bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Spirometric patterns in young and middle-aged adults: a 20-year European study
Authors: Carsin Anne-Elie , Garcia-Aymerich Judith , Accordini Simone , Dharmage Shyamali , Leynaert Bénédicte , de las Heras Marti , Casas Lidia , Caviezel Seraina , Demoly Pascal , Forsberg Bertil , Gislason Thorarinn , Corsico Angelo Guido , Janson Christer , Jogi Rain , Martínez-Moratalla Jesús , Nowak Dennis , Gómez Leopoldo Palacios , Pin Isabelle , Probst-Hensch Nicole , Raherison-Semjen Chantal , Squillacioti Giulia , Svanes Cecilie , Torén Kjell , Urrutia Isabel , Huerta Ismael , Anto Josep Maria , Jarvis Debbie , Guerra Stefano
Published: September 2023

Background

Understanding the natural history of abnormal spirometric patterns at different stages of life is critical to identify and optimise preventive strategies. We aimed to describe characteristics and risk factors of restrictive and obstructive spirometric patterns occurring before 40 years (young onset) and between 40 and 61 years (mid-adult onset).

Methods

We used data from the population-based cohort of the European Community Respiratory Health Survey (ECRHS). Prebronchodilator forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) and forced vital capacity (FVC) were assessed longitudinally at baseline (ECRHS1, 1993–1994) and again 20 years later (ECRHS3, 2010–2013). Spirometry patterns were defined as: restrictive if FEV1/FVC≥LLN and FVC<10th percentile, obstructive if FEV1/FVC<LLN or normal otherwise. Five spirometry patterns were derived depending on whether participants never developed restrictive/obstructive (normal), developed restrictive/obstructive at baseline (young onset) or at last follow-up (mid-adult onset). The characteristics and risk factors associated with these patterns were described and assessed using multilevel multinomial logistic regression analysis adjusting for age, sex, sample (random or symptomatic) and centre.

Results

Among 3502 participants (mean age=30.4 (SD 5.4) at ECRHS1, 50.4 (SD 5.4) at ECRHS3), 2293 (65%) had a normal, 371 (11%) a young restrictive, 301 (9%) a young obstructive, 187 (5%) a mid-adult onset restrictive and 350 (10%) a mid-adult onset obstructive spirometric pattern. Being lean/underweight in childhood and young adult life was associated with the occurrence of the young spirometric restrictive pattern (relative risk ratio (RRR)=1.61 95% CI=1.21 to 2.14, and RRR=2.43 95% CI=1.80 to 3.29; respectively), so were respiratory infections before 5 years (RRR=1.48, 95% CI=1.05 to 2.08). The main determinants for young obstructive, mid-adult restrictive and mid-adult obstructive patterns were asthma, obesity and smoking, respectively.

Conclusion

Spirometric patterns with onset in young and mid-adult life were associated with distinct characteristics and risk factors.
Core outcome set for pulmonary rehabilitation of patients with COPD: results of a modified Delphi survey
Authors: Souto-Miranda Sara , Saraiva Isabel , Spruit Martijn A , Marques Alda
Published: September 2023

Introduction

There is high heterogeneity of outcomes and measures reported in pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) trials of people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This hinders study comparability and benchmarking of PR. We have developed a core outcome set (COS) to overcome these challenges.

Methods

This study was informed by a systematic review and two qualitative studies and had patient involvement since its inception. A two-round Delphi survey was available in seven languages. Outcomes (n=63) scored 7–9 (crucial) by ≥70% of the participants and 1–3 (not that important) by ≤15% of participants from both groups in the Likert scale were automatically included in the COS, while outcomes that were considered crucial by only one of the groups were further discussed by the authors in a meeting.

Results

A total of 299 people (n=229 healthcare professionals/researchers/policy-makers; n=70 people with COPD and informal caregivers) participated in the survey (83% retention), which covered 29 countries/five continents. After the second round, six outcomes were included and three were added in the meeting. The final COS contains dyspnoea, fatigue, functional exercise capacity, health-related quality of life, health behaviours/lifestyle, knowledge about the disease, lower limb muscle function, personal goals and problematic activities of daily living.

Conclusion

A COS for PR of people with COPD is now available and can be used by different stakeholders to improve consistency and comparability of studies, benchmark PR and improve the quality of care provided. Future research should establish the core measures and investigate the uptake of this COS.
An extended car-following model considering backward-looking effect: A machine learning approach
Authors: Adewale Ayobami , Lee Chris
Published: September 2023

Most car-following models have mainly focused on the effects of the lead vehicle on the target vehicle's behaviour or the driver's forward-looking effects, but not the effects of the vehicle behind the target vehicle (the following vehicle) or the driver's backward-looking effects. Therefore, this study proposes a data-driven car-following model that incorporates both backward- and forward-looking effects using a deep neural network (DNN). This model is called the “DNN with backward-looking effect (DNN-BE) model”. The DNN-BE model produced higher prediction accuracy than the DNN model with forward-looking effects only and a conventional mathematical car-following model that considers both forward- and backward-looking effects. It was found that the target vehicle is more likely to accelerate when the spacing with the following vehicle is shorter and the spacing with the lead vehicle is longer. The result of permutation importance also shows that variables related to the following vehicle are more important when the spacing with the following vehicles is shorter.
Topological classes of higher-dimensional black holes in massive gravity
Authors: Chen Deyou , He Yucheng , Tao Jun
Published: September 2023

In this paper, we study topological numbers for five-, six- and seven-dimensional anti-de Sitter black holes in the ghost-free massive gravity. We find that when the black holes are charged, they have the same topological number. The topological numbers for the uncharged black holes are 0 or 1, and the specific values are determined by the values of the black holes’ parameters. Since k and $$c_ 0^2c_2 m^2 $$

c
0
2

c
2

m
2

appear together in the generalized free energy in the form of $$k +c_ 0^2c_2 m^2 $$

k
+

c
0
2

c
2

m
2

, where k characterizes the horizon curvature and $$c_2 m^2 $$

c
2

m
2

is the coefficient of the second term of massive potential associated with the graviton mass, this result is applicable to the black holes with the spherical, Ricci flat or hyperbolic horizons. This work shows that the parameters of the ghost-free massive gravity play an important role in topological classes of black holes.
SUSY partners and S-matrix poles of the one-dimensional Rosen–Morse II potential
Authors: San Millán Carlos , Gadella Manuel , Kuru Şengül , Negro Javier
Published: September 2023

Among the list of one-dimensional solvable Hamiltonians, we find the Hamiltonian with the Rosen–Morse II potential. The first objective is to analyse the scattering matrix corresponding to this potential. We show that it includes a series of poles corresponding to the types of redundant poles or anti-bound poles. In some cases, there are even bound states and this depends on the values of given parameters. Then, we perform different supersymmetric transformations on the original Hamiltonian using either the ground state (for those situations where there are bound states) wave functions, or other solutions that come from anti-bound states or redundant states. We study the properties of these transformations.
Persistence of Informal Social Networks in Indian Textile Market: A Case Study of Surat
Authors: Sachanandani Nikita , Ram Padmini
Published: September 2023

The importance of social networks in setting-up and running a business is well established in the literature. Experts on informality have concluded that with the development of a country, the informal sector will increasingly turn formal. However, evidence from this study indicates otherwise. This study looks at Surat in India which is one of the largest textile producing cities internationally. The industrial district has numerous informal establishments that form a part of the crucial ecosystem, working in cohesion with the more established ‘formal’ firms. The study examines the roles that social networks play in sustaining the textile industry. The research infers that social networks are crucial to run a business in the Surat textile market as all transactions take place through informal contracts, which are grounded on trust-based ‘references’, thereby making a strong network structure a key requirement.
Tectono-stratigraphic evolution of salt-influenced normal fault systems: an example from the Coffee-Soil Fault, Danish North Sea
Authors: Duffy Oliver B. , Gawthorpe Rob L. , Docherty Matthew
Published: September 2023

We explore how the relationships between fault activity, salt movement and sediment loading affect the stratal geometry of the hanging wall throughout the evolution of a salt-influenced normal fault system. We examine a
c.
65 km long portion of the Coffee-Soil Fault System in the Danish North Sea, the hanging wall of which has been partially influenced by a pre-rift unit of mobile salt. To constrain the tectono-stratigraphic evolution of this fault system, we combine structural observations with seismic stratigraphic analysis of the hanging wall growth strata. We find that the hanging wall of the Coffee-Soil Fault System shows major depocentre shifts through time, along with marked variability in the along- and across-strike stratal geometries. We explain how the development of these characteristics is influenced by: (1) the segmentation and linkage history of the fault system; (2) the evolution of the salt-cored cover monoclines above blind basement fault segments; and (3) changes in the location and rate of accommodation generated by the load-driven withdrawal of salt up the dip-slope of the hanging wall and by fault-related subsidence. Our findings have implications for structural and stratigraphic studies in salt-influenced rift basins, as well as for understanding the potential distribution of geo-storage and hydrocarbon reservoirs in such settings.
Direct dating of deposition and rift-related alteration of fossil-barren red bed units in the North Sea
Authors: Hodgskiss Malcolm S. W. , Roberts Nick M. W. , Paiste Päärn , Rameil Niels , Hammer Erik , Brunstad Harald , Lepland Aivo
Published: September 2023

Many fossil-barren or poorly fossiliferous red bed units are found in the North, Norwegian and Barents seas. Owing to the near-absence of biostratigraphic markers in these units, and the possibility of unconformities at their upper and lower boundaries, determining their depositional ages and stratigraphic assignment can be challenging. We apply
in situ
U–Pb carbonate dating on North Sea samples, including plant-root related carbonates (rhizoliths) from palaeosols and calcite veins cross-cutting clasts in a conglomeratic red bed unit, to constrain their respective ages. Our data indicate that one of the studied units was deposited
c.
260–250 Ma and may represent an early development of the Skagerrak Formation. The second unit yielded an oldest age of 180.2 ± 9.7 Ma, interpreted to represent a late diagenetic event rather than deposition. High Mn/Sr and low

δ

13
C values in many cements dated between
c.
180 and 100 Ma are interpreted to represent precipitation of diagenetic carbonates and reprecipitation of root carbonates, potentially related to Jurassic–Cretaceous volcanism and uplift during rifting of the North Sea. These new data point to U–Pb carbonate geochronology as an effective tool for directly dating red bed units and subsequent diagenetic events.

Supplementary material:
Detailed methods for all geochemical analyses are available at
https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.6850741
Surface rupture history and 18 kyr long slip rate along the Pazarcık segment of the East Anatolian Fault
Authors: Yönlü Önder , Karabacak Volkan
Published: September 2023

We investigate the palaeo earthquakes and slip rate on the Pazarcık segment of the East Anatolian Fault, which was involved in the surface rupture of the 6 February 2023 Pazarcık–Kahramanmaraş earthquake (M
w
7.7) and provided insights into the long-term behaviour of this major continental fault. Palaeoseismological data from two trench sites reveal evidence for at least five surface ruptures in the Holocene Period. The historical earthquake of AD 1114 is verified at both trench sites but the following event of AD 1513 is identified at only one site. In addition, the age difference of the older events shows that historical activity is separated by much longer periods of relative quiescence that range from 500 to 1000 years, which suggests quasiperiodic earthquake occurrence on sub-segments of the Pazarcık segment. Our fault-parallel trenches revealed 101 ± 5 m offset in the last 18 kyr and 51 ± 1 m offset in the last 9 kyr on a buried stream channel and the actual channel of the same stream respectively. The correlation of the maximum and abandonment age of the channel with measured offsets revealed a 5.6 mm a
−1
long-term slip rate of the fault.

Supplementary material:
A table and figures providing details of radiocarbon ages and trench sites are available at
https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.6850786
Early Paleozoic ductile deformation of the South China Block: the polyphase shear zones in the eastern Jiangnan belt
Authors: Hu Jun , Yu Xinqi , Li Wei , Liu Nianwei
Published: September 2023

Three parallel east–west-trending shear zones are components of the polyphase shear zones in the eastern Jiangnan belt. The meso- and microstructural characteristics and the estimates of deformation temperatures, vorticities and geochronology of these shear zones provide significant information regarding the tectonic evolution of the South China Block (SCB) during the early Paleozoic. Most shear sense indicators (e.g. asymmetric folds, S-C fabrics and rotating porphyroclasts) reveal that the kinematics were characterized by east–west dextral shear. Finite strain measurements indicate an oblate strain ellipsoid shape with S-type and SL-type tectonites. The rotated rigid porphyroclasts and Mohr circle methods yield vorticity (
Wk
) values of 0.58–0.80 and 0.66–0.89, respectively, indicating that the flow was generally shear-dominated with almost equal proportions of simple and pure shear. Both mineral deformation thermometers and quartz
c
-axis fabrics indicate that the deformation occurred at medium temperature conditions of 400–550°C. Combined with our new age and regional geological data, the east–west-trending shear zones might represent an increment of deformation during the last period of the early Paleozoic orogeny in the SCB.
Integrating Gaze and Mouse Via Joint Cross-Attention Fusion Net for Students' Activity Recognition in E-learning
Authors: Zhu Rongrong , Shi Liang , Song Yunpeng , Cai ZhongMin
Published: September 2023

E-learning has emerged as an indispensable educational mode in the post-epidemic era. However, this mode makes it difficult for students to stay engaged in learning without appropriate activity monitoring. Our work explores a promising solution that combines gaze and mouse data to recognize students' activities, thereby facilitating activity monitoring and analysis during e-learning. We initially surveyed 200 students from a local university, finding more acceptance for eye trackers and mouse loggers compared to video surveillance. We then designed eight students' routine digital activities to collect a multimodal dataset and analyze the patterns and correlations between gaze and mouse across various activities. Our proposed Joint Cross-Attention Fusion Net, a multimodal activity recognition framework, leverages the gaze-mouse relationship to yield improved classification performance by integrating cross-modal representations through a cross-attention mechanism and integrating the joint features that characterize gaze-mouse coordination. Evaluation results show that our method can achieve up to 94.87% F1-score in predicting 8-classes activities, with an improvement of at least 7.44% over using gaze or mouse data independently. This research illuminates new possibilities for monitoring student engagement in intelligent education systems, also suggesting a promising strategy for melding perception and action modalities in behavioral analysis across a range of ubiquitous computing environments.
Automated Face-To-Face Conversation Detection on a Commodity Smartwatch with Acoustic Sensing
Authors: Liang Dawei , Zhang Alice , Thomaz Edison
Published: September 2023

Understanding social interactions is relevant across many domains and applications, including psychology, behavioral sciences, human computer interaction, and healthcare. In this paper, we present a practical approach for automatically detecting face-to-face conversations by leveraging the acoustic sensing capabilities of an off-the-shelf, unmodified smartwatch. Our proposed framework incorporates feature representations extracted from different neural network setups and shows the benefits of feature fusion. The framework does not require an acoustic model specifically trained to the speech of the individual wearing the watch or of those nearby. We evaluate our framework with 39 participants in 18 homes in a semi-naturalistic study and with four participants in free living, obtaining an F1 score of 83.2% and 83.3% respectively for detecting user's conversations with the watch. Additionally, we study the real-time capability of our framework by deploying a system on an actual smartwatch and discuss several strategies to improve its practicality in real life. To support further work in this area by the research community, we also release our annotated dataset of conversations.
PoseSonic
Authors: Mahmud Saif , Li Ke , Hu Guilin , Chen Hao , Jin Richard , Zhang Ruidong , Guimbretière François , Zhang Cheng
Published: September 2023

In this paper, we introduce PoseSonic, an intelligent acoustic sensing solution for smartglasses that estimates upper body poses. Our system only requires two pairs of microphones and speakers on the hinges of the eyeglasses to emit FMCW-encoded inaudible acoustic signals and receive reflected signals for body pose estimation. Using a customized deep learning model, PoseSonic estimates the 3D positions of 9 body joints including the shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, and nose. We adopt a cross-modal supervision strategy to train our model using synchronized RGB video frames as ground truth. We conducted in-lab and semi-in-the-wild user studies with 22 participants to evaluate PoseSonic, and our user-independent model achieved a mean per joint position error of 6.17 cm in the lab setting and 14.12 cm in semi-in-the-wild setting when predicting the 9 body joint positions in 3D. Our further studies show that the performance was not significantly impacted by different surroundings or when the devices were remounted or by real-world environmental noise. Finally, we discuss the opportunities, challenges, and limitations of deploying PoseSonic in real-world applications.
TAO
Authors: Boovaraghavan Sudershan , Patidar Prasoon , Agarwal Yuvraj
Published: September 2023

Translating fine-grained activity detection (e.g., phone ring, talking interspersed with silence and walking) into semantically meaningful and richer contextual information (e.g., on a phone call for 20 minutes while exercising) is essential towards enabling a range of healthcare and human-computer interaction applications. Prior work has proposed building ontologies or temporal analysis of activity patterns with limited success in capturing complex real-world context patterns. We present TAO, a hybrid system that leverages OWL-based ontologies and temporal clustering approaches to detect high-level contexts from human activities. TAO can characterize sequential activities that happen one after the other and activities that are interleaved or occur in parallel to detect a richer set of contexts more accurately than prior work. We evaluate TAO on real-world activity datasets (Casas and Extrasensory) and show that our system achieves, on average, 87% and 80% accuracy for context detection, respectively. We deploy and evaluate TAO in a real-world setting with eight participants using our system for three hours each, demonstrating TAO's ability to capture semantically meaningful contexts in the real world. Finally, to showcase the usefulness of contexts, we prototype wellness applications that assess productivity and stress and show that the wellness metrics calculated using contexts provided by TAO are much closer to the ground truth (on average within 1.1%), as compared to the baseline approach (on average within 30%).
Abacus Gestures
Authors: Ehtesham-Ul-Haque Md , Billah Syed Masum
Published: September 2023

Designing an extensive set of mid-air gestures that are both easy to learn and perform quickly presents a significant challenge. Further complicating this challenge is achieving high-accuracy detection of such gestures using commonly available hardware, like a 2D commodity camera. Previous work often proposed smaller, application-specific gesture sets, requiring specialized hardware and struggling with adaptability across diverse environments. Addressing these limitations, this paper introduces Abacus Gestures, a comprehensive collection of 100 mid-air gestures. Drawing on the metaphor of Finger Abacus counting, gestures are formed from various combinations of open and closed fingers, each assigned different values. We developed an algorithm using an off-the-shelf computer vision library capable of detecting these gestures from a 2D commodity camera feed with an accuracy exceeding 98% for palms facing the camera and 95% for palms facing the body. We assessed the detection accuracy, ease of learning, and usability of these gestures in a user study involving 20 participants. The study found that participants could learn Abacus Gestures within five minutes after executing just 15 gestures and could recall them after a four-month interval. Additionally, most participants developed motor memory for these gestures after performing 100 gestures. Most of the gestures were easy to execute with the designated finger combinations, and the flexibility in executing the gestures using multiple finger combinations further enhanced the usability. Based on these findings, we created a taxonomy that categorizes Abacus Gestures into five groups based on motor memory development and three difficulty levels according to their ease of execution. Finally, we provided design guidelines and proposed potential use cases for Abacus Gestures in the realm of mid-air interaction.
Headar
Authors: Yang Xiaoying , Wang Xue , Dong Gaofeng , Yan Zihan , Srivastava Mani , Hayashi Eiji , Zhang Yang
Published: September 2023

Nod and shake of one's head are intuitive and universal gestures in communication. As smartwatches become increasingly intelligent through advances in user activity sensing technologies, many use scenarios of smartwatches demand quick responses from users in confirmation dialogs, to accept or dismiss proposed actions. Such proposed actions include making emergency calls, taking service recommendations, and starting or stopping exercise timers. Head gestures in these scenarios could be preferable to touch interactions for being hands-free and easy to perform. We propose Headar to recognize these gestures on smartwatches using wearable millimeter wave sensing. We first surveyed head gestures to understand how they are performed in conversational settings. We then investigated positions and orientations to which users raise their smartwatches. Insights from these studies guided the implementation of Headar. Additionally, we conducted modeling and simulation to verify our sensing principle. We developed a real-time sensing and inference pipeline using contemporary deep learning techniques, and proved the feasibility of our proposed approach with a user study (n=15) and a live test (n=8). Our evaluation yielded an average accuracy of 84.0% in the user study across 9 classes including nod and shake as well as seven other signals -- still, speech, touch interaction, and four non-gestural head motions (i.e., head up, left, right, and down). Furthermore, we obtained an accuracy of 72.6% in the live test which reveals rich insights into the performance of our approach in various realistic conditions.
"It's Not an Issue of Malice, but of Ignorance"
Authors: Davis Josh Urban , Wang Hongwei , Chilana Parmit K. , Yang Xing-Dong
Published: September 2023

As video conferencing (VC) has become necessary for many professional, educational, and social tasks, people who are d/Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) face distinct accessibility barriers. We conducted studies to understand the challenges faced by DHH people during VCs and found that they struggled to easily present or communicate effectively due to accessibility limitations of VC platforms. These limitations include the lack of tools for DHH speakers to discreetly communicate their accommodation needs to the group. Based on these findings, we prototyped a suite of tools, called Erato that enables DHH speakers to be aware of their performance while speaking and remind participants of proper etiquette. We evaluated Erato by running a mock classroom case study over VC for three sessions. All participants felt more confident in their speaking ability and paid closer attention to making the classroom more inclusive while using our tool. We share implications of these results for the design of VC interfaces and human-the-the-loop assistive systems that can support users who are DHH to communicate effectively and advocate for their accessibility needs.
SIDA
Authors: Zhang Jin , Dai Yuyan , Chen Jie , Luo Chengwen , Wei Bo , Leung Victor C. M. , Li Jianqiang
Published: September 2023

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia still persists and its chief complaint is dry cough. Physicians design wireless stethoscopes to facilitate diagnosis, however, lung sounds could be easily interfered with by external noises. To achieve lung sound enhancement, prior researches mostly assume the amount of clean and noisy data are the same. This assumption is hardly met due to extensive labor effort for data collection and annotation. The data imbalance across domains widely happens in real-world IoT systems, e.g. sound enhancement and WiFi-based human sensing. In this paper, we propose SIDA, a self-supervised imbalanced domain adaptation framework for sound enhancement and WiFi sensing, which makes it a generic time series domain adaptation solution for IoT systems. SIDA proposes a self-supervised imbalanced domain adaptation model that separately learns the representation of time series signals in a minority domain with limited samples, a majority domain with rich samples, and their mapping relations. For lung sound enhancement, we further proposes a phase correction model to sanitize the phase and a SNR prediction algorithm to recursively perform domain adaptation in an imbalanced noisy and clean lung sound dataset. Extensive experiments demonstrate SIDA increases noisy samples' SNR by 16.49dB and 4.06dB on a synthetic and a realistic imbalanced lung sound dataset, respectively. For WiFi-based human sensing, SIDA designs a cross-domain WiFi-based human identification model irrespective of walking trajectory. A specific trajectory where a group of people walks along in a realistic testing environment is considered the minority domain, and several other trajectories are stored at a server as the majority domain. Extensive experiments show SIDA could recognize individuals with an average accuracy of 94.72% and significantly outperform baselines on highly imbalanced WiFi dataset in cross-domain human identification tasks.
MicroCam
Authors: Hu Yongquan , Yeo Hui-Shyong , Yuan Mingyue , Fan Haoran , Elvitigala Don Samitha , Hu Wen , Quigley Aaron
Published: September 2023

The primary focus of this research is the discreet and subtle everyday contact interactions between mobile phones and their surrounding surfaces. Such interactions are anticipated to facilitate mobile context awareness, encompassing aspects such as dispensing medication updates, intelligently switching modes (e.g., silent mode), or initiating commands (e.g., deactivating an alarm). We introduce MicroCam, a contact-based sensing system that employs smartphone IMU data to detect the routine state of phone placement and utilizes a built-in microscope camera to capture intricate surface details. In particular, a natural dataset is collected to acquire authentic surface textures in situ for training and testing. Moreover, we optimize the deep neural network component of the algorithm, based on continual learning, to accurately discriminate between object categories (e.g., tables) and material constituents (e.g., wood). Experimental results highlight the superior accuracy, robustness and generalization of the proposed method. Lastly, we conducted a comprehensive discussion centered on our prototype, encompassing topics such as system performance and potential applications and scenarios.
A Characterization of Land-use Changes in the Proximity of Mining Sites in India
Authors: Mehta Shivani A. , Ashish  , Solanki Mayur , Seth Aaditeshwar
Published: September 2023

For a growing economy like India, most of its energy resources are obtained through extractive processes such as mining of coal and other minerals. Mining can however have many negative social and ecological impacts if it is not well regulated. Illegal mining or inadequate reclamation of abandoned mines can amplify these impacts, emphasizing the need to develop methods that can monitor changes in the land-use patterns in and around mining sites. We develop a method using machine learning on freely available satellite data to monitor the extent of mines, and augment it with outputs from land use and land cover classification, deforestation detection, and PM2.5 particulate matter estimation from remote sensing data to track land-use and ecological changes taking place in the proximity of mining sites. We provide evaluation results of our mining delineation classifier, a feasibility check of this suite of tools to monitor mining areas over a period of four years, and a temporal characterization study over 628 mines in India that were granted a clearance for operations during the period 2006 to 2012. We further use this suite of monitoring tools to compare socio-economic development and health indicators across mining and non-mining areas, across various states in India, to study whether extractive processes of mining benefit the immediate population in their neighbourhood.
Geometric and Learning-Based Mesh Denoising: A Comprehensive Survey
Authors: Chen Honghua , Li Zhiqi , Wei Mingqing , Wang Jun
Published: September 2023

Mesh denoising is a fundamental problem in digital geometry processing. It seeks to remove surface noise while preserving surface intrinsic signals as accurately as possible. While traditional wisdom has been built upon specialized priors to smooth surfaces, learning-based approaches are making their debut with great success in generalization and automation. In this work, we provide a comprehensive review of the advances in mesh denoising, containing both traditional geometric approaches and recent learning-based methods. First, to familiarize readers with the denoising tasks, we summarize four common issues in mesh denoising. We then provide two categorizations of the existing denoising methods. Furthermore, three important categories, including optimization-, filter-, and data-driven-based techniques, are introduced and analyzed in detail, respectively. Both qualitative and quantitative comparisons are illustrated, to demonstrate the effectiveness of the state-of-the-art denoising methods. Finally, potential directions of future work are pointed out to solve the common problems of these approaches. A mesh denoising benchmark is also built in this work, and future researchers will easily and conveniently evaluate their methods with state-of-the-art approaches. To aid reproducibility, we release our datasets and used results at
https://github.com/chenhonghua/Mesh-Denoiser
.
Balanced Allocations with the Choice of Noise
Authors: Los Dimitrios , Sauerwald Thomas
Published: September 2023

We consider the allocation of
m
balls (jobs) into
n
bins (servers). In the standard
Two-Choice
process, at each step
t
=1,2,... ,m we first sample
two
randomly chosen bins, compare their two loads and then place a ball in the least loaded bin. It is well-known that for any
m
⩾
n
, this results in a gap (difference between the maximum and average load) of log
2
log
n
+ Θ (1) (with high probability).

In this work, we consider
Two-Choice
in different settings with noisy load comparisons. One key setting involves an adaptive adversary whose power is limited by some threshold

\(g \in \mathbb {N}\)

. In each step, such adversary can determine the result of any load comparison between two bins whose loads differ by at most
g
, while if the load difference is greater than
g
, the comparison is correct.

For this adversarial setting, we first prove that for any
m
⩾
n
the gap is

\(\mathcal {O}(g+\log n)\)

with high probability. Then through a refined analysis we prove that if
g
⩽ log
n
, then for any
m
⩾
n
the gap is

\(\mathcal {O}(\frac{g}{\log g} \cdot \log \log n)\)

. For constant values of
g
, this generalizes the heavily loaded analysis of [
19
,
61
] for the
Two-Choice
process, and establishes that asymptotically the same gap bound holds even if load comparisons among “similarly loaded” bins are wrong. Finally, we complement these upper bounds with tight lower bounds, which establish an interesting phase transition on how the parameter
g
impacts the gap.

The analysis also applies to settings with outdated and delayed information. For example, for the setting of [
18
] where balls are allocated in consecutive batches of size

\(b = n\)

, we present an improved and tight gap bound of

\(\Theta (\frac{\log n}{\log \log n})\)

. This bound also extends for a range of values of
b
and applies to a relaxed setting where the reported load of a bin can be any load value from the last
b
steps.
Efficient Implementation of Modern Entropy Stable and Kinetic Energy Preserving Discontinuous Galerkin Methods for Conservation Laws
Authors: Ranocha Hendrik , Schlottke-Lakemper Michael , Chan Jesse , Rueda-Ramírez Andrés M. , Winters Andrew R. , Hindenlang Florian , Gassner Gregor J.
Published: September 2023

Many modern discontinuous Galerkin (DG) methods for conservation laws make use of summation by parts operators and flux differencing to achieve kinetic energy preservation or entropy stability. While these techniques increase the robustness of DG methods significantly, they are also computationally more demanding than standard weak form nodal DG methods. We present several implementation techniques to improve the efficiency of flux differencing DG methods that use tensor product quadrilateral or hexahedral elements, in 2D or 3D, respectively. Focus is mostly given to CPUs and DG methods for the compressible Euler equations, although these techniques are generally also useful for other physical systems, including the compressible Navier-Stokes and magnetohydrodynamics equations. We present results using two open source codes, Trixi.jl written in Julia and FLUXO written in Fortran, to demonstrate that our proposed implementation techniques are applicable to different code bases and programming languages.
Dietary and Therapeutic Benefits of Edible Insects: A Global Perspective
Authors: Tanga Chrysantus Mbi , Ekesi Sunday
Published: September 2023

Edible insects are gaining traction worldwide for research and development. This review synthesizes a large and well-established body of research literature on the high nutritional value and variety of pharmacological properties of edible insects. Positive benefits of insect-derived products include immune enhancement; gastrointestinal protection; antitumor, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory capacities; antibacterial activities; blood lipid and glucose regulation; lowering of blood pressure; and decreased risk of cardiovascular diseases. However, the pharmacological mechanisms of these active components of edible insects in humans have received limited research attention. In addition, we discuss health risks (safety); application prospects; regulations and policies governing their production and consumption with a view to promote innovations, intraglobal trade, and economic development; and suggestions for future directions for further pharmacological functional studies. The aim is to review the current state of knowledge and research trends on edible insects as functional ingredients beneficial to the nutrition and health of humans and animals (livestock, aquatic species, and pets).
Mechanisms of Systemic Osmoregulation in Insects
Authors: Halberg Kenneth Veland , Denholm Barry
Published: September 2023

Water is essential to life. Terrestrial insects lose water by evaporation from the body surface and respiratory surfaces, as well as in the excretory products, posing a challenge made more acute by their high surface-to-volume ratio. These losses must be kept to a minimum and be offset by water gained from other sources. By contrast, insects such as the blood-sucking bug Rhodnius prolixus consume up to 10 times their body weight in a single blood meal, necessitating rapid expulsion of excess water and ions. How do insects manage their ion and water budgets? A century of study has revealed a great deal about the organ systems that insects use to maintain their ion and water balance and their regulation. Traditionally, a taxonomically wide range of species were studied, whereas more recent research has focused on model organisms to leverage the power of the molecular genetic approach. Key advances in new technologies have become available for a wider range of species in the past decade. We document how these approaches have already begun to inform our understanding of the diversity and conservation of insect systemic osmoregulation. We advocate that these technologies be combined with traditional approaches to study a broader range of nonmodel species to gain a comprehensive overview of the mechanism underpinning systemic osmoregulation in the most species-rich group of animals on earth, the insects.
Pest Status, Bio-Ecology, and Area-Wide Management of Mirids in East Asia
Authors: Lu Yanhui , Wyckhuys Kris A.G. , Wu Kongming
Published: September 2023

Mirids (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Miridae) feed upon a wide variety of cultivated and wild plants and can be economically important crop pests. They have traditionally been perceived as innocuous herbivores in East Asia; however, population levels of various mirid species have dramatically increased over the past decades. High-profile pests such as Apolygus spp., Adelphocoris spp., and Lygus spp. are now widely distributed across the region, and their infestation pressure is associated with climate, agroecological conditions, and farming practices. This review outlines how an in-depth understanding of pest biology, a systems-level characterization of pest ecology, and a comprehensive evaluation of integrated pest management tactics have enabled sustainable management of mirids across crop boundaries and harvest cycles. This work underscores how more holistic, integrative research approaches can accelerate the implementation of area-wide management of generalist pests, effectively prevent pest population build-up and yield impact, and shrink the environmental footprint of agriculture. In addition to highlighting the merits of interdisciplinary systems approaches, we discuss prospects and challenges for the sustainable management of polyphagous mirid pests in landscape matrices.
Oral Anticoagulants Beyond Warfarin
Authors: Olie Renske H. , Winckers Kristien , Rocca Bianca , ten Cate Hugo
Published: September 2023

Direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs) have largely replaced vitamin K antagonists, mostly warfarin, for the main indications for oral anticoagulation, prevention and treatment of venous thromboembolism, and prevention of embolic stroke in atrial fibrillation. While DOACs offer practical, fixed-dose anticoagulation in many patients, specific restrictions or contraindications may apply. DOACs are not sufficiently effective in high–thrombotic risk conditions such as antiphospholipid syndrome and mechanical heart valves. Patients with cancer-associated thrombosis may benefit from DOACs, but the bleeding risk, particularly in those with gastrointestinal or urogenital tumors, must be carefully weighed. In patients with frailty, excess body weight, and/or moderate-to-severe chronic kidney disease, DOACs must be cautiously administered and may require laboratory monitoring. Reversal agents have been developed and approved for life-threatening bleeding. In addition, the clinical testing of potentially safer anticoagulants such as factor XI(a) inhibitors is important to further optimize anticoagulant therapy in an increasingly elderly and frail population worldwide.
Effective Models of Heat Conduction in Composite Electrodes
Authors: Li Weiyu , Tartakovsky Daniel M.
Published: September 2023

Thermal effects impact battery performance, safety, and health. Existing models of heat generation, conduction, and dissipation in batteries account for distinct physicochemical properties of the active material and electrolyte but routinely disregard the presence of the carbon binder domain (CBD), which ensures the electrodes’ cohesiveness and structural stability. We present a homogenized thermal model for a spherical active particle coated with CBD and immersed in a liquid electrolyte. The model replaces this composite particle with a homogeneous particle whose equivalent thermal conductivity and other properties preserve the amount of released heat and heat flux at the solid/electrolyte interface, for a given ambient temperature. The effective thermal conductivity is expressed in terms of the volume fraction of the active material in the mixture and the electrochemical and thermal properties of both the active material and CBD. This analytical expression for thermal conductivity can be readily integrated into thermal simulations at either device-scale or pore-scale, without adding computational complexity. Consequently, it provides a means to account for CBD in models used for battery design and management.
The effects of postprandial exercise and meal glycemic index on plasma glucose and glucoregulatory hormone responses after Roux-en-Y gastric bypass
Authors: Ternhamar Tummas , Møller Andreas , Martinussen Christoffer , Svane Maria S. , Hindsø Morten , Jørgensen Nils B. , Dirksen Carsten , Jensen Jens-Erik Beck , Hartmann Bolette , Holst Jens J. , Kiens Bente , Madsbad Sten , Bojsen-Møller Kirstine N.
Published: September 2023

We investigate the effect of moderate exercise after a high or a low glycemic index meal on nadir glucose and glucoregulatory hormones in gastric bypass-operated individuals and in matched unoperated controls. Cycling shortly after meal intake did not increase the risk of hypoglycemia in operated individuals. The low glycemic index meal increased glucose nadir and reduced excursions compared with the high glycemic index meal. Operated individuals had lower postexercise glucagon responses compared with controls.
Copper Selenide (CuSe) Monolith Fabricated by Facile Copper Foam Selenization for Efficient Photocatalytic Degradation of Methylene Blue
Authors: Wang Yefan , Gao Shan , Li Haoying , Cao Yang , Zhai Yijie , Chen Niezheng , Yang Zequn
Published: September 2023

A critical challenge that impedes the application of photocatalytic techniques for organic dye degradation from polluted industrial effluents is that traditional powdery photocatalysts exposed limited photo-absorption sites and exhibited inefficient recyclability. To overcome these challenges, this study designed a one-step process to synthesize a monolithic copper selenide (CuSe)-based photocatalyst. The characterization results fully supported that the maintenance of the copper foam during the selenization process was the prerequisite for the monolithic photocatalyst to keep its structural integrity in photocatalytic reactions. The surface of the monolithic photocatalyst fully covered by active CuSe is crucial for the exposure of photocatalytically active sites and the efficient degradation of methylene blue (MB). It was found that the CuSe-based monolithic photocatalyst exhibited excellent MB degradation performances under harsh pH conditions and high MB concentrations. From these perspectives, it is reasonable to conclude that the CuSe-based monolithic photocatalyst as prepared is a promising alternative to traditional powdery photocatalysts for organic dye degradation and industrial effluent cleaning.
Application of Fuzzy and Conventional Forecasting Techniques to Predict Energy Consumption in Buildings
Authors: Cabrera A. , Ruiz L. G. B. , Criado-Ramón D. , Barranco C. D. , Pegalajar M. C.
Published: September 2023

This paper presents the implementation and analysis of two approaches (fuzzy and conventional). Using hourly data from buildings at the University of Granada, we have examined their electricity demand and designed a model to predict energy consumption. Our proposal was conducted with the aid of time series techniques as well as the combination of artificial neural networks and clustering algorithms. Both approaches proved to be suitable for energy modelling although nonfuzzy models provided more variability and less robustness than fuzzy ones. Despite the relatively small difference between fuzzy and nonfuzzy estimates, the results reported in this study show that the fuzzy solution may be useful to enhance and enrich energy predictions.
Circularity in Materials: A Review on Polymer Composites Made from Agriculture and Textile Waste
Authors: Shafqat Ali Raza , Hussain Muzzamal , Nawab Yasir , Ashraf Munir , Ahmad Sheraz , Batool Ghazia
Published: September 2023

Agriculture and textiles have the highest production yields among all sectors to meet mankind’s basic needs, i.e., feeding and clothing; however, they are top contributors to environmental pollution and global waste generation. Their wastes and byproducts are precious organic materials, they have great potential as raw materials for the manufacturing of valuable products. This review sheds light on various textile and agricultural wastes, waste management issues, and their existing utilization. Current waste processing methods are mostly based on waste-to-energy routes or material reclamation; however, both methods are hazardous for the environment and are inefficient. During the past decade, many researchers have utilized agriculture and textile wastes in the fabrication of composites. Textile and agricultural wastes and byproducts can be efficiently used for composite fabrication and can be suitable alternatives to existing raw materials. Using textiles and agricultural wastes for composite manufacturing can not only address waste management issues and replace non-eco-friendly materials in the composite industry but also significantly improve composite properties.