Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of antidiabetic activity of Irvingia gabonensis (Aubry-Lecomte ex O'Rorke) leaf and bark in alloxan induced diabetic rats

The study aimed to evaluate the antidiabetic effect of Irvingia gabonensis leaf and bark extracts on alloxan induced diabetic rats. Forty-four healthy rats were used in the experiment; they were grouped into eight groups. Alloxan was injected intraperitoneally and increase in the blood sugar level was confirmed after three days with glucometer (AccuCheck). The aqueous and ethanolic extracts of both leaf and bark at 150 and 250 mg/kg were orally administered daily for 16 days. Blood sugar level and body weight of each group were monitored and haematological parameters determined at the end of the experiment. Diabetic groups to which aqueous leaf extract at doses of 150 mg/l and 250 mg/l were administered showed significant decrease in blood sugar level from 463.50±29.32 and 381.33±39.77 to 103.50±4.50 and 97.00±2.00 respectively, compared to the positive group treated with glibenclamide, 468.67±30.82 to 86.67±2.73 (P<0.05). The body weight showed significant increased after the 8th day in group treated with aqueous leaf extract at dose of 150 mg/l and 250mg/l (191.25±16.84 to 207.7±37.90 and 147.35±0.85 to 150.60±1.20) when compared to the positive control group (164.07±5.76 to 171.57±4.81) at P<0.05. Aqueous extracts of leaf and bark of Irvingia gabonensis had more anti-diabetic activity than the ethanolic extracts. They also improved the haematological indices of the treated animals.
Effects of Whole-Body Vibration and High-Impact Aerobic Training on Bone Metabolism and Body Balance in Premenopausal Women

Purpose Whole-body vibration (WBV) is new type of exercise that is being increasingly performed to prevent bone fractures and osteoporosis in frail people. Whether WBV plays an important role in positive skeletal responses of premenopausal women is controversial. The aim of this study was to determine the effects of 6 months of supervised WBV and high-impact aerobics (HIA) on bone metabolism and body balance in pre-menopausal women. Methods Sixty-seven eligible premenopausal women were stratified into three groups: the WBV training group (n = 23), HIA training group (n = 22), and control group (n = 22). The subjects in both training groups participated in a supervised training program involving three sets of 3-minute exercise sessions three times a week for 6 months. The WBV group received vibration in a static standing position. The HIA group jumped rope. Bone-related factors and body balance were compared at baseline and 6-month intervals. Results Comparison of the percent changes of the variables showed that WBV and HIA at the stimulus level of the current study had no superior effect on the bone metabolism of healthy premenopausal women compared with controls. However, comparison of the absolute changes between baseline and the 6-month intervention showed a couple of positive findings in all groups. Conclusions Our data suggest that higher exposures of isolated WBV than those used in the current study or WBV plus various types of HIA training might be needed to improve the bone metabolism and body balance in premenopausal women.
Perceptions of Social Responsibility of Prominent Fast Food Restaurants

In this study, U.S. resident’s perceptions of social responsibility of prominent fast food restaurants were investigated. A survey conducted in April 2015 collected information from a sample targeted to be representative of the U.S. population. In total, 302 completed participant’s responses were analyzed (n = 302). Using a best-worst choice experiment question, participant’s choices for “most” and “least” socially responsible fast food restaurants were analyzed, resulting in individual’s relative perceptions of social responsibility amongst the restaurants studied. Results indicate that of the fast food restaurants studied, Panera Bread was perceived to be the most socially responsible restaurant, followed by Subway and Chick-fil-A. In contrast, McDonald’s, KFC, and Taco Bell were perceived to be the least socially responsible of the fast food restaurants studied. Additionally, relationships amongst participant’s perceptions of social responsibility in fast food, demographic factors, consumption practices, and knowledge of fast food business practices were analyzed. Significant relationships were found amongst “being female” and “self-reported knowledge of fast food business practices” with “perceptions of the social responsibility of fast food restaurants”.
Supercritical Fluid Extraction of Quinones from Compost for Microbial Community Analysis

Supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) was used to extract quinones from compost to monitor the microbial community dynamics during composting. The 0.3 g of dried compost was extracted using 3 mL min−1 of carbon dioxide (90%) and methanol (10%) at 45°C and 25 MPa for a 30 min extraction time. The extracted quinones were analysed using ultra performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) with 0.3 mL min−1 of methanol mobile phase for a 50 min chromatographic run time. A comparable detected amount of quinones was obtained using the developed method and an organic solvent extraction method, being 36.06 μmol kg−1 and 34.54 μmol kg−1, respectively. Significantly low value of dissimilarity index () between the two methods (0.05) indicated that the quinone profile obtained by both methods was considered identical. The developed method was then applied to determine the maturity of the compost by monitoring the change of quinone during composting. The UQ-9 and MK-7 were predominant quinones in the initial stage of composting. The diversity of quinone became more complex during the cooling and maturation stages. This study showed that SFE had successfully extracted quinones from a complex matrix with simplification and rapidity of the analysis that is beneficial for routine analysis.
UNDERSTANDING, INTERPRETING AND QUERYING WEB STATISTICAL TABLES

Extraction of information from tables published on the Web is made less complicated because of easy identification of the text inside a table cell. In this thesis, we propose, and have implemented, a scheme which not only understands the contents in a statistical table, but is also able to convert them into a multidimensional database which can then be fed into an off-the-shelf system for querying and data integration. By carefully interpreting the intention of the table author via the visual cues embedded into the HTML text, and the layout design of multidimensional database modelling techniques, our system can successfully classify the keywords into semantically distinct dimension hierarchies, without any domain-specific knowledge, or machine learning. Experiments on a set of real-life statistical tables have confirmed the validity of this approach. Experiments on a set of real-life statistical tables have confirmed the validity of this approach.
Phenotypic detection of Extended Spectrum Beta- Lactamase producing uropathogens using DDST, PCT, Chrom agar and E-test – A comparitive study

Urinary tract infections (UTI) are a serious threat to human health affecting millions of people every year resulting in high morbidity and mortality. Enterobacteriaceae species like Escherichia coli, Proteus mirabilis, Enterobacter aerogenes, Citrobacter freundii and Klebsiella pneumoniae are the commonest uropathogens implicated in bacteremia and nosocomial infections. Aims and objectives: To identify and study the incidence of extended spectrum beta-lactamase producing Enterobacteriaceae in urinary tract infections by different phenotypic detection tests. About 100 Uropathogens isolated from urine samples of inpatients and outpatients of SVMCH during 2014-2015 were included. ESBL producing isolates were identified by screening methods and confirmed by phenotypic methods like DDST, PCT, E-test and CHROM agar. Among 52 isolates of E. coli 40% was ESBL producer, among 4 isolates of Citrobacter 50% was ESBL producer, out of 5 isolates of P. vulgaris 20% was ESBL producer, out of 6 isolates of K. oxytoca 33% was ESBL producer, out of 13 isolates of P. mirabilis 23% was ESBL producer, out of 16 isolates of K. pneumoniae 25% was ESBL producer, out of 3 isolates of E. aerogenes 67% was ESBL producer and none of the isolates of M. morgagnii was ESBL producer. By DDST, 29% of ESBL producing isolates and 71% of non-ESBL isolates were detected. With PCT, E-test and ESBL CHROM agar 35% of ESBL producers and 65% of non-ESBL isolates were detected. Conclusion: For early detection of ESBL producers, methods like DDST, PCT can be performed in microbiology laboratories as routine test, as they are simple to perform and cost effective. Those isolates which are found to be ESBL producers by screening methods can be confirmed by tests like E-test, ESBL CHROM agar which are found to be equally effective in detecting ESBL producers. K ey wo rd s
Implicit Theories of Intelligence, Achievement Goal Orientation, and Academic Achievement of Engineering Students

The present study investigated how individuals’ belief about intelligence affects their achievement goal orientation, and in turn, results to better academic achievement. More specifically, when learners believe that intelligence can be improved, their goal orientation is more on mastery and this leads to better achievement. A model was tested using path analysis with 291 engineering students in Manila, Philippines. It was found that achievement goal orientation had no direct effect on academic achievement. On theories of intelligence, incremental theory was both significantly predicted by performance approach and mastery approach while entity theory predicted performance approach and performance avoidance. This supports the findings that entity theorists indeed tend to adopt performance goals while incremental theorists tend to adopt mastery goals. It was also found in the study that even incremental theorists actually adopt performance approach goals indicating that individuals who believe that intelligence can be improved still carry out tasks in comparison to others.
FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH SLEEP QUALITY AMONG UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS AT A MALAYSIAN PUBLIC UNIVERSITY

Background: University students often report poor sleep quality because of sleeping disturbances due to insufficient rest, early morning awakening, and difficulty falling asleep. The objectives of this study were to determine the prevalence of sleep quality, the factors associated with sleep quality among undergraduate students in a public university. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study with stratified random sampling was used. The data were collected through the use of self-administered questionnaires from January until April 2016. Data analysis was done using Statistical Analysis Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20.0. Result: A total of 313 students responded and attempted the questionnaire, yielding a response rate of 95.1%, of which 221 students had poor sleep quality. The prevalence of poor sleep quality among undergraduate students was 70.6%. The majority (35.5%) with poor sleep quality, were aged above 21 years and 55.3% of those experiencing poor sleep quality were female. Moreover, 52.7% of the respondents were Malay, 42.2% were health sciences students, 67.1% lived in a hostel, and 38.2% of the students who had a BMI of 21.0 and above had poor sleep quality. This study showed that sleep quality was related to excessive daytime sleepiness and the level of stress (p≤0.05). Conclusion: Almost one-third of the students were defined as poor sleepers and suffered from daytime sleepiness. Health education should be conducted to increase the awareness and knowledge of their sleeping habits and problems, and, to encourage practices promoting good sleep hygiene.
A UAV-based active AirCore system for measurements of greenhouse gases

Abstract. We developed and field-tested an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based active AirCore for atmospheric mole fraction measurements of CO 2 , CH 4 , and CO. The system applies an alternative way of using the AirCore technique invented by NOAA. As opposed to the conventional concept of passively sampling air using the atmospheric pressure gradient during descent, the active AirCore collects atmospheric air samples using a pump to pull the air through the tube during flight, which opens up the possibility to spatially sample atmospheric air. The active AirCore system used for this study weighs ∼ 1.1 kg. It consists of a ∼ 50 m long stainless-steel tube, a small stainless-steel tube filled with magnesium perchlorate, a KNF micropump, and a 45 µ m orifice working together to form a critical flow of dried atmospheric air through the active AirCore. A cavity ring-down spectrometer (CRDS) was used to analyze the air samples on site not more than 7 min after landing for mole fraction measurements of CO 2 , CH 4 , and CO. We flew the active AirCore system on a UAV near the atmospheric measurement station at Lutjewad, located in the northwest of the city of Groningen in the Netherlands. Five consecutive flights took place over a 5 h period on the same morning, from sunrise until noon. We validated the measurements of CO 2 and CH 4 from the active AirCore against those from the Lutjewad station at 60 m. The results show a good agreement between the measurements from the active AirCore and the atmospheric station ( N = 146; R CO 2 2 : 0.97 and R CH 4 2 : 0.94; and mean differences: Δ CO 2 : 0.18 ppm and Δ CH 4 : 5.13 ppb). The vertical and horizontal resolution (for CH 4 ) at typical UAV speeds of 1.5 and 2.5 m s −1 were determined to be ± 24.7 to 29.3 and ± 41.2 to 48.9 m, respectively, depending on the storage time. The collapse of the nocturnal boundary layer and the buildup of the mixed layer were clearly observed with three consecutive vertical profile measurements in the early morning hours. Besides this, we furthermore detected a CH 4 hotspot in the coastal wetlands from a horizontal flight north to the dike, which demonstrates the potential of this new active AirCore method to measure at locations where other techniques have no practical access.
Trust and Commitment Influences on Customer Retention: Insights from B2B Services

Despite the importance of trust and commitment in relationship marketing, the scholarly inquiry on the issue is rather impeded in several ways. Furthermore, when it comes to the marketing of services, and specifically for business-to-business markets, the empirical documentation is even slimmer despite the fact that services are increasingly becoming a vital component of the product that the customers buy even when it comes to tangible goods such as computers or cars. In view of this gap, the present empirical study attempts an investigation of two specific antecedents of trust and, consequently, of commitment: the perceived quality of the service and the customer bonding techniques used by the supplier. In doing so, the causality of the relationships between the various constructs is also examined.
Cytoplasmic incompatibility and fitness benefits in the two-spotted spider mite Tetranychus urticae (red form) doubly infected with Wolbachia and Cardinium

Abstract Maternally inherited Wolbachia and Cardinium are widely distributed among arthropods, and their presence usually causes modifications of the reproduction and fitness of the host. Although co-infections of Cardinium and Wolbachia in the same host is common, yet relatively little is known about the multiple infections on host or the individual effects of each symbiont. In this study, we investigated the effects of, and interaction between, Wolbachia and Cardinium in the doubly infected two-spotted spider mite Tetranychus urticae (red form) in China. The individual cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI) level, bacteria density, fecundity, and host longevity were examined. Our results indicate that Wolbachia induced a week level of CI, while Cardinium-infected and doubly infected males causes severe CI. Wolbachia and Cardinium could not modify the CI strength and rescue CI each other. Wolbachia inhibited the proliferation of Cardinium in double-infected mites. The infection with Cardinium alone enhanced the fecundity of infected females. Interestingly, we found survival benefit in Wolbachia-infected, Cardinium-infected and the doubly infected females. We discuss the results observed with respect to the spread of bacterial infection in natural populations.
Oracle, Multiple Robust and Multipurpose Calibration in a Missing Response Problem

In the presence of a missing response, reweighting the complete case subsample by the inverse of nonmissing probability is both intuitive and easy to implement. When the population totals of some auxiliary variables are known and when the inclusion probabilities are known by design, survey statisticians have developed calibration methods for improving efficiencies of the inverse probability weighting estimators and the methods can be applied to missing data analysis. Model-based calibration has been proposed in the survey sampling literature, where multidimensional auxiliary variables are first summarized into a predictor function from a working regression model. Usually, one working model is being proposed for each parameter of interest and results in different sets of calibration weights for estimating different parameters. This paper considers calibration using multiple working regression models for estimating a single or multiple parameters. Contrary to a common belief that overfitting hurts efficiency, we present three rather unexpected results. First, when the missing probability is correctly specified and multiple working regression models for the conditional mean are posited, calibration enjoys an oracle property: the same semiparametric efficiency bound is attained as if the true outcome model is known in advance. Second, when the missing data mechanism is misspecified, calibration can still be a consistent estimator when any one of the outcome regression models is correctly specified. Third, a common set of calibration weights can be used to improve efficiency in estimating multiple parameters of interest and can simultaneously attain semiparametric efficiency bounds for all parameters of interest. We provide connections of a wide class of calibration estimators, constructed based on generalized empirical likelihood, to many existing estimators in biostatistics, econometrics and survey sampling and perform simulation studies to show that the finite sample properties of calibration estimators conform well with the theoretical results being studied.
The f(ℛ) halo mass function in the cosmic web

An important indicator of modified gravity is the effect of the local environment on halo properties. This paper examines the influence of the local tidal structure on the halo mass function, the halo orientation, spin and the concentration-mass relation. We use the excursion set formalism to produce a halo mass function conditional on large-scale structure. Our simple model agrees well with simulations on large scales at which the density field is linear or weakly non-linear. Beyond this, our principal result is that f(ℛ) does affect halo abundances, the halo spin parameter and the concentration-mass relationship in an environment-independent way, whereas we find no appreciable deviation from \text{ΛCDM} for the mass function with fixed environment density, nor the alignment of the orientation and spin vectors of the halo to the eigenvectors of the local cosmic web. There is a general trend for greater deviation from \text{ΛCDM} in underdense environments and for high-mass haloes, as expected from chameleon screening.
Cph . design and use of public playgrounds in urban green spaces

3 Resumé 5 Background 10 The importance of playgrounds in urban green spaces 10 The users: Children and accompanying adults 11 Aim of the thesis 11 Research questions 12 Introduction 13 Public outdoor playgrounds and their history 13 Different types of public outdoor playgrounds 13 Public outdoor playgrounds and critical voices 15 Children’s play and development 16 Playground design research 17 Research gaps 18 Evidence‐based playground design 18 Space for play and PlayLab Cph 19 Theoretical framework 20 Behaviour settings 20 Affordances 20 Applying the theoretical framework 21 Methods and materials used in the PhD thesis 22 1. PlayLab Cph 22 1a PlayLab Cph – the relation to evidence‐based design 23 1.b The evidence‐based design of the PlayLab Cph 24 1.c Post‐occupancy‐evaluation of the PlayLab Cph 25 2. Multiple case study 25 2.a Multiple case study – the relation to evidence‐based design 25 2.b Case selection 26 2.c Questionnaire survey 27 2.d Observation studies 29 2.e Processing and analysing data 30
Correlation of phenolic content and antibacterial activity of dried lime extracts against human pathogens

Medicinal plants are the oldest known source for the treatment of diseases. The use of plants and plant extracts for isolation of pharmaceutical compounds has received increasing attention from researchers over the past decades. We determined the antibacterial activity of dried black lime (Citrus aurantifolia) extracts on Gram-positive and Gram-negative human pathogens, including Enterococcus faecalis, Staphylococcus aureus, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Salmonella typhimurium by using agar well diffusion methods. Crude extracts were obtained from different organic solvents and from sterile distilled water as an aqueous solvent. Considerable antibacterial activity was observed for the methanolic extracts, particularly against E. faecalis. P. aeruginosa was the most susceptible among the Gram-negative bacteria. HPLC analysis of methanol dried lime extracts revealed a peak with a retention time of similar to that of the standard gallic acid, which is known to have potent antibacterial activity.
Natural strontium isotope composition as a tracer of weathering patterns and of exchangeable calcium sources in acid leached soils developed on loess of central Belgium

The natural Sr isotope composition of acid leached soils developed on loess, under beech forest, in central Belgium was used as a tracer of soil forming processes, in conjunction with physico-chemical and quantitative mineralogical investigations. Attention was focused on weathering and exchange processes, with special emphasis on the origin of the current soil exchangeable fraction and the influence of the atmospheric deposition and biological cycling on the calcium exchangeable pool (Sr acts as a proxy for Ca). The determination of Sr/Sr ratios was made on the bulk soil, on the clayand silt-size soil separates, on 0.1 M HCl extracts, on the labile pool, on the soil solution and on the bulk precipitation. The acid leached soil profiles are characterized by a sequence of weathering processes that is highlighted by both mineralogical and isotopic changes. From the calcareous unweathered loess (pH 7.5) to the uppermost soil horizons (pH < 4.0) the evolution of the Sr/Sr isotope ratio clearly reflects: (i) the selective weathering of Ca-plagioclase (small Sr/Sr ratio) and the increasing proportion of resistant Kand Rb-rich minerals (large Sr/Sr ratio) in the uppermost soil horizons; and (ii) a downward translocation of clay minerals with a large isotopic ratio, a physical breakdown of muscovite and a non-congruent chemical weathering of K-feldspar. The influence of organic restitutions or atmospheric deposition is not significant. The comparison between the Sr isotopic signature of the soil solution, and the exchangeable and HCl-extractible soil fractions provides information about cation exchange efficiency, soil–water interaction and the origin of the exchangeable pool.