Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of Sodium Omadine for Short-Term Preservation of Nitrate-N and Orthophosphate in Water Samples

Maintaining nitrate-N and orthophosphate (dissolved reactive phosphorus) concentrations in a water sample over time is critical for water quality research. This study investigated the ability of current preservation methods to maintain nitrate-N and orthophosphate concentrations in environmental water samples over a period of up to 14 days. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) currently recommends adding sulfuric acid for nitrate-N and filtering the water sample at the time of collection for orthophosphate. This study compared these recommended methods to baseline control concentrations in subsurface tile drainage water, pond water, and stream water. In addition, sodium omadine was tested as a potential alternative preservative. Across the three sources of water tested, sulfuric acid was the most reliable preservation method for both nitrate-N and orthophosphate, with percent changes from the baseline concentrations on Day 14 ranging from 2.30–3.27% for nitrate-N and 1.94–8.48% for orthophosphate. The control samples also maintained the baseline concentrations quite well, with percent changes on Day 14 ranging from 0.09–6.68% for nitrate-N and 2.63–11.87% for orthophosphate. When sodium omadine was added to the water samples, the nitrate-N concentrations had percent changes of 0.13–6.10% from the baseline concentration on Day 14. In contrast, sodium omadine was less effective for maintaining orthophosphate concentrations, with percent changes of 8.86–13.06% from the baseline concentration on Day 14. However, there were no significantly different orthophosphate concentrations when sodium omadine was added to stream water, showing a promising alternative for this scenario. Depending on the objective, researchers may need to consider the source water and length of storage of water samples to determine what, if any, preservative is necessary.
Factors affecting cervical screening among Turkish women.

BACKGROUND Cervical cancer is second most common cancer among women worldwide. OBJECTIVE To determinate pap smear test rates and affecting factors among Turkish women. METHODS This descriptive and cross-sectional questionnaire study covered 397 women consulting at Gynecology Outpatient Clinic of Birth and Children's Hospital in Ordu province, enrolled non-consecutively as volunteers after providing informed consent. Data for women who had a history of at least one pap smear in her history were compared with those having none. RESULTS 24.7% of women had knowledge about the pap smear test and 11.8% of them had undergone at least one pap smear test. Higher mean age (p=0.000), high education level (p=0.013), duration of marriage (p=0.001), working outside home (p=0.000), use of contraceptive method (p=0.000), history of cancer in women's family or relatives (p=0.021), having a sexually transmitted disease history (p=0.042), positive attitude towards gynecologic examination of women (p=0.000) and considering oneself in a cervical cancer risk group (p=0.004) were positively associated with a pap smear test history. CONCLUSION Since the rate of pap smear testing was very low, education of women about screening and protection against cervical cancer appears a high priority.
Detecting recent selective sweeps while controlling for mutation rate and background selection

A composite likelihood ratio test implemented in the program SweepFinder is a commonly used method for scanning a genome for recent selective sweeps. SweepFinder uses information on the spatial pattern of the site frequency spectrum (SFS) around the selected locus. To avoid confounding effects of background selection and variation in the mutation process along the genome, the method is typically applied only to sites that are variable within species. However, the power to detect and localize selective sweeps can be greatly improved if invariable sites are also included in the analysis. In the spirit of a Hudson-Kreitman-Aguadé test, we suggest to add fixed differences relative to an outgroup to account for variation in mutation rate, thereby facilitating more robust and powerful analyses. We also develop a method for including background selection modeled as a local reduction in the effective population size. Using simulations we show that these advances lead to a gain in power while maintaining robustness to mutation rate variation. Furthermore, the new method also provides more precise localization of the causative mutation than methods using the spatial pattern of segregating sites alone.
Next generation network management of heterogeneous mobile users

At present, none of the known mobility management proposals can efficiently support mobile wireless users in the Next Generation Network (NGN) because this environment will have both heterogeneous access technologies belonging to diverse network providers, and users using services with different network requirements. We aim to use Game Theory (GT) to understand how to fulfil the expectations of both users and network providers in a way that the NGN will work efficiently. In this work, we propose a game between the network operator and the users to evaluate how each user's decision impacts on the operator reward, and vice-versa. In addition, we investigate how both players can maximize their rewards or utilities, noticing they have conflicting expectations. Then, we analyse distinct network usage scenarios: no user mobility, mobility detected by both operator and user, distinct user classes and various network loads. Our results show that our mobility model with heterogeneous users has a Nash Equilibrium (NE) but it depends on the network load, who triggers the handover and the handover management approach being used. In our opinion, these results give some guidelines as to how the NGN mobility should be supported.
Exact stability analysis of second-order leader-follower consensus protocols with multiple time delays

An earlier investigation on leader-follower consensus protocols for double integrators with multiple time delays [1] is revisited in this paper from two completely different and novel perspectives. First, the crucial stability analysis of time delayed system is replaced with a recent technique called the Cluster Treatment of Characteristic Roots (CTCR). CTCR paradigm is pursued after a block-diagonalization (mode decoupling) transformation on the system. This treatment produces the unique exact and exhaustive stability tables for the dynamics in the space of the delays. Secondly, the novel concept of Spectral Delay Space is presented, as an overture to the CTCR for the determination of the needed potential stability crossing (switching) hypersurfaces in the delay space. Example cases are provided to display the strengths, efficiency and explicitness of this new stability analysis mechanism.
Australian health professionals' health website recommendation trends.

INTRODUCTION This study was concerned with indentifying motivations and trends associated with a health website recommendation from eight of Australia's major health professions to the health consumer. Health professions included in this study are: psychiatrists, general practitioners, social workers, dietitians, chiropractors, physiotherapists, optometrists and pharmacists. METHODS An online survey (www.limesurvey.org) was developed from a common set of questions negotiated between all eight health professions. Survey questions were constructed in an attempt to identify participants' reasons for or against recommending a health website to a patient. A 5-point scale (not, slightly, neutral, moderately, strongly) to measure influence was used throughout the question set. RESULTS This study indicates that Australian general practitioners (GPs) were the highest Australian health professionals to undertake a health website recommendation (86%), followed by psychiatrists (80%), with the lowest being physiotherapists (42%) and optometrists (33%). A profile of the Australian health professional who recommends a health website is identified as male, aged above 50 years, has had more than 10 years experience, works in a major city, is in private practice and has patient numbers exceeding 500 in a 12-month period (2009). CONCLUSION Recommendations from this study include the need to develop mechanisms that identify high-quality online medical information and the development and implementation of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses which up-skill health professionals concerning the recommendation of health websites for health care delivery.
The Oligopeptidase B of Leishmania Regulates Parasite Enolase and Immune Evasion*

Proteases are a ubiquitous group of enzymes that play key roles in the life cycle of parasites, in the host-parasite relationship, and in the pathogenesis of parasitic diseases. Furthermore, proteases are targets for the development of new anti-parasitic therapy. Protozoan parasites like Leishmania predominantly express Clan CA cysteine proteases for key life cycle functions. It was therefore unexpected to find a high level of serine protease activity expressed by Leishmania donovani. Purification of this activity followed by mass spectrometry identified oligopeptidase B (OPB; Clan SC, family S9A) as the responsible enzyme. This was confirmed by gene knock-out of OPB, which resulted in the disappearance of the detected serine protease activity of Leishmania extracts. To delineate the specific role of OPB in parasite physiology, proteomic analysis was carried out on OPB(−/−) versus wild type parasites. Four protein species were significantly elevated in OPB(−/−) parasites, and all four were identified by mass spectrometry as enolase. This increased enolase was enzymatically inactive and associated with the parasite membrane. Aside from its classic role in carbohydrate metabolism, enolase was recently found to localize to membranes, where it binds host plasminogen and functions as a virulence factor for several pathogens. As expected, there was a striking alteration in macrophage responses to Leishmania when OPB was deleted. Whereas wild type parasites elicited little, if any, response from infected macrophages, OPB(−/−) parasites induced a massive up-regulation in gene transcription. Additionally, these OPB(−/−) parasites displayed decreased virulence in the murine footpad infection model.
Spermidine Synthase Is Required for Virulence of Leishmania donovani

ABSTRACT Genetic lesions in the polyamine biosynthetic pathway of Leishmania donovani, the causal agent of visceral leishmaniasis, are conditionally lethal mutations that render the insect vector form of the parasite auxotrophic for polyamines. Recently, we have demonstrated that a Δodc L. donovani null mutant lacking ornithine decarboxylase (ODC), the rate-limiting enzyme in polyamine biosynthesis, was profoundly compromised in its ability to infect mice, indicating that ODC is essential for the infectious mammalian stage of the parasite and further validating the enzyme as a possible drug target. To assess whether other components of the polyamine biosynthetic pathway were also essential for parasite virulence, a cell line deficient in spermidine synthase (SPDSYN), the enzyme that converts putrescine to spermidine, was created by double-targeted gene replacement within a virulent L. donovani background. This Δspdsyn strain was auxotrophic for polyamines, required spermidine for growth in its insect vector form, and was adversely impacted in its ability to infect mice. These findings establish that SPDSYN, like ODC, is essential for maintaining a robust infection in mammals and indicate that pharmacologic inhibition of SPDSYN, and perhaps all components of the polyamine biosynthetic pathway, is a valid therapeutic strategy for the treatment of visceral and, potentially, other forms of leishmaniasis.
Trainable attention model based vergence control for active stereo vision system

We propose a new human-like vergence control method for an active stereo vision system. The proposed system uses a trainable selective attention model to localize an interesting object area in each camera. The selected object area in the master camera is compared with that in the slave camera to identify whether the two cameras find the same landmark. If the left and right cameras successfully find the same landmark, the implemented active vision system, with two cameras, focuses on the landmark. Using the motor encoder information, we can detect the depth information automatically. Computer simulation and experimental results show that the proposed vergence control method is very effective in implementing the human-like active stereo vision system.
An Empirical Study of the Impact of Product Characteristics and Electronic Commerce Interface Richness on Consumer Attitude and Purchase Intentions

Although there has been a pickup in the growth of business-to-consumer electronic commerce (EC) recently, the overall growth appears to have failed to live up to the various forecasts. Notwithstanding the concerns of security and privacy, this paper posits that for complex products and services offered on the web, existing EC interfaces (ECIs) lack the necessary "richness" to overcome the virtual nature that consumers face compared with a physical store. We empirically validate a conceptual framework that exists in the literature to address these issues of ECI design by drawing on insights from contingency research in information system (IS) design and media choice behavior. This paper finds that a fit or congruence between the product type and the ECI richness (in product information representation, and product-related interaction and communication between the consumer and vendor) leads to superior outcomes. Specifically, buying a complex product (e.g., digital camera) on the Web requires a greater ECI richness in the form of experiencing higher social presence and/or higher product presence. On the other hand, a lean ECI is sufficient for a simple product (e.g., diskette). The role of tolerance for ambiguity (TA), which is an individual difference variable, in this relationship is also examined. A significant three-way fit of TA with ECI richness and product types on consumer behavior is found. A number of implications and future research extensions are discussed
Instantaneous Non-Linear Processing by Pulse-Coupled Threshold Units

Contemporary theory of spiking neuronal networks is based on the linear response of the integrate-and-fire neuron model derived in the diffusion limit. We find that for non-zero synaptic weights, the response to transient inputs differs qualitatively from this approximation. The response is instantaneous rather than exhibiting low-pass characteristics, non-linearly dependent on the input amplitude, asymmetric for excitation and inhibition, and is promoted by a characteristic level of synaptic background noise. We show that at threshold the probability density of the potential drops to zero within the range of one synaptic weight and explain how this shapes the response. The novel mechanism is exhibited on the network level and is a generic property of pulse-coupled networks of threshold units.
The Majority of Human Memory B Cells Recognizing RhD and Tetanus Resides in IgM+ B Cells

B cell memory to T cell–dependent (TD) Ags are considered to largely reside in class-switched CD27+ cells. However, we previously observed that anti-RhD (D) Igs cloned from two donors, hyperimmunized with D+ erythrocytes, were predominantly of the IgM isotype. We therefore analyzed in this study the phenotype and frequency of D- and tetanus toxoid–specific B cells by culturing B cells in limiting dilution upon irradiated CD40L-expressing EL4.B5 cells and testing the culture supernatant. Most Ag-specific B cells for both TD Ags were found to reside in the IgM-expressing B cells, including CD27− B cells, in both hyperimmunized donors and nonhyperimmunized volunteers. Only shortly after immunization a sharp increase in Ag-specific CD27+IgG+ B cells was observed. Next, B cells were enriched with D+ erythrocyte ghosts and sorted as single cells. Sequencing of IGHV, IGLV, IGKV, and BCL6 genes from these D-specific B cell clones demonstrated that both CD27−IgM+ and CD27+IgM+ B cells harbored somatic mutations, documenting their Ag-selected nature. Furthermore, sequencing revealed a clonal relationship between the CD27−IgM+, CD27+IgM+, and CD27+IgG+ B cell subsets. These data strongly support the recently described multiple layers of memory B cells to TD Ags in mice, where IgM+ B cells represent a memory reservoir which can re-enter the germinal center and ensure replenishment of class-switched memory CD27+ B cells from Ag-experienced precursors.
The first three-dimensional fossils of Cretaceous sclerorhynchid sawfish: Asflapristis cristadentis gen. et sp. nov., and implications for the phylogenetic relations of the Sclerorhynchoidei (Chondrichthyes)

A new fossil batoid (ray), Asflapristis cristadentis gen. et sp. nov., is described from six exceptionally well-preserved, three-dimensional skeletal remains from the Turonian (Late Cretaceous) of Morocco. Mechanical and acid preparation and computed tomographic scanning of these specimens reveal details of much of the proximal skeleton, especially the skull, synarcual and pectoral skeleton, with only the more distal parts of the skeleton missing. These fossils represent a relatively large animal (62 cm preserved length, estimated total length approximately 2 metres) possessing a robust rostrum that lacks enlarged rostral denticles. It has a narrow and small chondrocranium with jaws that are relatively large compared to the rest of the skull and robust with highly ornamented teeth that lack cusps. The branchial skeleton shows a large second hypobranchial without an anterior process, which was probably fused to the basibranchial as in other sclerorhynchoids. The synarcual is large and lacks centra through its entire length, with no direct connection to the pectoral girdle observed. Pectoral fins probably possessed enlarged proximal elements (propterygium, mesopterygium and metapterygium); the articulation facet between the coracoid and the pectoral elements was reduced. A phylogenetic analysis using both parsimony and Bayesian methods was performed incorporating this new taxon. Both analyses recovered a phylogenetic topology that places the sclerorhynchoids in a close relation to rajoids and clearly separated from the morphologically similar Pristidae within the Rhinopristiformes. With respect to the extant taxa, the phylogenies generated are similar to that obtained from molecular analysis of modern batoids. The palaeoecological implication of this discovery suggests that the Asfla assemblage was not from a ‘normal’ open carbonate shelf but rather a restricted environment favouring a low-diversity chondrichthyan fauna. http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:7752385F-817D-40BF-961C-1AF7B9093E14
[Expression and activation of nuclear factor-kappaB in middle ear cholesteatoma].

OBJECTIVE To explore the expression and activation of NF-kappaB in middle ear cholesteatoma. METHODS The protein expression of NF-kappaB p65 in 21 middle ear cholesteatoma tissues and 8 normal external ear canal skin obtained in middle ear surgery were examined by immunohistochemistry; NF-kappaB DNA binding activity in these two kinds of tissues were also detected by electrophoretic motility shift assay (EMSA). The influence of cholesteatoma debris on the NF-kappaB DNA binding activity of HaCat cell were further analyzed. RESULTS All epithelial cell of cholesteatoma revealed a relatively abundant plasma expression of NF-kappaB p65 protein, among which 12 cases showed nuclear positive expression. In contrast,the normal skin epithelium only revealed a sparse plasma distribution of NF-kappaB protein. The levels of NF-kappaB p65 protein expression in the epithelium of middle ear cholesteatoma tissue and normal skin were 0.168 +/- 0.051, 0.088 +/- 0.019 (t = 4.211, P < 0.01), respectively. The NF-kappaB DNA binding activities of cholesteatoma [(16.5 +/- 10.1)%] were also higher than those in normal skin [(1.38 +/- 1.24)%, t = 3. 600, P = 0.014]. The NF-kappaB DNA binding activity of HaCat cell increased when exposed to cholesteatoma debris in a dose dependent manner. CONCLUSION NF-kappaB might be an important factor which was involved in the occurrence and development of cholesteatoma.
Determinants of depression in patients with comorbid depression following cardiac rehabilitation

Background A prior history of depression, at the point patients start cardiac rehabilitation (CR), is associated with poor outcomes; however, little is known about which factors play a part in determining the extent of benefit following CR. Therefore, we aim to identify and evaluate determinants of CR depression outcomes in patients with comorbid depression. Methods An observational study of routine practice using the British Heart Foundation National Audit of Cardiac Rehabilitation data between April 2012 and March 2017. Baseline characteristics were examined with independent samples t-test and χ2 test. A binary logistic regression was used to predict change in depression outcome following CR. Results The analysis included 2715 CR participants with depression history. The determinants of Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) depression measurement post-CR were higher total number of comorbidities (OR 0.914, 95% CI 0.854 to 0.979), a higher HADS anxiety score (OR 0.883, 95% CI 0.851 to 0.917), physical inactivity (OR 0.707, 95% CI 0.514 to 0.971), not-smoking at baseline (OR 1.774, 95% CI 1.086 to 2.898) and male gender (OR 0.721, 95% CI 0.523 to 0.992). Conclusion Baseline characteristics of patients with comorbid depression such as higher anxiety, higher total number of comorbidities, smoking, physical inactivity and male gender were predictors of their depression levels following CR. CR programmes need to be aware of comorbid depression and these related patient characteristics associated with better CR outcomes.
Ethanol Intoxication: A Risk Factor for Ischemic Brain Infarctionin Adolescents and Young Adults

Between January 1978 and December 1979 23 consecutive patients aged under 40 years with acute ischemic brain infarction were admitted to the department of neurology, Meilahti University Hospital in Helsinki. In 10 patients (43%) the onset of symptoms was preceded within 24 hours by ethanol intoxication, and all but one symptom occurred at weekends when most liquor is consumed in Finland. Ethanol intoxication preceding the stroke was 4 times as common in female and 5 times as common in male patients as ethanol intoxication in the general Finnish population of the same age and sex. The present results support those of our previous study and suggest that occasional ethanol intoxication increases the risk of ischemic brain infarction both in adolescents and young adults. Stroke, Vol 12, No 4, 1981