Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
High IFN-g and low SLPI mark severe asthma in mice and humans

Severe asthma (SA) is a challenge to control, as patients are not responsive to high doses of systemic corticosteroids (CS). In contrast, mild-moderate asthma (MMA) is responsive to low doses of inhaled CS, indicating that Th2 cells, which are dominant in MMA, do not solely orchestrate SA development. Here, we analyzed broncholalveolar lavage cells isolated from MMA and SA patients and determined that IFN-g (Th1) immune responses are exacerbated in the airways of individuals with SA, with reduced Th2 and IL-17 responses. We developed a protocol that recapitulates the complex immune response of human SA, including the poor response to CS, in a murine model. Compared with WT animals, Ifng–/– mice subjected to this SA model failed to mount airway hyperresponsiveness (AHR) without appreciable effect on airway inflammation. Conversely, AHR was not reduced in Il17ra–/– mice, although airway inflammation was lower. Computer-assisted pathway analysis tools linked IFN-g to secretory leukocyte protease inhibitor (SLPI), which is expressed by airway epithelial cells, and IFN-g inversely correlated with SLPI expression in SA patients and the mouse model. In mice subjected to our SA model, forced SLPI expression decreased AHR in the absence of CS, and it was further reduced when SLPI was combined with CS. Our study identifies a distinct immune response in SA characterized by a dysregulated IFNg/SLPI axis that affects lung [. ] Research Article Pulmonology
Accelerating KGlove Graph Embedding

The exponential growth of data and the need of processing it requires efficient algorithms that are capable of gradually interpreting this immense amount of new information gathered in all kind of structures. In this thesis we list several approaches to accelerate a recent graph embedding method and deploy it in tuning the hyper-parameters for the whole graph embedding model taking a graph as an input and delivering a set of embeddings for the instances in this graph. We provide some theoretical background and thoughts and explain the details of accelerating the underlying GloVe training model and how to overcome some related issues. Eventually we build a random search model that is used to determine the suitable hyper-parameters for an efficient graph embedding model.
The influence of hygienic quality parameters on composition and physical properties of Olkuska sheep milk

The aim of this study was to determine the influence of sheep’s milk hygienic quality parameters on its composition and physical characteristics. During the three-year study 140 samples of Olkuska sheep milk were collected for analyzes. The samples were taken during the morning milking, and then were tested to determine the composition, physical properties, the presence of inhibitory substances, somatic cell count (SCC) and the total number of microorganisms. The increase in SCC and the total number of microorganisms caused an increase in dry matter content, total protein, casein, fat, total and soluble ash, pH, viscosity, conductivity and freezing point, and a decrease in lactose content, acidity and density. Statistically significant correlations were obtained for the relationship between SCC and the content of casein, fat, acidity, pH, density, and conductivity. As regards the total number of microorganisms most of the correlations were statistically significant, and the calculated correlation coefficients were higher than in case of SCC. WPŁYW PARAMETRÓW JAKOŚCI HIGIENICZNEJ NA SKŁAD I WŁAŚCIWOŚCI FIZYCZNE MLEKA OWIEC OLKUSKICH Joanna Ptasińska-Marcinkiewicz Uniwersytet Ekonomiczny w Krakowie Katedra Towaroznawstwa Żywności S ł o w a k l u c z o w e: mleko owcze, skład, właściwości fizyczne, jakość higieniczna, współzależności. Address: Joanna Ptasińska-Marcinkiewicz, Cracow University of Economics, ul. Sienkiewicza 5, 30-033 Kraków, Poland, phone: +48 (12) 293 78 11, e-mail: joanna.ptasinska@uek.krakow. pl * This work was financed as a research project by the funds for science in the years 2008–2010
Complete Convergence of Randomly Weighted Sums of NOD Random Variables

Abstract In this paper, we investigate the complete convergence of double-indexed randomly weighted sums of negatively orthant dependent (NOD) random variables. Some complete moment convergence and complete convergence of this dependent sequence are presented, Marcinkiewicz-Zygmund-type strong law of large numbers is also obtained. Our results extend some corresponding ones. In addition, some simulations are illustrated to show the convergence.
Allergic Disease Title : Prevalence and longitudinal trends of food allergy during childhood and adolescence : results of the Isle of Wight Birth Cohort study Running head : Food allergy during childhood and adolescence

This article has been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as doi: 10.1111/cea.13088 This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. MR STEPHEN POTTER (Orcid ID : 0000-0002-9761-2227) PROFESSOR GRAHAM ROBERTS (Orcid ID : 0000-0003-2252-1248) Article type : Original Article-Epidemiology of Allergic Disease
Stakeholder maximization:

This thesis explores the research field of the long-term effects of corporate social performance (CSP) on the going-concern value of a the world’s largest multinational enterprises (MNEs). The thesis concentrates on the views of three distinct categories of actors which include: enterprises, scientists and valuators. Furthermore, a critical analysis of the concept of CSP is conducted. And a research agenda is presented for future research. The findings show that for the largest MNEs CSP shifted from a wealth redistribution mechanism into a tool for mitigating immediate reputational and legal risk. Based on the publicly disclosed data these enterprises have difficulties is valuing the long-term financial implications of CSP and seem not to consider CSP a value affecting factor that is a genuine part of their long-term value creating strategy. Instead CSP seems to be merely considered as a hygiene factor. Scientists on the contrary seem to be the group of actors that is the most positive about the positive affective power of CSP on the long-term value of a firm. Although they also make several remarks concerning the lack of an universalistic effect of CSP. They acknowledge that certain circumstances are needed in order to be able to structurally lower costs and increase revenues and profits. And that one should address solely certain CSP issues in order to generate the maximum amount of value for the focal firm and for society in general. Valuators, wherefore sell-side analysts were used as units of observations, were the most divided group of actors. Some recognized CSP as a value affecting factor in certain circumstances whereas others did resolutely rejected the value affecting potential of it. Furthermore, there is no synthesis extant on the concept of CSP and there is a lack of objective providers of CSP ratings. Which makes the prior used construct for measuring CSP questionable. Finally, the conclusion is reached that presently CSP is not a value affecting factor. However, if the CSP strategies and valuations practices of analysts would alter there could be a positive effect of CSP on the going-concern value. Table of contents
Development of the Indian Gender Role Identity Scale

The paper reports the preparation of the Indian Gender Role Identity Scale (IGRIS) to assess psychological masculinity and femininity in our culture. Review of literature reveals that while scales for assessing Gender Role Identity are available in the West, no such scale has been prepared in India taking into account the rigorous methodological procedure recommended for such scale. At the same time there are ample evidences that use of items in one culture are likely to be invalid in a different culture, since the meaning of masculinity and femininity differs widely across cultures. In the present scale the methodology followed by Sandra Bem was roughly followed, accommodating for the major critiques of Bem’s scale. At various phases it utilized 2486 subjects between the age range of 16 to 50 years of age, among which 1240 were female and 1246 male. The final scale consists of 30 items to be judged on a 7 point scale to describe oneself. The item validity, construct validity, reliability and working norm are provided.
Machine Learning and Affect Analysis Against Cyber-Bullying

Online security has been an important issue for several years. One of the burning online security problems lately in Japan has been online slandering and bullying, which appear on unofficial Web sites. The problem has been becoming especially urgent on unofficial Web sites of Japanese schools. School personnel and members of Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) have started Online Patrol to spot Web sites and blogs containing such inappropriate contents. However, countless number of such data makes the job an uphill task. This paper presents a research aiming to develop a systematic approach to Online Patrol by automatically spotting suspicious entries and reporting them to PTA members and therefore help them do their job. We present some of the first results of analysis of the inappropriate data collected from unofficial school Web sites. The analysis is performed firstly with an SVM based machine learning method to detect the inappropriate entries. After analysis of the results we perform another analysis of the data, using an affect analysis system to find out how the machine learning model could be improved.
Electrochemical Test Strip-Based Accurate Blood Uric Acid Measurement by Adding Blood Cell Filtration Membrane

In this paper, we demonstrated a novel electrochemical uric acid (UA) test strip by integrating the blood cells filtration membrane with the electrochemical UA test strip. The conventional electrochemical UA biosensor suffered from the effect of blood cells in the whole blood sample. The blood cells in the whole blood can impede the UA molecules transfer from the bulky blood solution to the surface of the enzyme-immobilized working electrode. If the concentration of the blood cells was extremely higher/lower, the electrochemical current signal generated by the electrochemical sensor was significantly prohibited, which was capable of resulting in the wrong measured result. The fatal drawbacks of the conventional UA test strip limited its application in blood UA monitoring at the point of care scale. In the proposed structure of the new designed electrochemical UA test strip, the blood cells filtration membrane was added in the blood collection pore. The blood plasma was driven by the hydrophilic force to fill the electrochemical reaction channel. The effect of the blood cells on the measured result can be significantly prohibited. The clinical verification of the proposed UA test strip was evaluated by comparing to the bulky biochemical analyzer. The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed UA test strips were precise enough with comparable accuracy to the clinical laboratory standard, which is a very promising tool for precisely monitoring the blood UA.
Application of protoplast fusants of Bacillus licheniformis and Pseudomonas aeruginosa on Meloidogyne incognita in tomato and eggplant 1

Root-knot nematodes Meloidogyne spp. are the most damaging pest to vegetable crops especially in tropical and subtropical climate. They are reported to cause annual losses up to 29% in tomato and 23% in eggplant. Controlling this pest has been achieved through the use of chemical nematicides. Recently, these chemicals began to be more restricted, owing to their adverse effects on the environment and human health. Efforts are being increased to find alternative control methods more acceptable as ecofriendly tools. Nowadays, many researches are focusing on the effect of rhizospheric bacteria to suppress the deleterious effects of these nematodes on plant hosts. In this study two pot experiments were conducted to evaluate the nematicidal effect of Bacillus licheniformis BL, Pseudomonas aeruginosa PA and two from their fusant products viz. F28 & F40, along with the commercial nematicide Micronema for controlling root knot nematode, Meloidogyne incognita on tomato and eggplants under greenhouse conditions. Results from tomato experiment indicated that both fusant products F28 and F40 were the highly effective treatments in decreasing M. incognita reproduction. The recorded percentage reductions were (83 & 76%) in M. incognita J2, (83 & 77%) in galls, (85 & 76%) in egg-masses and (65 & 73%) in females comparing to untreated control. Data from eggplant experiment revealed that F40 was the highly effective in suppressing root knot reproduction than all other treatments. The percentage reductions were (77%) in M. incognita J2 in roots, (87%) in galls and (90%) in egg-masses in root system compared to untreated control. Results also showed that combined parental strains treatment (BL & PA) was more effective in suppressing M. incognita than individual application. Micronema ranked the second after the two fusants in suppressing M. incognita reproduction on tomato and eggplant. The fusant products significantly increased the growth parameters viz. shoot length, leaves, shoot fresh & dry weights and root fresh weight of both tomato and eggplants than untreated control (nematode only).
Cause of Cambrian Explosion-Terrestrial or Co

We review the salient evidence consistent with or predicted by the Hoyle-Wickramasinghe (H-W) thesis of Cometary (Cosmic) Biology. Much of this physical and biological evidence is multifactorial. One particular focus are the recent studies which date the emergence of the complex retroviruses of vertebrate lines at or just before the Cambrian Explosion of ~500 Ma. Such viruses are known to be plausibly associated with major evolutionary genomic processes. We believe this coincidence is not fortuitous but is consistent with a key prediction of H-W theory whereby major extinction-diversification evolutionary boundaries coincide with virus-bearing cometary-bolide bombardment events. A second focus is the remarkable evolution of intelligent complexity (Cephalopods) culminating in the emergence of the Octopus. A third focus concerns the micro-organism fossil evidence contained within meteorites as well as the detection in the upper atmosphere of apparent incoming life-bearing particles from space. In our view the totality of the multifactorial data and critical analyses assembled by Fred Hoyle, Chandra Wickramasinghe and their many colleagues since the 1960s leads to a very plausible conclusion e life ge Foundation, Piara Waters, Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). E.J. Steele et al. / Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology 136 (2018) 3e23 4 may have been seeded here on Earth by life-bearing comets as soon as conditions on Earth allowed it to flourish (about or just before 4.1 Billion years ago); and living organisms such as space-resistant and space-hardy bacteria, viruses, more complex eukaryotic cells, fertilised ova and seeds have been continuously delivered ever since to Earth so being one important driver of further terrestrial evolution which has resulted in considerable genetic diversity and which has led to the emergence of mankind. © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
capillary-porous system, thermal power plants

The studies of the ultimate thermal flows have been carried out in metallic and poorly heat-conducting porous structures, which operate when gravitational and capillary forces act jointly and cool various devices of thermal power plants in order to create a scientific methodology. The mechanism of destruction of metal vaporizing surfaces and poorly heat-conducting coatings of low porosity made of natural mineral media (granite) has been described on the basis of the problem of thermoelasticity and experimental data. Thermal flow dependences on time of their action and depth of penetration of temperature perturbations were identified based on analogy. Capillary-porous systems have high intensity, heat transport ability, reliability, compactness. The results of calculations and experiment showed that the maximum thickness of the particles that detach under the influence of compression forces for granite coatings is (0.25÷0.3). 10 -2 m. Sections of compression curves that determine the detachment of particles with dimensions of more than 0.3×10 -2 m for large thermal flows and short feed times, are screened by the melting curve, and in the case of small thermal flows and time intervals – the expansion curve.
PhySical ProPertieS and Sugarcane root growth in a red oxiSol ( 1 )

Sugarcane, which involves the use of agricultural machinery in all crop stages, from soil preparation to harvest, is currently one of the most relevant crops for agribusiness in Brazil. the purpose of this study was to investigate soil physical properties and root growth in a eutroferric red oxisol (latossolo Vermelho eutroférrico) after different periods under sugarcane. the study was carried out in a cane plantation in rolândia, Paraná State, where treatments consisted of a number of cuts (1, 3, 8, 10 and 16), harvested as green and burned sugarcane, at which soil bulk density, macro and microporosity, penetration resistance, as well as root length, density and area were determined. results showed that sugarcane management practices lead to alterations in soil penetration resistance, bulk density and porosity, compared to native forest soil. these alterations in soil physical characteristics impede the full growth of the sugarcane root system beneath 10 cm, in all growing seasons analyzed.
Determinants of the Intention to Re-use Internet Business Reporting ( IBR ) : The Structural Equation Modelling Approach

Internet Business Reporting (IBR) is widely used as an intermediary tool to communicate useful and reliable information to financial reporting users such as auditors, accountants and other users. This study aims to examine the determinants of users’ intention to re-use IBR. Usable data was received via self-administered questionnaires from 350 users who were associated with the preparation and use of internet financial reporting. The structural equation modelling approach revealed that perceived usefulness, ease of use and information quality had a significant impact on users’ attitude to re-use IBR and subsequently, attitude significantly impacted users’ satisfaction to re-use IBR. However, perceived information quality had insignificant impact on users’ satisfaction to re-use IBR. Additionally, satisfaction and attitude were the significant reasons for users’ intention to re-use IBR. The study furnish significant insight on the specific determinants of users’ intention to re-use IBR which would assist in preparing financial reporting. Direction for future research is also provided.
AAB BIOFLUX Advances in Agriculture & Botanics-International Journal of the Bioflux Society Protocorm wounding enhanced Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of Hygrochilus parishii ( Veitch & Rchb

This study was aimed to encourage the use of protocorm wounding as a substitute of acetosyringone in an attempt to reduce cocultivation time and to increase possibility of successful genetic transformation of Hygrochilus parishii (Veitch & Rchb.f.) Pfitz. Agrobacterium tumefaciens strain LBA4404 harboring the plasmid pBI121 was employed as a transgene carrier. The plasmid pBI121 contained βglucuronidase (gus) and kanamycin resistance (nptII) genes, both of which were driven by the CaMV35S promoter. It was found that wounded protocorms cocultivated with A. tumefaciens for 30 min and acetosyringone-treated protocorms cocultivated for 30 min exhibited high gene expressions of 75 and 80%, respectively, while normal protocorms (control) showed gene expression of 60% when cocultivated with A. tumefaciens for 45 min. The presence of CaMV35S promoter and NOS terminator detected by PCR technique confirmed a successful T-DNA integration. This suggested that protocorm wounding could be used as a substitute of acetosyringone in enhancement of genetic modification.
MicroRNA 218 modulates PKC / AKT pathway to protect lidocaine-induced neurotoxicity in ganglia in vitro

Objectives: Application of local anesthetics such as lidocaine may induce neurotoxicity in peripheral sensory neurons of dorsal root ganglia (DRG). The present study examined the effect of microRNA 218 (miR-218) expression in the process of local anesthetic-induced neurotoxicity. Methods: DRG neurons from 8-week-old adult C57BL/6 mice were cultured in vitro. Lidocaine was applied to induce apoptosis. The expression level of miR-218 was assessed by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). Lentiviral vector was applied to silence miR-218 in DRG neurons. The protective effect of miR-218 knockdown against lidocaine-induced neurotoxicity was examined by TUNEL assay. Western blotting analysis was used to assess the activation of PKC/AKT signaling pathway. Results: The application of lidocaine significantly induced the apoptosis and increased the expression of miR218 in DRG neurons, both in concentration-dependent manners. Inhibition of miR-218 reduced lidocaine-induced apoptosis in DRG neurons. Western blotting analysis demonstrated that PKC/AKT signaling pathway was activated after inhibiton of miR-218 during the process of lidocaine-induced neurotoxicity. Furthermore, siRNA-mediated AKT inhibition reversed the protective effect of miR-218 downregulation on lidocaine-induced apoptosis of DRG neurons. Conclusions: Our study clearly demonstrated that miR-218 played an active role in regulating lidocaine-induced neurotoxicity in DRG neurons, partly through the regulation of AKT. Inhibition of miR-128 may provide a potential therapeutic target to protect local anesthetic-induced neurotoxicity.
A multiestimation scheme for discrete adaptive control

A pole-placement based adaptive controller synthesized from a multiestimation scheme is designed for linear time-invariant plants. A higher level switching structure between the various estimation schemes is used to supervise the reparametrization of the adaptive controller in real time. The basic usefulness of the proposed scheme is to improve the transient behaviour so that the closed loop stability is guaranteed. The scheme becomes specifically attractive when extended to linear plants whose parameters are piecewise constant while changing abruptly to new constant parametrizations or when they are time-varying. A complete description of the controller architecture with its associated multiestimation scheme is given.