Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Seasonal responses of terrestrial ecosystem water‐use efficiency to climate change

Ecosystem water‐use efficiency (EWUE) is an indicator of carbon–water interactions and is defined as the ratio of carbon assimilation (GPP) to evapotranspiration (ET). Previous research suggests an increasing long‐term trend in annual EWUE over many regions and is largely attributed to the physiological effects of rising CO2. The seasonal trends in EWUE, however, have not yet been analyzed. In this study, we investigate seasonal EWUE trends and responses to various drivers during 1982–2008. The seasonal cycle for two variants of EWUE, water‐use efficiency (WUE, GPP/ET), and transpiration‐based WUE (WUEt, the ratio of GPP and transpiration), is analyzed from 0.5° gridded fields from four process‐based models and satellite‐based products, as well as a network of 63 local flux tower observations. WUE derived from flux tower observations shows moderate seasonal variation for most latitude bands, which is in agreement with satellite‐based products. In contrast, the seasonal EWUE trends are not well captured by the same satellite‐based products. Trend analysis, based on process‐model factorial simulations separating effects of climate, CO2, and nitrogen deposition (NDEP), further suggests that the seasonal EWUE trends are mainly associated with seasonal trends of climate, whereas CO2 and NDEP do not show obvious seasonal difference in EWUE trends. About 66% grid cells show positive annual WUE trends, mainly over mid‐ and high northern latitudes. In these regions, spring climate change has amplified the effect of CO2 in increasing WUE by more than 0.005 gC m−2 mm−1 yr−1 for 41% pixels. Multiple regression analysis further shows that the increase in springtime WUE in the northern hemisphere is the result of GPP increasing faster than ET because of the higher temperature sensitivity of GPP relative to ET. The partitioning of annual EWUE to seasonal components provides new insight into the relative sensitivities of GPP and ET to climate, CO2, and NDEP.
Specifying causal relations between students' goals and academic self-concept : an integrated structural model of student motivation

Adolescence denotes a time of significant achievement as individuals attempt to successfully navigate through the various developmental stages. Progression through these stages occurs for all individuals however the rate of speed and forms of effects vary markedly for each individual. Unfortunately for many, adolescence proves to be a turbulent time and typically associated as a period of ‘storm and stress’ (see for example Arnett, 1999). Evidence of ‘storm and stress’ is apparent though decreases in perceptions of self, growing negative attitudes toward school and disturbingly low levels of school motivation (Anderman & Maehr, 1994; Marsh, 1989). Impetus for all educators and parents should be the fact that students’ motivation declines rapidly for the first three years of high school and stoops to its lowest level in Year 9 (Eccles, Wigfield & Schiefele, 1998; Watt, 2004; Zusho & Pintrich, 2001). Student motivation is a fundamental dimension to address as it predicts important educational outcomes including psychological wellbeing and academic achievement (Andersson, 1998; Gustafsson & Balke, 1993; Kaplan and Maehr, 1999; Wigfield & Eccles, 2000). A primary objective for educators is the examination of this period of growth in an attempt to alleviate the ‘storm and stress’ associated with adolescence. Most notably is the dramatic decrease in student motivation during high school. Do teachers need to build students’ academic self-concepts to enhance motivation and achievement or do teachers need to foster particular goal pursuits in order to increase academic self-concept and achievement? Hence this research study examines the causal relationship between adolescent students’ perceptions of self and how these interact with purposes students’ perceive for engaging in academic tasks and their combined effect on academic achievement.
Audience and the Use of Minority Languages on Twitter

On Twitter, many users tweet in more than one language. In this study, we examine the use of two Dutch minority languages. Users can engage with different audiences and by analyzing different types of tweets, we find that characteristics of the audience influence whether a minority language is used. Furthermore, while most tweets are written in Dutch, in conversations users often switch to the minority language.
Bioremediation of cadmium-contaminated water systems using intact and alkaline-treated alga (Hydrodictyon reticulatum) naturally grown in an ecosystem

ABSTRACT Cadmium can enter water, soil, and food chain in amounts harmful to human health by industrial wastes. The use of intact and NaOH-treated dried algal tissues (Hydrodictyon reticulatum), a major ecosystem bio-component, for Cd removal from aqueous solutions was characterized. Cadmium biosorption was found to be dependent on solution pH, bioadsorbent dose, the interaction between pH and dose, contact time, and initial Cd concentration. The experimental results indicated that the biosorption performance of alkaline-treated algal tissues was better than that of intact tissues. The maximum biosorption capacities were 7.40 and 12.74 mg g−1 for intact and alkaline-treated bioadsorbents, respectively, at optimum operating conditions. Biosorption reaches equilibrium after 24 and 240 minutes of contact, respectively, for alkaline-treated and intact bioadsorbents. Cadmium biosorption was best fitted to Langmuir isotherm model (R2 ≈ 0.99) and the kinetic study obeyed the pseudo-second-order kinetic model, which suggests chemisorption as the rate-limiting step in the biosorption process. Alkaline-treated algal tissues can be used as a new material of low-cost bioadsorbent for continuous flow rate treatment systems.
Parametric Reasoning Agents Extend the Control over Standard Behaviors

In this paper, we study how to extend the control over the behavioral space of logically specified agents so as they can take into account parameters issuing from constraints and/or preferences that are external to their core reasoning process. Our approach is supported by the proposition of a set of generic transformations to apply to the original agent program that is expressed in Indigo log, a variant of the Golog language. Several of these transformations exploit the non-determinism present in Indigo log programs. We also propose an automatic process to apply all those transformations on the basis of a set of parameters. Three case-studies show the significance of the approach in situations where agents are in interaction with human users.
Problems in the Organization of Organization Theory: An Essay in Honour of Todd Laporte

This essay examines a peculiar problem in organization theory its failure to achieve useful research-based prescriptions for organizational design and practice in the face of challenges posed by new technology and evolving social problems. It is argued that an important part of this problem in organization theory is the under-specification of its major concepts. Three under-specified concepts in particular are examined complexity, interdependence and scale. The analysis of these concepts is undertaken in the context of Todd LaPorte's work to promote, through well-posed questions, clearer and more specific formulations of these and other concepts as independent variables in organizational analysis. The essay concludes with suggestions for continuing the specification of major concepts in organization theory in ways inspired by LaPorte.
Severe Hypocalcemia in a Patient with Recurrent Chondrosarcoma

Hypocalcemia is relatively uncommon paraneoplastic syndrome. Only one case of hypocalcemia has been reported in a patient with chondrosarcoma. We herein report a case of a 32-year-old woman with metastatic chondrosarcoma with tetany. Her imaging findings revealed multiple calcific metastatic lesions in the lungs, pancreas, left atrium, and pulmonary vein. A laboratory examination showed hypocalcemia with no evidence of any other disease that could induce hypocalcemia. On the basis of the laboratory and clinical findings, we concluded the etiology of her severe hypocalcemia to be excessive calcium consumption by the tumor itself.
Parallelization of XPath queries using multi-core processors: challenges and experiences

In this study, we present experiences of parallelizing XPath queries using the Xalan XPath engine on shared-address space multi-core systems. For our evaluation, we consider a scenario where an XPath processor uses multiple threads to concurrently navigate and execute individual XPath queries on a shared XML document. Given the constraints of the XML execution and data models, we propose three strategies for parallelizing individual XPath queries: Data partitioning, Query partitioning, and Hybrid (query and data) partitioning. We experimentally evaluated these strategies on an x86 Linux multi-core system using a set of XPath queries, invoked on a variety of XML documents using the Xalan XPath APIs. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed parallelization strategies work very effectively in practice; for a majority of XPath queries under evaluation, the execution performance scaled linearly as the number of threads was increased. Results also revealed the pros and cons of the different parallelization strategies for different XPath query patterns.
Shortening all the simple closed geodesics on surfaces with boundary

ATHANASE PAPADOPOULOS AND GUILLAUME THERET´Abstract. We give a proof of an unpublished result of Thurston show-ing that given any hyperbolic metric on a surface of ﬁnite type withnonempty boundary, there exists another hyperbolic metric on the samesurface for which the lengths of all simple closed geodesics are shorter. (This is not possible for surfaces of ﬁnite type with empty boundary.)Furthermore, we show that we can do the shortening in such a way thatit is bounded below by a positive constant. This improves a recent resultobtained by Parlier in [2]. We include this result in a discussion of theweak metric theory of the Teichmu¨ller space of surfaces with nonemptyboundary.AMS Mathematics Subject Classiﬁcation: 32G15 ; 30F30 ; 30F60.Keywords: Teichmu¨ller space, surface with boundary, weak metric, lengthspectrum metric, Thurston’s asymmetric metric.
Ecology of the rare microbial biosphere of the Arctic Ocean

Understanding the role of microbes in the oceans has focused on taxa that occur in high abundance; yet most of the marine microbial diversity is largely determined by a long tail of low-abundance taxa. This rare biosphere may have a cosmopolitan distribution because of high dispersal and low loss rates, and possibly represents a source of phylotypes that become abundant when environmental conditions change. However, the true ecological role of rare marine microorganisms is still not known. Here, we use pyrosequencing to describe the structure and composition of the rare biosphere and to test whether it represents cosmopolitan taxa or whether, similar to abundant phylotypes, the rare community has a biogeography. Our examination of 740,353 16S rRNA gene sequences from 32 bacterial and archaeal communities from various locations of the Arctic Ocean showed that rare phylotypes did not have a cosmopolitan distribution but, rather, followed patterns similar to those of the most abundant members of the community and of the entire community. The abundance distributions of rare and abundant phylotypes were different, following a log-series and log-normal model, respectively, and the taxonomic composition of the rare biosphere was similar to the composition of the abundant phylotypes. We conclude that the rare biosphere has a biogeography and that its tremendous diversity is most likely subjected to ecological processes such as selection, speciation, and extinction.
Seroprevalence of avian cause H3N2 canine flu infection disease in pet dogs in Shenzhen, China

Canine influenza virus (CIV) is an emerging pathogen that causes severe and acute respiratory disease in dogs. Canine influenza is caused by two subtypes of influenza. A virus: H3N2 and H3N8. In recent years, surveys of avian origin CIV infection in dogs have been reported worldwide. However, little is known about the prevalence of CIV in pet dogs in China. In the present study, the prevalence of avian origin CIV H3N2 in pet dogs in Shenzhen, Southern China was investigated using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and hemagglutination inhibition (HI) assay. Thirty-one (6.71%) of the 462 serum samples tested were seropositive for avian origin CIV by ELISA. Use of the HI test revealed the presence of anti-H3 antibodies in 28 (6.06%) of 462 serum samples. The prevalence ranged from 4.87% (HI) or 6.19% (ELISA) to 7.41% among dogs of different ages, with high prevalence in pet dogs of 1 to 3 years old, but low prevalence in pet dogs ≤1 year. The seroprevalence in female dogs was 5.21%, and in male dogs it was 7.78% (ELISA) or 6.67% (HI). These findings demonstrated that avian origin canine influenza virus infection is prevalent in pet dogs and can spread rapidly through local dog populations, which indicates its potential for becoming established in pet dogs throughout China.
Cybersecurity in healthcare: A systematic review of modern threats and trends.

BACKGROUND The adoption of healthcare technology is arduous, and it requires planning and implementation time. Healthcare organizations are vulnerable to modern trends and threats because it has not kept up with threats. OBJECTIVE The objective of this systematic review is to identify cybersecurity trends, including ransomware, and identify possible solutions by querying academic literature. METHODS The reviewers conducted three separate searches through the CINAHL and PubMed (MEDLINE) and the Nursing and Allied Health Source via ProQuest databases. Using key words with Boolean operators, database filters, and hand screening, we identified 31 articles that met the objective of the review. RESULTS The analysis of 31 articles showed the healthcare industry lags behind in security. Like other industries, healthcare should clearly define cybersecurity duties, establish clear procedures for upgrading software and handling a data breach, use VLANs and deauthentication and cloud-based computing, and to train their users not to open suspicious code. CONCLUSIONS The healthcare industry is a prime target for medical information theft as it lags behind other leading industries in securing vital data. It is imperative that time and funding is invested in maintaining and ensuring the protection of healthcare technology and the confidentially of patient information from unauthorized access.
Wall-to-Lumen Ratio of Retinal Arterioles as a Tool to Assess Vascular Changes

The retina offers a beautiful and unique opportunity to visualize and examine the body’s microvasculature safely, repeatedly, quickly, and noninvasively in vivo. Retinal arterioles appear to undergo similar changes as cerebral and peripheral arterioles in hypertension, indicating that retinal arteriolar abnormalities mirror structural and functional microvascular changes elsewhere in end-organ tissues.1–4 Since the pioneering work by Keith et al5 in 1939, several studies have confirmed the prognostic significance of retinal vascular abnormalities on mortality attributed to a cardiovascular cause.5–7 However, although there is solid evidence for the prognostic significance of advanced retinopathy, the evidence of a prognostic impact of early retinal vascular abnormalities on cardiovascular risk stratification is less well established.1,8 It was suggested that methodological issues might be the cause for the lack of a solid evidence that early retinal vascular abnormalities are closely linked to cardiovascular risk.1,9 Therefore, much research effort over the last decade has focused on the development of new methodological approaches to enable more precise and reliable detection and evaluation of early retinal vascular abnormalities in hypertensive patients. A new approach focuses on retinal arteriolar structural parameters by using scanning laser Doppler flowmetry (SLDF) with automatic full-field perfusion imaging analyses (AFFPIAs). 2,10 This approach allows the assessment of both the outer diameter (OD) and inner diameter (ID) of retinal arterioles in vivo and, thus, analyzes vascular remodeling of retinal arterioles by calculating wall:lumen ratio, wall thickness, and wall cross-sectional area (volume of wall per unit of length) of retinal arterioles. These methods do not need to determine diameter of retinal venules, which are also subject to changes in cardiovascular disease. This review introduces and describes this new methodology, explains the improved power of measuring retinal vascular changes, and discusses our recent findings using this tool. The idea of assessing the …
Optimization of nanoparticles for cardiovascular tissue engineering

Nano-particulate delivery systems have increasingly been playing important roles in cardiovascular tissue engineering. Properties of nanoparticles (e.g. size, polydispersity, loading capacity, zeta potential, morphology) are essential to system functions. Notably, these characteristics are regulated by fabrication variables, but in a complicated manner. This raises a great need to optimize fabrication process variables to ensure the desired nanoparticle characteristics. This paper presents a comprehensive experimental study on this matter, along with a novel method, the so-called Geno-Neural approach, to analyze, predict and optimize fabrication variables for desired nanoparticle characteristics. Specifically, ovalbumin was used as a protein model of growth factors used in cardiovascular tissue regeneration, and six fabrication variables were examined with regard to their influence on the characteristics of nanoparticles made from high molecular weight poly(lactide-co-glycolide). The six-factor five-level central composite rotatable design was applied to the conduction of experiments, and based on the experimental results, a geno-neural model was developed to determine the optimum fabrication conditions. For desired particle sizes of 150, 200, 250 and 300 nm, respectively, the optimum conditions to achieve the low polydispersity index, higher negative zeta potential and higher loading capacity were identified based on the developed geno-neural model and then evaluated experimentally. The experimental results revealed that the polymer and the external aqueous phase concentrations and their interactions with other fabrication variables were the most significant variables to affect the size, polydispersity index, zeta potential, loading capacity and initial burst release of the nanoparticles, while the electron microscopy images of the nanoparticles showed their spherical geometries with no sign of large pores or cracks on their surfaces. The release study revealed that the onset of the third phase of release can be affected by the polymer concentration. Circular dichroism spectroscopy indicated that ovalbumin structural integrity is preserved during the encapsulation process. Findings from this study would greatly contribute to the design of high molecular weight poly(lactide-co-glycolide) nanoparticles for prolonged release patterns in cardiovascular engineering.
Brief Definitive Report Autoantibodies from Patients with Primary Biliary Cirrhosis Preferentially React with the Amino-terminal Domain of Nuclear Pore Complex Glycoprotein Gp210

Patients with primary biliary cirrhosis frequently develop autoantibodies directed to gp210, a major glycoprotein of the nuclear pore complex. This protein contains a large glycosylated cis-ternal domain, a single transmembrane segment, and a short cytoplasmic tail. It has been previously shown that autoantibodies from primary biliary cirrhosis patients exclusively react with the cytoplasmic tail. We demonstrate that autoantibodies against gp210 recognize at least two different epitopes. 4 out of 12 anti-gp210 positive sera reacted with the fragment consisting of the cytoplasmic tail, and 8 sera targeted a novel epitope located within the large glycosylated lumenal domain. Moreover, our data prove that carbohydrate moieties are an essential part of this novel epitope. We propose, therefore, that future screening assays should be performed with antigens possessing both epitopes to detect all sera with anti-gp210 specificity. A bout one third of patients with primary biliary cirrho-sis (PBC) have autoantibodies that recognize gp210, an integral glycoprotein of the nuclear pore complex (1-4). "Mature" gp210 is composed of three main domains. A large 1,783-amino acid amino-terminal domain is located in the perinuclear space between the outer and inner nuclear membrane. A short 20-amino acid hydrophobic segment spans the nuclear membrane and a 58-amino acid carboxy-terminal tail domain faces the cytoplasm (5, 6). It has been shown that gp210 contains high mannose-type oligosaccharides. Carbohydrate moieties contribute 5% of the mass of g p210 and are restricted to the amino-terminal domain (5). Since the three domains ofgp210 greatly differ from each other structurally, it is of interest whether the autoantibodies directed against gp210 recognize a specific domain of this protein. Recently, it has been reported that autoantibodies from PBC patients exclusively recognize a short region within the cytoplasmic tail ofgp210 (7). In the present study, we demonstrate that the anti-gp210 autoan-tibodies are directed against at least two antigenic determinants: one located in the cytoplasmic and another in the large lumenal domain of gp210 protein. Furthermore, the autoantibodies exclusively recognize the glycosylated form of the amino-terminal domain of gp210 protein, indicating that carbohydrate residues are an integral part of this novel epitope. Materials and Methods Patients. Sera were obtained from 43 patients with primary biliary cirrhosis and 20 healthy blood donors. The diagnosis of primary biliary cirrhosis was based on accepted clinical, biochemical , and histological criteria. Chemical Reagents. Routine chemical reagents were obtained from either the United States Biochemical Corp. (NPC). To avoid proteolytic degradation of proteins, …
CSF Electrophoresis in One Thousand Patients

SUMMARY: Agarose and/or cellulose acetate electrophoresis was performed on the CSF of one thousand patients. In patients with clinically definite multiple sclerosis (MS) (N = 267) 92.8% had oligoclonal banding (O.B.). In patients with possible MS (N - 283) O.B. was present in 31.1%. In patients with other neurological diseases (N = 450) O.B. was present in 8% (N = 36). Nineteen non-MS patients with positive O.B. had serum bands or disorders known to be associated with local immune response. The remaining 17 patients had no explanation for the oligoclonal banding. In the majority of these MS had not been a diagnostic consideration. CSF electrophoresis is the single most reliable laboratory lest in multiple sclerosis and deserves incorporation into the diagnostic criteria for the disease.