bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
FTO rs9939609:T&gt;A variant and physical inactivity as important risk factors for morbid obesity: A cross-sectional study
Authors: Martinez-Lopez Erika , Perez-Robles Mariana , Torres-Vanegas Joel , Godinez-Mora Sissi , Llamas-Covarrubias Iris Monserrat , Campos-Perez Wendy 
Published: May 2023

Abstract
Background The prevalence of obesity has been increasing worldwide. It has been reported that physiological, environmental factors such as: diet, culture, physical activity, and genetics, are the principal factors related with obesity. The FTO rs9939609:T > A variant has been associated with obesity. The A variant has been correlated with anthropometric and metabolic alterations. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to analyze the association of the FTO rs9939609: T > A variant and environmental factors with clinical, anthropometric, and biochemical variables in subjects with morbid obesity.Results The A variant frequency was higher in morbid obesity group compared with normal weight group (44% vs 25%, p < 0.001). Subjects with the AA genotype had higher BMI than those with the AT genotype (35.46 kg/m2 (31-39.8) vs 26.91 kg/m2 (23.7–30), p = 0.005). Women with the AA genotype showed higher waist circumference than the AT group (101.07cm (90.9-111.1) vs 85.45cm (77-93.8) p = 0.047). The FTO A variant increases the risk 3.54 times, and the physical inactivity 6.37 times for morbid obesity.Conclusions Our results suggest that among the studied variables, the most associated with morbid obesity were the FTO risk genotype (A allele) and physical inactivity. Therefore, it is important to promote physical activity as a lifestyle, mainly in subjects with risk genotype.
Trust and Deception in Proximity：Independent director-Executives Faultlines and Executive corruption
Authors: liu yuwei , ma sheng 
Published: May 2023

Abstract
Using a sample of China-A-share listed firms from 2008 to 2017, we examine the impact of the independent director-executives faultlines on executive corruption. The results suggest that the independent director-executives faultlines have a “double-edged sword” effect; it significantly inhibits the possibility of executives explicit corruption but aggravates executives implicit corruption. Further tests show that independent directors with legal backgrounds and academic experience have a more obvious inhibitory effect on explicit corruption. The non-local independent directors play a catalytic impact on the faultlines, and the power constraint of executives forms a superimposition effect with the faultlines, which all strengthen the faultlines inhibition effect on explicit corruption and the aggravation effect on implicit corruption. The research of this study shows the governance of independent directors under a “ties-oriented” culture in China and plays a specific enlightening role in the reconstruction of the ecology of independent directors.
Bitcoin versus Commodity assets: Impact on the US equity market before and after COVID-19 crisis: Evidence from PLS regression
Authors: mbarek Mohammed hedi Hadj , GAM Imen 
Published: May 2023

Abstract

This study investigates the interactions among US stock market, crude oil, natural gas and bitcoin assets using daily data covering the period from January 20, 2015 to December 10, 2021, through PLS regression method. Due to COVID-19 pandemic, the study period is characterized by lockdowns and mobility. This situation may affect the global economy and the financial market in the USA. Thus, a conscientious analysis of the incidence of a sanitary crisis such as COVID-19 on equity market seems to be primordial. Results are very interesting and approve the presence of a significant impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the U.S. financial market. More importantly, the follow up of the interconnections between the three assets under consideration and the US stock market proved that the strengthen of these interdependences have been changed due to the sanitary crisis. Moreover, like after the financial crisis of 2008, during the sanitary crisis the crude oil asset seems to be the most decisive to boost the US stock market. Taken together, our empirical findings are effective for the relevant authorities and policymakers in the United States to establish an appropriate financial and fiscal policy such as promoting investment in crude oil in order to boost the US equity market.
JEL codes: F65 – Q41 – G12
Intention process mining using a context-aware Hidden Markov Model
Authors: Choukri Imane , Guermah Hatim , Hafiddi Hatim , Nassar Mahmoud 
Published: May 2023

Abstract
The emerging availability of digital devices that can be utilized for activity tracking and context sensing opened new opportunities for context awareness and user intention recognition. Mainly, the opportunity to use generated data during user operational process execution and understand the intention behind its behavior under a given context. The hidden Markov model (HMM) has been widely used in many fields, such as speech recognition and computational biology. It can be seen as a class of stochastic processes that have a finite-state structure. It then offers a good promise for their applications in process mining. Then, much research has been done to build generic process models based on the study of user behavior captured during the implementation of operational processes. But they merely considered the relationship between the observed activities and their sequences. They ignored the implicit intention and the surrounding context, conditioning the user’s behavior when triggering the actual process. Consequently, the objective of this research was twofold. First, we specify a context HMM for intention mining in an unsupervised manner. Secondly, we upgrade the resulting model within context awareness property. Finally, we evaluated these models in a case study with a travel activity dataset. The experiments revealed that intention mining within a context-aware model had better precision in discovering the correct intentions.
Degradation of Pharmaceuticals from Simulated and Real Hospital Wastewater applying Conventionnal Fenton Process: Optimization conditions and application
Authors: APPIA Foffié Thiery Auguste , OUATTRA Lassiné 
Published: May 2023

Abstract

This study concerns the treatment of simulated and real hospital wastewater enriched in amoxicillin (AMX), ceftriaxone (CTX) and telebrix (TLX) by the Fenton process. The initial concentration of the compound, the molar ratio [H2O2]/[Fe2+]=k and the pH were used to determine the optimal conditions on the simulated wastewater. Then comes the study of the effects of inorganic ions, temperature and degradation of CTX and TLX. Chemical oxygen requirements (COD) and amoxicillin concentrations were used to monitor the experiments. The results obtained indicate that the optimum degradation (78.86%) is obtained at 0.5mM from the initial concentration, k=2 and pH=3. For instance, it has been found that the Fenton process does not degrade pharmaceuticals with the same efficacy. Furthermore, inorganic ions and high temperature reduce the performance of conventional Fenton. Moreover, this process hardly degrades (37.05%) real hospital wastewater, which contain inorganic ions in terms of COD removal. However, the successive addition of Fenton reagents provides a better COD removal rate for the treatment of this actual wastewater (88.96%). On the other hand, alternatives such as increasing the molar ratio as well as decreasing the quantities of Fenton reagents while keeping k constant did not have a positive effect on the removal rate of the actual wastewater. The formation of intermediate compounds was shown by comparison of the evolution of the concentration of the compound and the COD.
Acute collapse of a left atrial myxoma caused by multiple internal hemorrhages: a case report and literature review
Authors: Kato Takayoshi , Umeda Etsuji , Suzui Natsuko , Fujii Ryo , Ogura Hiroki , Sakai Osamu , Shimabukuro Katsuya , Doi Kiyoshi 
Published: May 2023

Abstract

Background: Left atrial myxoma is the most common benign tumor. Its growth rate is still unknown because it does not present specific symptoms until before the tumor grows to a certain size; early surgical management is performed in most of cases once physicians detect it. Despite the common perception of cardiac myxomas as slow-growing tumors, some authors have reported rapid enlargement of myxomas.
Case presentation: A 64-year-old woman was referred to our hospital with a diagnosis of left atrial tumor. The pointed tumor changed morphologically in a few hours and her respiratory condition, which had been normal at admission, suddenly deteriorated. Emergent surgery was performed, and the diagnosis was myxoma with multiple intratumor massive hematomas. The patient recovered uneventfully and was discharged on postoperative day 12 without any complications.
Conclusions: We report an extremely rare case of left atrial myxoma collapsed by acute multiple hemorrhages within itself. Massive internal hemorrhage alters the size, shape, and fragility of the tumor. We should recognize the potential risk of internal hemorrhage, which leads to acute deterioration in myxomas, that are so called ‘slow-growing benign’ tumors.
Rapamycin protects dopaminergic neurons by suppressing TLR2 mediated neuroinflammation and enhancing autophagy in rotenone-induced PD mice
Authors: xie xifang , Su Songxue , Huang Yujiao , Cui Qunli , Zang Weidong 
Published: May 2023

Abstract
Microglia inflammation and autophagy play important roles in the initiation and progression of Parkinson’s disease (PD). Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2) activation is closely related to microglial activation and enhances the cell-to-cell propagation of a-synuclein pathology. Clinical and preclinical samples also observed the impaired autophagy-lysosomal systems. As such, therapeutic strategies that inhibit TLR2 and/or modulate autophagy may be effective for PD treatment. As an autophagy inducer, rapamycin is initially used in the treatment of a variety of tumors by inhibiting mTORC1. Recently, rapamycin was reported to exert the anti-inflammatory effects in a variety of inflammatory diseases. Here, we employed the rotenone-induced Parkinson’s disease mouse model and peptidoglycan (PGN) cultured BV-2 cells to investigate whether rapamycin (Rapa) can act on PD by influencing TLR2 activation in vitro and in vivo experiments. The autophagy flux and the expression of inflammation related pathways downstream of TLR2 were examined. Our results showed that rapamycin increased the expression of LC3β to clear the accumulation of α-synuclein S129 phosphorylated(P-α-syn) and improved motor dysfunction in rotenone-induced PD mice, moreover, rapamycin inhibited the expression of TLR2 in microglia, further reduced nuclear translocation of nuclear factor of activated T cells, cytoplasmic 2(NFATc2) and downregulated gene expression of tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) in vitro and in vivo. These results demonstrate that rapamycin exerts therapeutic effects via enhancing autophagy and suppressing the expression of TLR2 in rotenone-induced PD mice.
Laboratory weathering studies to evaluate the water quality impact of a lithium mining in Portugal
Authors: Antão Ana Maria M. C. , Rodrigues Pedro M. S. M. , Rodrigues Ricardo , Couto Guilherme 
Published: May 2023

Abstract

In recent decades, the increasing demand for energy and raw materials in modern societies has led to a significant increase in mining exploration. However, this has also sparked the emergence of movements against mining exploration all over the world, particularly in Europe. During the operation of open pit mines, materials are deposited on the surface and subjected to weathering processes. These processes can create an environmental impact by causing the migration of chemical elements from soils to waters. Given the importance of the theme of water and soil contamination nowadays, it is important to verify the potential environmental impact resulting from open pit mine exploration. Laboratory tests were used to simulate weather conditions due to leaching of soils in a lithiniferous feldspar mine located in the centre of Portugal. Soil samples, resulting from the activity of the C57 mine (Guarda, Portugal) were collected and determined its granulometry. Water samples (surface and underground) were also collected in the area to allow a characterization of the existing waters upstream and downstream of the mining operation. To simulate the soil leaching process, the Soxhlet extractor method was utilized, and spectroscopic methods were used to determine the alkali and alkaline earth metals, as well as the transition and post-transition metals. Upon comparison with the results obtained for surface and groundwater, the findings suggest that there are notable concentrations of certain elements in the weathering solution, throughout the 3,000-hour duration of the laboratory test. This indicates that, for certain chemical elements, particularly aluminium and chromium, there may be some adverse effects on water quality.
Hybrid Security Model for Securing Healthcare Data on Cloud
Authors: Sambyal Sidhant , Arora Bhavna 
Published: May 2023

Abstract

The protection and affording privacy for patients’ data in Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and associated systems along with medical databases is referred to as medical data security. Security requirements concerning patients’ information availability, confidentiality, and integrity have arisen as a result of the increased digitization of medical data. Consequent to which the attackers have become capable of attacking the transmission channels and server to extract information and misuse them for various purposes. In order to secure the patients’ and other related data, it becomes imperative to secure healthcare sector as it may involve exploitation, insurance frauds, data manipulation in bio sensors etc. due to which the loss may be in millions and would go unaccounted. Strong security measures are now more crucial than ever as a result of the frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks against healthcare companies who now largely depend on cloud environment to store and safely secure their data. The paper discusses largely the data security issues of patients’ data on cloud environment in an technical way. An outline of medical data security, including typical threats and weaknesses, legal requirements, and recommended practices are given in this paper. It emphasizes the significance of having strong security measures in place, such as encryption and integrity in order to protect patient data thus assuring the healthcare providers trust in a cloud based environment. A model HSMDC (Hybrid Security Model for Healthcare Data on Cloud) has been proposed in this paper that uses multiple algorithms for providing security to ensure the security of the healthcare data in cloud environment.
On the structure-activity relationship of glyceryl oleate friction modifiers and its synergistic mechanism on phosphate ester antiwear additives
Authors: Qiu Feng , Feng Weimin , Song Hui , Yang Zhiquan , Zhang Fei , Hu Xianguo 
Published: May 2023

Abstract
The structure-activity relationship of glyceryl oleate organic friction modifiers and the difference in interaction with antiwear additives significantly affect the friction and wear characteristics of the lubrication system. This paper comprehensively considers the differences between polar functional groups and hydrocarbon tail chains, a combination of experiments and simulations were used to investigate the structure-activity relationships of three glyceryl oleate friction modifiers and the synergistic antiwear mechanisms with phosphate ester additives. The results indicate that the reduction of hydroxyl groups in glyceryl oleate weakens the electrostatic interaction with the metal interface and hydrogen bonding interaction, and the increase in hydrocarbon tail chains leads to the enhancement of the steric hindrance effect. Resulting in the substitution of polar functional groups and the increase in hydrocarbon tail chains deteriorating tribological properties. In addition, the binary additive system of glyceryl monooleate and phosphate ester exhibits a significant synergistic antiwear effect. It is attributed to the chemisorption of additive O(C = O/P-O/P = O) active sites and the Fe2O3 metal interface, GMO hydrogen bond interactions, the deprotonation of phosphate ester, as well as the carbonate and phosphate protective film generated by tribochemical reaction.
PAF-FHE: Low-Cost Accurate Non-Polynomial Operator Polynomial Approximation in Fully Homomorphic Encryption Based ML Inference
Authors: Dang Jingtian , Tong Jianming , Golder Anupam , Raychowdhury Arijit , Hao Cong , Krishna Tushar 
Published: May 2023

Abstract
Machine learning (ML) is getting more pervasive. Wide adoption of ML in healthcare, facial recognition, and blockchain involves private and sensitive data. One of the most promising candidates for inference on encrypted data, termed Fully Homomorphic Encryp-tion (FHE), preserves the privacy of both data and the ML model. However, it slows down plaintext inference by six magnitudes, with a root cause of replacing non-polynomial operators with latency-prohibitive 27-degree Polynomial Approximated Function (PAF). While prior research has investigated low-degree PAFs, naive stochastic gradient descent (SGD) training fails to converge on PAFs with degrees higher than 5, leading to limited accuracy compared to the state-of-the-art 27-degree PAF. Therefore, we propose four training techniques to enable convergence in the post-approximation model using PAFs with an arbitrary degree, including (1) Dynamic Scaling (DS) and Static Scaling (SS) to enable minimal approximation error during approximation, (2) Coefficient Tuning (CT) to obtain a good initial coefficient value for each PAF, (3) Progressive Approximation (PA) to simply the two-variable regression optimization problem into single-variable for fast 1 and easy convergence, and (4) Alternate Training (AT) to retraining the post-replacement PAFs and other linear layers in a decoupled divide-and-conquer manner. A combination of DS/SS, CT, PA, and AT enables the exploration of accuracy-latency space for FHE-domain ReLU replacement. Leveraging the proposed techniques, we propose a systematic approach (PAF-FHE) to enable low-degree PAF to demonstrate the same accuracy as SotA high-degree PAFs. We evaluated PAFs with various degrees on different models and variant datasets, and PAF-FHE consistently enables low-degree PAF to achieve higher accuracy than SotA PAFs. Specifically, for ResNet-18 under the ImageNet-1k dataset, our spotted optimal 12-degree PAF reduces 56% latency compared to the SotA 27-degree PAF with the same post-replacement accuracy (69.4%). While as for VGG-19 under the CiFar-10 dataset, optimal 12-degree PAF achieves even 0.84% higher accuracy with 72% latency saving. Our code is open-sourced at: https://github.com/TorchFHE/PAF-FHE
Space exposure enhanced pectin-degrading enzymes expression and activity in Aspergillus costaricaensis
Authors: Song Xiaohui , Li Tang , Gu Hui , Yin Heng 
Published: May 2023

Abstract
Aspergillus is a well-studied fungal genus that is widely used in the processing of plant biomass in industries. This study investigated the effects of space exposure on the ability of Aspergillus costaricaensis, a filamentous fungus isolated from rotten orange peel, to degrade pectin. The fungus was carried into space by the Long March 5B carrier rocket and exposed to cosmic radiation for 79 hours. After the flight, the strains were screened using pectin as the sole carbon source for directed screening and pectinase activity evaluation. The space-exposed strains showed increased biomass accumulation ability and pectin-degrading activity compared to the ground control strain. Comparative transcriptome analysis revealed that several CAZymes genes were significantly upregulated in the space-exposed strains, especially those related to pectin degradation. Among the 44 pectinases identified from the annotated genome, 42 were up-regulated. The identified activities of these pectinases can break down the four basic structures of pectin, and work together to break down pectin substrates. In addition, the expression of some genes involved in metabolism, sugar transport, and stress response were altered. These results suggest that the space environment can be used as a mutagenesis breeding technique to create highly efficient biomass-degrading microbial strains, with potential applications in biotechnology and bioengineering.
Effect of vegetation on flow hydraulics in compound open channels with non-prismatic floodplains
Authors: Rahim A. Samadi , Yonesi Hojjat Allah , Rahimi H. R. , Shahinejad B. , Podeh H. Torabi , Azamathulla Hazi Mohammad 
Published: May 2023

Abstract

The present paper aims to evaluate the effect of emergent rigid vegetation density on the flow's turbulence structure and hydraulic parameters at the non-prismatic floodplains. The experiments were performed using the physical model of the asymmetric non-prismatic compound channel. The results show that the velocity distribution in the vegetation flow is more influenced by the drag force caused by the vegetation than by the bed shear stress and does not follow the law of logarithmic velocity distribution throughout the non-prismatic section. The intense velocity gradient at the interface of the main channel and the floodplain leads to the development of strong secondary currents, increased Reynolds shear stresses, apparent shear stresses and momentum exchange in this region. Vegetation also decreases mean kinetic energy in the floodplain and increases it in the main channel. The mean turbulence exchange coefficient for the non-prismatic compound channels without vegetation was 0.23 and for the divergent and convergent compound channels was 0.035 and 0.020, respectively. The comparison of the local drag coefficient results shows that the fluctuations of this parameter are greater in the divergent section than in the convergent section due to the strong secondary currents in the interface.
miR-129-5p/FGF2 Axis is Associated with Homocysteine-induced Human
Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cell Injury
Authors: Li Jian , Wang Mingzhu , Wu Xiaoling , Xie Nanzi , Wang Haifeng , Huang Junling , Sheng Fei , Ma Wenlin 
Published: May 2023

Purpose:
Homocysteine (Hcy)-induced endothelial cell injury is a key event in atherosclerosis
pathogenesis. In this study, we aimed to explore the mechanisms underlying Hcy-induced
endothelial injury by assessing the effects of Hcy on endothelial cell proliferation and the microRNA
(miR)-129-5p/fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF2) axis.

Methods:
Human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) were treated with Hcy to construct
an endothelial cell injury model. Expression levels of FGF2 in Hcy-induced HUVECs were determined
using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction and western blotting. An FGF2 overexpression
lentiviral vector was constructed to upregulate FGF2 expression in HUVECs via lentivirus
transduction. A cell counting kit-8 assay was used to explore the effects of FGF2 overexpression
on HUVEC proliferation. An upstream regulatory miRNA was predicted, and its targetbinding
relationship with FGF2 was evaluated using a dual-luciferase reporter assay.

Results:
We found that FGF2 expression in HUVECs was inhibited by Hcy treatment. Lentivirus
transduction led to the overexpression of FGF2 in HUVECs, which significantly reversed the effect
of Hcy on endothelial cell proliferation. miR-129-5p was experimentally validated as an upstream
regulator of FGF2, and its decreased levels in HUVECs led to increased FGF2 expression.
In addition, HUVEC proliferation was enhanced by the knockdown of miR-129-5p, and this effect
was reversed by Hcy treatment.

Conclusion:
Taken together, the results of this study revealed that Hcy inhibits FGF2 expression
in HUVECs, and FGF2 is regulated by upstream miR-129-5p to improve the effect of Hcy on endothelial
cell proliferation.