Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Thermoactivation of a cellobiohydrolase

We have measured activity and substrate affinity of the thermostable cellobiohydrolase, Cel7A, from Rasamsonia emersonii over a broad range of temperatures. For the wild type enzyme, which does not have a Carbohydrate Binding Module (CBM), higher temperature only led to moderately increased activity against cellulose, and we ascribed this to a pronounced, temperature induced desorption of enzyme from the substrate surface. We also tested a “high affinity” variant of R. emersonii Cel7A with a linker and CBM from a related enzyme. At room temperature, the activity of the variant was similar to the wild type, but the variant was more accelerated by temperature and about two‐fold faster around 70 °C. This better thermoactivation of the high‐affinity variant could not be linked to differences in stability or the catalytic process, but coincided with less desorption as temperature increased. Based on these observations and earlier reports on moderate thermoactivation of cellulases, we suggest that better cellulolytic activity at industrially relevant temperatures may be attained by engineering improved substrate affinity into enzymes that already possess good thermostability.
End-to-End Automatic Speech Translation of Audiobooks

We investigate end-to-end speech-to-text translation on a corpus of audiobooks specifically augmented for this task. Previous works investigated the extreme case where source language transcription is not available during learning nor decoding, but we also study a midway case where source language transcription is available at training time only. In this case, a single model is trained to decode source speech into target text in a single pass. Experimental results show that it is possible to train compact and efficient end-to-end speech translation models in this setup. We also distribute the corpus and hope that our speech translation baseline on this corpus will be challenged in the future.
Metabolomic Markers of Essential Fatty Acids, Carnitine, and Cholesterol Metabolism in Adults and Adolescents with Phenylketonuria.

Background Individuals with phenylketonuria (PKU) have a risk of cognitive impairment and inflammation. Many follow a low-phenylalanine (low-Phe) diet devoid of animal protein in combination with medical foods (MFs). Objective To assess lipid metabolism in participants with PKU consuming amino acid MFs (AA-MFs) or glycomacropeptide MFs (GMP-MFs), we conducted fatty acid and metabolomics analyses. Methods We used subsets of fasting plasma and urine samples from our randomized crossover trial in which participants with early-treated classical and variant (milder) PKU consumed a low-Phe diet combined with AA-MFs or GMP-MFs for 3 wk each. Fatty acid profiles of red blood cell (RBC) membranes were determined for 25 adults (aged 18-49 y) with PKU and 143 control participants. Metabolomics analyses of plasma and urine samples were conducted by Metabolon for 9-10 adolescent and adult participants with PKU and for 15 control participants. Results RBC fatty acid profiles were not significantly different with AA-MFs or GMP-MFs. PKU participants showed higher total n-6:n-3 (ω-6:ω-3) fatty acids (mean ± SD percentages of total fatty acids: AA-MF = 5.45% ± 1.07%; controls = 4.33%; P < 0.001) and lower docosahexaenoic acid (DHA; AA-MF = 3.21% ± 0.98%; controls = 3.70% ± 1.01%; P = 0.02) and eicosapentaenoic acid (AA-MF = 0.33% ± 0.12%; controls = 0.60% ± 0.43%; P < 0.001) in RBCs than did control participants. Despite higher carnitine intake from AA-MFs than GMP-MFs (mean ± SE intake: AA-MFs = 58.6 ± 5.3 mg/d; GMP-MFs = 0.3 ± 0.01 mg/d; P < 0.001), plasma concentrations of carnitine were similar and not different from those in the control group (AA-MF compared with GMP-MF, P = 0.73). AA-MFs resulted in higher urinary excretion of trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO), which is synthesized by bacteria from carnitine, compared with GMP-MFs (mean ± SE scaled intensity-TMAO: AA-MFs = 1.2 ± 0.1, GMP-MFs = 0.9 ± 0.1; P = 0.005). Plasma deoxycarnitine was lower in PKU participants than in control participants, suggesting reduced carnitine biosynthesis in PKU (AA-MF = 0.9 ± 0.1; GMP-MF = 1.0 ± 0.1; controls = 1.3 ± 0.1; AA-MF compared with controls, P = 0.01; GMP-MF compared with controls, P = 0.04). Conclusions Supplementation with DHA is needed in PKU. Carnitine supplementation of AA-MFs shows reduced bioavailability due, in part, to bacterial degradation to TMAO, whereas the bioavailability of carnitine is greater with prebiotic GMP-MFs. This trial was registered at www.clinicaltrials. gov as NCT01428258.
Detecting Anomalous Faces with 'No Peeking' Autoencoders

Detecting anomalous faces has important applications. For example, a system might tell when a train driver is incapacitated by a medical event, and assist in adopting a safe recovery strategy. These applications are demanding, because they require accurate detection of rare anomalies that may be seen only at runtime. Such a setting causes supervised methods to perform poorly. We describe a method for detecting an anomalous face image that meets these requirements. We construct a feature vector that reliably has large entries for anomalous images, then use various simple unsupervised methods to score the image based on the feature. Obvious constructions (autoencoder codes; autoencoder residuals) are defeated by a 'peeking' behavior in autoencoders. Our feature construction removes rectangular patches from the image, predicts the likely content of the patch conditioned on the rest of the image using a specially trained autoencoder, then compares the result to the image. High scores suggest that the patch was difficult for an autoencoder to predict, and so is likely anomalous. We demonstrate that our method can identify real anomalous face images in pools of typical images, taken from celeb-A, that is much larger than usual in state-of-the-art experiments. A control experiment based on our method with another set of normal celebrity images - a 'typical set', but nonceleb-A are not identified as anomalous; confirms this is not due to special properties of celeb-A.
Serum Lipid Profile in Reproductive Age Women in Abakaliki, South-East Nigeria

Background: Parity has been associated with changes in serum lipid concentrations. This may have implications for cardiovascular health of women. Aims: The objective of the study was to evaluate atherogenic risk in a sample of reproductive age women in Abakaliki, southeast Nigeria, using lipid ratios like the Atherogenic Index of Plasma (AIP), Castelli’s Risk Index (CRI) and Atherogenic coefficient (AC). Subjects and Methods: This questionnaire based survey was conducted in one of the federal tertiary hospital in southeast Nigeria. Sampling was by non-probability purposive sampling technique. Study participants were drawn from women who had come for gynecological consultation, between December 1st 2014 and October 31th 2015. They were arbitrary classified into four groups based on their parity. The survey instrument was administered to the participants after obtaining an informed consent, and blood samples were drawn and analyzed for HDL cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, triglycerides and total cholesterol. Atherogenic risk ratios were derived from these lipid parameters and analyzed for statistical differences. Data analysis was by descriptive and inferential statistics using IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, version 24.0. Armonk, NY: IBM Corp. Results: The age of the women ranged from 17 to 65 years with a mean age of 32.9 (8.6) years. The lipid ratios were significantly different among the groups, especially for the AIP, CRI-I and II (p-values 0.03; 0.02; 0.02 respectively). Bonferroni Multiple Comparison Test demonstrated higher lipid ratios for low parity (para 1 and 2) than the nulliparous (CRI-I; 3.27 ± .196 vs. 4.354 ± 0.277and CRI-II; 1.791 ± 0.178 vs. 2.655 ± 0.251). Conclusion: The study demonstrated a higher atherogenic risk for low parity than the nulliparous.
Nurses’ Knowledge and Attitudes, and Pain Management Practice of Post-Operative Children in Bangladesh

Immediately after surgery, a high level of pain is expected but pain management appeared to be inadequate, which results in a number of post-operative complications. Nurses with a strong clinical knowledge, attitudes and skills are essential for relieving the suffering of pain in children undergoing surgery. Pain management nursing practice for children in Bangladesh is erratic, inconsistent and deviates from recommended standards. Initiatives are needed to improve this current situation. To do this it is necessary to examine the level of nurses’ knowledge and attitudes as well as their post-operative pain management practice for children in the context of Bangladesh. A descriptive survey was conducted during November 2009-January 2010. Approval was obtained from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of PSU, Thailand, and the target hospital directors. Data were collected from 93 pediatric surgical nurses at three medical college hospitals in Bangladesh. A survey questionnaire was used to collect data about nurses’ knowledge and attitudes and their pain management practices for children undergoing surgery. The data were analyzed by frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, and Pearson’s product-moment correlation coefficient. The study revealed that nurses’ knowledge and attitudes in pain management was at the moderate level ( x = 66.79%) and the pain management practice was also at the moderate level ( x = 78.16%). No relationship was observed between nurses’ knowledge and attitudes, and their pain management practices (r = .01, and p = .89). The findings highlight the need to improve nurses’ knowledge and attitudes and their practice in certain areas of pain assessment, pharmacological and non pharmacological pain management. Initiatives are recommended, such as including the pain content in nursing curriculum, and arranging inservice-education and training in pain management for pediatric nurses in Bangladesh. Key Wards: Child; Pain; Nursing; Knowledge; Practice.
Distributed Cross-Layer Optimization for Cognitive Radio Networks

This paper presents a distributed cross-layer optimization algorithm for a multihop cognitive radio network, with the objective of maximizing data rates for a set of user communication sessions. We study this problem with joint consideration of power control, scheduling, and routing. Even under a centralized approach, such a problem has a mixed-integer nonlinear program formulation and is likely NP-hard. Thus, a distributed problem is very challenging. The main contribution of this paper is the development of a distributed optimization algorithm that iteratively increases data rates for user communication sessions. During each iteration, our algorithm has routing, minimalist scheduling, and power control/scheduling modules for improving the current solution at all three layers. To evaluate the performance of the distributed optimization algorithm, we compare it with an upper bound of the objective function. Results show that the distributed optimization algorithm can achieve a performance close to this upper bound. Because the optimal solution (unknown) is between the upper bound and the solution obtained by our distributed algorithm, we conclude that the results obtained by our distributed algorithm are highly competitive.
Graph Prefetching Using Data Structure Knowledge

Searches on large graphs are heavily memory latency bound, as a result of many high latency DRAM accesses. Due to the highly irregular nature of the access patterns involved, caches and prefetchers, both hardware and software, perform poorly on graph workloads. This leads to CPU stalling for the majority of the time. However, in many cases the data access pattern is well defined and predictable in advance, many falling into a small set of simple patterns. Although existing implicit prefetchers cannot bring significant benefit, a prefetcher armed with knowledge of the data structures and access patterns could accurately anticipate applications' traversals to bring in the appropriate data. This paper presents a design of an explicitly configured prefetcher to improve performance for breadth-first searches and sequential iteration on the efficient and commonly-used compressed sparse row graph format. By snooping L1 cache accesses from the core and reacting to data returned from its own prefetches, the prefetcher can schedule timely loads of data in advance of the application needing it. For a range of applications and graph sizes, our prefetcher achieves average speedups of 2.3x, and up to 3.3x, with little impact on memory bandwidth requirements.
Association study between variants in the fibrinogen gene cluster, fibrinogen levels and hypertension: Results from the MONICA/ KORA study

Summary Previous studies reported a gender-specific association between plasma fibrinogen concentrations and incident hypertension. We systematically analysed polymorphisms and haplotypes across the fibrinogen gene cluster with fibrinogen levels and assessed their contribution to prevalent hypertension in 2,200 men and 2,159 women from the population-based MONICA/KORA Augsburg study. Eleven tagging single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were systematically selected in the three fibrinogen genes and haplotypes were reconstructed. The minor alleles of two SNPs, rs2227401 (FGB) and rs2070016 (FGA) and the haplotypes tagged by those variants, were significantly associated with higher fibrinogen concentrations in both, men and women, explaining 1% of the total variance of fibrinogen concentrations. In addition, a FGG haplotype, tagged by rs1049636, was associated with lower concentrations of fibrinogen in women, but not in men. Regarding hypertension, we detected a significant association with a FGA promoter variant (rs2070008) in women only, whereas fibrinogen haplotypes were not associated with hyper-tension after correction for multiple comparisons in either men or women. In conclusion, our results suggest that variants in all three fibrinogen genes are significantly associated with differences in fibrinogen concentrations with modest contribution to phenotypic variance. It is likely that other genetic variants outside the fibrinogen gene loci are involved in the regulation of fibrinogen concentrations. In addition, one FGA promoter variant was significantly associated with hypertension in women. Confirmation of these findings by future studies is warranted.
PROPERTIES OF P-TYPE SnS THIN FILMS PREPARED BY CHEMICAL BATH DEPOSITION

Thin film of tin monosulfide (SnS) is deposited onto glass substrates using chemical bath deposition (CBD) at room temperature for 24 h. The structural, electrical, and optical properties of the film are determined using X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy-dispersive Xray (EDX), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Hall Effect measurement and spectrophometry. Obtained films were polycrystalline of an orthorhombic structure. The crystallite size, lattice parameters, defective location density, and texture coefficient of the film are calculated from the XRD data. EDX analysis revealed that thin film has a nearly stoichiometric composition (Sn/S, 54.13/45.8). From the Hall Effect measurement, it was found that SnS thin film exhibits p-type conduction. Its resistivity and mobility were calculated to be 2.53×10 5 Ω. cm and 8.99×10 5 cm 2 /V.s respectively. The activation energy is calculated to be 0.527 eV in temperature range from 353-573 K by Arrhenius equation. Optical band gap values of direct and indirect transitions are estimated to be 1.37 eV and 1.05 eV, respectively.
Corrosion Characteristics of Vanadium Alloyed Ductile Cast Iron in Nitric Acid

4 Abstract: Corrosion characteristic of Vanadium alloyed ductile cast iron in nitric acid a t 30 C was o investigated using weight l oss m ethod. A lloy c ontaining 0.1 to 0.3 %V were produced and sand cast into cylindrical test bars using s andwich m ethod at the f oundry shop of the Metallurgical Engineering Department of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria Nigeria. The as-cast test bars were machined into corrosion 3 test coupons and immersed into 0.5MHNO solution and their r ate o f corrosion de termined using t he weight l oss m ethod, t he microstructures o f t he coupons were determined before and after corrosion test. It w as o bserved that ad dition of V anadium to ductile cast iro n increased the corrosion resistance up to maximum of 0.25%V addition. This corrosion resistance is attributed to the formation of hard and passive phases which acted as strong protective barriers to c orrosion. It was also obs erved that the rate of corrosion decreased with i ncrease in the number of days of exposure for all the coupons, this may be probably due to the deposition of corrosion products that tend to shield the corroding surface from further corrosion attack, there by depressing the rate of corrosion. This result shows that better corrosion resistance is achievable by addition of Vanadium t o d uctile cast iron in this medium.
Sex‐specific regulation of aging in Caenorhabditis elegans

A fascinating aspect of sexual dimorphism in various animal species is that the two sexes differ substantially in lifespan. In humans, for example, women's life expectancy exceeds that of men by 3–7 years. Whether this trait can be attributed to dissimilar lifestyles or genetic (regulatory) factors remains to be elucidated. Herein, we demonstrate that in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, the significantly longer lifespan of hermaphrodites—which are essentially females capable of sperm production—over males is established by TRA‐1, the terminal effector of the sex‐determination pathway. This transcription factor directly controls the expression of daf‐16/FOXO, which functions as a major target of insulin/IGF‐1 signaling (IIS) and key modulator of aging across diverse animal phyla. TRA‐1 extends hermaphrodite lifespan through promoting daf‐16 activity. Furthermore, TRA‐1 also influences reproductive growth in a DAF‐16‐dependent manner. Thus, the sex‐determination machinery is an important regulator of IIS in this organism. These findings provide a mechanistic insight into how longevity and development are specified unequally in the two genders. As TRA‐1 is orthologous to mammalian GLI (glioma‐associated) proteins, a similar sex‐specific mechanism may also operate in humans to determine lifespan.
Deployment-Associated Exposure Surveillance With High-Resolution Metabolomics

Objective: The aim of this study was to assess the suitability of high-resolution metabolomics (HRM) for measure of internal exposure and effect biomarkers from deployment-related environmental hazards. Methods: HRM provides extensive coverage of metabolism and data relevant to a broad spectrum of environmental exposures. This review briefly describes the analytic platform, workflow, and recent applications of HRM as a prototype environmental exposure surveillance system. Results: Building upon techniques available for contemporary occupational medicine and exposure sciences, HRM methods are able to integrate external exposures, internal body burden of environmental agents, and relevant biological responses with health outcomes. Conclusions: Systematic analysis of existing Department of Defense Serum Repository samples will provide a high-quality, cross-sectional reference dataset for deployment-associated exposures while at the same time establishing a foundation for precision medicine.
Melt electrospinning from poly(L‐lactide) rods coated with poly(ethylene‐co‐vinyl alcohol)

Rodlike poly(L-lactide) (PLLA) samples coated with poly(ethylene-co-vinyl alcohol) (EVOH) were made. Fibers were produced from these rodlike samples by using a melt electrospinning system equipped with a laser irradiating device, and the effects of EVOH content and the processing parameters of the melt electrospinning on fiber diameters were investigated. We also studied the fiber formation mechanism from the rods during the laser melt electrospinning process. The following conclusions were reached: (i) coating of EVOH on PLLA rods has a remarkable effect on decreasing fiber diameter from 3 μm to around 1 μm; (ii) increases in the electric field strength and temperature of spinning space decrease the average diameter of fibers produced from pure PLLA rods, and longer collector distance leads to lager PLLA fiber diameter; and (iii) the migration of PLLA component from the core to the surface of electrospun fibers takes place during the fiber formation process. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2009
Utilization of clove powder as phytopreservative for chicken nuggets preparation

�An investigation was undertaken to explore the possibilities of utilization of clove powder as phytopreservative in chicken nuggets prepared from spent hen meat and then storage study was conducted at 4±1°C, to assess the effect of test ingredient (clove powder) on sensory and microbiological qualities of optimized product in comparison with its control counterpart. Addition of clove powder in standard formulation caused a slight change in emulsion stability, cooking yield, water activity and composition of chicken nuggets. The findings showed antimicrobial effect of clove powder as microbial load in optimized preparation was found to be significantly (P�0.05) lower throughout the storage period when compared with control preparation. Sensory scores of optimized and control preparation were found to be acceptable even after 15 days of storage.
Development and piloting of a survey to estimate the frequency and nature of potentially harmful preventable problems in primary care from a UK patient’s perspective

Objectives To design and pilot a survey to be used at the population level to estimate the frequency of patient-perceived potentially harmful preventable problems occurring in UK primary care. To explore the nature of the problems, patient-suggested strategies for prevention and opinions of clinicians and the public regarding the potential for harm. Design A survey was codesigned by three members of the public and one researcher and piloted through public and patient involvement and engagement networks. Setting Self-selected sample of the UK population. Participants 977 members of the public accessed the online survey during October and November 2015. Primary outcome measures Respondent feedback about the ease of completion of the survey, quality of responses in terms of review by clinicians and members of the public, preliminary estimates of the frequency and nature of patient-perceived potentially harmful problems occurring in the last 12 months. Results 638 (65%) members of the public completed the survey and few respondents reported any difficulty in understanding or completing the survey. 132 (21%) respondents reported experiencing a potentially harmful preventable problem during the past 12 months and 108 (82%) of these respondents provided a description that was adequate for at least one clinician to form an opinion about the potentially harmful problem. Respondents were older than the UK generally, more likely to work or volunteer in the healthcare sector and tended to use primary care more frequently but their confidence and trust in their own general practitioner (GP) was similar to that of the UK population as measured by the annual English GP patient survey. Conclusions The survey was acceptable to patients and mostly provided data of sufficient quality for review by clinicians and members of the public. It is now ready to use at a population level to estimate the frequency and nature of potentially harmful preventable problems in primary care from a patient’s perspective.