bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Genome wide association and haplotype analyses for the crease depth trait in bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)
Authors: Song Chengxiang , Xie Kaidi , Hu Xin , Zhou Zhihua , Liu Ankui , Zhang Yuwei , Du Jiale , Jia Jizeng , Gao Lifeng , Mao Hailiang
Published: July 2023

Wheat grain has a complex structure that includes a crease on one side, and tissues within the crease region play an important role in nutrient transportation during wheat grain development. However, the genetic architecture of the crease region is still unclear. In this study, 413 global wheat accessions were resequenced and a method was developed for evaluating the phenotypic data of crease depth (CD). The CD values exhibited continuous and considerable large variation in the population, and the broad-sense heritability was 84.09%. CD was found to be positively correlated with grain-related traits and negatively with quality-related traits. Analysis of differentiation of traits between landraces and cultivars revealed that grain-related traits and CD were simultaneously improved during breeding improvement. Moreover, 2,150.8-Mb genetic segments were identified to fall within the selective sweeps between the landraces and cultivars; they contained some known functional genes for quality- and grain-related traits. Genome-wide association study (GWAS) was performed using around 10 million SNPs generated by genome resequencing and 551 significant SNPs and 18 QTLs were detected significantly associated with CD. Combined with cluster analysis of gene expression, haplotype analysis, and annotated information of candidate genes, two promising genes TraesCS3D02G197700 and TraesCS5A02G292900 were identified to potentially regulate CD. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to provide the genetic basis of CD, and the genetic loci identified in this study may ultimately assist in wheat breeding programs.
Effects of mobile-supervised question-driven collaborative dialogues on EFL learners’ communication strategy use and academic oral English performance
Authors: Cai Yuesheng , Zhang Lawrence Jun
Published: July 2023

This study investigated the effects of mobile-supervised question-driven collaborative dialogues (QDCDs) on reducing lower-intermediate-level English as a foreign language (EFL) participants’ tendency of their first language (L1) use in academic collaborative dialogues and on improving their academic foreign language (L2) oral performance. Throughout a whole semester, one group (n = 20) was involved in a mobile-supervised QDCDs intervention and a control group (n = 26) was involved in QDCDs with no supervision. Three semi-open-ended and three closed-ended academic questions were used to elicit pre-and post-study oral performance data from the participants. Independent-samples t-tests showed that after the intervention, the mobile-supervised group outperformed its control counterpart in a statistically significant manner in terms of Non-repeated L2 word production (NRW), T-unit count (TC), and Mean Length of Run after pruning (MLRP). The intervention group also significantly reduced their dependence on their L1-based speaker compensatory communication strategies (SC-CSs) in QDCDs. These results suggest that the intervention group outperformed the control group in their L2 academic oral performance and their language use tendency moves toward the L2 during QDCD. Based on the findings, we conclude that, even though L1 oral output may temporally enhance the quality of lower-intermediate-level EFL learners’ tasks, it may inhibit their academic oral proficiency development in the long run. Methods for fragmental bilingual oral output analysis are introduced. Pedagogical implications of the findings for MALL are also discussed.
Are reframing strategies more effective than empathy in processing trauma reports? A pilot study
Authors: Leuteritz Sophie , Böhme Stephanie , Mühlberger Andreas , Greve Werner
Published: July 2023

Listening to trauma reports can lead to the development of symptoms associated with secondary traumatization. This is particularly relevant for psychotherapists in practice, where psychologists need to estabilish effective strategies for processing and coping with such emotionally challenging events. This explorative study investigated adaptive reframing strategies for future therapists listening to trauma stories compared to feeling empathy for the client. In a mixed design, 42 postgraduate psychology students were randomly instructed to objectively distance themselves, reappraise, or feel empathetic while watching a video of a presumed trauma patient reporting a single violent act. An overall ANOVA did not reveal a difference between the reframing groups and the empathy group (between subjects manipulated) in their skin conductance level and heart rate variability during the video, as well as their change in state depression and state anxiety over the three measurements (before the video, after the video, and 2 days later). Nevertheless, an explorative t-test showed a significantly weaker rise in state depression and state anxiety from before the video to after the video in the reframing groups compared to the empathy group. This supports the suggestion that reframing strategies can be discussed as a protective factor against health issues such as secondary traumatization in therapists and should be examined in further studies in more detail.
After one year in university; a robust decrease in autistic traits reporting among autistic students
Authors: Zukerman Gil , Yahav Gili , Ben-Itzchak Ester
Published: July 2023

Background

Previous research on autistic students enrolled in university support programs has reported moderate improvement in anxiety/depression or adaptive behavior. However, alterations in autistic traits have not been examined.

Methods

This longitudinal study evaluated changes in university students’ autistic trait and state/trait anxiety levels. Participants were 24 neurotypically developed (ND) students with high levels of social anxiety symptoms (High SA), 30 ND students with low levels of SA symptoms (Low SA), and 41 autistic students (the primary focus of this study) residing with an ND peer student mentor as part of participating in the university’s integration support program. Autism spectrum quotient [AQ and State Trait Anxiety Inventory STAI] data were collected during the first semester of two consecutive academic years (T1, T2), as well as baseline (T1) levels of social anxiety, depression, and obsessive–compulsive symptoms.

Results

Significant interaction between group and time was observed, denoting a sharp decrease (2.9 SD) from T1 to T2 in the overall autistic trait level among the autistic group (AQ “attention switching” subscale demonstrating the most robust decrease), and a moderate decrease (0.5 SD) among the high SA group. Only for the autistic students were more compulsive symptoms at T1 associated with a lesser decrease in AQ scores (T1-T2), which in turn was negatively correlated with their T1 year-end grade point average.

Conclusion

The findings suggest that attending post-secondary education (while partaking in a support/transition program) is followed by a profound change of the individual’s subjective experience of autism, characterized by a sharp decline in the level of autistic traits, particularly attention switching. This change is independent of alterations in well-being indices, such as anxiety, that are known to characterize students attending university.
The impact of parents' physical activity goals and parental attitudes on physical activity during leisure time among children in middle childhood
Authors: Kamionka Agata , Lipowska Małgorzata , Lizińczyk Sebastian , Lipowski Mariusz
Published: July 2023

Introduction

Parents' supportiveness and health-promoting habits significantly affect the intensity of children's physical activity (PA) and the involvement of parents in their engagement in PA; in this domain, both the hours devoted to PA and PA goals can be assessed. The family plays an important role in shaping the physical and social organization of the environment for children aged 4–6 years.

Methods

A total of 680 families with 5-year-old children (330 girls, 350 boys) took part in the study. Data were collected from these participants, who were recruited from preschools and primary schools in the Pomeranian region of Poland. The aim of this study was to determine whether the involvement of parents in PA mediates the influence of parental attitudes on the ways in which their children spend their leisure time.

Results

The results showed that not all parental attitudes had direct impact on children's leisure time in PA and outside PA. Other aspects parental attitude had no significant impact on offspring's free time. Among fathers, only four aspects of parental attitude (namely, acceptance–rejection, inconsistency, autonomy, and overprotectiveness) had an impact on PA goals. Mothers' goals were influenced by the strength of a larger number of aspects of attitude (namely, acceptance–rejection, autonomy, inconsistency, over-demandingness, and overprotectiveness). Similarly, the strength of mothers' and fathers' acceptance–rejection attitudes, attitudes of autonomy, and overprotectiveness had an impact on their PA goals but were not directly linked to their children's leisure-time engagement in PA.

Discussion

Not all parental attitudes have a direct impact on children's PA or non-PA leisure time. However, the goals of PA parents have been recognized influence the leisure time of children in PA and outside PA. The most statistically significant relationship for both mothers and fathers was between parental attitudes and PA goals. Parental attitudes do not play a significant role in explaining involvement in PA or lack of it in leisure time among 5-year-old children.
General health and its relation to the quality of life and alcohol consumption in a Polish cohort of medical students – preliminary results of POLLEK survey
Authors: Barański Kamil , Szemik Szymon , Kaleta-Pilarska Angelina , Kowalska Małgorzata
Published: July 2023

Introduction

First-year students of medicine are at higher risk of stress related to the new environment and study overload. Such factors can play a role and have an impact on their quality of life and general health status which can cause possible problems with alcohol use. The aim of the study is to assess the relationship between mentioned factors in the Polish cohort of first-year medical students.

Materials and methods

The quality of life has been assessed within the WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire, the general health status was assessed via GHQ28, and alcohol consumption was assessed the by AUDIT questionnaire. Due to the lack of signature informed consent and lack of data, 381 (72%) students out of 525 were included in the final analysis.

Result

The majority of the 1-year students were females 68%; (n = 259) vs. 32% (n = 122) males. Half of the students had lowered risk of distress. However, females had a higher risk of having higher scores in GHQ-28 than males. In relation to the assessment of the quality of life, the students with a lower level of distress (<32 points in GHQ-28) had better results in each WHOQOL domain. There was no association between general health status and alcohol use. For the students who had possible problems with alcohol use the OR was 1.15 95% CI (0.73–1.80) and for students who were probably addicted OR was 1.07 95% CI (0.33–3.41).

Conclusion

The total quality of life in first-year Polish medical students is relatively high; however, half of them suffer because of distress and around 30% have some alcohol problems. Females are more likely to have higher GHQ-28 scores than males.
The central role of DNA damage in immunosenescence
Authors: Kell Loren , Simon Anna Katharina , Alsaleh Ghada , Cox Lynne S.
Published: July 2023

Ageing is the biggest risk factor for the development of multiple chronic diseases as well as increased infection susceptibility and severity of diseases such as influenza and COVID-19. This increased disease risk is linked to changes in immune function during ageing termed immunosenescence. Age-related loss of immune function, particularly in adaptive responses against pathogens and immunosurveillance against cancer, is accompanied by a paradoxical gain of function of some aspects of immunity such as elevated inflammation and increased incidence of autoimmunity. Of the many factors that contribute to immunosenescence, DNA damage is emerging as a key candidate. In this review, we discuss the evidence supporting the hypothesis that DNA damage may be a central driver of immunosenescence through senescence of both immune cells and cells of non-haematopoietic lineages. We explore why DNA damage accumulates during ageing in a major cell type, T cells, and how this may drive age-related immune dysfunction. We further propose that existing immunosenescence interventions may act, at least in part, by mitigating DNA damage and restoring DNA repair processes (which we term “genoprotection”). As such, we propose additional treatments on the basis of their evidence for genoprotection, and further suggest that this approach may provide a viable therapeutic strategy for improving immunity in older people.
Automated feedback and writing: a multi-level meta-analysis of effects on students' performance
Authors: Fleckenstein Johanna , Liebenow Lucas W. , Meyer Jennifer
Published: July 2023

Introduction

Adaptive learning opportunities and individualized, timely feedback are considered to be effective support measures for students' writing in educational contexts. However, the extensive time and expertise required to analyze numerous drafts of student writing pose a barrier to teaching. Automated writing evaluation (AWE) tools can be used for individual feedback based on advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology. A number of primary (quasi-)experimental studies have investigated the effect of AWE feedback on students' writing performance.

Methods

This paper provides a meta-analysis of the effectiveness of AWE feedback tools. The literature search yielded 4,462 entries, of which 20 studies (k = 84; N = 2, 828) met the pre-specified inclusion criteria. A moderator analysis investigated the impact of the characteristics of the learner, the intervention, and the outcome measures.

Results

Overall, results based on a three-level model with random effects show a medium effect (g = 0.55) of automated feedback on students' writing performance. However, the significant heterogeneity in the data indicates that the use of automated feedback tools cannot be understood as a single consistent form of intervention. Even though for some of the moderators we found substantial differences in effect sizes, none of the subgroup comparisons were statistically significant.

Discussion

We discuss these findings in light of automated feedback use in educational practice and give recommendations for future research.
PCT testing in sepsis protocols
Authors: Valencia Luke
Published: July 2023

Septicemia is a prominent disease with a mortality rate of over 20%, making it one of the most expensive illnesses for hospitals in the United States. Many cells throughout the body release procalcitonin (PCT) in response to severe bacterial infection. This literature review attempts to assess PCT testing as a potential addition to sepsis protocols and to identify recommendations when implementing PCT testing into sepsis workups. The incorporation of PCT testing could significantly reduce the financial burden, antibiotic usage, and mortality rates in sepsis cases.
The disparity between optimal and practical Lagrangian multiplier estimation in video encoders
Authors: Ringis Daniel Joseph , Vibhoothi  , Pitié François , Kokaram Anil
Published: July 2023

With video streaming making up 80% of the global internet bandwidth, the need to deliver high-quality video at low bitrate, combined with the high complexity of modern codecs, has led to the idea of a per-clip optimisation approach in transcoding. In this paper, we revisit the Lagrangian multiplier parameter, which is at the core of rate-distortion optimisation. Currently, video encoders use prediction models to set this parameter but these models are agnostic to the video at hand. We explore the gains that could be achieved using aper-clipdirect-search optimisation of the Lagrangian multiplier parameter. We evaluate this optimisation framework on a much larger corpus of videos than that has been attempted by previous research. Our results show that per-clip optimisation of the Lagrangian multiplier leads to BD-Rate average improvements of 1.87% for x265 across a 10 k clip corpus of modern videos, and up to 25% in a single clip. Average improvements of 0.69% are reported for libaom-av1 on a subset of 100 clips. However, we show that a per-clip, per-frame-type optimisation ofλfor libaom-av1 can increase these average gains to 2.5% and up to 14.9% on a single clip. Our optimisation scheme requires about 50–250 additional encodes per-clip but we show that significant speed-up can be made using proxy videos in the optimisation. These computational gains (of up to ×200) incur a slight loss to BD-Rate improvement because the optimisation is conducted at lower resolutions. Overall, this paper highlights the value of re-examining the estimation of the Lagrangian multiplier in modern codecs as there are significant gains still available without changing the tools used in the standards.
Diagnostic dilemma in acute neurological presentation of spinal arachnoid cysts: A case report
Authors: Jain Swati , Sun Ira , Pang Boon Chuan , Lim Su Lone , Low Shiong Wen
Published: July 2023

Background

Spinal arachnoid cysts are relatively uncommon, cerebrospinal fluid-filled sacs formed by arachnoid membranes that can be either idiopathic or acquired. The neurological presentation of these cysts is varied. Advances in imaging techniques have allowed an improved characterization of these entities and excluded other possible causes of clinical manifestation. Their presentation remains varied, ranging from pain to progressive neurological deficits. Here, we present two cases of patients with thoracic arachnoid cysts that posed a diagnostic dilemma at initial presentation because of their acute neurological deficit, and their eventual recovery after surgical intervention.

Case description

The first case is of a patient with end-stage renal failure, which prevented the administration of contrast during the workup. The differential diagnosis ranged from intradural abscess to arachnoid cyst. The second patient presented with non-remitting back pain that progressed to an acute neurological deficit. Both patients recovered well after decompression of the cyst.

Conclusion

The decision to intervene is still patient-dependent and based on the extent of neurological deterioration at the time of presentation due to the relatively benign nature and lack of understanding of the temporal presentation of neurological symptoms, which are rapidly and almost completely reversed after surgery. However, further studies need to be done to understand the acute presentation of these cysts, which are apparently long-standing.
Case report: Ectopic pregnancy in the interstitial part of the fallopian tube
Authors: Bužinskienė Diana , Mačionytė Monika , Dasevičius Darius , Šilkūnas Mindaugas
Published: July 2023

Ectopic pregnancy remains one of the most common causes of pregnancy-related death in the first trimester. 2.4% of ectopic pregnancies occur in the interstitial part of the fallopian tube. As the symptoms of this condition are non-specific and the localization is associated with a higher risk of bleeding, early diagnosis of interstitial pregnancies is important, based not only on clinical symptoms, but also on additional diagnostic methods. Early diagnosis leads to better treatment-related outcomes. We report a 32-year-old female patient who came to the emergency department because of pain in the lower abdomen and right iliac region and bloody vaginal discharge. During palpation of the abdomen, the pain was localized in the lower part of the abdomen. Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) was significantly increased in biochemical tests. Transvaginal ultrasound examination of internal genital organs, abdominal and pelvic computer tomography (CT) were per-formed. An ectopic pregnancy was suspected. Thus, the patient was hospitalized in the gynecology department for surgical treatment. A laparoscopy was performed and an ectopic pregnancy was diagnosed in the interstitial part of the right fallopian tube and in the right uterine corner, which led to right salpingectomy and right uterine angle resection. Thus, interstitial pregnancy is a rare and life-threatening gynecological condition due to the higher risk of bleeding compared to other ectopic pregnancies. However, appropriate diagnosis based on clinical signs, transvaginal ultrasound findings and hCG levels in the blood ensures early diagnosis of interstitial pregnancy, which leads to the choice of medical treatment with methotrexate or minimally invasive surgical techniques.
Functional measurement of canine muscular fitness: refinement and reliability of the Penn Vet Working Dog Center Sprint Test
Authors: Farr Brian , Gabrysiak Jorie , Traylor Rosemary , Zayas Sofia , Ramos Meghan , Mallikarjun Amritha , Otto Cynthia
Published: July 2023

Working, sporting, and companion dogs require muscular fitness to perform their daily tasks, competitive activities, and operational functions effectively and with a low risk of injury. There are currently no methods to measure the muscular fitness of dogs who are not debilitated. Sprint performance is highly correlated with muscular fitness in humans, and various sprint assessments are used to measure performance for sporting and tactical athletes. The Penn Vet Working Dog Center Sprint Test (ST) is a 25 m maximal effort sprint from a down position and was developed to be a low-cost measure of muscular fitness suitable for field use. The purpose of this project was to describe the refinements to the ST, detail the performance and measurement protocol, evaluate the measurement inter-rater and intra-rater reliability, characterize the acceleration profile, and explore the inter-day reliability. Both naïve and experienced raters demonstrated excellent intra-rater and inter-rater reliability. The acceleration profile of the dogs in this study was similar to that of average adult human sprinters and demonstrated the role of muscular fitness in performance over this short distance. Finally, a small group of dogs showed moderate inter-day reliability and provided initial performance data to inform future studies. The ST appears to be a reliable measure of canine muscular fitness and could be used to assess performance in healthy dogs and guide the return to sport or work of debilitated dogs.
Young People’s Attitudes, Perceptions and Experiences of Social Distancing and Self-Isolation During the Second Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Authors: Merritt Rowena Katherine , Vastano Alexandra , Nakagawa Jun , Doherty-Kelly Donna , Taylor Jayne
Published: July 2023

Objectives: Social distancing and self-isolation were key parts of the UK’s strategy for reducing the spread of COVID-19. This study explored young people’s attitudes, perceptions and experiences of social distancing and social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: Qualitative individual, family and paired-friendship interviews were conducted. All 26 participants lived or worked in East London and were aged between 20 and 39 years.

Results: Qualitative analysis revealed three main themes: 1) trust and breaking of the social distancing and self-isolation rules—trust in their friends to be careful and say if they are unwell; 2) own rule making—making their own household rules which made them less guilty about breaking national rules as they were adhering to rules (albeit their own); and 3) lack of clarity around self isolation and the need for practical support—confusion around length of time needed to self isolate and what self-isolation really meant.

Conclusion: Developing more effective and targeted communications and practical support mechanisms to encourage better adherence to social distancing and self-isolation rules among young people will be essential to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Flight Load Calculation Using Neural Network Residual Kriging
Authors: Yan Qi , Wan Zhiqiang , Yang Chao
Published: July 2023

Flight load calculation, an important step in aircraft design and optimization, typically involves millions of computations and requires significant computing resources and time. Improving the efficiency of flight load calculations while maintaining accuracy is therefore of great significance for shortening research and development cycles. This study investigated and compared multiple algorithms, including the neural network model, the Kriging surrogate model, and the neural network residual Kriging (NNRK) model, for flight load analysis. The accuracies of all models were confirmed through evaluation, with NNRK being the most efficient, making it highly suitable for flight load analysis. The flight load data of a civil aircraft, including the total weight, the center of gravity, the pitch moment of inertia, the altitude, the Mach number, the airspeed, the velocity pressure, the pitch rate, the load factor, and the angle of attack as input parameters, were used as sample data to establish models, for predicting wing loads under different flight conditions. The accuracies of all regressions were confirmed through evaluation, with NNRK being the most efficient. The flight load calculation shows that NNRK can significantly improve analysis efficiency and provide new insights into efficient and comprehensive flight load analysis.
Synthetic Training Data for Semantic Segmentation of the Environment from UAV Perspective
Authors: Hinniger Christoph , Rüter Joachim
Published: July 2023

Autonomous unmanned aircraft need a good semantic understanding of their surroundings to plan safe routes or to find safe landing sites, for example, by means of a semantic segmentation of an image stream. Currently, Neural Networks often give state-of-the-art results on semantic segmentation tasks but need a huge amount of diverse training data to achieve these results. In aviation, this amount of data is hard to acquire but the usage of synthetic data from game engines could solve this problem. However, related work, e.g., in the automotive sector, shows a performance drop when applying these models to real images. In this work, the usage of synthetic training data for semantic segmentation of the environment from a UAV perspective is investigated. A real image dataset from a UAV perspective is stylistically replicated in a game engine and images are extracted to train a Neural Network. The evaluation is carried out on real images and shows that training on synthetic images alone is not sufficient but that when fine-tuning the model, they can reduce the amount of real data needed for training significantly. This research shows that synthetic images may be a promising direction to bring Neural Networks for environment perception into aerospace applications.
Research on Fault-Tolerant Control of Combined Airframe Damage of Electric Aircraft
Authors: Zhang Lei , Mu Jin , Ma Hongtu , Dai Guicheng , Tong Shengxi
Published: July 2023

General aviation is an important branch of the aviation field. As a green energy aircraft, the electric aircraft is an important component and development direction of general aviation aircraft, and its safety is crucial. In this paper, the aerodynamic and dynamic characteristics of electric aircraft under collision, lightning strikes, and icing conditions are studied, and the dynamic and kinematics models of the aircraft are established by introducing damage factors. The STAR-CCM+ software is used to simulate the aerodynamic force and aerodynamic moment in the case of combined airframe damage. Based on the estimation ability of the L1 adaptive control algorithm for the parameter uncertainty of the controlled object and the automatic adjustment ability of control output, a fault-tolerant control law for electric aircraft is designed in the case of wing damage, horizontal tail damage after a collision, horizontal tail icing, and wing lightning damage. The results show that the control law has good fault-tolerant control ability for combined airframe damage of electric aircraft, and the control system has adaptability, anti-interference, and robustness, which has a good engineering reference significance for flight safety control of other transport aircraft.
occams: A Text Summarization Package
Authors: White Clinton T. , Molino Neil P. , Yang Julia S. , Conroy John M.
Published: July 2023

Extractive text summarization selects asmall subset of sentences from a document, which gives good “coverage” of a document. When given a set of term weights indicating the importance of the terms, the concept of coverage may be formalized into a combinatorial optimization problem known as the budgeted maximum coverage problem. Extractive methods in this class are known to beamong the best of classic extractive summarization systems. This paper gives a synopsis of thesoftware package occams, which is a multilingual extractive single and multi-document summarization package based on an algorithm giving an optimal approximation to the budgeted maximum coverage problem. The occams package is written in Python and provides an easy-to-use modular interface, allowing it to work in conjunction with popular Python NLP packages, such as nltk, stanza or spacy.
Dissemination of Enterococcal Genetic Lineages: A One Health Perspective
Authors: Monteiro Marques Joana , Coelho Mariana , Santana Andressa Rodrigues , Pinto Daniel , Semedo-Lemsaddek Teresa
Published: July 2023

Enterococcus spp. are commensals of the gastrointestinal tracts of humans and animals and colonize a variety of niches such as water, soil, and food. Over the last three decades, enterococci have evolved as opportunistic pathogens, being considered ESKAPE pathogens responsible for hospital-associated infections. Enterococci’s ubiquitous nature, excellent adaptative capacity, and ability to acquire virulence and resistance genes make them excellent sentinel proxies for assessing the presence/spread of pathogenic and virulent clones and hazardous determinants across settings of the human–animal–environment triad, allowing for a more comprehensive analysis of the One Health continuum. This review provides an overview of enterococcal fitness and pathogenic traits; the most common clonal complexes identified in clinical, veterinary, food, and environmental sources; as well as the dissemination of pathogenic genomic traits (virulome, resistome, and mobilome) found in high-risk clones worldwide, across the One Health continuum.
Design and Analysis of a High-Precision Dynamic Compensation System for Seed Dropping Position in Corn Sowing Operations
Authors: Chen Kaikang , Gao Shengbo , Wang Changwei , Yuan Yanwei , Zhao Bo , Zhou Liming , Niu Kang , Wang Hui , Zheng Yongjun
Published: July 2023

In response to the problem of imprecise maintenance of plant spacing and row spacing during corn sowing operations in the middle of existing corn farms, this study designed a dynamic compensation system for corn seed dropping position. The test system includes a corn seeding machine operating unit, a seed dropping variable measurement and control system unit, a terminal control system, and a dynamic compensation system. The dynamic performance of the control system was tested experimentally. When undisturbed signals were loaded, regardless of whether the machine used the position compensation function or not, the coefficient of variation of longitudinal grain spacing was 2.6% ± 0.2%, and the longitudinal grain spacing was basically consistent. After adding disturbance signals, compared with not using the dynamic compensation function, the variation coefficient of seed spacing decreased by an average of 6.94% when using the dynamic compensation function. When using the dynamic compensation function, compared with not using dynamic compensation function, the variation coefficient of lateral grain spacing decreased by an average of 9.16%. Stability analysis of longitudinal and lateral grain spacing was conducted through bench tests, verifying the stability of the proposed dynamic compensation system for seed dropping position.
Numerical Investigation of the Water-Drop Impact on Low-Drag Airfoil Using the Euler–Euler Approach and Eulerian Wall Film Model
Authors: Long Lingjie , Liu Xiaogang , Zhao Chenxi , Wang Zhongyi , Sun Haifeng
Published: July 2023

The Eulerian Wall Film (EWF) model is a mathematical model employed to analyze the behavior of fluid films on a surface. The model has been widely adopted in various engineering applications due to its accuracy and efficiency. However, it is rarely applied in the aerospace field. The solution of the water-drop impact constitutes an indispensable prerequisite for the computation of ice accretion on the exterior of aircraft wings. In this study, we propose a novel approach for the estimation of water-drop impact on wing surfaces by integrating the Euler–Euler approach and EWF model. This approach is capable of furnishing a point of reference and a theoretical foundation for prospective water-drop impact experiments. Through comparison with pertinent experimental findings, the precision of the numerical simulation approach utilized in this paper is substantiated. Specifically, the research object is the NACA653-218 airfoil of the C-919 transport aircraft, for which the aerodynamic properties, water-drop collision, and liquid film flow characteristics during steady flight were simulated.
Frame-Based Phone Classification Using EMG Signals
Authors: Salomons Inge , del Blanco Eder , Navas Eva , Hernáez Inma , de Zuazo Xabier
Published: July 2023

This paper evaluates the impact of inter-speaker and inter-session variability on the development of a silent speech interface (SSI) based on electromyographic (EMG) signals from the facial muscles. The final goal of the SSI is to provide a communication tool for Spanish-speaking laryngectomees by generating audible speech from voiceless articulation. However, before moving on to such a complex task, a simpler phone classification task in different modalities regarding speaker and session dependency is performed for this study. These experiments consist of processing the recorded utterances into phone-labeled segments and predicting the phonetic labels using only features obtained from the EMG signals. We evaluate and compare the performance of each model considering the classification accuracy. Results show that the models are able to predict the phonetic label best when they are trained and tested using data from the same session. The accuracy drops drastically when the model is tested with data from a different session, although it improves when more data are added to the training data. Similarly, when the same model is tested on a session from a different speaker, the accuracy decreases. This suggests that using larger amounts of data could help to reduce the impact of inter-session variability, but more research is required to understand if this approach would suffice to account for inter-speaker variability as well.
Potentialities of the Extraction Technologies and Use of Bioactive Compounds from Winery by-Products: A Review from a Circular Bioeconomy Perspective
Authors: Rodrigues Machado Adriana , Atatoprak Tugba , Santos Joana , Alexandre Elisabete M. C. , Pintado Manuela Estevez , Paiva Jorge A. P. , Nunes João
Published: July 2023

Agro-industrial by-products and by-products from the wine industry (pomace, peels, leaves, stems, and seeds) represent a potential economic interest because they are usually relevant natural sources of bioactive compounds, which may present significant biological activities related to human health and well-being. This article aims to review wine and winery industry by-products as potential natural sources of antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, antiaging, and anticancer compounds, as well as briefly highlighting the extraction methods used to obtain these bioactive compounds and explore their potential applications in the food, cosmetic, and packaging industries. Although there are some studies of wine industry by-products with different origins, this revision will be mainly focused on the Portuguese vineyard industry since it represents an import industrial sector as proof of the diversity of the bioactive compounds identified. Therefore, the recovery of these bioactive molecules that act as antioxidants and health-promoting agents may promote a variety of industries at the same time as the circular economy.
Hybrid Chaotic-Based PRNG for Secure Cryptography Applications
Authors: Alnajim Abdullah M. , Abou-Bakr Ehab , Alruwisan Sarah S. , Khan Sheroz , Elmanfaloty Rania A.
Published: July 2023

This paper suggests a novel one-dimensional (1D) map to address the limitations of traditional chaotic 1D maps. In contrast to traditional 1D maps, the proposed map has three control parameters a, μ, and c, allowing it to exhibit chaotic behavior over a wide range of values. The dynamic behavior of the new 1D map was analyzed using well-known numerical methods, including the bifurcation diagram and Lyapunov exponent. Both tests showed their complex and diverse behavior. In addition, a novel image encryption scheme was devised using the new function as its pseudorandom number generator. Rigorous statistical testing was applied to the proposed encryption algorithm. The mean square error (MSE) and peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) results, in addition to subjecting 28 images to number of pixels change rate (NPCR) and unified average changing intensity (UACI) tests demonstrated the robustness of the system. The results of this study demonstrate the effectiveness of the new 1D map for use in secure image cryptography applications, providing a more robust and secure alternative to traditional chaotic 1D maps.
Evaluation of Wheat Noodles Supplemented with Soy Protein Isolate for Nutritional, Textural, Cooking Attributes and Glycemic Index
Authors: Liang Jia-Ning , Nargotra Parushi , Li Xiang-Yu , Sharma Vishal , Hsieh Shu-Ling , Tsai Yung-Hsiang , Liu Yung-Chuan , Huang Chun-Yung , Kuo Chia-Hung
Published: July 2023

The elderly population in developed countries has increased rapidly in recent years; the elderly may be at greater risk of protein deficiency due to dietary, socio-economic, dental, and physical restrictions. Therefore, to address the issue of protein deficiency in elderly people, the present study aimed to enhance the protein content of high-gluten flour noodles, an Asian staple food, by supplementing them with soybean protein isolate (SPI) powder. The effect of SPI addition (5–20%, w/w) on composition, quality, texture, physical and sensory properties, and glycemic index (GI) of high-gluten flour noodles was investigated. The noodles made only from high-gluten flour served as control. In comparison to control noodles, 20% SPI noodles showed a rise in protein and moisture content from 16.17% to 30.64% and 36.06 to 44.84%, respectively. The cooking yield and cooking loss increased with an increase in SPI concentration compared to control noodles. Color characteristics analysis revealed the decreasing trend in brightness and yellowness of SPI noodles with minimal L* and b* values at a 20% SPI concentration. The addition of SPI also resulted in a decrease in the hardness and tensile strength of the noodles. The sensory analysis showed that 5% SPI noodles were more similar to control noodles in terms of flavor, taste, and overall acceptability. Moreover, the addition of SPI to the noodles significantly decreased the GI of the noodles reaching the standard of low-GI food. The findings of the current study indicate that soy protein noodles, besides supplementing the desired nutrients, may also prevent the risk of diabetes in elderly people.
Multiscale YOLOv5-AFAM-Based Infrared Dim-Small-Target Detection
Authors: Wang Yuexing , Zhao Liu , Ma Yixiang , Shi Yuanyuan , Tian Jinwen
Published: July 2023

Infrared detection plays an important role in the military, aerospace, and other fields, which has the advantages of all-weather, high stealth, and strong anti-interference. However, infrared dim-small-target detection suffers from complex backgrounds, low signal-to-noise ratio, blurred targets with small area percentages, and other challenges. In this paper, we proposed a multiscale YOLOv5-AFAM algorithm to realize high-accuracy and real-time detection. Aiming at the problem of target intra-class feature difference and inter-class feature similarity, the Adaptive Fusion Attention Module (AFAM) was proposed to generate feature maps that are calculated to weigh the features in the network and make the network focus on small targets. This paper proposed a multiscale fusion structure to solve the problem of small and variable detection scales in infrared vehicle targets. In addition, the downsampling layer is improved by combining Maxpool and convolutional downsampling to reduce the number of model parameters and retain the texture information. For multiple scenarios, we constructed an infrared dim and small vehicle target detection dataset, ISVD. The multiscale YOLOv5-AFAM was conducted on the ISVD dataset. Compared to YOLOv7, mAP@0.5 achieves a small improvement while the parameters are only 17.98% of it. In contrast, with the YOLOv5s model, mAP@0.5 was improved from 81.4% to 85.7% with a parameter reduction from 7.0 M to 6.6 M. The experimental results demonstrate that the multiscale YOLOv5-AFAM has a higher detection accuracy and detection speed on infrared dim and small vehicles.
Monitoring of Surgically Treated Upper Arm Fracture by Implanted Antenna at 402 MHz
Authors: Zeinelabedeen Wael , Uyguroglu Rasime
Published: July 2023

Remote patient monitoring aims to reduce non-essential visits to clinics and hospitals, monitor high-risk patients outside clinical settings, and optimize clinical staff utilization. This paper proposes a new monitoring application for surgically treated upper arm fractures. The humerus fracture should be healed within four to six weeks. Traditional monitoring is conducted through repeated X-ray images and visits to clinical laboratories or hospitals. Our goal is to avoid the expected drawbacks due to repeated exposure to X-rays, such as vomiting, bleeding, fainting, and sometimes the risk of cancer. Furthermore, this study aims to improve the patient’s quality of life during the treatment period by monitoring them at home. The technique depends on implanting a 116 mm length half-wave dipole antenna in the fractured arm and recording the reflection coefficient and the transmitted power at the far-field of it outside the body at 402 MHz. The fracture is represented by an extra layer added to the humerus, which increases the loss of electromagnetic field in the human tissue and then reduces the value of the transmitted power. The existence of fractures shows a change in the transmitted average power densities (APDs) in the range of 11.54% to 15.75%, based on the fracture types, and an increase in reflection coefficients in the range of −22.35 dB to −22.65 dB compared to the normal bone, which monitors the bone healing status. The standard limit of the specific absorption rate was taken into account to guarantee the safety of the human body. Different fracture types were considered and monitored, and CST Microwave Studio was used for simulation. The technique was verified experimentally by measurements carried out on a lifeless front leg animal model. The technique can also be used for the monitoring of ulna and tibia fractures.
Automated Wildlife Bird Detection from Drone Footage Using Computer Vision Techniques
Authors: Mpouziotas Dimitrios , Karvelis Petros , Tsoulos Ioannis , Stylios Chrysostomos
Published: July 2023

Wildlife conservationists have traditionally relied on manual identification and tracking of bird species to monitor populations and identify potential threats. However, many of these techniques may prove to be time-consuming. With the advancement of computer vision techniques, automated bird detection and recognition have become possible. In this manuscript, we present an application of an object-detection model for identifying and tracking wild bird species in natural environments. We used a dataset of bird images captured in the wild and trained the YOLOv4 model to detect bird species with high accuracy. We evaluated the model’s performance on a separate set of test images and achieved an average precision of 91.28%. Our method surpassed the time-consuming nature of manual identification and tracking, allowing for efficient and precise monitoring of bird populations. Through extensive evaluation on a separate set of test images, we demonstrated the performance of our model. Furthermore, our results demonstrated the potential of using YOLOv4 for automated bird detection and monitoring in the wild, which could help conservationists better understand bird populations and identify potential threats.
Hydrothermal Oxidation of Coarse Aluminum Granules with Hydrogen and Aluminum Hydroxide Production: The Influence of Aluminum Purity
Authors: Ambaryan Grayr N. , Buryakovskaya Olesya A. , Kumar Vinod , Valyano Georgii E. , Kiseleva Elena A. , Grigorenko Anatoly V. , Vlaskin Mikhail S.
Published: July 2023

This study is devoted to the hydrothermal oxidation of aluminum—the exothermic process in which hydrogen and aluminum oxide (or hydroxide) are produced. In this work, the influence of the chemical purity of aluminum on the conversion degree of coarse aluminum at hydrothermal oxidation was studied. Distilled water and coarse granules of aluminum with an average size of ~7–10 mm and three different aluminum purities—99.7, 99.9, and 99.99%—were used in the experiments. The oxidation experiments were carried out inside a 5 liter autoclave in an isothermal mode at temperatures from 200 to 280 °C, with a step of 20 °C. The holding time at the set temperature varied from 4 to 10 h. It was shown that the chemical purity of aluminum considerably influences the oxidation kinetics. More chemically pure aluminum oxidizes much faster, e.g., at a temperature of 280 °C and a holding time of 10 h, the conversion degree of granules with a chemical purity of 99.9% and 99.7% was less than 2%, while 99.99% aluminum was almost fully oxidized. The conversion degree of 99.99% aluminum decreased with the reduction in temperature and holding time, to 66–68% at 280 °C, 4 h, and 2–3% at 200 °C, 10 h.
Phaeodactylum tricornutum as Fucoxanthin Biofactory Model and Hepatoprotective Effect of Encapsulated Spirulina and Fucoxanthin
Authors: Delgado-Ramallo Jesús Fidel , Ceballos-Cuevas Laura , Álvarez-Gil María , Suárez-Montes David , Casado-Bañares Víctor , Goñi-de-Cerio Felipe , Rodríguez Eduardo
Published: July 2023

In recent decades, the worldwide production of microalgae has been carried out on an industrial scale. In recent years, the market for natural products has grown because of changes in consumer preferences for more natural products. The objective of this study was to demonstrate the hepatoprotective capacity of fucoxanthin extract obtained from an industrial culture of the microalgae Phaeodactylum tricornutum (Culture Collection of Alga and Protists in Scotland). The microalga was grown in an artificial and natural seawater mixture (1:9), using Walne’s culture medium in columns and raceway photobioreactors (RWP) inside a greenhouse. The carotenoid content in the tested systems continued to increase from day 5 of the culture, when the stationary phase was reached. The final biomass powder contained 4.9 mg (2.59%) of pure fucoxanthin. The possible hepatoprotective activity of fucoxanthin was then studied in the HepG2 cell line for 24 h in culture, and compared with the cytotoxicity of methotrexate (MTX). In conclusion, the active ingredient showed hepatoprotective activity against MTX in the human hepatocyte cell line HEPG-2 at a concentration of 0.25 mg/mL. The current results also suggest that it has beneficial properties for liver health and is a suitable ingredient for all types of nutraceutical products.