Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Milk fatty acid profile of Peruvian Criollo and Brown Swiss cows in response to different diet qualities fed at low and high altitude

Two identical experimental protocols were followed at 200 and 3,600 m above sea level (a.s.l.) determining the changes of the milk fatty acid (FA) profile of Brown Swiss (BS) and indigenous Peruvian Criollo cows (CR) as a response to diets which were designed to cover the variation in feed quality caused by season. At each site (altitude), six BS and six CR cows, adapted to >3,500 m a.s. l. , were fed three dietary treatments (DS, dry-season forage; RS rainy-season forage; OC, diet optimised to meet the cow's requirements) in a 2 × 2 × 3-factorial arrangement. Intakes of FA and milk yield increased from diet DS (low quality diet) to RS and OC (high quality diet) for both cow types. Milk fat proportions of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), C18:3 c9,c12,c15, total n-3 and polyunsaturated FA (PUFA) were highest (p < 0.05) with diet OC and higher in the lowlands than in the highlands. Low intakes of diet DS obviously resulted in a ruminal energy deficiency and body lipid mobilisation. The ruminal energy deficiency with diet DS was especially pronounced in BS, apparently reducing biohydrogenation rate and leading to lower proportions of C18:0 and higher proportions of C18:3 c9,c12,c15 in milk fat (p < 0.05). Especially C18:3 c9,c12,c15 intake did not concur with its proportion in milk fat, suggesting a strong dependence on energy status. Milk yield and FA excretion with milk were higher for BS than for CR (p < 0.05) with all three diets although milk fat content was lower (p < 0.05) for BS than CR. Milk fat of BS was richer in CLA and PUFA than milk fat of CR (p < 0.05). The desaturase indices for 18 FA were also higher for BS than CR (p < 0.05), suggesting a slightly higher Δ9-desaturase activity for BS, especially with diet DS. Milk fat content was generally higher at the high altitude than at the lowland site (p < 0.05), whereas the FA profile was unexpectedly similar across sites. Various interactions were found among diet type, cow type and altitude (site) indicating that a combination of these factors contributes to the characteristic FA profile of the respective milk.
The Influence of Disorder on Thermotropic Nematic Liquid Crystals Phase Behavior

We review the theoretical research on the influence of disorder on structure and phase behavior of condensed matter system exhibiting continuous symmetry breaking focusing on liquid crystal phase transitions. We discuss the main properties of liquid crystals as adequate systems in which several open questions with respect to the impact of disorder on universal phase and structural behavior could be explored. Main advantages of liquid crystalline materials and different experimental realizations of random field-type disorder imposed on liquid crystal phases are described.
Training Performance of Laparoscopic Surgery in Two- and Three-Dimensional Displays

Introduction. This research investigated differences in the effects of a state-of-art stereoscopic 3-dimensional (3D) display and a traditional 2-dimensional (2D) display in simulated laparoscopic surgery over a longer duration than in previous publications and studied the learning effects of the 2 display systems on novices. Methods. A randomized experiment with 2 factors, image dimensions and image sequence, was conducted to investigate differences in the mean movement time, the mean error frequency, NASA-TLX cognitive workload, and visual fatigue in pegboard and circle-tracing tasks. Results. The stereoscopic 3D display had advantages in mean movement time (P < .001 and P = .002) and mean error frequency (P = .010 and P = .008) in both the tasks. There were no significant differences in the objective visual fatigue (P = .729 and P = .422) and in the NASA-TLX (P = .605 and P = .937) cognitive workload between the 3D and the 2D displays on both the tasks. For the learning effect, participants who used the stereoscopic 3D display first had shorter mean movement time in the 2D display environment on both the pegboard (P = .011) and the circle-tracing (P = .017) tasks. Conclusions. The results of this research suggest that a stereoscopic system would not result in higher objective visual fatigue and cognitive workload than a 2D system, and it might reduce the performance time and increase the precision of surgical operations. In addition, learning efficiency of the stereoscopic system on the novices in this study demonstrated its value for training and education in laparoscopic surgery.
Using Explicit Discourse Connectives in Translation for Implicit Discourse Relation Classification

Implicit discourse relation recognition is an extremely challenging task due to the lack of indicative connectives. Various neural network architectures have been proposed for this task recently, but most of them suffer from the shortage of labeled data. In this paper, we address this problem by procuring additional training data from parallel corpora: When humans translate a text, they sometimes add connectives (a process known as explicitation). We automatically back-translate it into an English connective and use it to infer a label with high confidence. We show that a training set several times larger than the original training set can be generated this way. With the extra labeled instances, we show that even a simple bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory Network can outperform the current state-of-the-art.
Frequency of Depression and Anxiety among Tuberculosis Patients

Objective: The aim of present study was to determine the frequency of depression and anxiety among tuberculosis patients. Methods: It was a descriptive study that had investigated the co-morbidity of depression and anxiety among tuberculosis patients with reference to gender. This study was conducted in Jinnah Post Graduate Medical Centre—Chest ward (TB clinic) from July 2014 to September 2014. Hundred diagnosed patients of tuberculosis (50 males and 50 females) were randomly selected. Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire (GAD-7) were used to assess the level of anxiety and depression. Results: Findings indicated that 56% tuberculosis (TB) patients had moderate to severe level of depression, whereas 65% TB patients had moderate to severe level of anxiety. Female patients had significantly high prevalence of depression as compared to males (t = –2.173, P < 0.05). Similarly, prevalence of anxiety was also significantly higher in female patients (t = –3.468, P < 0.05). Conclusion: Likelihood of depression and anxiety was frequent in tuberculosis patients. However, better management of these psychiatric morbidities may improve treatment adherence, illness perception and patient coping skills.
Designing interactive systems

Alistair Sutcliff DIS was the first in what is hoped to be series of conferences focusing on the design process of interactive systems. The conference was started by a group from the CHI community who wanted to see more focus on design and had three cooperating sponsors: IFIP Working Group 13.2, the Association for Software Design, and ACM SIGCHI. Attendance was approximately 125 from USA, Europe and Japan. Many new conferences go through an identity crisis and DIS is no exception. The main objective was to shape the vision of what design is and how it can be improved. The papers did not all directly reflect the design theme, but that is probably a 'chicken and egg' problem of needing papers to define what design is before a conception of design exists. Anyway, there is my personal reflection on some of the papers and sessions. The opening plenary presentation by Henry Petroski set out an interesting perspective of engineering design. Taking the humble paper clip and pencil, Petroski showed how design is often sub-optimal, a response to constraints and economics of the real world and evolves over time. How the design compromises and variations for something as apparently simple as a paper clip, scale up to complex software systems is a key issue, however, Petroski's presentation stopped short of covering complex artifacts. The main lessons were taking constraints into account and learning from design histories. In civil engineering there is a 30 year cycle of design evolution to extinction (e.g. a type of bridge design is pushed to its limits then another design paradigm takes over). Wednesday's sessions covered evolutionary design, experience and requirements , and organization concerns. The session titles were often misleading and came in for criticism by discussants. The discussant role worked well throughout the conference and developed many interesting perspectives on the papers. On the first session, Tom Moran illustrated how design varied by its scale and intent. As discussant, Tom compared the quite different views of design presented in the first three papers. In the first of these Jack Carroll presented a framework within which others can then design for themselves in an electronic village which gives people a means of interacting and authoring material for a local Web community. This differed from the design view in the paper by Fischer, Nakakoji and Ost-wald which described designing an environment which allows people to design classes …
2-Amino-6-methylpyridinium 2,2,2-trichloroacetate

In the asymmetric unit of the title molecular salt, C6H9N2 +·C2Cl3O2 −, there are two independent 2-amino-6-methylpyridinium cations and two independent trichloroacetate anions. The pyridine N atom of the 2-amino-6-methylpyridine molecule is protonated and the geometries of these cations reveal amine–imine tautomerism. Both protonated 2-amino-6-methylpyridinium cations are essentially planar [maximum deviations = 0.026 (2) and 0.012 (2) Å]. In the crystal, the protonated N atom and the 2-amino group of the cation are hydrogen bonded to the carboxylate O atoms of the anion via a pair of N—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, forming an R 2 2(8) ring motif. These motifs are connected via N—H⋯O and C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds to form slabs parallel to (101).
Divergent ecosystem responses within a benthic marine community to ocean acidification

Ocean acidification is predicted to impact all areas of the oceans and affect a diversity of marine organisms. However, the diversity of responses among species prevents clear predictions about the impact of acidification at the ecosystem level. Here, we used shallow water CO2 vents in the Mediterranean Sea as a model system to examine emergent ecosystem responses to ocean acidification in rocky reef communities. We assessed in situ benthic invertebrate communities in three distinct pH zones (ambient, low, and extreme low), which differed in both the mean and variability of seawater pH along a continuous gradient. We found fewer taxa, reduced taxonomic evenness, and lower biomass in the extreme low pH zones. However, the number of individuals did not differ among pH zones, suggesting that there is density compensation through population blooms of small acidification-tolerant taxa. Furthermore, the trophic structure of the invertebrate community shifted to fewer trophic groups and dominance by generalists in extreme low pH, suggesting that there may be a simplification of food webs with ocean acidification. Despite high variation in individual species’ responses, our findings indicate that ocean acidification decreases the diversity, biomass, and trophic complexity of benthic marine communities. These results suggest that a loss of biodiversity and ecosystem function is expected under extreme acidification scenarios.
The N-terminal Part of Arabidopsis thaliana Starch Synthase 4 Determines the Localization and Activity of the Enzyme*

Starch synthase 4 (SS4) plays a specific role in starch synthesis because it controls the number of starch granules synthesized in the chloroplast and is involved in the initiation of the starch granule. We showed previously that SS4 interacts with fibrillins 1 and is associated with plastoglobules, suborganelle compartments physically attached to the thylakoid membrane in chloroplasts. Both SS4 localization and its interaction with fibrillins 1 were mediated by the N-terminal part of SS4. Here we show that the coiled-coil region within the N-terminal portion of SS4 is involved in both processes. Elimination of this region prevents SS4 from binding to fibrillins 1 and alters SS4 localization in the chloroplast. We also show that SS4 forms dimers, which depends on a region located between the coiled-coil region and the glycosyltransferase domain of SS4. This region is highly conserved between all SS4 enzymes sequenced to date. We show that the dimerization seems to be necessary for the activity of the enzyme. Both dimerization and the functionality of the coiled-coil region are conserved among SS4 proteins from phylogenetically distant species, such as Arabidopsis and Brachypodium. This finding suggests that the mechanism of action of SS4 is conserved among different plant species.
Reconstruction of the original mycoflora in pelleted feed by PCR-SSCP and qPCR.

Ground feeds for pigs were investigated for fungal contamination before and after pelleting (subsamples in total n = 24) by cultural and molecular biological methods. A fungal-specific primer pair ITS1/ITS5.8R was used to amplify fungal DNA; PCR products were processed for the PCR-SSCP method. In the resulting acrylamide gel, more than 85% of DNA bands of ground feeds were preserved after pelleting. Twenty-two DNA bands were sequenced; all represented fungal DNA. The level of fungal DNA in ground feed samples was equivalent to 4.77-5.69 log10 CFU g(-1) , calculated by qPCR using a standard curve of Aspergillus flavus. In pelleted feed, the level of fungal DNA was in average ± 0.07 log10 different from ground feed. Quantified by cultural methods, the fresh ground feeds contained up to 4.51 log10 CFU g(-1) culturable fungi, while there was < 2.83 log10 CFU g(-1) detected in pelleted feeds. This result shows that, while the process of pelleting reduced the amount of living fungi dramatically, it did not affect the total fungal DNA in feed. Thus, the described methodology was able to reconstruct the fungal microbiota in feeds and reflected a considerable fungal contamination of raw materials such as grains.
Bifurcation and chaos in a simple passive bipedal gait

This paper proposes an analysis of the behavior of perhaps the simplest biped robot: the compass gait model. It has been shown previously that such a robot can walk down a slope indefinitely without any actuation. Passive motions of this nature are of particular interest since they may lead us to strategies for controlling active walking machines as well as to a better understanding of human locomotion. We show here that, depending on the parameters of the system, passive compass gait may exhibit 1-periodic, 2/sup n/-periodic and chaotic gaits proceeding from cascades of period-doubling bifurcations. Since compass equations are quite involved (they combine nonlinear differential and algebraic equations in a 4-dimensional space), our investigations rely, in part, on numerical simulations.
Energy consumption evaluation for power saving mechanisms in recent IEEE 802.15.4 low-rate wireless personal area networks

This paper presents the evaluation on energy consumption of power saving mechanisms in recent IEEE 802.15. 4 Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Network (LR-WPAN) systems. The LR-WPAN applications share a common system requirement of high energy efficiency through power saving mechanisms to prolong battery lifespan. First, the recent IEEE 802.15. 4 standard amendments including, but not limited to IEEE 802.15. 4/4e/4f/4g/4j/4k/4m and their targeted applications are listed and discussed. Then, the applications are categorized based on different energy consumption models which are interconnected with the radio operations of the proposed power saving mechanisms. Next, addressing pervasive demands and respective energy consumption models in multiple application scenarios, three power saving mechanisms for LR-WPAN are proposed and evaluated taking into consideration realistic parameters. As a result, it is found that the power saving mechanisms are capable of supporting battery lifespan up to typically 3 years. Out of the three proposed mechanisms, two are found to be more suitable for deployment of symmetrical energy consumption model where all devices share similar burden of radio operations, while one is found to be otherwise, optimized for asymmetrical energy consumption model where some devices have larger burden as compared to others.
Evaluation of bias on the assessment of diet breadth of herbivorous insects using molecular methods

The interactions between herbivores and their host plants play a key role in ecological processes. Understanding the width and nature of these interactions is fundamental to ecology and conservation. Recent research on DNA‐based inference of trophic associations suggests that the host range of phytophagous insects in the tropics may be wider than previously thought based on traditional observation. However, the reliability of molecular inference of ecological associations, still strongly dependent on PCR and thus exposed to the risk of contamination with environmental DNA, is under debate. Here, we explored alternative procedures to reduce the chance of amplification of external, nondiet DNA, including surface decontamination and analysis of mid/hind guts, comparing the results with those obtained using the standard protocol. We studied 261 specimens in eight species of Neotropical Chrysomelidae that yielded 316 psbA‐trnH intergenic spacer sequences (cpDNA marker of putative diets) from unique and multiple‐band PCR results. The taxonomic identity of these sequences was inferred using the automated pipeline BAGpipe, yielding results consistent with 31 plant families. Regardless of the protocol used, a wide taxonomic spectrum of food was inferred for all chrysomelid species. Canonical Correspondence Analysis using these data revealed significant differences attributed mainly to species (expectedly, since they represent different ecologies), but also to treatment (untreated vs. cleaned/gut samples) and PCR results (single vs. multiple bands). Molecular identification of diets is not straightforward and, regardless of the species’ niche breadth, combining approaches that reduce external contamination and studying multiple individuals per species may help increasing confidence in results.
Derived neutrophil lymphocyte ratio may predict benefit from cisplatin in the advanced biliary cancer: the ABC-02 and BT-22 studies.

BACKGROUND The superiority of cisplatin and gemcitabine (CisGem) chemotherapy over gemcitabine (Gem) alone in patients with advanced biliary tract cancer (ABC) has been demonstrated in two randomised trials; ABC02 and the Biliary Tract (BT) 22 study. We used a combined dataset from these two trials to investigate the derived neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (dNLR), which is thought to be a prognostic factor associated with clinical outcomes in several solid tumours, including ABC. METHODS White blood cell (WBC) and absolute neutrophil count (ANC) were available for 379 of 410 patients from ABC-02 and all 83 patients in BT-22. The dNLR was calculated as ANC/(WBC-ANC), as previously specified. We examined the association between dNLR and overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS), as well as comparing the treatment effect in two patient groups defined by their dNLR level. A high dNLR was defined as ≥3.0, which was approximately the upper tertile value. RESULTS A total of 462 individual patient records were analysed, 328 with baseline dNLR <3 and 134 with dNLR ≥3. There were 443 deaths in the cohort, and all surviving patients had a dNLR <3. There was strong evidence that dNLR was closely associated with both OS [hazard ratio (HR), 1.62; 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.32-2.01] and PFS (HR, 1.40; 95% CI 1.13-1.72). There was limited evidence (P = 0.10) of a differential effect of CisGem on OS between the two dNLR groups, but this was clearest in the ABC-02 dataset (P = 0.06). There was good evidence (P = 0.008) of an association between low baseline dNLR and long-term survival on a CisGem regimen. There was also good evidence of an association between ECOG performance status (split at 0 and 1 versus 2) on both OS (P < 0.001) and PFS (P = 0.01), but no evidence of a differential treatment effect, with both groups receiving benefit from the addition of cisplatin. CONCLUSIONS These data confirm that high dNLR is associated with worse OS and PFS, and suggests it may also be predictive of benefit for the addition of cisplatin to gemcitabine in European patients with ABC. Incorporating dNLR into the clinical context may better inform prognosis and chemotherapy decisions in ABC patients.
Wireless sensor network wormhole avoidance using reputation-based routing

Wireless sensor networks offer a practical and economically viable alternative to manual data gathering in general and military scenarios, providing a means of surveillance of a region of terrain and providing warning of any threats. However, in hostile scenarios, the network is likely to come under attack from malicious entities which seek to compromise routing diversity in these environments. This paper introduces a low overhead wireless sensor network routing technique which seeks to establish a set of trusted stable routes during the early deployment period of a wireless sensor network, and favour them during future network operation when less trusted devices may be introduced. An example case study is presented illustrating continued routing resilience during a malicious hardware insertion attack known as the wormhole attack.
An End-to-End Chinese Discourse Parser with Adaptation to Explicit and Non-explicit Relation Recognition

This paper describes our end-to-end discourse parser in the CoNLL-2016 Shared Task on Chinese Shallow Discourse Parsing. To adapt to the characteristics of Chinese, we implement a uniform framework for both explicit and non-explicit relation parsing. In this framework, we are the first to utilize a seed-expansion approach for the argument extraction subtask. In the official evaluation, our system achieves an F1 score of 26.90% in overall performance on the blind test set.
Bio-poly(butylene succinate) and Its Composites with Grape Pomace: Mechanical Performance and Thermal Properties

Biocomposites from bio-based poly(butylene succinate) (BioPBS) and grape pomace (GP) were made by melt extrusion–injection molding. Grape pomace is a low value byproduct from the wine industry that can be utilized as a filler to increase its value and to decrease the amount of polymer required in a composite blend. Experiments were performed with up to 50% grape pomace by weight. Composites were also compatibilized with in situ manufactured maleic anhydride-grafted BioPBS (MA-g-BioPBS). Flexural and impact strength were improved with the addition of GP up to the addition of 50 wt % GP, suggesting that at this loading the formulation reached threshold performance. The blend of (57:40:3) BioPBS/GP/MA-g-BioPBS showed the best overall performance in terms of a balance of both mechanical properties and thermal properties. The increase in impact resistance confirmed that the GP acted as a reinforcing phase. The addition of 3 wt % MA-g-BioPBS in samples containing 40 wt % of grape pomace resulted in improvements of 28.4 and 59% in flexural and impact strengths, respectively, compared to neat BioPBS. Heat distortion temperature increased with the addition of grape pomace by 14.3% in a blend combination of 57% BioPBS, 40% grape pomace, and 3% MA-g-BioPBS compared to neat BioPBS. Scanning electron microscopy results show improved interfacial adhesion with the addition of MA-g-BioPBS and thermogravimetric analysis results prove that the GP is thermally stable under the processing conditions. This study shows that GP can be successfully incorporated into a BioPBS matrix to create biocomposites with improved thermal and mechanical properties.