Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Morinda citrifolia L. (noni) improves athlete endurance: Its mechanisms of action

The ability of noni juice to improve endurance in athletes was evaluated clinically. A placebo-controlled clinical trial with TAHITIAN NONI® Juice (TNJ) was conducted in 40 highly-trained athletes. Drinking 100 mL of TNJ twice daily increased endurance (time-to-fatigue) by 21%, and improved antioxidant status as measured by a 25% decrease in blood chemiluminescence. Chemical analyses by multiple laboratories and drug-urine screening of human volunteers reveal that TNJ does not contain any illegal drugs or substances prohibited by the World Anti-doping Agency. The collective results indicate that TNJ improves endurance via potent antioxidant effects. The results warrant human clinical trials to assess the dosages and the feasibility of using TNJ by athletes participating in strenuous sports such as football, rugby, ice hockey, soccer and basketball. Key words: Noni, Morinda citrifolia, antioxidant, free radicals, endurance.
The Historical Roots of Corruption: State Building, Economic Inequality, and Mass Education

We show a link between levels of mass education in 1870 and corruption levels in 2010 for 78 countries that remains strong when controlling for change in the level of education, GDP/ capita, and democratic governance. A theoretical model for the existence of a causal mechanism between universal education and control of corruption is presented. Early introduction of universal education is linked to levels of economic equality in the late 19th and early 20st centuries and to efforts to increase state capacity. First, societies with more equal education gave citizens more opportunities and power for opposing corruption. Secondly, the need for increased state capacity was a strong motivation for the introduction of universal education in many countries. In addition to the statistical analyses, historical evidence show that strong states provided more education to their publics and that such states were more common where economic disparities were initially smaller.
Neutrophil to Lymphocyte Ratio and Mean Platelet Volume as Inflammatory Indicators in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Nephritis.

Objectives This study aims to evaluate the role of neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and mean platelet volume (MPV) as activation and inflammatory markers in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients with nephritis. Patients and methods A total of 108 SLE patients (8 males, 100 females; mean age 35.3±10.2 years; range 16 to 64 years) including 78 patients with renal involvement (8 males, 70 females; mean age 33.9±10.6 years; range 16 to 64 years) (SLEn+ group) and 30 patients without renal involvement (30 females; mean age 39.1±8.2 years; range 22 to 55 years) (SLEn- group) were included in this retrospective study. All patients' clinical characteristics and laboratory data which include erythrocyte sedimentation rate, C-reactive protein, white blood counts, neutrophil counts, lymphocyte counts, platelet counts, and MPV levels were obtained from medical records. The laboratory data at the highest proteinuria periods of the patients with renal involvement were recorded. Results Mean MPV (SLEn+ =9.1±2.2, SLEn- =7.9±1.2, p=0.001) and NLR (SLEn+ =5.9±5.9, SLEn- =2.6±2.5, p<0.001) values were significantly higher in lupus nephritis group. Besides, a positive correlation between NLR and C-reactive protein was found in lupus nephritis group (r=1.97, p=0.045). Based on receiver operating characteristic curve with area under the curve of 0.76, cutoff NLR value of 1.93 had 83% sensitivity and 54% specificity [95% confidence interval, 0.66-0.85] in differentiating SLE patients with or without nephritis. Conclusion Neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio and MPV may be discriminative for lupus nephritis. Also, NLR may be a predictor of lupus nephritis. Both MPV and NLR values may be affected by a great number of factors; therefore, further prospective studies are needed to evaluate the use of these parameters in SLE.
Autophagy: Dichotomy in the Host Response-Therapy in Cáncer

A hallmarik feature of autopaghy, defined as an evolutionary catabolic lysosomal process, under a program core of 32 Atg proteins, each with a function in the multi step auto phogos me formation, and a elegant and fine tuned regulatory mechanism; is the dichotomy in the host response in cell survival or cell death. As a protective and prosurvival meehanism contribute to mantain homeostasis [1,2], differentiation and normal tissue cell development, function like a housekeeping and control quality of any insult htat threaten an organism. However, as an hyperactivated state (internal or external stimulus-insult) of self eating can cause serious damage cell/injury, that lastly kill the cell [3,4]. These two sides of the coin in which down stream signaling affects that for one side contibute to the elimination of waster disposal products of the metabolism but for other is a source of nutrients in tumor growth constitute the focus of current and intense research in cáncer therapy.
Hedging vs. speculative pressures on commodity futures returns

This study introduces a non linear model for commodity futures prices which accounts for pressures due to hedging and speculative activities. The linkage with the corresponding spot market is considered assuming that a long term equilibrium relationship holds between futures and spot pricing. Over the 1990-2010 time period, a dynamic interaction between spot and futures returns in five commodity markets (copper, cotton, oil, silver, and soybeans) is empirically validated. An error correction relationship for the cash returns and a non linear parameterization of the corresponding futures returns are combined with a bivariate CCC-GARCH representation of the conditional variances. Hedgers and speculators are contemporaneously at work in the futures markets, the role of the latter being far from negligible. In order to capture the consequences of the growing impact of financial flows on commodity market pricing, a two-state regime switching model for futures returns is developed. The empirical findings indicate that hedging and speculative behavior change across the two regimes, which we associate with low and high return volatility, according to a distinctive pattern, which is not homogeneous across commodities.
Opinions Power Opinions: Joint Link and Interaction Polarity Predictions in Signed Networks

Social media has been widely adopted by online users to share their opinions. Among users in signed networks, two types of opinions can be expressed. They can directly specify opinions to others via establishing positive or negative links; and they also can give opinions to content generated by others via a variety of social interactions such as commenting and rating. Intuitively these two types of opinions should be related. For example, users are likely to give positive (or negative) opinions to content from those with positive (or negative) links; and users tend to create positive (or negative) links with those that they frequently positively (or negatively) interact with. Therefore we can leverage one type of opinions to power the other. Meanwhile, they can enrich each other that can help mitigate the data sparsity and cold-start problems in the corresponding predictive tasks - link and interaction polarity predictions, respectively. In this paper, we investigate the problem of joint link and interaction polarity predictions in signed networks. We first understand the correlation between these two types of opinions; and then propose a framework that can predict signed links and the polarities of interactions simultaneously. The experimental results on a real-world signed network demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.
Investigating Software Detection Methods

A defective module not only increases the development time and development cost but also increases the maintenance time and maintenance cost. According to the available literature survey, many systems failed due to schedule and time budget overruns. Therefore a software defect detection technique is needed to identify those software modules that are very likely to include defects and thereby improves the software quality by contributing in the efficient removal software defects. The main objective of the paper is to help software developers in identifying the software defects based on the various software metrics using various classification and machine learning techniques. In this paper, we are performing empirical classification comparison on 5 real world datasets. Keywords— Software defect detection, Clustering Techniques, Machine Learning Techniques, Software Metrics
A Two‐Part Strategy for Using Genomic Selection to Develop Inbred Lines

We propose a strategy for implementing genomic selection in plant breeding programs for developing inbred lines that reorganizes traditional breeding programs into two distinct components. These components are: (i) a population improvement component to develop improved germplasm through rapid recurrent selection and (ii) a product development component to identify new inbred varieties or parents for hybrids using traditional breeding program designs. Stochastic simulations of entire breeding programs over 40 yr were used to evaluate the effectiveness of this strategy relative to a conventional program without genomic selection and programs using three standard strategies of implementing genomic selection. Cost effectiveness was measured by constraining all programs to approximately equal annual operating costs and directly comparing each program’s overall performance. Programs using the two-part strategy generated between 2.36 and 2.47 times more genetic gain than the conventional program and between 1.31 and 1.46 times more genetic gain than the best performing standard genomic selection strategy. These results indicate that the two-part strategy is a cost-effective strategy for implementing genomic selection in plant breeding programs. R.C. Gaynor, G. Gorjanc, and J.M. Hickey, Roslin Institute and Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, Univ. of Edinburgh, Easter Bush Research Center, Midlothian EH25 9RG, UK; A.R. Bentley, E.S. Ober, P. Howell, R. Jackson, and I.J. Mackay, John Bingham Lab. , NIAB, Huntingdon Road, Cambridge, CB3 0LE, UK. Received 5 Sep. 2016. Accepted 25 May 2017. *Corresponding author ( john. hickey@roslin.ed.ac.uk). Assigned to Associate Editor Aaron Lorenz. Abbreviations: 2Part, two-part program with PYT genomic selection; 2Part+H, two-part program with headrow genomic selection; AYT, advanced yield trial; CI, confidence interval; Conv, conventional breeding program; Conv GS, conventional program with genomic selection; EYT, elite yield trial; G ́ Y, genotype-by-year interaction; Head GS, headrow genomic selection program; PYT, preliminary yield trial; PYT GS, preliminary yield trial genomic selection program; QTN, quantitative trait nucleotides; SNP, single nucleotide polymorphism. Published in Crop Sci. 56:2372–2386 (2016). doi: 10.2135/cropsci2016.09. 0742 © Crop Science Society of America | 5585 Guilford Rd., Madison, WI 53711 USA This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Published online August 3, 2017
Biosynthesis of zirconia nanoparticles using the fungus Fusarium oxysporum

Zirconia nanoparticles may be produced by challenging the fungus Fusarium oxysporum with aqueous ZrF62− anions; extra-cellular protein-mediated hydrolysis of the anionic complexes results in the facile room temperature synthesis of nanocrystalline zirconia. Extracellular hydrolysis of the metal anions by cationic proteins of molecular weight around 24 to 28 kDa, which are rather similar in nature to silicatein, is shown to be responsible for the synthesis of zirconia nanoparticles, opening up the exciting possibility of large-scale biological synthesis of technologically important oxide materials.
HEIGHT PARTITION EFFECT ON COMBINED MIXED CONVECTION AND SURFACE RADIATION IN A VENTED RECTANGULAR CAVITY

The present paper reports numerical results of mixed convection and surface radiation within a horizontal ventilated cavity heated from below and provided with an adiabatic thin partition on the heated surface. Air, a radiatively transparent medium, is considered to be the cooling fluid. The effect of the governing parameters, which are the Reynolds number, 200 Re 5000, the relative height of the baffle, 0 Hb 0.75, and the emissivity of the walls, 0 1, on the fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics is studied in detail. The maximum and mean temperatures, the ratio, QE/QL, of the heat quantities leaving the cavity through the exit, QE, and through the left vertical cold side, QL, are also presented versus the above controlling parameters.
Comparative Research of Repair Characteristics of Four Types of SkinInjuries in Rabbits

In order to investigate the biomechanics of four types of skin injuries caused by different etiological factors, and to explore the healing characteristics of various injuries, twenty rabbits were randomly assigned into four experimental groups (n=5). Four types of injuries were made on the dorsum of the rabbits. Blood glucose concentrations were measured on day 0, 1 and 3. Tensile strength was measured using tensiometer. Body weights of the rabbits with excision skin wounds were 7.81% less on day 10 compared to that before wounding. Blood glucose concentrations on day 1 rose from 24.54% to 28.92%, with the maximum for frostbite and minimum for burn wound rabbits (P? 0.05). Tensile strengths of frostbite rabbits were significantly greater than those of the burn rabbits (P? 0.05). Daily mean healing velocities of the excision wounds, cauterization burns, scalds and frostbites were 0.18±0.10, 0.34±0.08, 0.33±0.11 and 0.42±0.16 cm2/d, respectively. Healing velocity in case of excised wounds was less than that of frostbites (P? 0.05). Meanwhile, healing velocities in burns and scald groups were faster than that in the excision wound group (P? 0.05). It was concluded that injuries could result in an increase in the blood glucose level. The excision skin wound obviously affected the rabbits’ growth and reduced healing velocity.
On the Impact of Illumination-Invariant Image Pre-transformation for Contemporary Automotive Semantic Scene Understanding

Illumination changes in outdoor environments under non-ideal weather conditions have a negative impact on automotive scene understanding and segmentation performance. In this paper, we present an evaluation of illuminationinvariant image transforms applied to this application domain. We compare four recent transforms for illumination invariant image representation, individually and with colour hybrid images, to show that despite assumptions to contrary such invariant pre-processing can improve the state of the art in scene understanding performance. In addition, we propose a robust approach based on using an illumination-invariant image representation, combined with the chromatic component of a perceptual colour-space to improve contemporary automotive scene understanding and segmentation. By using an illumination invariant pre-process, to reduce the impact of environmental illumination changes, we show that the performance of deep convolutional neural network based scene understanding and segmentation can yet be further improved. This illuminating result enforces the need for invariant (unbiased) training sets within such deep network training and shows that even a welltrained network may still not offer truly optimal performance (if we ignore any prior data transforms attributable to a priori insight). Our approach is demonstrated over a range of example imagery where we show a notable improvement in performance using pre-processed, illumination invariant, automotive scene imagery.
Them and Us : Neanderthal predation and the bottleneck speciation of modern humans

Based on a reassessment of Neanderthal behavioural ecology it is argued argues that the emergence of behaviourally modern humans was the consequence of systemic Neanderthal predation of Middle Paleolithic humans in the East Mediterranean Levant between 100 and 45 thousand years BP. ‘Neanderthal predation theory’ proposes intraguild predation, sexual predation, hybridisation, lethal raiding and coalitionary killing gradualistically reduced the Levantine human population, resulting in a population bottleneck <50 Kya and precipitating the selection of anti-Neanderthal adaptations. Sexual predation generated robust selection pressure for an alternate human mating system based on, private copulation, concealed ovulation, menstrual synchrony, habitual washing, scent concealment, mate guarding, enforced female fidelity, incest avoidance and long-term pair bonding. Simultaneously, intraguild predation, lethal raiding and coalitionary killing generated selection pressure for strategic adaptations, including cognitive fluidity, male aggression, language capacity, creativity, increased athleticism, enhanced semantic memory, group loyalty, male risk-taking, capacity to form strategic coalitions, guile, conjectural reasoning and manual dexterity. Nascent fully modern human phenotypes were fixed during the population bottleneck by genetic drift and dispersed via global migrations. The new antiNeanderthal species Homo sapiens sapiens agonistically replaced Neanderthals and Neanderthal-human hybrids, firstly in the Levant, then progressively throughout Europe and
Interactive comment on “The imprint of surface fluxes and transport on variations in total column carbon dioxide” by G. Keppel-Aleks et al

The authors have examined the meridional gradients in CO2 column abundances, estimated from ground-based remote sensing measurements, to assess the constraints that these data may provide on terrestrial sources and sinks of CO2. The CO2 column data from the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) are new and the analysis presented in the manuscript provides an understanding of the scales on which variations in the CO2 surface fluxes are manifested the data. The manuscript also provides insight as to how we can exploit this information to improve flux esti-
Diet of the harbour seal Phoca vitulina: implication for the flatfish nursery in the Bay of Somme (English Channel, France)

Changes in marine species abundance can impact ecosystems’ stability and sustainability of fisheries. In the eastern Atlantic Ocean, harbour seals (Phoca vitulina ) are top predator occupying highest trophic level in coastal marine food webs. Although, the overall European population decline, harbour seals have increased dramatically since the 1990’s at the southern limit of their European distribution along the French coast of the English Channel. However, little is known about the feeding habits of the expanding peripheral populations limiting the assessment of the role and the impact of this predator in these coastal ecosystems. Here, we investigated the sex-specific diet of harbour seals during summer in the Bay of Somme, the largest colony in the English Channel. We collected 91 faecal samples from haul-out sites mainly used by harbour seal but also by few grey seals. Molecular methods have been used to discard grey seal samples and differentiate gender. Collectively, the 86 faecal samples of harbour seals contained the remains of 3327 prey belonging to at least 13 fish species, and represented ~109 kg of consumed fish (of which 85% were soles and plaices). Most of the fish consumed were juvenile and small flatfish (Buglossidium luteum, Microchirus variegatus, Solea vulgaris , Pegusa lascaris, Pleuronectes platessa and Platichthys flesus ). Hard-part identification further showed a similar diet between the sexes in terms of primary prey consumed, but a greater diversity of preys in the male diet. The dependence of harbour seals on flatfish has not been reported elsewhere and has significant implications for the sustainability of the important flatfish nursery in the Bay of Somme. Consumption estimation and ecosystem modelling are now required to provide robust assessment of the effect of harbour seal predation on population dynamics of the flatfish nursery, on ecosystem of the Bay of Biscay at-large, and finally on interactions with fisheries.
INVESTIGATION OF SCALE EFFECTS IN HARD ROCKS

Rock and rock masses present a variation of mechanical properties when the tested volume changes. Usual approaches for estimating rock mass properties do not really consider volume change. To investigate the scale effects on rock strength and the deformation modulus, core samples with different size were collected in an underground mine and tested in uniaxial compression. In situ dilatometer measurements were also performed to evaluate the deformation modulus. The results showed a decrease in strength and of the deformation modulus when the tested specimen size increased. The results also highlight that the usual approaches to estimate rock mass properties from those of intact rock samples can overestimate the strength and deformation modulus particularly for a rock masses with few or no joints. RÉSUMÉ Les roches et massifs rocheux présentent une variation des propriétés mécaniques lorsque le volume impliqué varie. Les approches usuelles pour extrapoler les propriétés du massif rocheux ne considèrent pas vraiment les variations de volume. Pour étudier les effets d’échelle sur la résistance et le module de déformation, différentes dimensions d’échantillons ont été forées dans une mine souterraine et utilisées pour préparer des éprouvettes testées en compression uniaxiale. Des mesures à l’aide d’un dilatomètre ont également été réalisées in situ pour évaluer le module de déformation. Les résultats ont montré une réduction de la résistance et du module de déformation avec l’augmentation du volume des éprouvettes. Les résultats indiquent également que les approches usuelles pour estimer les propriétés du massif rocheux à partir des propriétés des roches intactes peuvent surestimer la résistance et le module de déformation surtout pour les massifs présentant peu ou pas de discontinuités géologiques.