Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Bio Polymeric Adhesive Produced by Photo Cross-Linkable Technique

The advantages of photo polymerization methods compared to thermal techniques are: rapid cure reactions, low energy demands, solvent free requirements and room temperature use. In order to form a macromer, polycaprolactone (PCL) was cross-linked via ultraviolet power with 2-isocyanatoethyl methacrylate. Different methods of characterization were carried out: estimation of swelling capacity, adhesive capacity (using aminated substrates), surface energy (by contact angle), and attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared. In addition to these experiments, we carried out dynamical mechanical thermal analysis, thermogravimetry and thermorphology characterizations of PCL. Thus, it has been concluded that the prepared macromer could be transformed into membranes that were effective as a medical adhesive. The degree of cross linking has been estimated using two different techniques: swelling of the samples and photo cross linking of the samples with different periods of irradiation at relatively high UV-power (600 mW/cm2).
Functional Evidence for a Small and Rigid Active Site in a High Fidelity DNA Polymerase

Hypotheses on the origins of high fidelity in replicative DNA polymerases have recently focused on the importance of geometric or steric effects in this selectivity. Here we reported a systematic study of the effects of base pair size in T7 DNA polymerase (pol), the replicative enzyme for bacteriophage T7. We varied base pair size in very small (0.25 Å) increments by use of a series of nonpolar thymidine shape mimics having gradually increasing size. Steady-state kinetics were evaluated for the 5A7A exonuclease-deficient mutant in a 1:1 complex with thioredoxin. For T7 pol, we studied insertion of natural nucleotides opposite variably sized T analogs in the template and, conversely, for variably sized dTTP analogs opposite natural template bases. The enzyme displayed extremely high selectivity for a specific base pair size, with drops in efficiency of as much as 280-fold for increases of 0.4 Å beyond an optimum size approximating the size of a natural pair. The enzyme also strongly rejected pairs that were smaller than the optimum by as little as 0.3 Å. The size preferences with T7 DNA pol were generally smaller, and the steric rejection was greater than DNA pol I Klenow fragment, correlating with the higher fidelity of the former. The hypothetical effects of varied active site size and rigidity are discussed. The data lend direct support to the concept that active site tightness is a chief determinant of high fidelity of replicative polymerases and that a less rigid (looser) and larger active site can lead to lower fidelity.
Bidirectional risk between venous thromboembolism and cancer in East Asian patients: synthesis of evidence from recent population-based epidemiological studies

Background Unprovoked (idiopathic) venous thromboembolism (VTE) with no obvious antecedent risk factors, is associated with a significant risk of subsequent occult cancer. Conversely, there is a heightened risk of VTE in cancer patients. This bidirectional risk can be estimated from population-based cohort studies conducted in East Asians. Methods A literature search using medical subject heading terms and Boolean logic in PubMed and MedLine was performed in April 2017. Twenty-two papers reported from East Asia were retrieved for study and data synthesis. Proportional meta-analysis with a random-effects model was used to synthesize data with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) when appropriate. Results Synthesis of data on VTE incidence in the East Asian population (I2 = 76.2%) showed that pooled incidence was 20.3 (95% CI, 11.2–32) per 100,000 person-years. VTE incidence steadily increased with age. Unprovoked VTE accounted for 35% (95% CI, 24%–48%) of all cases of incident VTE (I2 = 99.7%). The overall cancer risk was significantly higher (2.3-fold) in the VTE cohort than in comparators. Among the patients with unprovoked VTE, approximately 7% had a subsequent cancer diagnosis within 2 years of the first episode of idiopathic VTE. The risk of VTE recurrence was increased in cancer patients (adjusted odds ratio, 1.64; 95% CI, 1.26–1.99). VTE incidence was 9.9 per 1,000 person-years in cancer patients, particularly in liver, pancreas, and lung cancer patients. Conclusion Newly diagnosed VTE incidence is estimated at approximately 4,400 new cases annually in Taiwan and 7,100 in South Korea. Similar to the trend in VTE incidence among the general population, VTE risk in East Asian cancer patients is markedly lessened.
Prospective study of hemostatic alterations in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia

In a group of newly diagnosed acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) children we evaluated a number of hemostatic and inflammatory markers at diagnosis and at different time points during chemotherapy for the remission induction to identify alterations in the plasma levels of prothrombotic markers before and during the course of chemotherapy. The following plasma markers were evaluated: thrombin‐antithrombin complex (TAT), D‐Dimer, plasminogen activator inhibitor 1 (PAI‐1), antithrombin, fibrinogen, von Willebrand factor (VWF) antigen and high molecular weight VWF (HMW‐VWF) multimers, P‐selectin, tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF‐α), and interleukin 6 (IL‐6). Plasma samples were collected at the following time points: at T0 (baseline) and T1 (+24 days of therapy), T2 (+36 days therapy), and T3 (+64 days therapy). The results show that, at diagnosis, ALL children presented with laboratory signs of increased thrombin generation and fibrin formation (i.e. high TAT and D‐dimer levels), fibrinolysis inhibition (i.e. high PAI‐1 level), endothelial activation (i.e., high HMW‐VWF and soluble P‐selectin levels) and inflammation (i.e. high TNF‐alpha and IL‐6 levels). After starting induction therapy, the thrombin generation markers and inflammatory cytokines significantly decreased. To the opposite, PAI‐1 and P‐selectin significantly increased, suggesting an insult by chemotherapy on the vascular endothelium. These effects were more evident during steroid administration. Symptomatic venous thromboembolism (VTE) episodes developed in two cases during induction therapy, which did not allow the evaluation of the predictive value for VTE of laboratory markers. Am. J. Hematol. , 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The Effects of Animals on Human Health and Well-Being

Substantial sums of money are invested annually in preventative medicine and therapeutic treatment for people with a wide range of physical and psychological health problems, sometimes to no avail. There is now mounting evidence to suggest that companion animals, such as dogs and cats, can enhance the health of their human owners and may thus contribute significantly to the health expenditure of our country. This paper explores the evidence that pets can contribute to human health and well‐being. The article initially concentrates on the value of animals for short‐ and long‐term physical health, before exploring the relationship between animals and psychological health, focusing on the ability of dogs, cats, and other species to aid the disabled and serve as a "therapist" to those in institutional settings. The paper also discusses the evidence for the ability of dogs to facilitate the diagnosis and treatment of specific chronic diseases, notably cancer, epilepsy, and diabetes. Mechanisms underlying the ability of animals to promote human health are discussed within a theoretical framework. Whereas the evidence for a direct causal association between human well‐being and companion animals is not conclusive, the literature reviewed is largely supportive of the widely held, and long‐standing, belief that "pets are good for us. "
Canadian Elementary School Teachers’ Perceptions of Gender Differences in Shy Girls and Boys in the Classroom

Shyness may play a significant role in children’s socio-emotional and cognitive competence in the classroom. This qualitative study investigated elementary school teachers’ perceptions of the concept of shyness in their students. In particular, we explored teachers’ perceptions regarding the role that gender plays in shy children’s behaviours, and their suggestions for educational strategies for shy girls and boys to improve their socio-communicative competence and socio-emotional literacy. Twelve elementary school teachers (10 female, 2 male) participated in interviews about their thoughts/beliefs and feelings/attitudes regarding their experiences with shy girls and boys in the classroom. Overall, findings point to differences in teachers’ perceptions of shyness in boys and girls in the classroom, and suggest that some teachers perceive that shyness may be particularly problematic for boys. Findings are discussed in terms of inclusive and holistic educational programs that promote emotional and social competence among all children.
Natural Occurrence of Alternaria Toxins in Wheat-Based Products and Their Dietary Exposure in China

A total of 181 wheat flour and 142 wheat-based foods including dried noodle, steamed bread and bread collected in China were analyzed for alternariol (AOH), alternariol monomethyl ether (AME), tentoxin (TEN) and tenuazonic acid (TeA) by ultra-performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-tandem mass spectrometry. TeA was the predominant toxin found in 99.4% wheat flour samples at levels ranging from 1.76 μg/kg to 520 μg/kg. TEN was another Alternaria toxin frequently detected in wheat flour samples (97.2%) at levels between 2.72 μg/kg and 129 μg/kg. AOH and AME were detected in 11 (6.1%) samples at levels ranging from 16.0 μg/kg to 98.7 μg/kg (AOH) and in 165 (91.2%) samples with a range between 0.320 μg/kg and 61.8 μg/kg (AME). AOH was quantified at higher levels than AME with the ratio of AOH/AME ranging from 1.0 to 3.7. Significant linear regressions of correlation in toxin concentrations were observed between AOH and AME, AME and TeA, TEN and TeA, AOH+AME and TeA. At an average and 95th percentile, dietary exposure to AOH and AME in the Chinese general population and different age subgroups exceeded the relevant threshold value of toxicological concern (TTC), with the highest exposure found in children which deserves human health concern. TEN and TeA seem unlikely to be health concerns for the Chinese via wheat-based products but attention should be paid to synergistic or additive effects of TeA with AOH, AME, TEN and a further assessment will be performed once more data on toxicity-guided fractionation of the four toxins are available. It is necessary to conduct a systemic surveillance of Alternaria toxins in raw and processed foods in order to provide the scientific basis for making regulations on these toxins in China.
Psychological Reactance and Adolescents' Attitudes Toward Tobacco‐Control Measures

The theory of psychological reactance predicts that, to the extent that smoking-control measures are perceived as threatening the individual's freedom to choose among behavioral alternatives, they may be met with resistance. Data were collected from a national representative sample of 2,400 young people (ages 16–20) by telephone interviews. Dispositional reactance was shown to be associated with smoking. Principal components analyses revealed that a distinction should be made between attitudes toward weak and attitudes toward strong smoking-control measures. Attitudes toward strong measures were particularly negative among regular smokers. Among regular smokers, dispositional reactance was found to be significantly associated with attitudes toward strong tobacco-control measures. Processes of psychological reactance deserve attention when designing smoking control programs.
Influence of External Gaseous Environments on the Electrical Properties of ZnO Nanostructures Obtained by a Hydrothermal Method

This paper deals with experimental investigations of ZnO nanostructures, consisting of a mixture of nanoparticles and nanowires, obtained by the chemical (hydrothermal) method. The influences of both oxidizing (NO2) and reducing gases (H2, NH3), as well as relative humidity (RH) on the physical and chemical properties of ZnO nanostructures were tested. Carrier gas effect on the structure interaction with gases was also tested; experiments were conducted in air and nitrogen (N2) atmospheres. The effect of investigated gases on the resistance of the ZnO nanostructures was tested over a wide range of concentrations at room temperature (RT) and at 200 °C. The impact of near- ultraviolet (UV) excitation (λ = 390 nm) at RT was also studied. These investigations indicated a high response of ZnO nanostructures to small concentrations of NO2. The structure responses to 1 ppm of NO2 amounted to about: 600% in N2/230% in air at 200 °C (in dark conditions) and 430% in N2/340% in air at RT (with UV excitation). The response of the structure to the effect of NO2 at 200 °C is more than 105 times greater than the response to NH3, and more than 106 times greater than that to H2 in the relation of 1 ppm. Thus the selectivity of the structure for NO2 is very good. What is more, the selectivity to NO2 at RT with UV excitation increases in comparison at elevated temperature. This paper presents a great potential for practical applications of ZnO nanostructures (including nanoparticles) in resistive NO2 sensors.
No Need to Stop: Menu Techniques for Passing by Public Displays

Although public displays are increasingly prevalent in public spaces, they are generally not interactive. Menu techniques can enable users to select what is interesting to them. Current touch screen techniques are unsuitable, because for many public displays, users merely pass by and rarely stop. We investigate command selection in this new context of passing-by interaction, in which users only have a few seconds to interact. We present six hands-free gestural techniques and evaluate them in a Wizard-of-Oz experiment. Based on the results of this study, we provide design recommendations for menu selection in passing-by situations.
Designing of a Mobile Collaboration Application for Student Collaborative Group Work: Evidence from China

With the advance of mobile technologies, it has been easier for mobile devices to support collaborative activities. This opportunity brings about new possibilities to carry out mobile collaborative work and mobile learning (m-learning) which play an important role in relevant field. Researchers find that Process Support Systems (PSS) and Collaboration Engineering (CE) can benefit the collaborative process. However, there is few research applying PSS and CE theories to mobile collaborative applications. In this paper, we present the design of a simple PSS: one Android meeting application based on CE methods to support university students' collaborative study. We carried out an experiment among 75 students from 6 Chinese universities and evaluated the capabilities of the application with a survey and in-depth interview. Our findings suggest that this application can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of students' group collaboration. Our study further serves as an example that CE methods are useful for mobile collaboration systems.
Effects of lung volume reduction surgery in hamsters with elastase-induced emphysema

Lung volume reduction surgery (LVRS) has been shown to improve respiratory mechanics in selected patients with severe emphysema. This is thought to be due to an improvement in lung elastic recoil. This study was aimed at gaining further understanding about the effects of LVRS on respiratory mechanics and airway function. Control hamsters instilled with saline (Ctrl; n=8) were compared with emphysematous animals that underwent either a sham operation (Sham; n=7) or an LVRS (LVRS; n=7). As expected, there was a significant increase in the static lung volumes in the Sham as compared to the Ctrl group and a significant decrease of these volumes in LVRS as compared to the Sham group. Surprisingly, emphysema was associated with a significant increase and LVRS with a significant decrease in vital capacity. Despite a tendency toward an increase in lung compliance as compared to Sham, indices of maximal expiratory flows tended to decrease with LVRS. As opposed to humans, there was no change in the distribution of airway diameters in Sham compared to Ctrl. These findings appear to be largely explained by the high compliance of the hamster chest wall. This allows for better matching between the emphysematous lung and the chest-wall sizes than in humans.
Up‐gradient eddy fluxes of potential vorticity near the subtropical jet

The role of eddy fluxes in the general circulation is often approached by treating eddies as (macro)turbulence. In this approach, the eddies act to diffuse certain quasi‐conservative quantities, such as potential vorticity (PV), along isentropic surfaces in the free atmosphere. The eddy fluxes are determined primarily by the eddy diffusivities and are necessarily down‐gradient of the basic state PV field. Support for the (macro)turbulence approach stems from the fact that the eddy fluxes of PV in the free atmosphere are generally down‐gradient in the long‐term mean. Here we call attention to a pronounced and significant region of up‐gradient eddy PV fluxes on the poleward flank of the jet core in both hemispheres. The region of up‐gradient (i.e., notionally “antidiffusive”) eddy PV fluxes is most pronounced during the winter and spring seasons and partially contradicts the turbulence approach described above. Analyses of the PV variance (potential enstrophy) budget suggest that the up‐gradient PV fluxes represent local wave decay and are maintained by poleward fluxes of PV variance. Finite‐amplitude effects thus represent leading order contributions to the PV variance budget, whereas dissipation is only of secondary importance locally. The appearance of up‐gradient PV fluxes in the long‐term mean is associated with the poleward shift of the jet—and thus the region of wave decay relative to wave growth—following wave‐breaking events.
Total mercury and methylmercury levels in commercially important fishes in Japan

The distribution of mercury in the muscle and other tissues was determined in 23 species of fishes and invertebrates. This study reveals species-specific patterns of mercury accumulation in the muscle of tuna and alfonsino. Consistently high levels of total mercury were found in Beryx splendens (0.78±0.56 μg/g), Atlantic Thunnus thynnus (0.42±0.06 μg/g), Pacific T. thynnus (0.59±0.34 μg/g), Thunnus obesus (0.98±0.34 μg/g), Makaira nigricans (0.56±0.05 μg/g), Tetraptrus audax (0.51±0.08 μg/g), and Xiphias gladius (0.47±0.24 μg/g). Other fish species had lower levels of total mercury or methylmercury in muscle than the maximum permitted level of mercury in fish in Japan (0.4 μg/g). Total mercury and methylmercury levels in the muscles of T. thynnus, T. obesus, and B. splendens were closely correlated with body weight.
Analysis and Design of Actuation-Sensing-Communication Interconnection Structures towards Secured/Resilient Closed-loop Systems

This paper considers the analysis and design of resilient/robust decentralized control systems. Specifically, we aim to assess how the pairing of sensors and actuators lead to architectures that are resilient to attacks/hacks for industrial control systems and other complex cyber-physical systems. We consider inherent structural properties such as internal fixed modes of a dynamical system depending on actuation, sensing, and interconnection/communication structure for linear discrete time-invariant dynamical systems. We introduce the notion of resilient fixed-modes free system that ensures the non-existence of fixed modes when the actuation-sensing-communication structure is compromised due to attacks by a malicious agent on actuators, sensors, or communication components and natural failures. Also, we provide a graph-theoretical characterization for the resilient structurally fixed modes that enables to capture the non-existence of resilient fixed modes for almost all possible systems' realizations. Additionally, we address the minimum actuation-sensing-communication co-design ensuring the non-existence of resiliently structurally fixed modes, which we show to be NP-hard. Notwithstanding, we identify conditions that are often satisfied in engineering settings and under which the co-design problem is solvable in polynomial-time complexity. Furthermore, we leverage the structural insights and properties to provide a convex optimization method to design the gain for a parametrized system and satisfying the sparsity of a given information pattern. Thus, exploring the interplay between structural and non-structural systems to ensure their resilience. Finally, the efficacy of the proposed approach is demonstrated on a power grid example.
Visual search in sport and ergonomics: Its relationship to selective attention and performer expertise

Visual search data has been frequently used to make direct implications about aspects of selective attention. In the first part of this article, the relationship between visual search and selective attention is examined to see what assumptions and limitations exist in making these implications. It is revealed that although much of the existing visual search research can be interpreted from within the selective attention notions of pertinence and context, measures of visual orientation alone, as provided by eye-movement recording, are inadequate solitary indicators of the allocation of attention. The capacity to make attentional shifts without eye movements, the distinction between looking and seeing, and the unknown role of information processed from the periphery of the retina in dynamic information pick-up emerge as essential limitations in the eye-movement recording approach to assessing selective attention. In the second part of the article, the extent to which visual search strategy, like selective a.
Expressing Health Through Lifestyle Patterns

Few concepts have received more attention from health professionals and the public during the last decade than health. This is largely due to the emergence of disease prevention and health promotion as global priorities. Unfortunately, the nature of health as a positive life process is poorly understood. Theoretical formulations of health often lack spec ificity and existing measures almost without exception reflect a narrow clinical perspective of health as the absence of disease. The purpose of this paper is to propose a system for classifying expressions of health of persons in their entirety and to suggest related indicators of high-level health.
Mobility and mortgages : Evidence from the PSID ☆ N .

We use the 1999-2009 Panel Survey of Income Dynamics to estimate household move probabilities as a function of, among other things, current housing equity. The lock-in effect supposes that mobility decreases with equity, particularly as equity becomes negative. We find that while owners do move less than renters, the move probability increases as homeowners become underwater. The propensity to move out of state in particular increases dramatically for sand state homeowners who have negative equity. There is no lock in effect from negative equity. ∗The Pennsylvania State University, Departments of Economics and Risk Management fyj@psu.edu. †The Pennsylvania State University, Department of Economics paul.grieco@psu.edu.
Commentary: Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV): Announcement of the Coronavirus Study Group

During the summer of 2012, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, a hitherto unknown coronavirus (CoV) was isolated from the sputum of a patient with acute pneumonia and renal failure ([1][1], [2][2]). The isolate was provisionally called human coronavirus Erasmus Medical Center (EMC) ([3][3]). Shortly thereafter