Given that bisformyl dityrosine can be released from the spore wall by mild hydrolysis, the process of formyl tyrosine-containing molecule formation may resemble the assembly of the dityrosine layer.The autogenous self-healing of cementitious material micro-cracks might lead to the service-life extension of structures. However, most of its aspects are still unknown. This paper investigates the self-healing capacity of ternary cement blends including metakaolin (MK), ground granulated blast-furnace slag (BFS), limestone (LS), and siliceous filler (F). Morphology and healing precipitation patterns were studied through the optical microscopy of artificial micro-cracks, global healing product mass monitoring, and XRD and TGA used to identify and quantify mineral formation. The self-healing potential index is introduced based on the mass measurements. It was found that the formulation containing 10% MK presented the highest healing potential at an early age ( less then 28 days), while the formulations containing 20% BFS with 10% LS/F showed a higher healing potential at an older age (cracked after 28 days of curing). Calcite, C-S-H, and portlandite were found to be the main healing products alongside specific formulation-dependent compounds, and it was observed that the calcite’s relative quantity generally increased with time. Finally, the evolution of the self-healing product phases was accurately monitored through XRD and TGA measurements.This study explores the influence of rosemary, Rosmarinus officinalis (L.) essential oil (EO) on the biochemical (acetylcholinesterase, catalase, and glutathione S-transferase), physiological (oxygen consumption), and behavioral (open field test, repellency) parameters of an important stored product insect cowpea weevil, Callosobruchus maculatus (F.). R. officinalis EO exhibited effective insecticidal action against C. maculatus even at relatively low concentrations. LC50 = 15.69 μL/L air, and was highly repellent at concentrations equal to or above LC25. Statistically significant inhibition in locomotor activity occurred only after the acute exposure to the EO at LC12.5 and LC25. The oxygen consumption test showed metabolism increase only at LC50. An increase in activity was observed in the case of all three enzymes examined. The presented data provides a potentially valuable resource in designing more environmentally friendly and safer insecticide agents.Chronic low back pain (cLBP) is a common disorder with unsatisfactory treatment options. Acupuncture has emerged as a promising method for treating cLBP. However, the mechanism underlying acupuncture remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the modulation effects of acupuncture on resting state functional connectivity (rsFC) of the periaqueductal gray (PAG) and ventral tegmental area (VTA) in patients with cLBP. Seventy-nine cLBP patients were recruited and assigned to four weeks of real or sham acupuncture. Resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging data were collected before the first and after the last treatment. Fifty patients completed the study. We found remission of pain bothersomeness in all treatment groups after four weeks, with greater pain relief after real acupuncture compared to sham acupuncture. We also found that real acupuncture can increase VTA/PAG rsFC with the amygdala, and the increased rsFC was associated with decreased pain bothersomeness scores. Baseline PAG-amygdala rsFC could predict four-week treatment response. Our results suggest that acupuncture may simultaneously modulate the rsFC of key regions in the descending pain modulation (PAG) and reward systems (VTA), and the amygdala may be a key node linking the two systems to produce antinociceptive effects. Our findings highlight the potential of acupuncture for chronic low back pain management.Kashkaval of Pindos cheese was successfully produced using 100% sheep milk (KS) or with the addition of 10% goat milk (KG). Urda cheese was manufactured using 100% sheep milk (US) or 90% sheep milk-10% goat (UG) whey from the production of kashkaval of Pindos cheese. Both cheeses were made taking into account their traditional cheese-making methods. The cheeses were assessed for their chemical, microbiological and organoleptic characteristics. Generally, no significant differences were observed between KS and KG cheese and between US and UG cheese regarding their physicochemical, textural characteristics, soluble nitrogen fraction and total fatty acid content. The fat content of Urda cheese was low, in accordance with the demand of consumers for healthy products. KS cheeses showed higher total volatile compounds than KG cheeses at 60 and 90 days of ripening and storage as well as lower counts of thermophilic-mesophilic lactic acid bacteria. No differences were observed in the microbial counts between US and UG cheeses. Acetone, hexanal, 2 heptanone, ethanol and toluene were found in abundance in Urda cheeses. Both kashkaval of Pindos and Urda cheeses received high scores during the organoleptic evaluation. The obtained data may lead to the production of both cheeses with standard characteristic according to the traditional recipes and improve their recognition.The world has been suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic since late 2019. In this study, we compared various types of infection locations in which COVID-19 cases clustered, based on the data from three adjacent provinces in Northeast China. The collected data include all officially reported cases in this area until 8 March 2020. We explored the associations between the cases and the frequency of infection locations. The COVID-19 epidemic situation was worse in Heilongjiang Province than in Liaoning and Jilin Provinces. Most clustered cases occurred in individual families and/or between relatives. The transmission in public venues served as a hub for transmitting the disease to other families and results in new clusters. The public transport spread the infection over long distances by transporting infected individuals, and most infections did not seem to occur within vehicles. This field study shows the effect of indoor environments on SARS-CoV-2 transmission and our data may be useful in developing guidance for future disease prevention and control.Crowdsensing applications provide platforms for sharing sensing data collected by mobile devices. A blockchain system has the potential to replace a traditional centralized trusted third party for crowdsensing services to perform operations that involve evaluating the quality of sensing data, finishing payment, and storing sensing data and so forth. The requirements which are codified as smart contracts are executed to evaluate the quality of sensing data in a blockchain. However, regardless of the fact that the quality of sensing data may actually be sufficient, one key challenge is that malicious requesters can deliberately publish abnormal requirements that cause failure to occur in the quality evaluation process. If requesters control a miner node or full node, they can access the data without making payment; this is because of the transparency of data stored in the blockchain. This issue promotes unfair dealing and severely lowers the motivation of workers to participate in crowdsensing tasks. We (i) propose a novel crowdsensing scheme to address this issue using Trusted Execution Environments; (ii) offer a solution for the confidentiality and integrity of sensing data, which is only accessible by the worker and corresponding requester; (iii) and finally, report on the implementation of a prototype and evaluate its performance. Our results demonstrate that the proposed solution can guarantee fairness without a significant increase in overhead.3D facial landmarks are known to be diagnostically relevant biometrics for many genetic syndromes. The objective of this study was to extend a state-of-the-art image-based 2D facial landmarking algorithm for the challenging task of 3D landmark identification on subjects with genetic syndromes, who often have moderate to severe facial dysmorphia. The automatic 3D facial landmarking algorithm presented here uses 2D image-based facial detection and landmarking models to identify 12 landmarks on 3D facial surface scans. The landmarking algorithm was evaluated using a test set of 444 facial scans with ground truth landmarks identified by two different human observers. Three hundred and sixty nine of the subjects in the test set had a genetic syndrome that is associated with facial dysmorphology. For comparison purposes, the manual landmarks were also used to initialize a non-linear surface-based registration of a non-syndromic atlas to each subject scan. Compared to the average intra- and inter-observer landmark distances of 1.1 mm and 1.5 mm respectively, the average distance between the manual landmark positions and those produced by the automatic image-based landmarking algorithm was 2.5 mm. The average error of the registration-based approach was 3.1 mm. Comparing the distributions of Procrustes distances from the mean for each landmarking approach showed that the surface registration algorithm produces a systemic bias towards the atlas shape. In summary, the image-based automatic landmarking approach performed well on this challenging test set, outperforming a semi-automatic surface registration approach, and producing landmark errors that are comparable to state-of-the-art 3D geometry-based facial landmarking algorithms evaluated on non-syndromic subjects.The importance of surface roughness and its non-destructive examination has often been emphasised in structural rehabilitation. The presented innovative procedure enables the estimation of concrete-to-concrete strength based on a combination of low-cost, area-limited tests and geostatistical methods. The new method removes the shortcomings of the existing one, i.e., it is neither qualitative nor subjective. The interface strength factors, cohesion and friction, can be estimated accurately based on the collected data on a surface texture. The data acquisition needed to create digital models of the concrete surface can be performed by terrestrial close-range photogrammetry or other methods. In the presented procedure, limitations to the availability of concrete surfaces are overcome by the generation of subsequential Gaussian random fields (via height profiles) based on the semivariograms fitted to the digital surface models. In this way, the randomness of the surface texture is reproduced. The selected roughness parameters, such as mean valley depth and, most importantly, the geostatistical semivariogram parameter sill, were transformed into contact bond strength parameters based on the available strength tests. The proposed procedure estimates the interface bond strength based on the geostatistical methods applied to the numerical surface model and can be used in practical and theoretical applications.Completed area coverage planning (CACP) plays an essential role in various fields of robotics, such as area exploration, search, rescue, security, cleaning, and maintenance. Tiling robots with the ability to change their shape is a feasible solution to enhance the ability to cover predefined map areas with flexible sizes and to access the narrow space constraints. By dividing the map into sub-areas with the same size as the changeable robot shapes, the robot can plan the optimal movement to predetermined locations, transform its morphologies to cover the specific area, and ensure that the map is completely covered. The optimal navigation planning problem, including the least changing shape, shortest travel distance, and the lowest travel time while ensuring complete coverage of the map area, are solved in this paper. To this end, we propose the CACP framework for a tiling robot called hTrihex with three honeycomb shape modules. The robot can shift its shape into three different morphologies ensuring coverage of the map with a predetermined size.