Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Haematological and febrile response to Escherichia coli lipopolysaccharide in 12‐week‐old cockerels of genetically diverse layer lines fed diets with increasing L‐arginine levels

Due to its decisive function in the avian metabolic, endocrine and immune system L-arginine (Arg) is dietary indispensable for chickens. In 12-week-old cockerels of two high- and two low-performing purebred layer lines, the effects of increasing dietary Arg on the haematological and febrile response were studied over 48 h after single lipopolysaccharide (LPS) injection. The offered diets contained Arg equivalent to 70%, 100% and 200% of recommended supply. Pathophysiological alterations in weight gain, feed intake, body temperature and differential blood count were examined in comparison with their physiological initial values. Within the first 24 h after LPS injection, cockerels reduced feed intake and lost body weight subsequently. Thereby, low-performing genotypes lost body weight to a lesser extent than high-performing ones. The loss of body weight was further intensified by deficient dietary Arg. Within the following 24 h, cockerels recovered by improving feed intake and weight gain. Furthermore, LPS induced genotype-specific fever response: both brown genotypes showed initial hypothermia followed by longer lasting moderate hyperthermia, whereas the white genotypes exhibited biphasic hyperthermia. Fever response was accompanied by significant changes in differential blood counts. Characterized by lymphopenia and heterophilia, a severe leucopenia was observed from 4 to 8 h after LPS injection and replaced by a marked leucocytosis with longer lasting monocytosis up to 48 h after LPS injection. Under given pathophysiological conditions, deficiently Arg-supplied cockerels showed higher total leucocyte counts than adequately and excessively Arg-supplied cockerels. However, deficient and surplus dietary Arg tended to cause higher ratios between heterophils and lymphocytes. To conclude, present results confirmed that LPS induced numerous immunological changes in 12-week-old cockerels and emphasized that chicken's genotype is a source of variation to be considered for immunological studies. Deficient dietary Arg intensified acute changes in differential blood counts and weight gain during LPS-induced inflammation.
Ultrastructural alterations in Schistosoma mansoni juvenile and adult male worms after in vitro incubation with primaquine

BACKGROUND Praziquantel has been cited as the only drug for treating schistosomiasis. However, concerns over drug resistance have encouraged the search for novel drug leads. The antimalarial drug primaquine possesses interesting anti-schistosmal properties. OBJECTIVES This study is the first to document the potential role of primaquine as a schistosomicide and the ultrastructural changes induced by primaquine on juvenile or adult male worms of Schistosoma mansoni. METHODS Ultrastructural alterations in the tegumental surface of 21-day-old juvenile and adult male worms of S. mansoni were demonstrated following primaquine treatment at different concentrations (2, 5, 10, 15, and 20 µg/mL) and incubation periods (1, 3, 6, 24, and 48 h) in vitro, using both scanning and transmission electron microscopy. FINDINGS At low concentrations (2, 5, and 10 µg/mL) both juvenile and adult male worms were alive after 24 h of incubation, whereas contraction, paralysis, and death of all worms were observed after 24 h of drug exposure at 20 µg/mL. The tegument of juvenile and adult male worms treated with primaquine exhibited erosion, peeling, and sloughing. Furthermore, extensive damage of both tegumental and subtegumental layers included embedded spines, and shrinkage of muscles with vacuoles. The in vitro results confirmed that primaquine has dose-dependent effects with 20 µg/mL as the most effective concentration in a short incubation period. MAIN CONCLUSIONS The schistosomicidal activity of primaquine indicates that this drug possesses moderate in vitro activity against juvenile and adult male worms, since it caused high mortality and tegumental alterations. This study confirmed that the antimalarial drug primaquine possesses anti-schistosomal activity. Further investigation is needed to elucidate its mechanism of action.
Post-Repair Performance of Corroded Bond Critical RC Beams Repaired with CFRP

Synopsis: Presented in this paper is an investigation on the ability of externally applied fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) laminates to maintain bond of steel reinforcement in concrete members subjected to corrosion. Specimens were transversely confined with CFRP laminates in the bond zone after being subjected to various degrees of corrosion ranging from 2 to 10% theoretical mass loss. Some specimens were further corroded after repair to assess the effects of further structural deterioration. Control beams were subjected to minor amounts of corrosion and tested to failure without repair. Test results showed that CFRP wrapping was able to confine the corrosion cracking resulting in an overall flexural failure for all repaired specimens unlike the brittle bond splitting failures of the control specimens. CFRP confinement proved less effective at higher levels of pre-repair corrosion. Initial amounts of post-repair corrosion enhanced the performance of the CFRP repair by increasing the confining pressure; however the concrete rapidly deteriorated as the corrosion increased. In general, CFRP confinement was found to provide superior bond performance with respect to the unrepaired members indicating the potential future use in field applications of bond repair.
Political Parties and Party Systems in Africa: Themes and Research Perspectives

The last decade of the twentieth century was characterised by a resurgence of multipartism in Africa. The return of political parties produced a discontinuity not only in the continent's political life, but also in the study of African politics. A number of new researches were carried out that were largely based on existing theories and concepts in political science. These new works thus contributed to an increased integration of the study of politics south of the Sahara with mainstream political science. The present article provides an overview of the insights and advances that these studies have produced, focusing on the key issues raised by the return of party pluralism in Africa and on the utility of existing models, theories and approaches for its understanding. There is little doubt that recent research efforts have advanced our knowledge of the changing politics of the continent. However, neither the elaboration of theoretical frameworks nor the detail of empirical knowledge has achieved adequate levels of development as yet.
Modular Labelled Sequent Calculi for Abstract Separation Logics

Abstract separation logics are a family of extensions of Hoare logic for reasoning about programs that manipulate resources such as memory locations. These logics are “abstract” because they are independent of any particular concrete resource model. Their assertion languages, called Propositional Abstract Separation Logics (PASLs), extend the logic of (Boolean) Bunched Implications (BBI) in various ways. In particular, these logics contain the connectives * and –*, denoting the composition and extension of resources, respectively. This added expressive power comes at a price, since the resulting logics are all undecidable. Given their wide applicability, even a semi-decision procedure for these logics is desirable. Although several PASLs and their relationships with BBI are discussed in the literature, the proof theory of, and automated reasoning for, these logics were open problems solved by the conference version of this article, which developed a modular proof theory for various PASLs using cut-free labelled sequent calculi. This paper non-trivially improves upon this previous work by giving a general framework of calculi on which any new axiom in the logic satisfying a certain form corresponds to an inference rule in our framework, and the completeness proof is generalised to consider such axioms. Our base calculus handles Calcagno et al.’s original logic of separation algebras by adding sound rules for partial-determinism and cancellativity, while preserving cut-elimination. We then show that many important properties in separation logic, such as indivisible unit, disjointness, splittability, and cross-split, can be expressed in our general axiom form. Thus, our framework offers inference rules and completeness for these properties for free. Finally, we show how our calculi reduce to calculi with global label substitutions, enabling more efficient implementation.
Characterization of a novel polymeric Zinc (II) complex containing the anti- malarial Quinine as ligand: A Theoretical Approach (Semi-empirical and DFT methods).

A novel polymeric zinc (II) complex of quinine, [chlorosulphato (2-ethenyl)-4-azabicyclo [2.2. 2]oct5-ylium-(6-methoxyquinolin-4-yl) methanol zinc (II)] has been synthesized and characterized. However, theoretical studies on the geometries, thermodynamic parameters, vibrational frequencies, geometric parameters, dipole moments, and band gaps of the complex were carried out. All these properties were obtained using the AM1, PM3 and DFT methods. Comparisons were made on the calculated bond distances, bond angles, dihedral and vibrational frequencies with the experimental data and it compared favourably well.
A Study on the Relation Between Stomatognathic System and the Systemic Condition. Concerning Influence of Horizontal Changes in Mandibular Position on the Upright Posture, Particulary on Gravity Fluctuation and Antigravity Muscles.

In this studies, the author investigated changes in upright posture in 5 healthysubjects while the mandibular position altered for 1 and 5 minutes in a horizontal direction at the distances of 2.5 and 5.0mm. Namely, loci of gravity fluctuation were examined under analysis system in order to reveal what effect were given upon the upright posture. At the same time, electromyograms were obtained from mascles of masticatory system, neck and lower extremity for the observation of the effects on gravitymuscles. The results obtained were as follows:1. Loci of gravity fluctuation1) Loci of gravity fluctuation tended to increase beyond the normal range when the mandibular position was horizontally changed for 1 and 5 minutes at the distances of 2.5 and 5.0mm. 2) Changing amounts were less in the anterior direction than in the right and left directions.2. Activities of antigravity muscles Although muscular activities showed similar tendencies to those of loci of gravity fluctuation they showed individual differences3. Since these results revealed that horizontal changes in mandibular position influenced both loci of gravity fluctuation and muscular activities, it was suggested that changes in the stomatognatic system are involved the systemic condition, and that the recovery of adequate function of the stomatognatic system is essential to the maintenance of systemic harmony.
Role of the acid tolerance response in virulence of Salmonella typhimurium

During its life cycle, Salmonella typhimurium is exposed to a variety of acidic conditions. Survival in the acidic environments within the host may require the adaptive acid tolerance response (ATR), which is characterized by the induction of several Salmonella proteins upon exposure to mildly acidic conditions. These induced proteins protect the bacterium from death under severe acid challenge. The goal of this study was to examine the role of ATR in Salmonella pathogenesis. Initially, we observed that differences exist between the virulent S. typhimurium strains and the laboratory S. typhimurium strain LT2 with respect to their ATR. Mutations affecting the ATR of S. typhimurium LT2, including atrB, atrC (polA), atrD, atbR, and fur, were crossed into virulent Salmonella strains, and the resultant transductants were screened for virulence in mice and acid sensitivity. Surprisingly, with the exception of the fur mutation, none of the muatations had a major effect on acid resistance or virulence in the pathogenic strains. The fur mutants showed a 1-to 3-log increase in the 50% lethal dose; however, the magnitude of its effect was dependent on the strain background. Strains containing two or three different atr mutations were constructed, and these were also examined for acid sensitivity and virulence. The double and triple mutants that contained an atrC mutation no longer displayed an ATR. Those mutants which were more acid sensitive were also highly attenuated, suggesting a strong correlation between the ability to mount and ATR and virulence in S. typhimurium. Comparison of the ability of the various atr single, double, and triple mutants to survive within macrophages showed that strains containing an atrC mutation survived much less than the wild type in bone marrow-derived macrophages. No difference in survival within J774 macrophage like cells were detected.
Relevance of DNA repair gene polymorphisms to gastric cancer risk and phenotype

Variations in DNA repair genes have been reported as key factors in gastric cancer (GC) susceptibility but results among studies are inconsistent. We aimed to assess the relevance of DNA repair gene polymorphisms and environmental factors to GC risk and phenotype in a Caucasian population in Spain. Genomic DNA from 603 patients with primary GC and 603 healthy controls was typed for 123 single nucleotide polymorphisms in DNA repair genes using the Illumina platform. Helicobacter pylori infection with CagA strains (odds ratio (OR): 1.99; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.55–2.54), tobacco smoking (OR: 1.77; 95% CI: 1.22–2.57), and family history of GC (OR: 2.87; 95% CI: 1.85–4.45) were identified as independent risk factors for GC. By contrast, the TP53 rs9894946A (OR: 0.73; 95% CI: 0.56–0.96), TP53 rs1042522C (OR: 0.76; 95% CI: 0.56–0.96), and BRIP1 rs4986764T (OR: 0.55; 95% CI: 0.38–0.78) variants were associated with lower GC risk. Significant associations with specific anatomopathological GC subtypes were also observed, most notably in the ERCC4 gene with the rs1799801C, rs2238463G, and rs3136038T variants being inversely associated with cardia GC risk. Moreover, the XRCC3 rs861528 allele A was significantly increased in the patient subgroup with diffuse GC (OR: 1.75; 95% CI: 1.30–2.37). Our data show that specific TP53, BRIP1, ERCC4, and XRCC3 polymorphisms are relevant in susceptibility to GC risk and specific subtypes in Caucasians.
Information Systems Success: The Quest for the Independent Variables

In 1992, DeLone and McLean suggested that the dependent variable for information systems (IS) research is IS Success. Their research resulted in the widely cited DeLone and McLean (D&M) IS Success Model, in which System Quality, Information Quality, Use, User Satisfaction, Individual Impact, and Organizational Impact are distinct, but related dimensions of IS success. Since the original IS Success Model was published, research has developed a better understanding of IS success. Meanwhile, comprehensive and integrative research on the variables that influence IS success has been lacking. Therefore, we examine the literature on the independent variables that affect IS success. After examining over 600 articles, we focused our attention on integrating the findings of over 140 studies. In this research, we identify 43 specific variables posited to influence the different dimensions of IS success, and we organize these success factors into five categories based on the Leavitt Diamond of Organizational Change: task characteristics, user characteristics, social characteristics, project characteristics, and organizational characteristics. Next, we identify 15 success factors that have consistently been found to influence IS success: Enjoyment, Trust, User Expectations, Extrinsic Motivation, IT Infrastructure, Task Compatibility, Task Difficulty, Attitudes Toward Technology, Organizational Role, User Involvement, Relationship with Developers, Domain Expert Knowledge, Management Support, Management Processes, and Organizational Competence. Finally, we highlight gaps in our knowledge of success factors and propose a road map for future research.
Intensive Language Action Therapy in Chronic Aphasia: A Randomized Clinical Trial Examining Guidance by Constraint.

Purpose Intensive language action therapy (ILAT) can be effective in overcoming learned nonuse in chronic aphasia. It is suggested that all three guiding principles (constraint, communication embedding, massed practice) are essential to ILAT's success. We examined whether one of these, guidance by constraint, is critical. Method Twenty-four participants with aphasia (PWAs) were assigned to ILAT or a modified version of promoting aphasic communicative effectiveness (PACE) in a randomized block, single-blind, parallel-group treatment study. Blocking was by severity (mild/moderate, moderate to severe, severe). Both groups received intensive treatment in the context of therapeutic language action games. Whereas the ILAT group was guided toward spoken responses, the PACE group could choose any response modality. Results All participants, whether assigned to ILAT or PACE groups, improved on the primary outcome measure, picture naming. There was a Severity × Treatment interaction, with the largest effects estimated for PWAs with mild/moderate and moderate to severe aphasia. Regardless of severity, the ILAT group outperformed the PACE group on untrained pictures, suggesting some benefit of ILAT to generalization. However, this difference was not statistically significant. Conclusion Although the groups differed in subtle ways, including better generalization to untrained pictures for ILAT, the study was inconclusive on the influence of guidance by constraint.
Attention-based End-to-End Models for Small-Footprint Keyword Spotting

In this paper, we propose an attention-based end-to-end neural approach for small-footprint keyword spotting (KWS), which aims to simplify the pipelines of building a production-quality KWS system. Our model consists of an encoder and an attention mechanism. The encoder transforms the input signal into a high level representation using RNNs. Then the attention mechanism weights the encoder features and generates a fixed-length vector. Finally, by linear transformation and softmax function, the vector becomes a score used for keyword detection. We also evaluate the performance of different encoder architectures, including LSTM, GRU and CRNN. Experiments on real-world wake-up data show that our approach outperforms the recent Deep KWS approach by a large margin and the best performance is achieved by CRNN. To be more specific, with ~84K parameters, our attention-based model achieves 1.02% false rejection rate (FRR) at 1.0 false alarm (FA) per hour.
Measuring the anthropomorphism, animacy, likeability, perceived intelligence, and perceived safety of robots

This study emphasizes the need for standardized measurement tools for human robot interaction (HRI). If we are to make progress in this field then we must be able to compare the results from different studies. A literature review has been performed on the measurements of five key concepts in HRI: anthropomorphism, animacy, likeability, perceived intelligence, and perceived safety. The results have been distilled into five consistent questionnaires using semantic differential scales. We report reliability and validity indicators based on several empirical studies that used these questionnaires. It is our hope that these questionnaires can be used by robot developers to monitor their progress. Psychologists are invited to further develop the questionnaires by adding new concepts, and to conduct further validations where it appears necessary.
Are Migraine and Tension-Type Headache Genetically Related? An Investigation of Twin Family Data

Migraine and tension-type headache (TTH) are often viewed as distinct entities and defined as such in the International Classification of Headache Disorders, 2nd edition (ICHD-II) criteria, although there is also empirical evidence to suggest they may be etiologically similar. This study aims to investigate whether migraine and TTH are etiologically related conditions. First, we explored whether migraine and TTH were associated with the same environmental and lifestyle risk factors at the population level. Second, we examined comorbidity of migraine and TTH in a twin design. By comparing the associations in monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs, we investigated whether the comorbidity can be explained by genetic factors that influence both conditions. Results indicated that migraine and TTH were largely associated with the same environmental and lifestyle factors, including younger age, female sex, higher body mass index, more depression, stress at home, and less participation in regular exercise, with consistently stronger effects for migraine than for TTH. Migraine in one twin was significantly associated with TTH in the other twin. A stronger cross-trait, cross-twin association in MZ than DZ twins suggested that this comorbidity may also be partly due to shared genetic factors, although the difference in associations was not significant. In conclusion, our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that migraine and TTH have partly shared etiologies. For both treatment and research, it may be advisable not to make a rigid distinction, but to treat migraine and TTH as related conditions.
Studies on the Influence of Knit Structure and Stitch Length on Ring and Compact Yarn Single Jersey Fabric Properties

This study focused on the effect of single jersey, single pique, double pique and honeycomb structures and structural cell stitch length (SCSL) on ring and compact yarn single jersey fabric properties. Compact yarn fabrics showed better performance in all the structures and their respective SCSL. With increased SCSL, the dimensional properties like CPI, WPI, SD, grams per square meter, thickness and tightness factor decreased for all the structures, while comfort properties like air permeability and water absorbency increased. The tensile, bending and compression properties of weft knitted fabrics improved and compressional resilience and surface properties generally decreased. Total hand values improved with SCSL. Other properties, such as abrasion resistance, bursting strength and pilling resistance improved with decreased SCSL. Combination order of knit-tuck stitches played an important role in all the properties. Double pique fabric showed better performance for the summer outer wear and single jersey fabric showed better performance for summer inner wear.
A comprehensive review and comparison of different computational methods for protein remote homology detection

Protein remote homology detection is one of the most fundamental and central problems for the studies of protein structures and functions, aiming to detect the distantly evolutionary relationships among proteins via computational methods. During the past decades, many computational approaches have been proposed to solve this important task. These methods have made a substantial contribution to protein remote homology detection. Therefore, it is necessary to give a comprehensive review and comparison on these computational methods. In this article, we divide these computational approaches into three categories, including alignment methods, discriminative methods and ranking methods. Their advantages and disadvantages are discussed in a comprehensive perspective, and their performance is compared on widely used benchmark data sets. Finally, some open questions in this field are further explored and discussed.