Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Isolation and Characterization of Mesenchymal Stromal Cells from Human Umbilical Cord and Fetal Placenta

The human umbilical cord (UC) and placenta are non-invasive, primitive and abundant sources of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) that have increasingly gained attention because they do not pose any ethical or moral concerns. Current methods to isolate MSCs from UC yield low amounts of cells with variable proliferation potentials. Since UC is an anatomically-complex organ, differences in MSC properties may be due to the differences in the anatomical regions of their isolation. In this study, we first dissected the cord/placenta samples into three discrete anatomical regions: UC, cord-placenta junction (CPJ), and fetal placenta (FP). Second, two distinct zones, cord lining (CL) and Wharton's jelly (WJ), were separated. The explant culture technique was then used to isolate cells from the four sources. The time required for the primary culture of cells from the explants varied depending on the source of the tissue. Outgrowth of the cells occurred within 3 - 4 days of the CPJ explants, whereas growth was observed after 7 - 10 days and 11 - 14 days from CL/WJ and FP explants, respectively. The isolated cells were adherent to plastic and displayed fibroblastoid morphology and surface markers, such as CD29, CD44, CD73, CD90, and CD105, similarly to bone marrow (BM)-derived MSCs. However, the colony-forming efficiency of the cells varied, with CPJ-MSCs and WJ-MSCs showing higher efficiency than BM-MSCs. MSCs from all four sources differentiated into adipogenic, chondrogenic, and osteogenic lineages, indicating that they were multipotent. CPJ-MSCs differentiated more efficiently in comparison to other MSC sources. These results suggest that the CPJ is the most potent anatomical region and yields a higher number of cells, with greater proliferation and self-renewal capacities in vitro. In conclusion, the comparative analysis of the MSCs from the four sources indicated that CPJ is a more promising source of MSCs for cell therapy, regenerative medicine, and tissue engineering.
Constitutive overexpression of periostin delays wound healing in mouse skin

Periostin is a matricellular protein involved in development, maintenance, and regulation of tissues and organs via by binding to cell surface integrin receptors. Pathologically, periostin plays an important role in the process of wound healing: as a deficiency of the Postn gene delays wound closure and periostin is consistently up‐regulated in response to injury and skin diseases. However, the functional role of elevated periostin in the process of wound healing has not been tested. In this study, we generated Postn‐transgenic mice under the control of the CAG promoter/enhancer to investigate the effects of constitutive overexpression of full length periostin during its pathophysiological roles. Transgenic mice showed significant overexpression of periostin in skin, lung, and heart, but no morphological changes were observed. However, when these transgenic mice were injured, periostin overexpression delayed the closure of excisional wounds. Expression of IL‐1β and TNFα, pro‐inflammatory cytokines important for wound healing, was significantly decreased in the transgenic mice, prior to delayed healing. Infiltration of neutrophils and macrophages, the main sources of IL‐1β and TNFα, was also down‐regulated in the transgenic wound sites. From these data, we conclude that enforced expression of periostin delays wound closure due to reduced infiltration of neutrophils and macrophages followed by down‐regulation of IL‐1β and TNFα expression. This suggests that regulated spatiotemporal expression of periostin is important for efficient wound healing and that constitutive periostin overexpression interrupts the normal process of wound closure.
Fear of Ebola

In response to the Ebola scare in 2014, many people evinced strong fear and xenophobia. The present study, informed by the pathogen-prevalence hypothesis, tested the influence of individualism and collectivism on xenophobic response to the threat of Ebola. A nationally representative sample of 1,000 Americans completed a survey, indicating their perceptions of their vulnerability to Ebola, ability to protect themselves from Ebola (protection efficacy), and xenophobic tendencies. Overall, the more vulnerable people felt, the more they exhibited xenophobic responses, but this relationship was moderated by individualism and collectivism. The increase in xenophobia associated with increased vulnerability was especially pronounced among people with high individualism scores and those with low collectivism scores. These relationships were mediated by protection efficacy. State-level collectivism had the same moderating effect on the association between perceived vulnerability and xenophobia that individual-level value orientation did. Collectivism—and the set of practices and rituals associated with collectivistic cultures—may serve as psychological protection against the threat of disease.
Fuzzy approach for sentiment analysis

Sentiment analysis aims to identify the polarity of a document through natural language processing, text analysis and computational linguistics. Over the last decade, there has been much focus on sentiment analysis as the data available on-line has grown exponentially to include many sentiment based documents (reviews, feedback, articles). Many approaches consider machine learning techniques or statistical analysis, but there has been little use of the fuzzy classifiers in this field especially considering the ambiguity of language and the suitability of fuzzy approaches to deal with this ambiguity. This paper proposes a fuzzy rule based system for sentiment analysis, which can offer more refined outputs through the use of fuzzy membership degrees. We compare the performance of our proposed approach with commonly used sentiment classifiers (e.g. Decision Trees, Naïve Bayes) which are known to perform well in this task. The experimental results indicate that our fuzzy-based approach performs marginally better than the other algorithms. In addition, the fuzzy approach allows the definition of different degrees of sentiment without the need to use a larger number of classes.
Tracking User-Preference Varying Speed in Collaborative Filtering

In real-world recommender systems, some users are easily influenced by new products and whereas others are unwilling to change their minds. So the preference varying speeds for users are different. Based on this observation, we propose a dynamic nonlinear matrix factorization model for collaborative filtering, aimed to improve the rating prediction performance as well as track the preference varying speeds for different users. We assume that user-preference changes smoothly over time, and the preference varying speeds for users are different. These two assumptions are incorporated into the proposed model as prior knowledge on user feature vectors, which can be learned efficiently by MAP estimation. The experimental results show that our method not only achieves state-of-the-art performance in the rating prediction task, but also provides an effective way to track user-preference varying speed.
Optimizing the Gating System for Steel Castings

The article presents the attempt to optimize a gating system to produce cast steel castings. It is based on John Campbell’s theory and presents the original results of computer modelling of typical and optimized gating systems for cast steel castings. The current state-of-the-art in cast steel casting foundry was compared with several proposals of optimization. The aim was to find a compromise between the best, theoretically proven gating system version, and a version that would be affordable in industrial conditions. The results show that it is possible to achieve a uniform and slow pouring process even for heavy castings to preserve their internal quality.
Algorithmic single‐locus species delimitation: effects of sampling effort, variation and nonmonophyly in four methods and 1870 species of beetles

The vast number of undescribed species and the fast rate of biodiversity loss call for new approaches to speed up alpha taxonomy. A plethora of methods for delimiting species or operational taxonomic units (OTUs) based on sequence data have been published in recent years. We test the ability of four delimitation methods (BIN, ABGD, GMYC, PTP) to reproduce established species boundaries on a carefully curated DNA barcode data set of 1870 North European beetle species. We also explore how sampling effort, intraspecific variation, nearest neighbour divergence and nonmonophyly affect the OTU delimitations. All methods produced approximately 90% identity between species and OTUs. The effects of variation and sampling differed between methods. ABGD was sensitive to singleton sequences, while GMYC showed tendencies for oversplitting. The best fit between species and OTUs was achieved using simple rules to find consensus between discordant OTU delimitations. Using several approaches simultaneously allows the methods to compensate for each other's weaknesses. Barcode‐based OTU‐picking is an efficient way to delimit putative species from large data sets where the use of more sophisticated methods based on multilocus or genomic data is not feasible.
Producing Novel Fibrinolytic Isoindolinone Derivatives in Marine Fungus Stachybotrys longispora FG216 by the Rational Supply of Amino Compounds According to Its Biosynthesis Pathway

Many fungi in the Stachybotrys genus can produce various isoindolinone derivatives. These compounds are formed by a spontaneous reaction between a phthalic aldehyde precursor and an ammonium ion or amino compounds. In this study, we suggested the isoindolinone biosynthetic gene cluster in Stachybotrys by genome mining based on three reported core genes. Remarkably, there is an additional nitrate reductase (NR) gene copy in the proposed cluster. NR is the rate-limiting enzyme of nitrate reduction. Accordingly, this cluster was speculated to play a role in the balance of ammonium ion concentration in Stachybotrys. Ammonium ions can be replaced by different amino compounds to create structural diversity in the biosynthetic process of isoindolinone. We tested a rational supply of amino compounds ((±)-3-amino-2-piperidinone, glycine, and l-threonine) in the culture of an isoindolinone high-producing marine fungus, Stachybotrys longispora FG216. As a result, we obtained four new kinds of isoindolinone derivatives (FGFC4–GFC7) by this method. Furthermore, high yields of FGFC4–FGFC7 confirmed the outstanding production capacity of FG216. Among the four new isoindolinone derivatives, FGFC6 and FGFC7 showed promising fibrinolytic activities. The knowledge of biosynthesis pathways may be an important attribute for the discovery of novel bioactive marine natural products.
Health Warnings, Smoking Rules, and Smoking Status: A Cross-National Comparison of Turkey and the United States

ABSTRACT Objectives: This study aimed to compare the prevalence of smoking status (i.e., current, former and never) between the United States and Turkey in terms of age and gender, and examine how smoking rules and health warnings are associated with smoking status within and between the two countries. Methods: The study used data from the 2012–2013 National Adult Tobacco Survey (U.S. sample, N = 60,196) and the 2012 Global Adult Tobacco Survey (Turkey sample, N = 9,581). SAS PROC SURVEYLOGISTIC with a weighted variable was used to examine the associations between demographics (age, gender and education), smoking rules, health warnings, and smoking status within and between the two countries. Results: There was an 18% current smoking prevalence among U.S. sample, compared to 27% of the Turkey sample. The U.S. sample had a higher rate of former smoking compared to the Turkey sample (25% vs. 22%). In both countries, being older and male gender predicted former smoking while being younger and female gender predicted never smoking. Having seen a health warning, and not allowing smoking in the vehicle and home positively predicted former and never smoking status. Higher education predicted both smoking statuses in the U.S. only. Conclusions: It is important to work with partners particularly in low- and middle-income countries (e.g., Turkey) to combat the global tobacco epidemic. In both counties, cessation endeavors should emphasize a comprehensive understanding of smoking status in terms of smoking rules in personal spaces and health warnings.
Investments in children's health and the Kenyan cash transfer for orphans and vulnerable children: evidence from an unconditional cash transfer scheme

Abstract Child mortality is one of the most pressing global health and policy issues in the developing world. The leading drivers of death—pneumonia, diarrhea and malaria—are preventable and treatable. However, these illnesses are exacerbated by a lack of accessible nutrition, water, basic and preventive health services, and sanitary living conditions—all factors which are more likely to disproportionately impact the poor. We examine whether Kenya's largest social protection impacts children's incidence of upper respiratory illness. The Kenya Cash Transfer for Orphans and Vulnerable Children was designed to support orphans affected by HIV/AIDS and has covered over 240,000 households as of 2014. Using longitudinal, cluster‐randomized program data from 2007 to 2009, we run a generalized linear latent and mixed method estimation model on a sample of children 0‐7 years and under‐5 years of age. We find that the program is associated with a decrease in illness in children 0‐7 years of age (P < 0.05), but found no effects on a stratified sample of under‐5 children. Furthermore, no impacts on health care seeking in the event of illness were detected. This study is one of few examining children's health using data from a large scale unconditional cash transfer program. With the widespread adoption of over 123 cash transfer programs across sub‐Saharan Africa, these findings suggest social cash transfer programs are capable of promoting the multidimensional well‐being for the world's most vulnerable populations.
Preparation and property investigation of multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT)/epoxy composite films as high-performance electric heating (resistive heating) element

A series of multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT)/epoxy composite films with a thickness of ~700 μm is prepared by a sequential process of premixing, post dispersing, film casting, and thermal curing. The effects of the physical shear dispersion on the properties of conductive polymer composites as the electric heating element are investigated. The scanning electron microscope (SEM) images show that highly efficient conductive networks form with shear dispersions of MWCNTs in the polymer matrix. The electrical resistivity decreases sharply from ~10 15 Ω·cm for the neat epoxy resin to ~10 2 Ω·cm for the composite film with 2.0 wt% MWCNTs in accordance with the percolation behaviour, and a low percolation threshold of ~0.018 wt% is fitted. The electric heating behaviour of the composite film is observed at a low MWCNT content of 0.05 wt% due to the high electrical conductivity. For the composite film with 2.0 wt% MWCNTs, an equilibrium temperature of 115°C is reached at an applied voltage of 40 V within 30 s. The excellent electric heating behaviour, including the rapid temperature response, electric heating efficiency, and operational stability, is primarily related to the conductive two-dimen-sional networks consisting of MWCNTs and the thermodynamically stable polymer matrix.
CHOP: parsing proteins into structural domains

Sequence-based domain assignment is one of the most important and challenging problems in structural biology. We have developed a method, CHOP, that chops proteins into domain-like fragments. The basic idea is to cut proteins from entirely sequenced organisms beginning from very reliable experimental information (Protein Data Bank), proceeding to expert annotations of domain-like regions (Pfam-A) and completing through cuts based on termini of native protein ends. The CHOP server takes protein sequences as input and returns the dissections supported by homology transfer. CHOP results are precompiled for many entirely sequenced proteomes. The service is available at http://www.rostlab. org/services/CHOP/.
Measuring Intuition

The long-held popular notion of intuition has garnered much attention both academically and popularly. Although most people agree that there is such a phenomenon as intuition, involving emotionally charged, rapid, unconscious processes, little compelling evidence supports this notion. Here, we introduce a technique in which subliminal emotional information is presented to subjects while they make fully conscious sensory decisions. Our behavioral and physiological data, along with evidence-accumulator models, show that nonconscious emotional information can boost accuracy and confidence in a concurrent emotion-free decision task, while also speeding up response times. Moreover, these effects were contingent on the specific predictive arrangement of the nonconscious emotional valence and motion direction in the decisional stimulus. A model that simultaneously accumulates evidence from both physiological skin conductance and conscious decisional information provides an accurate description of the data. These findings support the notion that nonconscious emotions can bias concurrent nonemotional behavior—a process of intuition.
Revisiting the photosystem II repair cycle

ABSTRACT The ability of photosystem (PS) II to catalyze the light-driven oxidation of water comes along with its vulnerability to oxidative damage, in particular of the D1 core subunit. Photodamaged PSII undergoes repair in a multi-step process involving (i) reversible phosphorylation of PSII core subunits; (ii) monomerization and lateral migration of the PSII core from grana to stroma thylakoids; (iii) partial disassembly of PSII; (iv) proteolytic degradation of damaged D1; (v) replacement of damaged D1 protein with a new copy; (vi) reassembly of PSII monomers and migration back to grana thylakoids for dimerization and supercomplex assembly. Here we review the current knowledge on the PSII repair cycle.
Higher Energy Intake Variability as Predisposition to Obesity: Novel Approach Using Interquartile Range.

OBJECTIVE It is known that total energy intake and its distribution during the day influences human anthropometric characteristics. However, possible association between variability in total energy intake and obesity has thus far remained unexamined. This study was designed to establish the influence of energy intake variability of each daily meal on the anthropometric characteristics of obesity. METHODS A total of 521 individuals of Czech Caucasian origin aged 16–73 years (390 women and 131 men) were included in the study, 7-day food records were completed by all study subjects and selected anthropometric characteristics were measured. The interquartile range (IQR) of energy intake was assessed individually for each meal of the day (as a marker of energy intake variability) and subsequently correlated with body mass index (BMI), body fat percentage (%BF), waist-hip ratio (WHR), and waist circumference (cW). RESULTS Four distinct models were created using multiple logistic regression analysis and backward stepwise logistic regression. The most precise results, based on the area under the curve (AUC), were observed in case of the %BF model (AUC=0.895) and cW model (AUC=0.839). According to the %BF model, age (p<0.001) and IQR-lunch (p<0.05) seem to play an important prediction role for obesity. Likewise, according to the cW model, age (p<0.001), IQR-breakfast (p<0.05) and IQR-dinner (p <0.05) predispose patients to the development of obesity. The results of our study show that higher variability in the energy intake of key daily meals may increase the likelihood of obesity development. CONCLUSIONS Based on the obtained results, it is necessary to emphasize the regularity in meals intake for maintaining proper body composition.
Spatial and temporal variability in desert dust and anthropogenic pollution in Iraq, 1997–2010

ABSTRACT Satellite imaging has emerged as a method for monitoring regional air pollution and detecting areas of high dust concentrations. Unlike ground observations, continuous data monitoring is available with global coverage of terrestrial and atmospheric components. In this study we test the utility of different sources of satellite data to assess air pollution concentrations in Iraq. SeaWiFS and MODIS Deep Blue (DB) aerosol optical depth (AOD) products were evaluated and used to characterize the spatial and temporal pollution levels from the late 1990s through 2010. The AOD and Ångström exponent (an indicator of particle size, since smaller Ångström exponent values reflect a source that includes larger particles) were correlated on 50 × 50 km spatial resolution. Generally, AOD and Ångström exponent were inversely correlated, suggesting a significant contribution of coarse particles from dust storms to AOD maxima. Although the majority of grid cells exhibited this trend, a weaker relationship in other locations suggested an additional contribution of fine particles from anthropogenic sources. Tropospheric NO2 densities from the OMI satellite were elevated over cities, also consistent with a contribution from anthropogenic sources. Our analysis demonstrates the use of satellite imaging data to estimate relative pollution levels and source contributions in areas of the world where direct measurements are not available. Implications: The authors demonstrated how satellite data can be used to characterize exposures to dust and to anthropogenic pollution for future health related studies. This approach is of a great potential to investigate the associations between subject-specific exposures to different pollution sources and their health effects in inaccessible regions and areas where ground monitoring is unavailable.
Electromagnetic pulses generated by compression of granitic rocks and animal behavior

experiments on granite, basalt and marbles were made using a 500-ton compression machine with simultaneous detection of acoustic emission, electromagnetic (EM) waves. Attempts were made to reproduce unusual animal behavior before major earthquakes depicted in folklores and reported retrospectively in the M7.2 Kobe earthquake in 1995. Unusual animal behavior was observed during stress loading with simultaneous detection of pulsed EM waves prior to the detection of AE, but the judgement has to be partially subjective when animal behavior is discussed. Hence, hypothalamic chemicals in in-vivo brain and blood plasma of rats were analyzed before and after rock fractures. The enhanced noradrenaline and reduced adrenaline were observed, which was distinctively different from the reactions to other stresses but the same as that of exposures to EM waves. Unusual animal behavior would mostly be caused by pulsed EM waves.
Improving tor using a TCP-over-DTLS tunnel

The Tor network gives anonymity to Internet users by relaying their traffic through the world over a variety of routers. All traffic between any pair of routers, even if they represent circuits for different clients, are multiplexed over a single TCP connection. This results in interference across circuits during congestion control, packet dropping and packet reordering. This interference greatly contributes to Tor's notorious latency problems. Our solution is to use a TCP-over-DTLS (Datagram Transport Layer Security) transport between routers. We give each stream of data its own TCP connection, and protect the TCP headers--which would otherwise give stream identification information to an attacker--with DTLS. We perform experiments on our implemented version to illustrate that our proposal has indeed resolved the cross-circuit interference.