Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effective population size and the genetic consequences of commercial whaling on the humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) from Southwestern Atlantic Ocean

Abstract Genotypes of 10 microsatellite loci of 420 humpback whales from the Southwestern Atlantic Ocean population were used to estimate for the first time its contemporary effective (N e) and census (N c) population sizes and to test the genetic effect of commercial whaling. The results are in agreement with our previous studies that found high genetic diversity for this breeding population. Using an approximate Bayesian computation approach, the scenario of constant N e was significantly supported over scenarios with moderate to strong size changes during the commercial whaling period. The previous generation N c (N e multiplied by 3.6), which should corresponds to the years between around 1980 and 1990, was estimated between ~2,600 and 6,800 whales (point estimate ~4,000), and is broadly compatible with the recent abundance surveys extrapolated to the past using a growth rate of 7.4% per annum. The long-term N c in the constant scenario (point estimate ~15,000) was broadly compatible (considering the confidence interval) with pre-whaling catch records estimates (point estimate ~25,000). Overall, our results shown that the Southwestern Atlantic Ocean humpback whale population is genetically very diverse and resisted well to the strong population reduction during commercial whaling.
Dual-Fiber-Ring Architecture Supporting Discretionary Peer-to-Peer Intra-Communication and Bidirectional Inter-communication in Metro-Access Network

Direct communication among optical network units (ONUs) is very significant for next-generation optical networks. In this paper, a metro-access optical network architecture supporting intra-communication and inter-communication is proposed based on dual-fiber ring topology. By adopting two tunable fiber Bragg gratings and one arrayed waveguide grating in the remote node, direct peer-to-peer communication of ONUs can be achieved. By designing the architecture to provide inter-communication in two opposite transmission directions, not only the efficiency and flexibility of inter-communication can be guaranteed depending on the shortest transmission path, but also the inter-communication can be supported even if a dual-fiber fault occurs. By allocating three wavelengths to one ONU, not only the intra-communication and inter-communication for one ONU can be carried out simultaneously, but also the inter-communication for different ONUs can be realized simultaneously. By using a dual-fiber ring structure, both the scale and the reliability can be improved. Because the network capacity and scale are relatively large, the relative construction-and-maintenance cost of the network is low. The availability of the proposal can be verified via the performance analyses and the simulations.
E‐cigarettes, vaping and performativity in the context of tobacco denormalisation

Abstract E‐cigarettes are devices through which a nicotine solution is ‘vapourised’ and inhaled by the user. Unlike cigarettes, the process involves no tobacco combustion. However, the inhalation and exhalation of vapour is reminiscent of smoking and there is debate about the possible harms and benefits of e‐cigarette use, including the ‘renormalisation’ of smoking. Despite these debates, there has been little exploration into the embodied and semiotic similarities between smoking and vaping. This paper views the practices of vaping and smoking through the lens of performativity that is, the accumulation of meaning associated with the habits over time and space. Through in‐depth interviews, we explore how young adults from primarily disadvantaged areas in Scotland, understand the similarity in practices between smoking and vaping. Participants talked about financial barriers to using different types of e‐cigarettes, and how their use reflected their views on smoking cessation. They also discussed the embodied similarities between smoking and vaping, with divergent opinions on whether this continuance of habit was beneficial or not, revealing still developing and ambiguous norms around performativity. The norms of vaping were also frequently discussed, with participants’ experiences and views reflecting the contested position of vaping in an environment where cigarette smoking is denormalised.
Pilot study provides qualitative evidence for intrinsic motivation in schizophrenia spectrum disorders

Persons with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSDs) face multiple health barriers that are improved with exercise, but they seldom exercise due to a variety of barriers, of which amotivation is primary. In the current study, we investigated the subjective experiences of persons with SSDs following a formal exercise program. Twenty seven persons with SSDs who had taken part in a 16-week walking program provided feedback during exit interviews. Our purpose was to ascertain whether comments provided evidence of development of intrinsic motivation as defined by Ryan and Deci’s self determination of behavior theory. Our directed content analysis resulted in 5 thematic codes: autonomy, competence, relatedness, health benefits and personal enjoyment. Results highlight the importance of health-related group activities in supporting competence, relatedness and autonomy. Development and testing of interventions to support intrinsic motivation is critical to improving the health of this vulnerable group.
Optimal management of posterior cruciate ligament injuries: current perspectives

Background The optimal management of posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) injuries is debated by orthopedic surgeons. A natural history study (NHS) of acute, isolated PCL tears in patients with a mean follow-up of 14.3 years was previously published. The purpose of this study was to compare and contrast the results of the NHS study with those of other studies with similar follow-up time after operative and nonoperative management of isolated PCL tears. Material and methods With reviewing the literature, six operative management and six nonoperative management studies were found for treating isolated PCL injuries. We analyzed the subjective and objective outcomes of these 12 studies and compared them to the results of the NHS to determine optimal management of PCL injuries. Results Final follow-up times ranged from a mean of 6.2 to 15 years in the nonoperative studies and 6.3 to 12 years in the operative studies. Side-to-side differences in laxity following surgical management ranged from 1.1 to 7 mm on KT-1000 arthrometer testing and 2.8 to 4.7 mm on Telos stress testing. Tegner scores at final follow-up ranged from 6.6 to 7.7 in nonoperative studies and 5.7 to 7.4 in operative studies. International Knee Documentation Committee scores were 73.4, 82.7, and 84 in nonoperative studies and 65 and 87 in the operative studies. Lysholm scores were 85.2 in the nonoperative study and ranged from 81 to 92.1 in operative studies. Osteoarthritis was reported with ranges from 17% to 88% in nonoperative studies and 13.3% to 63.6% in operative studies. Conclusion We found that the subjective and objective results in the NHS compare favorably to those of outcomes for PCL reconstruction. Unless a technique is found that can completely restore knee stability, it is unlikely that simply reducing posterior laxity will improve outcomes or prevent the development of osteoarthritis.
Targeted alpha-particle therapy: imaging, dosimetry, and radiation protection

Systemic or locoregionally administered alpha-particle emitters are highly potent therapeutic agents used in oncology that are fundamentally novel in their mechanism and, most likely, overcome radiation resistance as the alpha particles emitted have a short range and a high linear energy transfer. The use of alpha emitters in a clinic environment requires extra measures with respect to imaging, dosimetry, and radiation protection. This is shown for the example of 223Ra dichloride therapy. After intravenous injection, 223Ra leaves the blood and is taken up rapidly in bone and bone metastases; it is mainly excreted via the intestinal tract. 223Ra can be imaged in patients with a gamma camera. Dosimetry shows that, after a series of six treatments for a 70-kg person with an overall administered activity of 23 MBq, 223Ra results in an absorbed alpha dose of approximately 17 Gy to the bone endosteum and approximately 1.7 Gy to the red bone marrow. During administration, special care must be taken to ensure that no spill is present on the skin of either the patient or staff. Due to the low dose rate, the treatment is normally performed on an outpatient basis; the patient and carers should receive written instructions about the therapy and radiation protection.
Using Tversky’s contrast model to investigate how features of similarity affect judgments of likelihood

The representativeness heuristic suggests that similarity judgments provide a basis for judgments of likelihood. We use Tversky’s (1977) contrast model of similarity to design tests of this underlying mechanism. If similarity is used to judge likelihood, factors that are known to affect similarity should also affect judgments of likelihood. In two experiments, we manipulated two such factors described in the contrast model of similarity: the nature of the task and context effects. In a between-subject design, respondents assessed either similarity of fictive citizens of 15th century Florence, or the likelihood that they belonged to the same family. The factors that affected similarity also affected the likelihood judgments. These results support the assumption that similarity is an important contributor to judgments of likelihood.
Neogene wetland vegetation based on a leaf assemblage from the Bełchatów Lignite Mine (Central Poland)

Abstract Well-preserved leaf macroremains collected in the Bełchatów Lignite Mine (Central Poland) were investigated. Fossil leaves of Acer, Dicotylophyllum, Fagus, Eucommia, Laria, Laurophyllum, Liquidambar, Pinus, Populus, Pterocarya, Quercus, Salix, Salvinia, Taxodium, Ulmus, Vitis, and Zelkova, and fossil fruit of Eucommia were found in fossil assemblage KRAM-P 218 formed in a fluvial sedimentary environment. The fossil assemblage is dominated by plant remains of riparian vegetation of bottomland hardwood forest type. Some taxa point to the presence of mesophytic upland communities. The floristic composition points to warm temperate climate with mild winters, comparable to Cfa type (warm temperate, fully humid with hot summer) in the Köppen-Geiger climate classification. Mean annual temperature of 13.5-16.5°C was reconstructed by the coexistence approach method. Middle to late Miocene age (late Sarmatian to early Pannonian) is suggested for the plant-bearing deposits.
Diagnosis and Management of High Risk Group for Gastric Cancer

Gastric cancer is associated with high morbidity and mortality worldwide. To reduce the socioeconomic burden related to gastric cancer, it is very important to identify and manage high risk group for gastric cancer. In this review, we describe the general risk factors for gastric cancer and define high risk group for gastric cancer. We discuss strategies for the effective management of patients for the prevention and early detection of gastric cancer. Atrophic gastritis (AG) and intestinal metaplasia (IM) are the most significant risk factors for gastric cancer. Therefore, the accurate selection of individuals with AG and IM may be a key strategy for the prevention and/or early detection of gastric cancer. Although endoscopic evaluation using enhanced technologies such as narrow band imaging-magnification, the serum pepsinogen test, Helicobacter pylori serology, and trefoil factor 3 have been evaluated, a gold standard method to accurately select individuals with AG and IM has not emerged. In terms of managing patients at high risk of gastric cancer, it remains uncertain whether H. pylori eradication reverses and/or prevents the progression of AG and IM. Although endoscopic surveillance in high risk patients is expected to be beneficial, further prospective studies in large populations are needed to determine the optimal surveillance interval.
Linking science: approaches for linking scientific publications across different LOD repositories

Enriching the content of a digital library (DL) with additional information from other DLs and domains would facilitate the scholarly communication, scientific findings, and knowledge distribution. The implementation of semantic technologies by interlinking resources results in a new vision for interoperability among different DLs. Therefore, this research explores bibliographic Linked Open Data (LOD) repositories by investigating alignments among them. The application of global unigrams frequency is applied for determining the importance of terms on the set of metadata. The semantic relatedness of the retrieved publications is measured by comparing two main approaches with one another: Vector Space Model through TF-IDF and Cosine Similarity, versus a Deep Learning approach through Word2Vec implementation of Word Embeddings. In summary, they are performing with 40.5% difference, concerning the outcome of relevant retrieved publications. In addition to the given metadata, word embeddings achieve a better performance for short texts, such as publications titles.
Characterization of Mineral oil Based Fe3O4 Nanofluid for Application in Oil Filled Transformers

In this paper, magnetite (Fe3O4) nanoparticles based nanofluid has been synthesized and characterized for application in oil filled transformers. The intent of this work is to check the feasibility of magnetite based nanofluid through appropriate characterizations. Magnetite nanoparticles have been synthesized by chemical co-precipitation method and the corresponding nanoparticles have been characterized by Raman spectroscopy, X-Ray diffraction, UV-Vis spectroscopy and Scanning Electron Microscopy. Further, ferrofluid has been characterized at different concentrations of nanoparticles those including 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40% w/v % to report optimal concentration for improved dielectric and thermal performance of the nanofluid. Electrical measurements such as resistivity, permittivity and loss tangent at different concentrations of magnetite are reported. It is inferred that 20% concentration of magnetite is an optimal concentration with an improvement of 34% of BDV. Importantly, with the application of magnetite nanoparticles overall thermal and dielectric behavior of the insulation fluid will be improved while reducing the size and weight of the transformers.
Identification of variants in the mitochondrial lysine‐tRNA (MT‐TK) gene in myoclonic epilepsy—pathogenicity evaluation and structural characterization by in silico approach

Variations in mitochondrial genes have an established link with myoclonic epilepsy. In the present study we evaluated the nucleotide sequence of MT‐TK gene of 52 individuals from 12 unrelated families and reported three variations in 2 of the 13 epileptic patients. The DNA sequences coding for MT‐TK gene were sequenced and mutations were detected in all participants. The mutations were further analyzed by the in silico analysis and their structural and pathogenic effects were determined. All the investigated patients had symptoms of myoclonus, 61.5% were positive for ataxia, 23.07% were suffering from hearing loss, 15.38% were having mild to severe dementia, 69.23% were males, and 61.53% had cousin marriage in their family history. DNA extracted from saliva was used for the PCR amplification of a 440 bp DNA fragment encompassing complete MT‐TK gene. The nucleotide sequence analysis revealed three mutations, m.8306T>C, m.8313G>C, and m.8362T>G that are divergent from available reports. The identified mutations designate the heteroplasmic condition. Furthermore, pathogenicity of the identified variants was predicted by in silico tools viz., PON‐mt‐tRNA and MitoTIP. Secondary structure of altered MT‐TK was predicted by RNAStructure web server. Studies by MitoTIP and PON‐mt‐tRNA tools have provided strong evidences of pathogenic effects of these mutations. Single nucleotide variations resulted in disruptive secondary structure of mutant MT‐TK models, as predicted by RNAStructure. In vivo confirmation of structural and pathogenic effects of identified mutations in the animal models can be prolonged on the basis of these findings.
Biopharmaceutical Potential of Selegiline Loaded Chitosan Nanoparticles in the Management of Parkinson's Disease.

Selegiline hydrochloride, a hydrophilic anti-Parkinson' moiety, undergoes extensive first-pass metabolism and has low bioavailability. A process to obtain of selegiline (SH) loaded chitosan nanoparticles was attempted to circumvent the above problem, through intranasal delivery. SH loaded polymeric nanoparticles were prepared by ionic gelation of chitosan with tripolyphosphate, and stabilized by tween 80/ poloxamer 188. The resulting nanoparticles (NPs) were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry, entrapment efficiency, particle size, zeta potential and surface morphology by scanning electron microscopy. Further, they were schematically evaluated for mucoadhesive strength, in-vitro dissolution, drug release kinetics, pharmacokinetics, catalepsy, akinesia, in-vivo lipid peroxidation, nitrite levels, glutathione, catalase enzyme levels in brain and physicochemical stability parameters. Selegiline nanoparticles (SP18) produced were in size of 63.1 nm, polydispersity index of 0.201, zeta potential of +35.2 mV, mucoadhesion of 65.4% and entrapment efficiency of 74.77%. Selegiline showed biphasic release from nanoparticles, over a period of 36 h, with Fickian diffusion controlled release profile. Maximum concentration of SH in plasma was recognized as 52.71 ng/ml at 2 h for SP18, 20.09 ng/ml at 1 h for marketed formulation, and 21.69 ng/ml for drug solution. SH loaded NPs showed a reversive effect in catalepsy and akinesia behaviour. This effect was specially pronounced in rats receiving SH loaded CS-NPs. Significant decrease in lipid peroxidation and nitrite concentration; increase in reduced glutathione and catalase enzyme levels were obtained due to antioxidant characteristics of SH, which turned to be useful to treat Parkinson's disease. Selegiline loaded chitosan nanoparticles form an effective non-invasive drug delivery systemof direct nose to brain targeting in Parkinson's disease.
POLYMERIC COMPOSITE MEMBRANES FOR TEMPERATURE AND PH-RESPONSIVE DELIVERY OF DOXORUBICIN HYDROCHLORIDE

Objective(s): Nowadays hydrogels are one of the upcoming classes of polymer-based controlled-release drug delivery systems. Temperature and pH-responsive delivery systems have drawn much attention because some diseases reveal themselves by a change in temperature and/or pH. The objective of this work is to prepare and characterize composite membrane using responsive nanoparticles into a polymer matrix. Materials and Methods: These nanoparticles were made of the copolymer poly (N-isopropylacrylamide-co-methacrylic acid) by an aqueous dispersion polymerization process and are responsible for dual sensitivity to temperature and pH. Morphology study with SEM, swelling behavior with Dynamic Light Scattering Technique, in vitro drug release behavior with side-by-side Diffusion Cells were also investigated in this paper. Doxorubicin hydrochloride was used as a model solute. Results:The study on the release of doxorubicin hydrochloride showed that the release rate was higher at pH 5 than pH 7.4, increased with the increase of temperature. Nevertheless, ionic strength only poses a minor direct effect at higher pH. Conclusion:Such system may be potentially used as a tumor-targeting doxorubicin hydrochloride delivery in the body.
Evaluating the relationship between dental caries number and salivary level of IgA in adults

Background Dental caries are the most common mouth infectious disease and also chronic disease of childhood. Saliva plays different roles in oral cavity; for example, salivary immunoglobulins play significant role in body and oral immunity. Various studies were conducted on the different effects of IgA on oral cavity, especially dental caries, and reported controversial results. The current study aimed to compare salivary IgA level at different stages of dental caries in adults. Material and Methods A total of 40 adults, aged 20 to 40 years, referred to the department of oral medicine at Qazvin Faculty of Dentistry, were selected voluntarily based on the number of decayed teeth. Their unstimulated saliva was collected by the spitting method. The cases were assigned to 4 groups each of 10, based on the number of decayed teeth, as follows: Group 1: Caries free, Group 2: With 1 or 2 decayed teeth, Group 3: With 3 or 4 decayed teeth, and Group 4: With 5 or more decayed teeth. None of the cases had systemic diseases or the history of using medicines which affect the quality or quantity of saliva. The salivary IgA level of the cases was measured immunoturbidometrically and analyzed by ANOVA and t test. Results Significant difference was observed between the groups 1 and 4, but there was no significant difference between the other groups. Conclusions According to the results of the current study, the salivary IgA can be considered as an index for the function of immune system, which may be increased by the number of decayed teeth. In fact, the increase of salivary IgA is just the response of immune system to the accumulation of microorganisms and may be the attempt of body to control them. Key words:Saliva, IgA, Dental caries.
Effects of Interruptibility-Aware Robot Behavior

As robots become increasingly prevalent in human environments, there will inevitably be times when a robot needs to interrupt a human to initiate an interaction. Our work introduces the first interruptibility-aware mobile robot system, and evaluates the effects of interruptibility-awareness on human task performance, robot task performance, and on human interpretation of the robot's social aptitude. Our results show that our robot is effective at predicting interruptibility at high accuracy, allowing it to interrupt at more appropriate times. Results of a large-scale user study show that while participants are able to maintain task performance even in the presence of interruptions, interruptibility-awareness improves the robot's task performance and improves participant social perception of the robot.
An Evaluation of Cognitive-Behaviour Therapy for Depression in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis

Summary Twenty depressed multiple sclerotic patients were randomly allocated either to cognitive-behaviour therapy or to a waiting list control condition. Assessment of depressive symptoms was conducted at pre-treatment, post-treatment, and a four-week follow-up. In comparison to the waiting list control condition, cognitive-behaviour therapy was found to result in clinically and statistically significant improvement on most measures. Although the mechanism by which such treatment achieves its effects is unclear, these results clearly support the use of cognitive-behavioural treatments for depression in this population.