method may initiate a new avenue in the measurement and diagnosis of electromagnetic fields.
Metacommunity analyses show an increase in ecological specialisation throughout the Ediacaran period
Authors: Eden Rebecca , Manica Andrea , Mitchell Emily G.
Published: May 2022

The first animals appear during the late Ediacaran (572 to 541 Ma); an initial diversity increase was followed reduction in diversity, often interpreted as catastrophic mass extinction. We investigate Ediacaran ecosystem structure changes over this time period using the “Elements of Metacommunity Structure” framework to assess whether this diversity reduction in the Nama was likely caused by an external mass extinction, or internal metacommunity restructuring. The oldest metacommunity was characterised by taxa with wide environmental tolerances, and limited specialisation or intertaxa associations. Structuring increased in the second oldest metacommunity, with groups of taxa sharing synchronous responses to environmental gradients, aggregating into distinct communities. This pattern strengthened in the youngest metacommunity, with communities showing strong environmental segregation and depth structure. Thus, metacommunity structure increased in complexity, with increased specialisation and resulting in competitive exclusion, not a catastrophic environmental disaster, leading to diversity loss in the terminal Ediacaran. These results reveal that the complex eco-evolutionary dynamics associated with Cambrian diversification were established in the Ediacaran.
An evolutionary conserved detoxification system for membrane lipid–derived peroxyl radicals in Gram-negative bacteria
Authors: Naguib Marwa , Feldman Nicolás , Zarodkiewicz Paulina , Shropshire Holly , Biamis Christina , El-Halfawy Omar M. , McCain Julia , Dezanet Clément , Décout Jean-Luc , Chen Yin , Cosa Gonzalo , Valvano Miguel A.
Published: May 2022

How double-membraned Gram-negative bacteria overcome lipid peroxidation is virtually unknown. Bactericidal antibiotics and superoxide ion stress stimulate the transcription of the Burkholderia cenocepacia bcnA gene that encodes a secreted lipocalin. bcnA gene orthologs are conserved in bacteria and generally linked to a conserved upstream gene encoding a cytochrome b561 membrane protein (herein named lcoA, lipocalin-associated cytochrome oxidase gene). Mutants in bcnA, lcoA, and in a gene encoding a conserved cytoplasmic aldehyde reductase (peroxidative stress-associated aldehyde reductase gene, psrA) display enhanced membrane lipid peroxidation. Compared to wild type, the levels of the peroxidation biomarker malondialdehyde (MDA) increase in the mutants upon exposure to sublethal concentrations of the bactericidal antibiotics polymyxin B and norfloxacin. Microscopy with lipid peroxidation–sensitive fluorescent probes shows that lipid peroxyl radicals accumulate at the bacterial cell poles and septum and peroxidation is associated with a redistribution of anionic phospholipids and reduced antimicrobial resistance in the mutants. We conclude that BcnA, LcoA, and PsrA are components of an evolutionary conserved, hitherto unrecognized peroxidation detoxification system that protects the bacterial cell envelope from lipid peroxyl radicals.
Half circular modified burr−III distribution, application with different estimation methods
Authors: Iftikhar Ayesha , Ali Azeem , Hanif Muhammad
Published: May 2022

The data related to many medical, environmental and ecological variables are often measured in terms of angles wherein its range is defined in [0,π). This type of data is referred to as axial or half circular data. Modeling based on half circular data has not received its due share of attention in statistical literature. In this paper, we introduce a new half circular distribution based on inverse stereographic projection technique on modified Burr−III distribution, called the half circular modified Burr−III (hcMB−III) distribution. The basic properties of the proposed distribution are derived. It is common observation that while estimating the parameters of a model, one usually adopts maximum likelihood estimation method as the starting point. In this paper, we consider seven frequentist methods of estimation, besides using maximum likelihood method for estimating the parameters of the hcMB−III distribution. Monte Carlo simulations are performed for investigating the performances of the considered methods in terms of their biases and mean square errors using small, medium and large sample sizes. Finally, one data set related to posterior corneal curvature of the eyes of 23 patients, is analyzed to check potentiality of the newly proposed model.
Assessing the asymmetric impact of physical infrastructure and trade openness on ecological footprint: An empirical evidence from Pakistan
Authors: Zahra Samia , Khan Dilawar , Gupta Rakesh , Popp József , Oláh Judit
Published: May 2022

This study analyzed the asymmetric impact of the physical infrastructure and trade openness on Pakistan’s ecological footprint over the period 1970–2019 using the non-linear autoregressive distributed lag model. The study results posit that positive and negative shocks to physical infrastructure increase and decrease the ecological footprint asymmetrically in the short-run and symmetrically in the long-run. Likewise, the positive and negative shocks to trade openness increase and decrease the ecological footprint asymmetrically, both in the short and in the long run. Furthermore, urbanization also positively and significantly increases Pakistan’s ecological footprint in the short and long run. Moreover, a 1% increase in physical infrastructure increases the ecological footprint by 0.32%, while a 1% decrease in physical infrastructure decreases the ecological footprint by 0.33% in the long run. Similarly, a 1% increase in trade openness causes a 0.09% increase in the ecological footprint in the long term, while a 1% reduction in trade openness causes a 0.61% reduction in the ecological footprint. The results also conclude that urbanization is a major determinant of Pakistan’s long-term ecological footprint. Thus, a 1% increase in urbanization causes a 1.31% increase in the ecological footprint in the long run. Finally, this study recommends that policies regarding physical infrastructure be formulated keeping in view its environmental impact. In addition, strict environmental policies should be implemented to reduce the environmental degradation effect of trade openness.
Prohaptoglobin inhibits the transforming growth factor-β-induced epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition in vitro by increasing Smad1/5 activation and suppressing the Smad2/3 signaling pathway in SK-Hep1 liver cancer cells
Authors: Oh Mi-Kyung , Joo Hansol , Kim In-Sook
Published: May 2022

Transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) is an important inducer of the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in various cancers. Our previous study demonstrated that prohaptoglobin (proHp) stimulates Smad1/5 activation via ALK1, a TGF-β type I receptor, in endothelial cells, suggesting that proHp plays a role in TGF-β signaling. However, the function of proHp in cellular events downstream of Smads remains unclear. The current study investigated the effects of proHp on TGF-β-mediated Smad-dependent EMT induction and cell invasion in vitro using proHp-overexpressing SK-Hep1 liver cancer cells. The results of Western blotting, quantitative real-time RT-PCR, and immunocytochemistry indicated that proHp downregulated expression of mesenchymal marker and EMT regulator such as N-cadherin, vimentin, and twist, and upregulated expression of the epithelial marker E-cadherin. Compared with control cells, proHp-overexpressing cells exhibited high levels of ALK1/2/3 receptors and markedly increased Smad1/5 phosphorylation. Interestingly, proHp attenuated TGF-β-induced expression of mesenchymal markers and Smad2/3 phosphorylation. It also significantly suppressed cell invasion and migration. Knockdown of Smad1/5 abolished the inhibitory effects of proHp on TGF-β-stimulated Smad2/3 phosphorylation and mesenchymal marker expression. These findings indicate that proHp suppresses the TGF-β-induced EMT and cell invasion in vitro by enhancing Smad1/5 activation via ALK1/2/3 receptors and thus suppressing the Smad2/3 signaling pathway in SK-Hep1 cells. This study suggests that proHp may prevent a de-differentiation of hepatic cells and induce a cell differentiation by regulating the Smad signaling pathway.
CalliFACS: The common marmoset Facial Action Coding System
Authors: Correia-Caeiro Catia , Burrows Anne , Wilson Duncan Andrew , Abdelrahman Abdelhady , Miyabe-Nishiwaki Takako
Published: May 2022

Facial expressions are subtle cues, central for communication and conveying emotions in mammals. Traditionally, facial expressions have been classified as a whole (e.g. happy, angry, bared-teeth), due to automatic face processing in the human brain, i.e., humans categorise emotions globally, but are not aware of subtle or isolated cues such as an eyebrow raise. Moreover, the same facial configuration (e.g. lip corners pulled backwards exposing teeth) can convey widely different information depending on the species (e.g. humans: happiness; chimpanzees: fear). The Facial Action Coding System (FACS) is considered the gold standard for investigating human facial behaviour and avoids subjective interpretations of meaning by objectively measuring independent movements linked to facial muscles, called Action Units (AUs). Following a similar methodology, we developed the CalliFACS for the common marmoset. First, we determined the facial muscular plan of the common marmoset by examining dissections from the literature. Second, we recorded common marmosets in a variety of contexts (e.g. grooming, feeding, play, human interaction, veterinary procedures), and selected clips from online databases (e.g. YouTube) to identify their facial movements. Individual facial movements were classified according to appearance changes produced by the corresponding underlying musculature. A diverse repertoire of 33 facial movements was identified in the common marmoset (15 Action Units, 15 Action Descriptors and 3 Ear Action Descriptors). Although we observed a reduced range of facial movement when compared to the HumanFACS, the common marmoset’s range of facial movements was larger than predicted according to their socio-ecology and facial morphology, which indicates their importance for social interactions. CalliFACS is a scientific tool to measure facial movements, and thus, allows us to better understand the common marmoset’s expressions and communication. As common marmosets have become increasingly popular laboratory animal models, from neuroscience to cognition, CalliFACS can be used as an important tool to evaluate their welfare, particularly in captivity.