Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Automation and control issues applied to a heat exchanger prototype

The main objective of this paper is to present an innovative equipment for practical teaching in control engineering, paying special attention to its conceptualisation and its possibilities for the theoretical-practical training. The role of the control and automation issues applied to this prototype is discussed. A distributed control system (DCS) applied to this prototype and its possibilities will be introduced
Decision making pattern of subsistence farmers in Bulgaria

Economic research by and large is dominated by a ‘rationality’ paradigm. Economic decision making within this paradigm is viewed as a maximising procedure. In general the latter represents the decision-making as a choice amongst a well defined set of alternatives. In this paper we question this and analyse the options of the small-scale subsistence farmers in Bulgaria in the way they see them. By applying mental accounting methodology we deduce some significant characteristics of Bulgarian subsistence agriculture.
Temperature and toxicity of the copper herbicide (NautiqueTM) to freshwater fish in field and laboratory trials

Abstract Unlike ionic copper, chelated copper herbicides reduce fish toxicity by chaperoning copper. Application guidelines that were developed based on toxicity data from ionic copper may therefore be too strict for chelated copper herbicides, limiting their application to concentrations ineffective against target plants. Our goals were to examine the toxicity of the chelated copper herbicide NautiqueTM relative to other copper herbicides in laboratory and field trials. Our laboratory results showed that NautiqueTM was two orders of magnitude less toxic than CaptainTM and copper sulfate, indicating that it had a larger margin of safety for non-target fish. The results of our caged fish study in Greene County, NY, however, indicated that NautiqueTM can elevate fish mortality in field settings at concentrations much lower than those observed in the laboratory. Mortality risk for caged fish within the first 72 h after treatment was 2.3 times greater, on average, in the treatment sites than the reference sites. The elevated fish toxicity we observed in the field trials could have been affected by high water temperature. In our laboratory trials, a higher percentage of fathead minnows died at 28°C than at 22°C after NautiqueTM exposure. It is possible that the stress of the higher lake water temperatures (29–34°C), particularly for caged fish that could not descend to cooler waters, increased NautiqueTM toxicity. Although our laboratory results indicate that NautiqueTM may have fewer impacts on non-target fish than other copper formulations at concentrations effective for aquatic plant control, field trials indicate that the margin of safety of NautiqueTM may be lower for fish in warm lake waters. Warming climate trends may therefore increase and complicate the challenges of invasive macrophyte control.
A NEW SPECIES OF PORTULACA (PORTULACACEAE)

Portulaca y ecorensis is described from the conglomeritic mudflow barrens at 1500-1600 m elevation in the Yecora valley in the Sierra Madre of eastern Sonora, Mexico. This annual is related to P. oleracea and P. refusa but differs in small size, strong reddish pigmentation, smaller seeds, larger flowers and pollen, distribution, and habitat.
Benzene increases aneuploidy in the lymphocytes of exposed workers: A comparison of data obtained by fluorescence in situ hybridization in interphase and metaphase cells

Benzene is an established human leukemogen that increases the level of chromosome aberrations in lymphocytes of exposed workers. Numerical aberrations (aneusomy) can be observed by fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) in both interphase and metaphase cells. Whereas interphase FISH allows nondividing cells to be analyzed, one advantage of metaphase FISH is that it can also detect structural changes. The present study compares the abilities of metaphase and interphase FISH to detect aneusomy of chromosomes 7 and 8 in healthy benzene‐exposed human subjects. Metaphase and interphase cells from the peripheral blood of 43 workers exposed to benzene (median = 31 ppm, 8‐hr TWA) and 44 frequency‐matched controls were analyzed by FISH. Normal diploid cells contained two hybridization signals, whereas those that were potentially monosomic contained one, trisomic 3 and tetrasomic 4. The frequency of cells with one hybridization signal for chromosome 7 in metaphase spreads rose from 2.72 ± 0.19 (%, mean ± SE) in controls to 3.79 ± 0.63 in workers exposed to 31 or fewer ppm benzene and 5.9 ± 0.85 in those exposed to more than 31 ppm (Ptrend < 0.0001). No similar dose‐dependent increase in the frequency of cells with one hybridization signal was observed by interphase FISH, probably because of probe overlap artifact. Although significant dose‐dependent increases in the frequency of cells with three hybridization signals for chromosome 7 were detected by both methods in the higher‐exposed group, a larger, more significant difference was detected by metaphase FISH between controls and workers exposed to 31 or fewer ppm. Similar data were obtained for chromosome 8. Interphase and metaphase FISH were moderately correlated for three hybridization signals but not for one hybridization signal in chromosome 7 or 8. In general, metaphase FISH was more sensitive in detecting both monosomy and trisomy in the lymphocytes of exposed workers. Environ. Mol. Mutagen. 34:260–268, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Hypopharyngeal cancer: United Kingdom National Multidisciplinary Guidelines

Abstract This is the official guideline endorsed by the specialty associations involved in the care of head and neck cancer patients in the UK. With an age standardised incidence rate of 0.63 per 100 000 population, hypopharynx cancers account for a small proportion of the head and neck cancer workload in the UK, and thus suffer from the lack of high level evidence. This paper discusses the evidence base pertaining to the management of hypopharyngeal cancer and provides recommendations on management for this group of patients receiving cancer care. Recommendations • Cross-sectional imaging with computed tomography of the head, neck and chest is necessary for all patients; magnetic resonance imaging of the primary site is useful particularly in advanced disease; and computed tomography and positron emission tomography to look for distant disease. (R) • Careful evaluation of the upper and lower extents of the disease is necessary, which may require contrast swallow or computed tomography and positron emission tomography imaging. (R) • Formal rigid endoscopic assessment under general anaesthetic should be performed. (R) • Nutritional status should be proactively managed. (R) • Full and unbiased discussion of treatment options should take place to allow informed patient choice. (G) • Early stage disease can be treated equally effectively with surgery or radiotherapy. (R) • Endoscopic resection can be considered for early well localised lesions. (R) • Bulky advanced tumours require circumferential or non-circumferential resection with wide margins to account for submucosal spread. (R) • Offer primary surgical treatment in the setting of a compromised larynx or significant dysphagia. (R) • Midline lesions require bilateral neck dissections. (R) • Consider management of silent nodal areas usually not addressed for other primary sites. (G) • Reconstruction needs to be individualised to the patients’ needs and based on the experience of the unit with different reconstructive techniques. (G) • Consider tumour bulk reduction with induction chemotherapy prior to definitive radiotherapy. (R) • Consider intensity modulated radiation therapy where possible to limit the consequences of wide field irradiation to a large volume. (R) • Use concomitant chemotherapy in patients who are fit enough and consider epidermal growth factor receptor blockers for those who are less fit. (R)
Experimental Support for a Categorical Compositional Distributional Model of Meaning

Modelling compositional meaning for sentences using empirical distributional methods has been a challenge for computational linguists. We implement the abstract categorical model of Coecke et al. (2010) using data from the BNC and evaluate it. The implementation is based on unsupervised learning of matrices for relational words and applying them to the vectors of their arguments. The evaluation is based on the word disambiguation task developed by Mitchell and Lapata (2008) for intransitive sentences, and on a similar new experiment designed for transitive sentences. Our model matches the results of its competitors in the first experiment, and betters them in the second. The general improvement in results with increase in syntactic complexity showcases the compositional power of our model.
Organic Matter and Water Addition Enhance Soil Respiration in an Arid Region

Climate change is generally predicted to increase net primary production, which could lead to additional C input to soil. In arid central Asia, precipitation has increased and is predicted to increase further. To assess the combined effects of these changes on soil CO2 efflux in arid land, a two factorial manipulation experiment in the shrubland of an arid region in northwest China was conducted. The experiment used a nested design with fresh organic matter and water as the two controlled parameters. It was found that both fresh organic matter and water enhanced soil respiration, and there was a synergistic effect of these two treatments on soil respiration increase. Water addition not only enhanced soil C emission, but also regulated soil C sequestration by fresh organic matter addition. The results indicated that the soil CO2 flux of the shrubland is likely to increase with climate change, and precipitation played a dominant role in regulating soil C balance in the shrubland of an arid region.
Use of an Aquacultured Oyster ( Crassostrea gigas ) in the Reverse

Shellfish aquaculture is prominent in many coastal and estuarine environments and has both ecological and economic impacts. Bahía San Quintín is a reverse estuary in Baja California, Mexico, where Pacific oysters (Crassostrea gigas) are cultivated. While oysters likely feed heavily on phytoplankton especially during upwelling periods, we hypothesized that other forms of organic matter such as seagrass (Zostera marina) and macroalgae (Ulva spp.) must also be used by the oysters, especially in the most inshore portions of the bay. We measured the carbon and hydrogen stable isotope composition of oysters and their potential food resources at upper, mid, and lower bay sites during upwelling and nonupwelling seasons and applied a Bayesian mixing model to evaluate resource use. Hydrogen isotopes provided a large separation between potential food resources. Although we did not find any strong seasonal effects due to upwelling, there was a strong spatial gradient in resource use. Phytoplankton were most important at the lower (oceanic) site (median resource use for two sampling times, 68 and 79 %) and decreased up the estuary as macroalgae became more important (43 and 56 % at the upper site). At all sites for both sampling times, seagrass was an unimportant resource for oysters. The contrast between high phytoplankton use at the lower site and increased macroalgal use at the upper site is likely due to available resource biomass. Results indicate the adaptability of oysters to varying resource availability and the possibility of a higher system carrying capacity than that based on phytoplankton alone given multiple potential food sources. This study also highlights the utility of hydrogen isotopes in estuarine food web research.
Providing adaptive support to the understanding of instructional material

We present an adaptive interface designed to provide tailored support for the understanding of written instructional material. The interface relies on a user model based on a Bayesian network, that assesses users' understanding as users read the instructional material and try to understand it by generating explanations to themselves. The user model's assessment is used by the interface to generate tailored scaffolding of further user's explanations that can improve the user's comprehension. After illustrating how the Bayesian user model assesses understanding from the user's explanations and from latency data on the user's attention, we discuss initial results on the effectiveness of the interface's adaptive interventions.
Neural Machine Translation Model with a Large Vocabulary Selected by Branching Entropy

Neural machine translation (NMT), a new approach to machine translation, has achieved promising results comparable to those of traditional approaches such as statistical machine translation (SMT). Despite its recent success, NMT cannot handle a larger vocabulary because the training complexity and decoding complexity proportionally increase with the number of target words. This problem becomes even more serious when translating patent documents, which contain many technical terms that are observed infrequently. In this paper, we propose to select phrases that contain out-of-vocabulary words using the statistical approach of branching entropy. This allows the proposed NMT system to be applied to a translation task of any language pair without any language-specific knowledge about technical term identification. The selected phrases are then replaced with tokens during training and post-translated by the phrase translation table of SMT. Evaluation on Japanese-to-Chinese, Chinese-to-Japanese, Japanese-to-English and English-to-Japanese patent sentence translation proved the effectiveness of phrases selected with branching entropy, where the proposed NMT model achieves a substantial improvement over a baseline NMT model without our proposed technique. Moreover, the number of translation errors of under-translation by the baseline NMT model without our proposed technique reduces to around half by the proposed NMT model.
Molecular Characterization of Cryptosporidium Species and Giardia duodenalis from Symptomatic Cambodian Children

Background In a prospective study, 498 single faecal samples from children aged under 16 years attending an outpatient clinic in the Angkor Hospital for Children, northwest Cambodia, were examined for Cryptosporidium oocysts and Giardia cysts using microscopy and molecular assays. Methodology/Principal Findings Cryptosporidium oocysts were detected in 2.2% (11/498) of samples using microscopy and in 7.7% (38/498) with molecular tests. Giardia duodenalis cysts were detected in 18.9% (94/498) by microscopy and 27.7% (138/498) by molecular tests; 82% of the positive samples (by either method) were from children aged 1–10 years. Cryptosporidium hominis was the most common species of Cryptosporidium, detected in 13 (34.2%) samples, followed by Cryptosporidium meleagridis in 9 (23.7%), Cryptosporidium parvum in 8 (21.1%), Cryptosporidium canis in 5 (13.2%), and Cryptosporidium suis and Cryptosporidium ubiquitum in one sample each. Cryptosporidium hominis and C. parvum positive samples were subtyped by sequencing the GP60 gene: C. hominis IaA16R6 and C. parvum IIeA7G1 were the most abundant subtypes. Giardia duodenalis was typed using a multiplex real-time PCR targeting assemblages A and B. Assemblage B (106; 76.8% of all Giardia positive samples) was most common followed by A (12.3%) and mixed infections (5.1%). Risk factors associated with Cryptosporidium were malnutrition (AOR 9.63, 95% CI 1.67–55.46), chronic medical diagnoses (AOR 4.51, 95% CI 1.79–11.34) and the presence of birds in the household (AOR 2.99, 95% CI 1.16–7.73); specifically C. hominis (p = 0.03) and C. meleagridis (p<0.001) were associated with the presence of birds. The use of soap was protective against Giardia infection (OR 0.74, 95% CI 0.58–0.95). Conclusions/Significance This is the first report to describe the different Cryptosporidium species and subtypes and Giardia duodenalis assemblages in Cambodian children. The variety of Cryptosporidium species detected indicates both anthroponotic and zoonotic transmission in this population. Interventions to improve sanitation, increase hand washing after defecation and before preparing food and promote drinking boiled water may reduce the burden of these two parasites.
Charged Molecules Modulate the Volume Exclusion Effects Exerted by Crowders on FtsZ Polymerization

We have studied the influence of protein crowders, either combined or individually, on the GTP-induced FtsZ cooperative assembly, crucial for the formation of the dynamic septal ring and, hence, for bacterial division. It was earlier demonstrated that high concentrations of inert polymers like Ficoll 70, used to mimic the crowded cellular interior, favor the assembly of FtsZ into bundles with slow depolymerization. We have found, by fluorescence anisotropy together with light scattering measurements, that the presence of protein crowders increases the tendency of FtsZ to polymerize at micromolar magnesium concentration, being the effect larger with ovomucoid, a negatively charged protein. Neutral polymers and a positively charged protein also diminished the critical concentration of assembly, the extent of the effect being compatible with that expected according to pure volume exclusion models. FtsZ polymerization was also observed to be strongly promoted by a negatively charged polymer, DNA, and by some unrelated polymers like PEGs at concentrations below the crowding regime. The influence of mixed crowders mimicking the heterogeneity of the intracellular environment on the tendency of FtsZ to assemble was also studied and nonadditive effects were found to prevail. Far from exactly reproducing the bacterial cytoplasm environment, this approach serves as a simplified model illustrating how its intrinsically crowded and heterogeneous nature may modulate FtsZ assembly into a functional Z-ring.
miR-200 family and targets, ZEB1 and ZEB2, modulate uterine quiescence and contractility during pregnancy and labor

Throughout most of pregnancy, uterine quiescence is maintained by increased progesterone receptor (PR) transcriptional activity, whereas spontaneous labor is initiated/facilitated by a concerted series of biochemical events that activate inflammatory pathways and have a negative impact on PR function. In this study, we uncovered a previously undescribed regulatory pathway whereby micro-RNAs (miRNAs) serve as hormonally modulated and conserved mediators of contraction-associated genes in the pregnant uterus in the mouse and human. Using miRNA and gene expression microarray analyses of uterine tissues, we identified a conserved family of miRNAs, the miR-200 family, that is highly induced at term in both mice and humans as well as two coordinately down-regulated targets, zinc finger E-box binding homeobox proteins ZEB1 and ZEB2, which act as transcriptional repressors. We also observed up-regulation of the miR-200 family and down-regulation of ZEB1 and ZEB2 in two different mouse models of preterm labor. We further demonstrated that ZEB1 is directly up-regulated by the action of progesterone (P4)/PR at the ZEB1 promoter. Excitingly, we observed that ZEB1 and ZEB2 inhibit expression of the contraction-associated genes, oxytocin receptor and connexin-43, and block oxytocin-induced contractility in human myometrial cells. Together, these findings implicate the miR-200 family and their targets, ZEB1 and ZEB2, as unique P4/PR-mediated regulators of uterine quiescence and contractility during pregnancy and labor and shed light on the molecular mechanisms involved in preterm birth.
Pendrin, encoded by the Pendred syndrome gene, resides in the apical region of renal intercalated cells and mediates bicarbonate secretion

Pendrin is an anion transporter encoded by the PDS/Pds gene. In humans, mutations in PDS cause the genetic disorder Pendred syndrome, which is associated with deafness and goiter. Previous studies have shown that this gene has a relatively restricted pattern of expression, with PDS/Pds mRNA detected only in the thyroid, inner ear, and kidney. The present study examined the distribution and function of pendrin in the mammalian kidney. Immunolocalization studies were performed using anti-pendrin polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies. Labeling was detected on the apical surface of a subpopulation of cells within the cortical collecting ducts (CCDs) that also express the H+-ATPase but not aquaporin-2, indicating that pendrin is present in intercalated cells of the CCD. Furthermore, pendrin was detected exclusively within the subpopulation of intercalated cells that express the H+-ATPase but not the anion exchanger 1 (AE1) and that are thought to mediate bicarbonate secretion. The same distribution of pendrin was observed in mouse, rat, and human kidney. However, pendrin was not detected in kidneys from a Pds-knockout mouse. Perfused CCD tubules isolated from alkali-loaded wild-type mice secreted bicarbonate, whereas tubules from alkali-loaded Pds-knockout mice failed to secrete bicarbonate. Together, these studies indicate that pendrin is an apical anion transporter in intercalated cells of CCDs and has an essential role in renal bicarbonate secretion.
An improved method for isolation of epithelial and stromal cells from the human endometrium

We aimed to improve the efficiency of isolating endometrial epithelial and stromal cells (EMECs and EMSCs) from the human endometrium. We revealed by immunohistochemical staining that the large tissue fragments remaining after collagenase treatment, which are usually discarded after the first filtration in the conventional protocol, consisted of glandular epithelial and stromal cells. Therefore, we established protease treatment and cell suspension conditions to dissociate single cells from the tissue fragments and isolated epithelial (EPCAM-positive) and stromal (CD13-positive) cells by fluorescence-activated cell sorting. Four independent experiments showed that, on average, 1.2 × 106 of EMECs and 2.8 × 106 EMSCs were isolated from one hysterectomy specimen. We confirmed that the isolated cells presented transcriptomic features highly similar to those of epithelial and stromal cells obtained by the conventional method. Our improved protocol facilitates future studies to better understand the molecular mechanisms underlying the dynamic changes of the endometrium during the menstrual cycle.