Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fatty Acid Methyl Ester (FAME) Succession in Different Substrates as Affected by the Co-Application of Three Pesticides

Introduction In intensive agriculture areas the use of pesticides can alter soil properties and microbial community structure with the risk of reducing soil quality. Materials and Methods In this study the fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs) evolution has been studied in a factorial lab experiment combining five substrates (a soil, two aged composts and their mixtures) treated with a co-application of three pesticides (azoxystrobin, chlorotoluron and epoxiconazole), with two extraction methods, and two incubation times (0 and 58 days). FAMEs extraction followed the microbial identification system (MIDI) and ester-linked method (EL). Results and Discussion The pesticides showed high persistence, as revealed by half-life (t1/2) values ranging from 168 to 298 days, which confirms their recalcitrance to degradation. However, t1/2 values were affected by substrate and compost age down to 8 days for chlorotoluron in S and up to 453 days for epoxiconazole in 12M. Fifty-six FAMEs were detected. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that the EL method detected a higher number of FAMEs and unique FAMEs than the MIDI one, whereas principal component analysis (PCA) highlighted that the monosaturated 18:1ω9c and cyclopropane 19:0ω10c/19ω6 were the most significant FAMEs grouping by extraction method. The cyclopropyl to monoenoic acids ratio evidenced higher stress conditions when pesticides were applied to compost and compost+soil than solely soil, as well as with final time. Conclusion Overall, FAMEs profiles showed the importance of the extraction method for both substrate and incubation time, the t1/2 values highlighted the effectiveness of solely soil and the less mature compost in reducing the persistence of pesticides.
A New Approach to Attention Deficit Disorder.

As burgeoning numbers of children and adolescents are being diagnosed with attention deficit disorders, parents are increasingly asking teachers, "Do you think my child has ADD or ADHD? " Some insist that their child receive multiple accommodations for presumed ADD/ADHD. Many teachers and school administrators are uncertain about how to respond. They are also unsure about which interventions are appropriate when a student appears to be impaired by attention disorders but the parents are skeptical or refuse to consider that possibility. A recent study conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control found that approximately 7.8 percent of U.S. children ages 4–17 are currently diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) (Journal of the American Medical Association, 2005). This means that most teachers are likely to have at least a couple of students with ADD/ADHD 1 in every class they teach. However, few educators are familiar with major findings from recent scientific studies of attention deficit disorders or with the implications of these findings for schools. For decades, most educators, physicians, psychologists, and parents have thought of ADD as a cluster of behavior problems, a label for children who can't sit still, won't stop talking, and often are disruptive in class. Discussion has centered mainly on controversy over whether children with this diagnosis should be treated with stimulant medication, which, paradoxically, calms down overactive bodies and brains. However, recent research offers a new way of understanding this disorder and a different view of how medication treatment actually works in the brain.
Comparison between Airway Responses to High versus Low Molecular Weight Compounds in Occupational Asthma

Occupational asthma (OA) is a heterogeneous disease, and the characteristics of the sensitizer responsible for OA may induce different clinical, functional, and biological manifestations. We examined the characteristics of 74 patients with OA induced by low molecular weight compounds (LMWC) or by high molecular weight compounds (HMWC) and diagnosed by specific inhalation challenge (SIC). Patients with OA induced by LMWC had a longer occupational exposure before the beginning of symptoms, a lower sputum eosinophilia, and a higher prevalence of late airway response (LAR), in comparison with patients with OA induced by HMWC. Pulmonary function tended to be poorer and atopy tended to be less frequent in LMWC-induced OA than in HMWC-induced OA. These data confirm and extend previous observations showing that the characteristics of the specific sensitizer inducing OA may determine different clinical, functional, and biological features, probably related to the difference pathogenetic mechanisms underlying these different types of OA.
Making writing invisible: A Study into the Complexities of Standard Written English Acquisition in Higher Education

Higher education in the UK has changed from a system catering for an elite, to one which aims to improve the potential of over 40% of young people (Clark, 2003). Whilst not rejecting the idea of education for its own sake, this thesis suggests that one of the purposes of this mass higher education is to fit students for employment. It maintains that for students studying English and Media, this purpose includes the ability to produce Standard Written English. It examines the complexities involved in producing English and Media graduates who have this competence and explores the power relationships involved in teaching and assessing writing. The theories of Bourdieu are used to give a perspective on the use of Standard Written English as an important aspect of cultural capital which distinguishes members of the educated discourse community. Using written work and interview data from fifteen English and Media undergraduates at one university, plus written tutor feedback and comments, it considers the reasons why students might not meet the criteria set. It challenges the notion that because spelling, punctuation and grammar are ‘surface features’, achieving competence in using them is easy or relatively unimportant. In firmly rejecting the ‘student deficit’ approach, this thesis maintains that there is a need to openly acknowledge different literacies, their social consequences and the complexities involved in changing writing habits. This acknowledgement then necessitates a curriculum which includes genuine opportunities and encouragement to acquire a valuable asset. It is suggested that in doing so, the UK higher education system can move a step further away from its elitist, gatekeeping function and closer to delivering meaningful qualifications and relevant expertise to those students whose employment prospects are linked to written communication.
Image Blocking Artifacts Reduction via Patch Clustering and Low-Rank Minimization

Summary form only given. Block-based Discrete Cosine Transform (BDCT) has been widely used in image and video compression due to its energy compacting property and relative ease of implementation. However, BDCT has a major drawback, which is usually referred to as blocking artifacts. Blocking artifacts appear as grid noise along the block boundaries because each block is transformed and quantized independently. Image deblocking techniques can reduce these distortions and alleviate the conflict between bit rate reduction and visual quality preservation. Many state-of-the-art image deblocking algorithms treated the blocking artifacts reduction of the compressed image as an inverse restoration problem. Natural image prior models are well utilized into the blocking artifacts reduction processing, such as the local sparsity prior model and non-local similarity property of natural images. These two local and non-local models characterize the image prior information in two complementary perspectives. Therefore, it is necessary to combine these two models in a unified framework. In this paper, we propose a novel method to reduce the blocking artifacts of blockcoded images via patch clustering and low-rank minimization, which simultaneously exploits the local and non-local sparse representations in a unified framework. First, the whole compressed image are divided into small patches. For each patch, we perform patch clustering to collect similar patches into a group. Then the whole group are simultaneously reconstructed by a low-rank minimization approach. Singular value thresholding (SVT) algorithm is employed to solve the low-rank minimization problem. To further improve the performance of the proposed algorithm, we adopt an iterative procedure to utilize the newly output data in each iteration and update the noise and signal variance adaptively. Experimental results show that the proposed method achieves higher PSNR and SSIM than the state-of-the-art methods. Comparing to the state-of-theart algorithms and, the proposed algorithm achieves about 0.37dB and 0.11dB improvement on average. For visual quality assessment, the deblocking images produced by the proposed algorithm reveal much more sharp edge structures and richer textures.
Toward variability-aware testing

We investigate how to execute a unit test for all products of a product line without generating each product in isolation in a brute-force fashion. Learning from variability-aware analyses, we (a) design and implement a variability-aware interpreter and, alternatively, (b) reencode variability of the product line to simulate the test cases with a model checker. The interpreter internally reasons about variability, executing paths not affected by variability only once for the whole product line. The model checker achieves similar results by reusing powerful off-the-shelf analyses. We experimented with a prototype implementation for each strategy. We compare both strategies and discuss trade-offs and future directions. In the long run, we aim at finding an efficient testing approach that can be applied to entire product lines with millions of products.
[Diabetic retinopathy epidemiology in type II diabetic patients. Effect of the changes in the diagnostic criteria and stricter control of the diabetes between 1993 and 2005 on the incidence of diabetic retinopathy].

OBJECTIVE The aim of the study was to compare the results with those of a previous study by the same author in 1993 when 741 type II diabetic patients were recruited. We determined the prevalence of diabetic retinopathy and the impact of the new diagnostic criteria and stricter control of diabetes on the results obtained. METHODS The study sample was obtained by hazard selection of 741 type II diabetic patients, from the total diabetic patients visited in the interval between January 1 and December 1 in 2005. RESULTS We observed a decrease in the prevalence of diabetic retinopathy between the two studies. In the first study the incidence was 39.41% while in the present study it was 27.55%. The diabetic macular edema prevalence was similar in both studies (7.15% in the past and 7.90% in the present study). There was also a decrease in the number of blind patients (11.20% in 1993 and 4.90% in the current study). The number of patients treated with laser photocoagulation increased (13.49% in the current study as compared to 6.20% in the previous study). Statistic analysis revealed the risk factors for retinopathy: diabetes mellitus duration, elevated HbA1C levels and the need for insulin treatment. CONCLUSIONS A better control of diabetes mellitus may lead us to observe an increase in visual acuity, and a better control of diabetic retinopathy. The incidence of diabetic retinopathy certainly decreased between the study periods; however the overall incidence of diabetes in the community has increased during the last few years, making firm conclusions difficult.
Rediscovering Models of Sabbath Keeping: Implications for Psychological Well-Being

There is a growing interest in Sabbath keeping in America as a counterbalance to our culture's consumerism, exhaustion, and loss of segmentation between work and other life arenas. We describe three models of Sabbath keeping, their implications for well-being, their inherent challenges and a program of research to investigate the proposed relationships. The models are (a) Life Segmentation, in which people actively segment their lives to create respite; (b) Prescribed Meaning, in which people prescribe positive and religious meaning to life segmentation; and (c) Integrated Sabbath, in which Sabbath keeping is celebrated as an integrated belief system of daily rest, reflection and relationship development.
Generalized Multiview Analysis: A discriminative latent space

This paper presents a general multi-view feature extraction approach that we call Generalized Multiview Analysis or GMA. GMA has all the desirable properties required for cross-view classification and retrieval: it is supervised, it allows generalization to unseen classes, it is multi-view and kernelizable, it affords an efficient eigenvalue based solution and is applicable to any domain. GMA exploits the fact that most popular supervised and unsupervised feature extraction techniques are the solution of a special form of a quadratic constrained quadratic program (QCQP), which can be solved efficiently as a generalized eigenvalue problem. GMA solves a joint, relaxed QCQP over different feature spaces to obtain a single (non)linear subspace. Intuitively, GMA is a supervised extension of Canonical Correlational Analysis (CCA), which is useful for cross-view classification and retrieval. The proposed approach is general and has the potential to replace CCA whenever classification or retrieval is the purpose and label information is available. We outperform previous approaches for textimage retrieval on Pascal and Wiki text-image data. We report state-of-the-art results for pose and lighting invariant face recognition on the MultiPIE face dataset, significantly outperforming other approaches.
Predictive Value of Tumor Load in Breast Cancer Sentinel Lymph Nodes for Second Echelon Lymph Node Metastases

Background: The need for routine axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) in patients with invasive breast cancer and low-volume sentinel node (SN) involvement is questionable. Accurate prediction of second echelon lymph node involvement could identify those patients most likely to benefit from ALND. Methods: A consecutive series of 317 patients with invasive breast cancer and a tumor positive axillary SN followed by ALND was reviewed. Clinicopathologic features of the primary tumor and the SN were assessed as possible predictors of second echelon lymph node involvement. Results: Second echelon metastases were found in 116/317 cases (36.6%). Frequency of second echelon lymph node involvement in patients with isolated tumor cells (ITC, N = 23), micro- (N = 101) and macrometastases (N = 193) was 13%, 20% and 48%, respectively (p < 0.001). Based on the area % of SN occupied by tumor no subgroup of patients could be selected with less than 20% second echelon lymph node involvement. However, none of the patients with SN ITC or micrometastases and a primary tumor size ≤1 cm (N = 12, 3.8%) had second echelon lymph node involvement. Conclusions: Accurately measured SN tumor load predicts second echelon lymph node involvement. However, even in patients with ITC, the second echelon lymph nodes are involved in 13% justifying ALND.
Multidimensional scaling of emotional responses to music: The effect of musical expertise and of the duration of the excerpts

Musically trained and untrained listeners were required to listen to 27 musical excerpts and to group those that conveyed a similar emotional meaning (Experiment 1). The groupings were transformed into a matrix of emotional dissimilarity that was analysed through multidimensional scaling methods (MDS). A 3-dimensional space was found to provide a good fit of the data, with arousal and emotional valence as the primary dimensions. Experiments 2 and 3 confirmed the consistency of this 3-dimensional space using excerpts of only 1 second duration. The overall findings indicate that emotional responses to music are very stable within and between participants, and are weakly influenced by musical expertise and excerpt duration. These findings are discussed in light of a cognitive account of musical emotion.
Model based power optimisation of wind farms

We present a framework for maximising the power output of a wind farm considering wake effects. A parameter representing the total power coefficient of a wind farm is introduced, which quantifies the wind speed deficit due to wake. For any given wake model, this parameter is a function of the blade pitch angle and the tip speed ratio of the individual turbines, and is independent of the wind speed. Thus, the variables associated with each turbine can be optimised offline, given the wind farm layout, in order to determine reference set points that maximise power production. An MPC controller is designed for individual turbines to track the optimal reference set points. The performance is illustrated with the turbine simulator FAST and the wind farm simulator Aeolus SimWindFarm.
Bit Rearrangement for MIMO Retransmissions

In this paper, we propose a new hybrid automatic repeat request (H-ARQ) scheme in MIMO. The proposed scheme performs bit-level exchanges and modifications every retransmission and covers all combinations of number of antennas and number of retransmissions in M-QAM. In order to obtain a better bitwise mapping scheme, we define two independent bitwise suboperations, which are called bit swapping and inversion (BSI) and bit shifting between antennas (BSA), and derive sets for BSI and BSA. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated through link simulations with a 3GPP long-term evolution (LTE) specification and is compared to previous H-ARQ schemes in MIMO. The results show that the proposed bitwise mapping scheme provides approximately 2 dB gain over the conventional scheme even at a high mobile speed.
BRASSINOSTEROID INSENSITIVE2 Interacts with ABSCISIC ACID INSENSITIVE5 to Mediate the Antagonism of Brassinosteroids to Abscisic Acid during Seed Germination in Arabidopsis[W]

A kinase regulates the integration of brassinosteroid and abscisic acid signaling during seed germination by phosphorylating and stabilizing an abscisic acid-responsive transcription factor. Seed germination and postgerminative growth are regulated by a delicate hormonal balance. Abscisic acid (ABA) represses Arabidopsis thaliana seed germination and postgerminative growth, while brassinosteroids (BRs) antagonize ABA-mediated inhibition and promote these processes. However, the molecular mechanism underlying BR-repressed ABA signaling remains largely unknown. Here, we show that the Glycogen Synthase Kinase 3-like kinase BRASSINOSTEROID INSENSITIVE2 (BIN2), a critical repressor of BR signaling, positively regulates ABA responses during seed germination and postgerminative growth. Mechanistic investigation revealed that BIN2 physically interacts with ABSCISIC ACID INSENSITIVE5 (ABI5), a bZIP transcription factor. Further genetic analysis demonstrated that the ABA-hypersensitive phenotype of BIN2-overexpressing plants requires ABI5. BIN2 was found to phosphorylate and stabilize ABI5 in the presence of ABA, while application of epibrassinolide (the active form of BRs) inhibited the regulation of ABI5 by BIN2. Consistently, the ABA-induced accumulation of ABI5 was affected in BIN2-related mutants. Moreover, mutations of the BIN2 phosphorylation sites on ABI5 made the mutant protein respond to ABA improperly. Additionally, the expression of several ABI5 regulons was positively modulated by BIN2. These results provide evidence that BIN2 phosphorylates and stabilizes ABI5 to mediate ABA response during seed germination, while BRs repress the BIN2-ABI5 cascade to antagonize ABA-mediated inhibition.
The PKCδ -Abl complex communicates ER stress to the mitochondria – an essential step in subsequent apoptosis

Conditions that compromise protein folding in the endoplasmic reticulum trigger the unfolded protein response (UPR), which either restores proper protein folding or results in cellular demise through apoptosis. In this study, we found that, in response to ER stress in vivo and in vitro, PKCδ translocates to the ER where it binds to the tyrosine kinase Abl. Tyrosine phosphorylation and kinase activity of PKCδ are required for PKCδ binding to Abl in the ER. Moreover, we found that inhibition of PKCδ by the PKCδ-specific peptide inhibitor δV1-1 or by silencing of PKCδ reduces ER-stress-induced JNK activation and inhibits ER-stress-mediated apoptosis. Furthermore, the inhibitor of PKCδ kinase activity rottlerin blocks the translocation of the PKCδ-Abl complex from the ER to the mitochondria and confers protection against apoptosis. Thus, PKCδ communicates ER stress to the mitochondria by binding to ER-localized Abl. The PKCδ-Abl complex then translocates to the mitochondria, communicating ER stress to this organelle, thereby, triggering apoptosis.
Amplification and expression of a cellular oncogene (c-myc) in human gastric adenocarcinoma cells

Three of 16 human gastric adenocarcinoma samples, maintained as solid tumors in nude mice, were found to carry amplified c-myc genes. In two samples with a high degree of c-myc DNA amplification (15- to 30-fold), double minute chromosomes were observed in karyotype analysis. The level of c-myc RNA was markedly elevated in a rapidly growing and poorly differentiated tumor, whereas it was only slightly elevated in a slowly growing and more differentiated tumor.
Central and peripheral fatigue in male cyclists after 4-, 20-, and 40-km time trials.

PURPOSE Few studies have assessed neuromuscular fatigue after self-paced locomotor exercise; moreover, none have assessed the degree of supraspinal fatigue. This study assessed central and peripheral fatigue after self-paced exercise of different durations. METHODS Thirteen well-trained male cyclists completed 4-, 20-, and 40-km simulated time trials (TTs). Pre- and immediately post-TT (<2.5 min), twitch responses from the knee extensors to electrical stimulation of the femoral nerve and transcranial magnetic stimulation of the motor cortex were recorded to assess neuromuscular and corticospinal function. RESULTS Time to complete 4-, 20-, and 40-km TTs was 6.0 ± 0.2, 31.8 ± 1.0, and 65.8 ± 2.2 min at average exercise intensities of 96%, 92%, and 87% of maximum oxygen uptake, respectively. Exercise resulted in significant reductions in maximum voluntary contraction, with no difference between TTs (-18%, -15%, and -16% for 4-, 20-, and 40-km TTs, respectively). Greater peripheral fatigue was evident after 4-km (40% reduction in potentiated twitch) compared with that after 20-km (31%) and 40-km TTs (29%). In contrast, longer TTs were characterized by more central fatigue, with greater reductions in voluntary activation measured by motor nerve (-11% and -10% for 20- and 40-km TTs vs -7% for 4-km TTs) and cortical stimulation (-12% and -10% for 20- and 40-km vs -6% for 4-km). CONCLUSIONS These data demonstrate that fatigue after self-paced exercise is task dependent, with a greater degree of peripheral fatigue after shorter higher-intensity (6 min) TTs and more central fatigue after longer lower-intensity TTs (>30 min).