Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Application of Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a biocontrol agent against Fusarium infection of sugar beet plants

Applicability of Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a biocontrol agent of Fusarium ox- ysporum and as plant growth promoter was investigated. At 5 g L -1 concentration, germination rate of the soaked seeds reached 85.83% in comparison with 54.00% for the untreated ones. Plant growth parameters, chlorophyll contents, TSS and sucrose percentages were also tested. Application of 5 g L-1 of yeast resulted in a reduction of the pre- and post-emergence damping- off 6.67 and 11.67%, respectively. Survival of treated plants increased to 83.33% in comparison with 30.00% for the pots inoculated with the pathogen containing untreated seeds. Linear growth of F. oxysporum was inhibited with 39.52% and 50% by using 5 g L -1 and 6.35 g L -1 of the yeast, respectively.
TRIANNIAL EXPERIENCE WITH HIV-I DETECTION USING IN-HOUSE RT-PCR WITH OTHER CORRELES

A total of 500 referred cases for HIV detection was screened using In-House Real-Time (RT) PCR for their viral load from extracted RNA in our laboratory. Only 136/500 detected positive. The data further revealed the minimum viral load (MVL) was 100 C/ml. in our study cohort. The age groups of both sexes detected for HIV positivity, the viral load ranged from 49700 to 7337902 C/ml. Age groups i.e. 20-40 and 41-60 years were maximally affected with a gender ratio of 2.4:1 in male and females respectively. The CD4/CD8 ratio also remained higher in these age groups. The infection in these groups was correlated with their daily activities and other socio-economic status in males. Thus, in-house quantitative method with RT-PCR detection as one of the suitable techniques for HIV detection which is cost effective to HIV infection for anti-retroviral treatment (ARTS) in many diagnostic laboratories.
WETLAND ASSESSMENT USING UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE (UAV) PHOTOGRAMMETRY

Abstract. The use of Unmanned Arial Vehicle (UAV) photogrammetry is a valuable tool to enhance our understanding of wetlands. Accurate planning derived from this technological advancement allows for more effective management and conservation of wetland areas. This paper presents results of a study that aimed at investigating the use of UAV photogrammetry as a tool to enhance the assessment of wetland ecosystems. The UAV images were collected during a single flight within 2½ hours over a 100 ha area at the Kameelzynkraal farm, Gauteng Province, South Africa. An AKS Y-6 MKII multi-rotor UAV and a digital camera on a motion compensated gimbal mount were utilised for the survey. Twenty ground control points (GCPs) were surveyed using a Trimble GPS to achieve geometrical precision and georeferencing accuracy. Structure-from-Motion (SfM) computer vision techniques were used to derive ultra-high resolution point clouds, orthophotos and 3D models from the multi-view photos. The geometric accuracy of the data based on the 20 GCP’s were 0.018 m for the overall, 0.0025 m for the vertical root mean squared error (RMSE) and an over all root mean square reprojection error of 0.18 pixel. The UAV products were then edited and subsequently analysed, interpreted and key attributes extracted using a selection of tools/ software applications to enhance the wetland assessment. The results exceeded our expectations and provided a valuable and accurate enhancement to the wetland delineation, classification and health assessment which even with detailed field studies would have been difficult to achieve.
Dispute Resolution and the Vanishing Trial: Comparing Federal Government Litigation and ADR Outcomes

This study compares litigation and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in civil cases handled by Assistant United States Attorneys (AUSAs) during the period 1995 to 1998. The findings indicate that that use of ADR can be an efficient and effective procedural solution to the problems of time and cost in the justice system without sacrificing the quality of macrojustice. When ADR was used, 65% of cases settled (only 29% of cases settled when it was not used). Significantly more cases settled when ADR was voluntary than when it was mandatory (71% vs. 50%), and tort cases settled with more frequency than employment discrimination cases (73% vs. 60%). When using ADR, AUSAs subjectively estimated that the process saved significant time and money. AUSAs spent an average of $869 in neutral fees and estimated that the process saved $10,735 in litigation expenses per case. AUSAs spent an average of 12 hours preparing for ADR and 7 hours in the ADR process per case, which they estimated saved 88 hours of staff time and 6 months of litigation time per case. Analyses of various macrojustice outcomes show that ADR outcomes were not significantly different from litigated outcomes, indicating that the process was neutral, favoring neither private parties nor the government. While these statistics are descriptive, a final analysis shows that the earlier a case is referred to ADR, the shorter its time to disposition. In sum, the study provides a better picture of how ADR is used by the government in federal court cases, and suggests that ADR has the potential to improve dispute processing without sacrificing the quality of justice.
Polymorphisms in IL 4 and IL 4 RA Confer Susceptibility to Asthma

1 Immunogenetic Laboratory, Department of Immunology, School of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran 2 Molecular Immunology Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran 3 Department of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Children’s Medical Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran 4 Pediatrics Center of Excellence, Children’s Medical Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran 5 Growth and Development Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods in investigating risk factors for lost to follow-up for tuberculosis treatment in Japan – Are physicians and nurses at a particular risk?

Background The treatment success rate of pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) patients aged 64 years and below in Japan, a tuberculosis (TB) middle-burden country with a notification of 13.9 per 100,000 populations in 2016, has been fluctuating around 70% for some years. In order to improve treatment outcome, it is critical to address those lost to follow-up (LTFU). The objective of the study therefore was to describe the characteristics of, and analyze the risk factors for those LTFU among pulmonary TB patients aged between 15 and 64, and discuss policy implications. Methods The study used a mixed method of quantitative and qualitative approach, and was conducted in two phases. The first involved analysis of cohort data from the national TB surveillance of PTB patients newly notified between 1 January 2006 and 31 December 2015. The second phase involved focus group (FGD) discussions with public health nurses, who are responsible for supporting TB patients’ adherence to medication, on the possible reasons why some patients become lost to follow-up. Results Analysis of the surveillance data suggested that among all patients, positive sputum smear (adjusted odds ratio, [aOR] 0.52, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.47–0.58) and cavitary lesion on chest x-ray (aOR 0.79, 95%CI 0.72–0.85) decreased the risk, while not requiring hospitalization increased the risk of LTFU (aOR 1.46, 95%CI 1.33–1.60). Among females, being a physician (aOR 2.07 95%CI 1.23–3.48) and nurse (aOR 1.18, 95%CI 1.91–1.37) were identified as additional risk factors for LTFU. The analysis of focus group discussions revealed three possible themes which may be useful in understanding why nurses and physicians were at a higher risk of becoming LTFU–firstly, the possibility that physicians and nurses were finding it difficult to make medication taking a routine, secondly, their low risk perception towards TB is affecting their adherence behavior, and thirdly, their unwillingness to accept DOTS was increasing their risk of becoming LTFU. Conclusions The analysis of surveillance data and FGD transcripts indicated that patient education for those starting their treatment as an outpatient, and establishing DOTS that is both acceptable and realistic to physicians and nurses, may be two issues which need to be addressed urgently.
Title Human Dendritic Cells Activated via Dectin-1 Are Efficient at Priming Th 17 , Cytotoxic CD 8 T and B Cell Responses

Background: Dendritic cells capture antigens through PRRs and modulate adaptive immune responses. The type of adaptive immune T cell response generated is dependent upon the type of PRR activated by the microbes. Dectin-1 is a Ctype lectin receptor present on dendritic cells. Methodology/Principal Findings: Here we show that selective dectin-1 agonist Curdlan can activate human DCs and induce the secretion of large amounts of IL-23, IL-1b, IL-6 and low levels of IL-12p70 as determined by ELISA. The Curdlanstimulated DCs are efficient at priming naı̈ve CD4 cells to differentiate into Th17 and Th1 cells. Furthermore, these CD4 T cells induce differentiation of B cells to secrete IgG and IgA. In addition, Curdlan-stimulated DCs promote the expansion and differentiation of Granzyme and perforin expressing cytotoxic T lymphocyte that display high cytolytic activity against target tumor cells in vitro. Conclusions/Significance: These data demonstrate that DCs stimulated through Dectin-1 can generate efficient Th, CTL and B cell responses and can therefore be used as effective mucosal and systemic adjuvants in humans. Citation: Agrawal S, Gupta S, Agrawal A (2010) Human Dendritic Cells Activated via Dectin-1 Are Efficient at Priming Th17, Cytotoxic CD8 T and B Cell Responses. PLoS ONE 5(10): e13418. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0013418 Editor: Fu-Sheng Wang, Beijing Institute of Infectious Diseases, China Received April 15, 2010; Accepted September 18, 2010; Published October 18, 2010 Copyright: 2010 Agrawal et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This study is supported by a New Scholar grant from the Ellison Medical Foundation (www.ellisonfoundation.org.) The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: aagrawal@uci.edu
Can Tests Based on Option Hedging Errors Correctly Identify Volatility Risk Premia?

This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the properties of popular tests for the existence and the sign of the market price of volatility risk. These tests are frequently based on the fact that for some option pricing models under continuous hedging the sign of the market price of volatility risk coincides with the sign of the mean hedging error. Empirically, however, these tests suffer from both discretization error and model mis-specification. We show that these two problems may cause the test to be either no longer able to detect additional priced risk factors or to be unable to identify the sign of their market prices of risk correctly. Our analysis is performed for the model of Black and Scholes (1973) (BS) and the stochastic volatility (SV) model of Heston (1993). In the model of BS, the expected hedging error for a discrete hedge is positive, leading to the wrong conclusion that the stock is not the only priced risk factor. In the model of Heston, the expected hedging error for a hedge in discrete time is positive when the true market price of volatility risk is zero, leading to the wrong conclusion that the market price of volatility risk is positive. If we further introduce model mis-specification by using the BS delta in a Heston world we find that the mean hedging error also depends on the slope of the implied volatility curve and on the equity risk premium. Under parameter scenarios which are similar to those reported in many empirical studies the test statistics tend to be biased upwards. The test often does not detect negative volatility risk premia, or it signals a positive risk premium when it is truly zero. The properties of this test furthermore strongly depend on the location of current volatility relative to its long-term mean, and on the degree of moneyness of the option. As a consequence tests reported in the literature may suffer from the problem that in a time-series framework the researcher cannot draw the hedging errors from the same distribution repeatedly. This implies that there is no guarantee that the empirically computed t-statistic has the assumed distribution.
Increasing Student Engagement in Higher Education Using a Context-Aware Q&A Teaching Framework

Modeling in Software Engineering is a complex task which includes interaction and discussion. Often multiple iterations are needed to end up with a satisfying design to handle given problems like complexity or change. This behavior can also be seen in education in software engineering, where learners tend to iterate over their models after having multiple discussions with their instructors or peers about possible solutions. This is an important part of the learning process, however, it is increasingly harder to implement for large scale on campus courses due to high student to lecturer ratios. One of the biggest problems is that lecturers are not able to allocate their time during class to support all students equally. This issue leads to new teaching methodologies and automated or semi-automated tools to support in-class interaction of students. However, these tools are lacking an automated mapping between questions asked and the teaching context provided. This context has to be inserted manually or is implicitly available during the lecture, however is lost after the lecture is over. In this paper we describe the adaption of a lecture-style instruction and the introduction of a context-aware Q&A teaching framework to increase student interaction by parallelizing it with content delivery. We achieve this while also lowering barriers for students to participate, even in multi-classroom setups. The stated approach also allows the creation of a knowledge repository which persists student interaction including its teaching context. This repository can be used by students to prepare for upcoming exams as well as by instructors to optimize their teaching content. Using our approach, we are able to show that there is an increase in student participation, leading to increased student examination performance for active students.
Chemical Composition and Physicochemical Analysis of Matured Stems of Opuntia dillenii Grown in Nigeria

This study investigated the chemical composition and physiochemical properties of matured stems of Opuntia dillenii grown in Nigeria in accordance with standard procedures. The proximate analysis revealed moisture content (11.20%), crude protein (11.60%), carbohydrate content (64%) while the ash (3.33%), fat (4.42%) and crude fibre content (4.40%) were low. The phytochemical screening revealed that saponin (118.08±0.57µg/ml) was the most concentrated while oxalate and phytate had low concentrations. The physiochemical assessment of the matured stem oil demonstrated high peroxide value, acid value and low iodine value. The fatty acid analysis revealed high concentrations of myristic acid (41.66%) followed by linoleic acid (13.95%), heptadecanoic acid (11.32%) and stearic acid (9.25%). Unsaturated fatty acids such as oleic acid and linolenic acid were not detected. The study demonstrated that the matured stems of Opuntia dillenii contained nutrients that are nutritionally beneficial to human health and substantial amount of saponins that could be employed in the confectionaries and cosmetic sectors, however the fatty acid analysis demonstrated that these matured stems may not be rich in unsaturated fatty acids while the matured stem oil may be susceptible to auto oxidation and possess a low shelf life.
Non-Native Suckermouth Armored Catfishes in Florida: Description of Nest Borrows and Burrow Colonies with Assessment of Shoreline Conditions

Abstract : Non-native populations of the Neotropical family Loricariidae, the suckermouth armored catfishes, have been introduced and become established in many warm-climate regions of the world, including parts of the United States (e.g., Florida and Texas). In Florida, the most common loricariid catfishes are members of the genus Pterygoplichthys. Over the past 20 years these catfishes have invaded most inland drainages in the central and southern parts of the Florida peninsula. In certain rivers, canals, and lakes, they are widespread and abundant, accounting for a large proportion of the total fish biomass. Adult Pterygoplichthys attain sizes well over 40 cm long. In both their native and introduced ranges, Pterygoplichthys and certain other loricariid catfishes excavate and maintain burrows in shoreline slopes for use as spawning and nesting sites. The burrows are reportedly excavated and maintained by adult males. In larger reaches of some waterways, burrows created by Pterygoplichthys number in the hundreds or even thousands. The burrows are thought to cause or exacerbate bank erosion. However, there are no quantitative data available to adequately evaluate possible associations between presence and abundance of burrows and bank instability. The goal of the present study was to obtain baseline information on the burrows of Pterygoplichthys in Florida and to provide a preliminary assessment of shoreline conditions, including factors associated with bank stability and erosion. Specific objectives: 1) survey portions of selected rivers and canals in peninsular Florida to determine the number and location of loricariid catfish nest burrows; 2) measure and characterize burrow structures and surrounding habitats; 3) identify shoreline features correlated with the presence of burrows; and 4) categorize bank condition and erosion.
Classification of red blood cell shapes in flow using outlier tolerant machine learning

The manual evaluation, classification and counting of biological objects demands for an enormous expenditure of time and subjective human input may be a source of error. Investigating the shape of red blood cells (RBCs) in microcapillary Poiseuille flow, we overcome this drawback by introducing a convolutional neural regression network for an automatic, outlier tolerant shape classification. From our experiments we expect two stable geometries: the so-called ‘slipper’ and ‘croissant’ shapes depending on the prevailing flow conditions and the cell-intrinsic parameters. Whereas croissants mostly occur at low shear rates, slippers evolve at higher flow velocities. With our method, we are able to find the transition point between both ‘phases’ of stable shapes which is of high interest to ensuing theoretical studies and numerical simulations. Using statistically based thresholds, from our data, we obtain so-called phase diagrams which are compared to manual evaluations. Prospectively, our concept allows us to perform objective analyses of measurements for a variety of flow conditions and to receive comparable results. Moreover, the proposed procedure enables unbiased studies on the influence of drugs on flow properties of single RBCs and the resulting macroscopic change of the flow behavior of whole blood.
Quantitative structure e activity relationship for the oxidation of aromatic organic contaminants in water by TAML / H 2 O 2

Tetra-amido macrocyclic ligand (TAML) activator is a functional analog of peroxidase enzymes, which activates hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) to form high valence iron-oxo complexes that selectively degrade persistent aromatic organic contaminants (ACs) in water. Here, we develop quantitative structure eactivity relationship (QSAR) models based on measured pseudo first-order kinetic rate coefficients (kobs) of 29 ACs (e.g., phenols and pharmaceuticals) oxidized by TAML/H2O2 at neutral and basic pH values to gain mechanistic insight on the selectivity and pH dependence of TAML/H2O2 systems. These QSAR models infer that electron donating ability (EHOMO) is the most important AC characteristic for TAML/H2O2 oxidation, pointing to a rate-limiting single-electron transfer (SET) mechanism. Oxidation rates at pH 7 also depend on AC reactive indices such as f min and qH þ, which respectively represent propensity for electrophilic attack and the most positive net atomic charge on hydrogen atoms. At pH 10, TAML/H2O2 is more reactive towards ACs with a lower hydrogen to carbon atoms ratio (#H:C), suggesting the significance of hydrogen atom abstraction. In addition, ln kobs of 14 monosubstituted phenols is negatively correlated with Hammett constants (s) and exhibits similar sensitivity to substituent effects as horseradish peroxidase. Although accurately predicting degradation rates of specific ACs in complex wastewater matrices could be difficult, these QSAR models are statistically robust and help predict both relative degradability and reaction mechanism for TAML/H2O2-based treatment processes. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Maternal adversity and ecological stressors in natural populations: the role of stress axis programming in individuals, with implications for populations and communities

Summary 1. Biomedical researchers have long appreciated that maternal stressors can induce preparative and adaptive programming in offspring via exposure to maternal Glucocorticoids (GCs). However, few ecologists are aware of the capacity for maternal GC exposure to translate ecological and environmental stressors into preparative and adaptive programmed offspring responses in free-living systems. We review a growing body of experimental work indicating that circulating maternal GCs link ecological stressors with adaptive programming of the stress axis. Throughout, we emphasise that natural and human-induced ecological stressors play a fundamental role in programming the capacity of individuals, populations and communities to respond to both predictable and unpredictable ecological change via translating maternal adversity into responsive programming of the vertebrate stress axis. 2. To encourage rigorous testing of this paradigm in a broad range of ecological systems, we introduce the principal extrinsic stressors with a recognised potential to alter maternal circulating GC levels. We then review from the biomedical literature regarding the underlying physiological and epigenetic mechanisms of stress-induced programming of individual phenotypes to predict how variation in ecological stressors can produce individual variation in stress axis management. 3. To appreciate the potential evolutionary inertia (i.e. adaptive value) of maternally programmed individual variation, we review key recent studies in free-living systems that test its adaptive function, and then discuss how variation in stress-axis programming may scale up to influence populations and ecological communities. 4. Given the huge potential of this field, it is encouraging that ecologists are beginning to examine how and why maternal GCs translate ecological and environmental stressors into preparative stress axis programming in free-living systems.