Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of Nitrate toxicity on free Proline accumulation , chlorophyll degradation and photosynthetic efficiency in the green alga Chlorella vulgaris

The effects of high nitrate concentrations on alterations in maximal photochemical efficiency of PSII ratio (Fv/Fm), chlorophyll content, chlorophyll degradation, growth rate and proline accumulation in Chlorella vulgaris Beyerinck [Beijerinck] were investigated in this study. The Fv/Fm ratio was observed in response to the increased nitrate concentration. The Fv/Fm ratio decreased in C. vulgaris following 44 h in 12.99 mM NaNO3-enriched media. Experimental results showed that, growth rates and chlorophyll content declined by increasing nitrate concentration. The decrease in the ratio of chlorophyll a/b with enrichment of high nitrate concentration (6.5 mM and 12.99 mM NaNO3) was also caused by a decrease in chlorophyll a and an increase in chlorophyll b concentration in C. vulgaris cultures. The results showed that 6.5 and 12.99 mM nitrate concentration increased proline content in treated cells, which suggests that nitrate stress lead to proline accumulation in C. vulgaris. ARTICLE HISTORY Received: October 16, 2018 Accepted: December 17, 2018
Equity market comovements and financial contagion : a study of Latin America and the United States

This paper examines the extent of short-term comovements and financial contagion for four major Latin American emerging markets and the United States by employing a dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) approach and a structural change analysis. Cross-market linkages are found to be time-varying and subjected to several breaks over the period 1988-2009. The patterns followed by DCC estimates are, however, not consistent with higher comovements between these markets in recent years. Finally, our results do not support the financial contagion hypothesis for the Mexican crisis of 1994, the Asian crisis of 1997-1998, and the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, in almost all cases.
The Effect of Financial Constraints , Investment Policy and Product Market Competition on the Value of Cash Holdings

This paper empirically investigates the value shareholders place on excess cash holdings and how shareholders’ valuation of cash holdings is associated with financial constraints, firm growth, cash flow uncertainty and product market competition for Australian firms from 1990 to 2007. Our results indicate that the marginal value of cash holdings to shareholders declines with larger cash holdings and higher leverage. However, firms that are more financially constrained, have higher growth rates and are facing higher uncertainty exhibit higher marginal value of cash holdings. These findings are consistent with the explanation that excess cash holdings are not necessarily detrimental to firm value. Firms with costly external financing and save more cash for current operating and future investing needs, find that the market values these cash hoarding policies favourably.
What Are the Drivers of ICT Diffusion ? Evidence from Latin American Firms

It is generally recognized that information and communication technologies (ICTs) have radically changed how modern business is conducted, beneating arm performances through several channels such as increasing the efaciency of internal processes, expanding market reach, or increasing innovation. However, most related literature refers to developed countries, and evidence for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is scarce and fragmented. Our article contributes to alling this gap by identifying the drivers of ICT diffusion in LAC arms. We and evidence of the presence of both epidemic and rank effects, where larger, older, skill-intensive, and exporter and urban arms are more likely to adopt ICTs. However, once adopted, size and location lose importance. The availability of novel empirical evidence speciac to the LAC region offers useful insights to policymakers for the design and implementation of initiatives aimed at fostering productivity by increasing ICT adoption and intensive use.
TO STUDY THE EFFECT OF ZN , FE AND FYM ON YIELD , ECONOMICS AND NUTRIENT UPTAKE OF DIFFERENT RICE ( ORYZA SATIVA L . ) VARIETIES

A field experiment was carried out at research farm Institute of Agricultural sciences, BHU, Varanasi for two consecutive years during kharif seasons of 2006-07 and 2007-08. Testing variables consisting of two varieties i.e. NDR-359 and HUBR 2-1, two sources of fertilizer application i.e. 100% RFD of NPK through inorganic source and 75% RFD through inorganic and rest 25% through FYM. Two micronutrients, Zn and Fe through Zn-EDTA and Fe-EDTA were tested in different combinations either on soil or as foliar application or both @ 0.5 and 1.0 kg ha. Amongst varieties, var. NDR-359 recorded significantly higher yield, economics and NPK uptake of rice than HUBR 2-1, while Zn and Fe uptake were significantly increased in HUBR 2-1. Fertilizer source as application of 75% RFD through inorganic and rest through FYM recoded significantly higher yield, economics and N, P, K, Zn and Fe uptake of rice than 100% RFD through inorganic source. Among the different micronutrient treatments, soil application of Zn-EDTA @ 1 kg ha recorded significantly higher Zn uptake in rice whereas application of Fe-EDTA @ 0.5 kg ha recorded significantly higher Fe uptake by rice as compared to other micronutrient treatments.
PAIN IN THE EYE: AN EVIDENCE-BASED APPROACH TO OCULAR/PERIOCULAR ANESTHESIA & ANALGESIA

Background Today’s veterinary practitioner is perhaps more aware than ever of the need to effectively recognize the need for periand postoperative analgesia in dogs and cats, and to be able to determine an appropriate pain management plan. This increased awareness and growing need to proactively identify effective and safe analgesic protocols is also likely a primary contributor to the rapid development and marketing of analgesic medications in the veterinary market. Kohn et al have defined animal pain as an “unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, and should be expected in an animal subjected to any procedure or disease model that would be likely to cause pain in a human”. Despite the apparent simplicity of this definition, however, it still proves exquisitely challenging for practitioners and investigators to make objective assessments of pain or the potential for pain in non-verbal patients. Furthermore, many of the species we treat have evolved to mask “expected” pain in order to avoid predation. This, in combination with other species-specific factors, heavily influence behavioral manifestations of pain in the clinical setting.
VASCULAR CALCIFICATION AND GROWTH ARREST SPECIFIC PROTEIN 6 LEVELS IN CHRONIC RENAL DISEASE

Introduction: main Growth arrest specific protein 6 (Gas6) is a vitamin K-dependent protein and regulates various processes such as proliferation, cell survival, migration and inflammation. Gas6 is known to protect endothelial cells and vascular smooth muscle cells against apoptosis by inhibiting Bcl-2 induced Caspase 3 activation. The relationship between Gas6 and cardiovascular diseases has been demonstrated in many mouse models and cell cultures. However, there are conflicting reports whether Gas6 levels are increasing or decreasing in human studies of diabetic and/or chronic renal failure. In present study the aim was to examine plasma Gas6 levels and its relation with CIMT and coronary artery calcification score (CACS) in chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients. Methods: Total of 137 patients of which 32 chronic hemodialysis and 105 predialysis patients as well as 73 healthy controls were enrolled in the study. Human Gas6 levels in serum samples were studied by ELISA method. CIMT was measured by ultrasonography. CACS was measured by multislice computed tomography. Results: The mean age was 54.37±16.61 years in dialysis group, 55.20±14.80 years in predialysis group and 53.26±9.04 years in control group. Serum creatinine was 0.78±0.16 mg/dl in the control group and 1.96±1.64 mg/dl in the predialysis and 5.94±1.55 mg/dl in the dialysis group. 24 hours urine protein levels were significally higher in the dialysis group than the predialysis and the control group. CIMT values were similar in predialysis and dialysis groups. These values were significantly higher than control group. Although CACS was higher significant since the distribution range was very wide. Gas6 was 98.84±53.32 ng/mL in the control group and statistically higher than dialysis (63.85±38.92 ng/mL) and predialysis groups (54.96±38.49 ng/mL) (p=0.001). Gas6 levels were lower in diabetic patients than non-diabetics (53.69±35.26 ng/mL, 69.26±47.50 ng/mL, p=0.023, respectively). Negative correlation was detected between Gas6 and age, BMI, CACS, carotid IMT and proteinuria. In the logistic regression analysis, Gas6 remained significantly associated with BMI, CIMT and proteinuria. Conclusion: In our study, a negative correlation of Gas6 with BMI, CACS, CIMT and proteinuria and lower Gas6 levels in diabetic patients support that decreased Gas6 levels in chronic renal failure may have a role in vascular calcification through altered glucose tolerance, chronic inflammation, endothelial dysfunction and increased apoptosis. Our study has an importance because it is the first study showing a relation between Gas6 and proteinuria, CACS and carotid IMT in patients with chronic renal failure.
Blog-Mediated Refl ection for Professional Development : Exploring Themes and Criticality of L 2 Teachers ’ Refl ective Practice

Refl ection is a key component of teacher quality assessment and a venue for professional development. Among many tools for teacher refl ection, keeping blogs as a user-friendly, technology-enhanced tool has recently come to the forefront in teacher education. To contribute to the body of literature on the potentiality of blogs for teacher professional development, this study sought to investigate the use of blogs by Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers to provide a perspective on the themes in their refl ection-on-action and the degree of criticality of their refl ection. To this end, 32 male and female in-service EFL teachers, teaching at diff erent language institutes, voluntarily agreed to post their classroom experiences to a blog over a 3-month period. Content analysis of the refl ection tags resulted in the identifi cation of three main refl ective categories, each including a number of themes: (a) teacher-oriented category (e.g., teachers’ sharing emotions, classroom management, teaching methods and techniques, use of fi rst language [L1], and instructional ethics); (b) learner-oriented category (e.g., learners’ classroom participation, language skills, motivation, and emotions); and (c) contextoriented category (e.g., assessment system, textbooks, classroom facilities, and teachers’ working conditions). Moreover, the levels of refl ection embedded into the tags were explored using a modifi ed version of a refl ection model proposed by Lee (2005). The fi ndings revealed that teachers were more critical (71%) than descriptive (29%) in their refl ections. These fi ndings have implications for teachers’ refl ection and their professional development.
FIXED WING VTOL UAV

Department of Aeronautic, Automotive and Ocean Engineering, School of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia Department of Applied Mechanics and Design, School of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia Article history Received 1 June 2018 Received in revised form 11 June 2018 Accepted 19 November 2018 Published 28 November 2018
A survey on viewpoints of nursing and midwifery students and their clinical instructors at Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery of Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences towards clinical education during 2009-2011

Introduction: Clinical environments play a vital role in nursing and midwifery students' learning. The present study investigates the viewpoints of clinical instructors and nursing and midwifery students of Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences about clinical education status during 2009-2011. Methods: In this cross sectional research data were gathered using a researcher made questionnaire including five domains: educational plan, quality of clinical instructors function, role of clinical professionals in clinical education, educational facilities and space, clinical evaluation and professional satisfaction. The questionnaire was completed by clinical instructors and nursing and midwifery students. Convenient sampling was accomplished. Face validity, content validity and reliability of the questionnaire was assessed and confirmed by test – retest method. Results: Majority of clinical instructors, nursing and midwifery students reported day and evening work shifts more appropriate. Majority of clinical instructors reported the clinical education status pleasant, but 79.8% nursing students and 64.2% midwifery students reported it moderate. Comparing the mean of clinical education status from the viewpoints of clinical instructors didn't show a significant difference in the domain of "the role of the others impressive in clinical education", but there was a significant difference between the nursing and midwifery students in their view points about the domain. Conclusion: Clinical competency is an essential component in providing high quality nursing care, thus the educational planners should continue to evaluate the effectiveness of clinical education. Boosting the clinical learning environment domains such as “successful instructors”, “professional values”, “professional relationship with the members of caring team” and “conflict management” could make the clinical ex perience attractive and assure students’ satisfaction about their professional life.
Configurable Stochastic Analysis Framework for Asynchronous Systems Scientific Students ’ Associations Report

Ensuring the correctness of critical systems – such as safety-critical, distributed and cloud applications – requires the rigorous analysis of the functional and extra-functional properties of the system. A large class of typical quantitative questions regarding dependability and performability are usually addressed by stochastic analysis. Recent critical systems are often distributed/asynchronous, leading to the wellknown phenomenon of state space explosion. The size and complexity of such systems often prevents the success of the analysis due to the high sensitivity to the number of possible behaviors. In addition, temporal characteristics of the components can easily lead to huge computational overhead. Calculation of dependability and performability measures can be reduced to steadystate and transient solutions of Markovian models. Various approaches are known in the literature for these problems differing in the representation of the stochastic behavior of the models or in the applied numerical algorithms. The efficiency of these approaches are influenced by various characteristics of the models, therefore no single best approach is known. The prerequisite of Markovian analysis is the exploration of the state space, i.e. the possible behaviors of the system. Symbolic approaches provide an efficient state space exploration and storage technique, however their application to support the vector operations and index manipulations extensively used by stochastic algorithms is cumbersome. The goal of our work is to introduce a framework that facilitates the analysis of complex, stochastic systems by combining the advantages of symbolic algorithms, compact matrix representations and various numerical algorithms. We propose a fully symbolic method to explore and describe the stochastic behaviors. A new algorithm is introduced to transform the symbolic state space representation into a decomposed linear algebraic representation. This approach allows leveraging existing symbolic techniques, such as the specification of properties with Computational Tree Logic (CTL) expressions. The framework provides configurable stochastic analysis: an approach is introduced to combine the different matrix representations with numerical solution algorithms. Various algorithms are implemented for steady-state reward and sensitivity analysis, transient reward analysis and mean-time-to-first-failure analysis of stochastic models in the Stochastic Petri Net (SPN) based Markov reward model formalism. The analysis tool is integrated into the PetriDotNet modeling application. Benchmarks and industrial case studies are used to evaluate the applicability of our approach.
ASSESSMENT OF GENETIC VARIABILITY IN S 2 MAIZE ( ZEA MAYS L . ) INBRED LINES UNDER STRESS CONDITION

In order to study the effect of drought stress on morphophysiologic characteristics, yield and yield components of 80 S 2 inbred lines of corn (Zea maize L.) along with twelve inbred lines, three composite populations and five checks an experiment was conducted in a lattice square design (10 x 10) with two replications under stress condition during summer season 201314, The results of analyze variance showed that under drought condition, there was a highly significant difference for 17 characters except relative water content at 60 days, relative water content at 90 days and number of kernel rows per cob. High heritability and high genetic advance as per cent mean was noticed for grain yield per plot, bulk cob weight, anthesis to silking interval and grain yield per plant revealed that variation in these characters is largely controlled by heritable factors. indicative of additive gene action. Thus, the heritability estimates will be reliable if accompanied by high genetic advance. Hence, these traits could be used as selection criteria for yield in maize under stress condition.
Pathological changes inducing by S . aureus in immunodeficiency mice immunized with Soluble Culture Filtrate S . aureus Antigens ( SCFAgs ) .

In order to determine the influence of Soluble Culture Filtrate S.aureus Antigens (SCFAgs) on S.aureus infection in Mitomicin c immunosupression mice, seventy four white mice, both sex,7-8 weeks age were divided randomly into five groups.1 st group(n=16 ) was immunized with 0.4ml of S.aureus CFSAgs (concentration of protein( 4.2mg/ml) ,i/p two doses, 2 weeks intervals. 2 nd group(n=16) was injected with mitomycine C ,(1mg/kg B.W) I/p three time /week for 4 weeks. 3 ed group (n=16) was immunized with CFSAgs as 1st group and treated with mitomycin as 2 nd group. 4 th group(n=10) was inoculated with (0.4ml) I/P with1X10 9 CFU/ML of viable virulent. S.aureus and was served as control positive group. 5 th group (n=16) was inoculated with 0.5ml sterile normal saline. Cellular and humoral immune response were recorded at 28-30 day post immunization, skin test and passive heam agglutination test respectively, then all animals of immunized and treatment groups were challenge with S,aureus as control positive group. The results explained that animals treatment with MMC were died during (18) hrs post inoculation with virulent viable S.aureus with very heavy bacterial isolation, animal of control positive group were died at( 24)hrs post infection with heavy bacterial isolation The results revealed that immunization with CFSAgs elicited both humoral and cellular immune responses, the level values of both arms of immune response were lower animal treatment with MMC, Severe pathological lesions were seen in examined organs of control positive group but these lesions are more extensive in animal treatment with MMC. The main lesions in examined organs of these animals are suppurative inflammation ,congestion ,apoptosis and necrosis. We conclusion that MMC induce immunosuppression condition and immunization with CFSAgs can improve the immune responses in the animals that are suffering from immunosuppression.
Risk-return preferences in the pension domain

This paper presents new evidence for the Netherlands on pension preferences and investor autonomy in the pension domain using a representative survey of about 1000 Dutch citizens. Our main conclusions are the following. Risk aversion is domain dependent and highest in the pension domain. The vast majority of respondents favours the currently dominant defined benefit pension system. If offered a combined defined benefit/defined contribution system, the majority would like to have a guaranteed pension income of at least 70% of their net labour income. Self-assessed risk tolerance and financial expertise are important individual explanatory variables of pension attitudes. The average respondent considers himself financially unsophisticated and is reluctant to take control of retirement savings investment, even when offered the possibility to increase expertise. Respondents who have chosen a relatively safe portfolio tend to switch to the riskier median portfolio when they are shown future income streams. This again suggests that many respondents currently lack the skills to have investor autonomy over investment for retirement.
Tumor necrosis factor-α induces MMP-9 expression via p 42 / p 44 MAPK , JNK , and nuclear factor-κ B in A 549 cells

Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), in particular MMP-9, have been shown to be induced by cytokines including tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and contributes to airway inflammation. However, the mechanisms underlying MMP-9 expression induced by TNF-α in human A549 cells remain unclear. Here, we showed that TNF-α induced production of MMP-9 protein and mRNA is determined by zymographic, Western blotting, RT-PCR and ELISA assay, which were attenuated by inhibitors of MEK1/2 (U0126), JNK (SP600125), and NF-κB (helenalin), and transfection with dominant negative mutants of ERK2 (ΔERK) and JNK (ΔJNK), and siRNAs for MEK1, p42 and JNK2. TNF-α-stimulated phosphorylation of p42/p44 MAPK and JNK were attenuated by pretreatment with the inhibitors U0126 and SP600125 or transfection with dominant negative mutants of ΔERK and ΔJNK. Furthermore, the involvement of NF-κB in TNF-α-induced MMP-9 production was consistent with that TNF-α-stimulated degradation of IκB-α and translocation of NF-κB into the nucleus which were blocked by helenalin, but not by U0126 and SP600125, revealed by immunofluorescence staining. The regulation of MMP-9 gene transcription by MAPKs and NF-κB was further confirmed by gene luciferase activity assay. MMP-9 promoter activity was enhanced by TNF-α in A549 cells transfected with wild-type MMP-9Luc, which was inhibited by helenalin, U0126, or SP600125. In contrast, TNF-α-stimulated MMP-9 luciferase activity was totally lost in cells transfected with mutant-NF-κB MMP-9-luc. Moreover, pretreatment with actinomycin D and cycloheximide attenuated TNF-α-induced MMP-9 expression. These results suggest that in A549 cells, phosphorylation of p42/p44 MAPK, JNK, and transactivation of NF-κB are essential for TNF-α-induced MMP-9 gene expression. © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Numerical algorithm for pricing of discrete barrier option in a Black-Scholes model

In this article, we propose a numerical algorithm for computing price of discrete single and double barrier option under the Black–Scholes model. In virtue of some general transformations, the partial differential equations of option pricing in different monitoring dates are converted into simple diffusion equations. The present method is fast compared to alternative numerical methods presented in previous papers.