Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of Pyometra on Some Oxidative Stress Parameters , Inflammatory Mediators and Neutrophil Segmentation in Bitches

Pyometra is characterized by uterine bacterial infection with the accumulation of pus in the uterus often initiates systemic inflammation in the body and may lead to multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS). The main objectives of this study is to evaluate C-reactive protein (CRP), tumour necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin-6 (IL-6), superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), and thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances (TBARS) in bitches with pyometra and control bitches to explore the possible variety between the groups to detect the morbidity of the disease and contribution of these parameters in the condition of MODS. All bitches underwent ovariohysterectomy (OVH) and blood sampling was performed just before and after 15 days of the surgery. TNF-α, CRP, and IL-6 levels were significantly higher in pyometra group before the OVH (P<0.05, P<0.001, P<0.001, respectively), and CRP and IL-6 levels were significantly high after 15 days of OVH (P<0.001, P<0.05, respectively). Two-segmented neutrophils were significantly lower in pyometra group before (P<0.05) and after OVH (P<0.01). It is revealed that with this study, CRP and IL-6 could be used for inflammation detection when leucocyte number was normal in operated bitches with pyometra. Oxidative stress was not apparent in bitches with pyometra. Also, platelet (PLT) level and neutrophil segmentation index (NSI) might be good indicators to identify the chronic phase and the severity of the disease and risk of disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) in bitches with pyometra.
Phytochemical investigation and antimicrobial activity of leaves extract of Vernonia auriculifera Hiern.

Context: The genus Vernonia is one of the largest groups in the family Compositae constituting more than 500 species distributed widely in tropical and sub-tropical regions of Africa, Asia, and America. Traditionally the genus is used for the treatment of schistosomiasis, amoebic dysentery, gastrointestinal problems, malaria, venereal diseases, wounds, hepatitis, and diabetes. Vernonia auriculifera Hiern is used for healing wounds as ointment around the injured areas. Aims: To investigate the phytochemical constituents and evaluate antimicrobial activity of leaves extract of Vernonia auriculifera Hiern. Methods: Phytochemical screening tests were conducted to identify the class of compounds present in the leaves extracts of V. auriculifera. Silica gel column chromatographic technique was applied to separate the constituents of the extracts. Various spectroscopic techniques (IR, 1H NMR, 13C NMR, DEPT-135, COSY, gHSQC, and gHMBC) were applied to determine the structures of isolated compounds. Results: Phytochemical screening of the methanol leaf extract revealed the presence of tannins, flavonoids, terpenoids, saponins and absence of anthraquinones, steroids, and alkaloids. Silica gel column chromatography of the methanol leaves extract yielded one compound. The hexane, chloroform, methanol and water extracts were tested against Staphylococcus aureus. The methanol and water extracts showed promising growth suppression at minimum inhibitory concentration of 200 mg/mL. Conclusions: The polar extracts of the leaves of Vernonia auriculifera Hiern possess antimicrobial activity.
ASSESSMENT OF MICROBIAL (BACTERIA) CONCENTRATIONS OF AMBIENT AIR AT SEMI-ARID URBAN REGION: INFLUENCE OF METEOROLOGICAL FACTORS

In the present study, outdoor airborne microflora (bacteria) at different locations, viz; institutional, health care, commercial, traffic, industrial and agricultural areas of Tirupati  a semi-arid urban region, southern peninsular India was investigated during winter season, 2004. Concentrations of airborne viable bacteria averaged between 19 ± 5 CFU/m 3 (IE) and 3 ± 5 CFU/m 3 (SVU) and observed the following trend among the locations: IE > TG > CBS > TUDA > RUYA > SVU. Airborne Gram- positive bacteria were most abundant, with more than 60 to 90% of the measured population at each location. Developed regression models have been explained about 50% (or greater) variation in bacteria concentration at each location (except RUYA), due to the effect of meteorological factors - temperature, RH, and wind speed. Among these factors, wind speed had the most pronounced influence on bacterial concentration, with the regression coefficient (β) varied between 0.225 and 2.092, followed by the temperature. The overall air quality index (ABQI) with respect to bacterial composition of aerosol is found to be 22.33 which signifies that the quality of air is good. The results reveal that the airborne bacteria are contributed from terrestrial (soil) sources greatly followed by the little contribution from point sources. Keywords. Bioaerosol, airborne bacteria, meteorological factors, multiple linear regression, quality index, India.
Muon Beam Emittance Evolution in the Helical Ionization Cooling Channel for Bright Muon Sources

Characteristic of a helical latticeforsix dimensional muon ionization cooling will be presented to utilize for a bright muon source. The beta function and the dispersion in the lattice are tunable by adjusting the helical magnetic component. Asaresult, thecoolingdecrementsandtheequilibriumbeam emittance in transverse and longitudinal phase spaces are flexible. A helical magnetic component can be adjusted by changing the geometry of helical solenoid magnets. Manipulating a cooling path is an important capability in a bright muon source to serve a high quality muon beam for various muon beam applications.
Forced and Internal Components of Winter Air Temperature Trends over North America during the past 50 Years: Mechanisms and Implications*

AbstractThis study elucidates the physical mechanisms underlying internal and forced components of winter surface air temperature (SAT) trends over North America during the past 50 years (1963–2012) using a combined observational and modeling framework. The modeling framework consists of 30 simulations with the Community Earth System Model (CESM) at 1° latitude–longitude resolution, each of which is subject to an identical scenario of historical radiative forcing but starts from a slightly different atmospheric state. Hence, any spread within the ensemble results from unpredictable internal variability superimposed upon the forced climate change signal. Constructed atmospheric circulation analogs are used to estimate the dynamical contribution to forced and internal components of SAT trends: thermodynamic contributions are obtained as a residual. Internal circulation trends are estimated to account for approximately one-third of the observed wintertime warming trend over North America and more than half l.
Attitude toward Enhancing Extensive Listening through Podcasts Supplementary Pack.

To promote independent extensive listening, the aim of this study is to investigate Saudi preparatory level students’ and their teachers’ perception about podcasts’ criteria and contents to include in an extensive supplementary listening pack. An exploratory sequential design was adopted to collect data. The results of the focus group thematic analysis helped designing an online close-ended survey. The participants were 120 students and teachers sampled from the four proficiency levels of the English Language Institute (ELI) at King Abdulaziz University (KAU) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The findings of the study revealed that teachers were more familiar with the podcasts than students. Furthermore, all participants had a positive attitude toward using a listening instructional supplementary pack that can include few short authentic podcasts. They recommended using various challenging topics that are related to students’ interests and proficiency levels. This study contributes to the literature of integrating podcasts to enhance extensive listening. It recommends designing an extensive listening supplementary pack based on Vandergrift and Goh’s (2012) metacognitive approach and testing its suitability for application.
The Geometry of Interaction as a Module System

The Geometry of Interaction (goi) was originally introduced by Girard in the context of Linear Logic. Many of its recent applications concern the interpretation and analysis of functional programming languages, with applications ranging from hardware synthesis to quantum computation. In this paper we argue that for such programming-language applications it is useful to understand the goi as a module system. We show that the structure of particle-style goi models can naturally be expressed by a standard ML-like module system. This provides a convenient, familiar formalism for working with the goi that abstracts from inessential implementation details. With this view, the goi becomes a method of implementing ML-style module systems for a wide range of programming languages. It can be considered as a higherorder generalisation of system-level linking. The relation between the goi and the proposed module system is established by developing a linear version of the F-ing modules approach of Rossberg, Russo and Dreyer that uses a new decomposition of the exponential rules of Linear Logic. We illustrate the utility of the modular view of the goi with examples on game semantics and parallel evaluation.
CALCAREOUS NANNOFOSSIL STRATIGRAPHY AND REASSESSMENT OF THE EOCENE GLACIAL RECORD IN SUBANTARCTIC PISTON CORES OF THE SOUTHEAST PACIFIC 1 Wuchang

This study provides the first detailed documentation of calcareous nannofossil assemblages in Eocene subantarctic Eltanin piston cores recovered from the southeast Pacific Ocean. These Eltanin cores are important because they have been reported to contain ice-rafted quartz. The present study confirms early and middle Eocene ages for the cores and dates them more precisely using calcareous nannofossils. Semiquantitative study of the nannoflora indicates that they are of a warmer water character than those from the higher latitudes (such as Falkland Plateau, Maud Rise, and Kerguelen Plateau). This study concludes that it is unlikely for the ice-rafted quartz in the Eocene sections to be downcore contaminants from the overlying Neogene sediment and suggests that the grains are probably the result of Eocene ice-rafting from Antarctica when the Drake Passage was closed and water circulation patterns were different from those of today.
Using Threshold Derivation of Software Metrics for Building Classifiers in Defect Prediction

The knowledge about the software metrics, which serve as quality indicators, is vital for the efficient allocation of resources in quality assurance activities. Recent studies showed that some software metrics exhibit threshold effects and can be used for software defect prediction. Our goal was to analyze if the threshold derivation process could be used to improve a standard classification models for software defect prediction, rather than to search for universal threshold values. We proposed two classification models based on Bender method for threshold derivation to test this idea, named Threshold Naive Bayes and Threshold Voting. Threshold Naive Bayes is a probabilistic classifier based on Naive Bayes and improved by threshold derivation. Threshold Voting is a simple type of ensemble classifier which is based solely on threshold derivation. The proposed models were tested in a case study based on datasets from subsequent releases of large open source projects and compared against the standard Naive Bayes classifier in terms of geometric mean (GM) between true positive and true negative rate. The results of our case study showed that the Threshold Naive Bayes classifier performs better than the other two when compared in terms of GM. Hence, this study has shown that threshold derivation process for software metrics may be used to improve the performance of standard classifiers in software defect prediction. Future research will analyze its effectiveness in general classification purposes and test on other types of data.
Faecal sludge drying beds: increasing drying rates for fuel resource recovery in Sub-Saharan Africa

In urban Sub-Saharan Africa, the collection and transport of faecal sludge (FS) typically ends up with FS directly dumped into the urban environment, as safe treatment and disposal options are too expensive or non-existent. Resource recovery from FS treatment, such as dried FS as an industrial fuel, could provide a financial incentive to increase access to FS management services. In Dakar, Senegal, enhanced drying to reduce the footprint of drying beds for fuel production was evaluated. Greenhouses did not increase drying rates over uncovered beds, however, daily mixing of FS on the surface of the beds resulted in a 6 day reduction to achieve 90% total solids (TS). FS was dried to 90% TS in 2 weeks for loading rates of 100 kg TS/m 2 *year, and 3 weeks for 150 kg TS/m 2 *year. The results indicate that with simple but innovative adaptations, footprints of treatment plants could be reduced and/or treatment capacities increased by 20%. FS can be adequately dried in Dakar to produce fuel, meaning 8.25 tons of dried FS could currently be produced daily, contributing 31,403 GJ/year fuel to industries. In addition, this financial incentive could reduce FS that is currently discharged untreated to the environment, and provide an additional 116,705 GJ/year.
Active Labour Market Policy vs Employment Tax Credits: Lessons from Recent UK Reforms

Many welfare-to-work programs in both North America and Europe are directed at making work pay for the low skilled. This paper identifies two alternative policies that are motivated by this same objective – active labour market programs that involve wage subsidies together with improved job matching; and earned income tax credits that supplement wages for working low-income families. Although sharing similar concerns over labour market incentives for low skilled workers, these alternative policies typically differ in many important ways. We present an evaluation of the impacts of two such recent programs designed to enhance the labour market attachment of low-wage workers in the UK. These programs have many features in common and are similar to many policy proposals in Europe and North America. The evaluation of the UK reforms brings empirical evidence into the debate on the effectiveness of these programs and is used to assess what aspects of their design work well and what aspects could be improved.
Textual substitution methods for image compression

Textual substitution methods are one-dimensional compression methods that maintain a constantly changing dictionary of strings to adaptively compress a stream of characters by replacing common substrings with indices (pointers) into a dictionary. Lempel and Ziv proved that the proposed schemes were practical as well as asymptotically optimal for a general source model. Two-dimensional (i.e. images) applications of textual substitution methods have been widely studied in the past. Substantially those applications involve first the application of a linearization strategy to the input data, and then the encoding of the resulting monodimensional vector using LZ type one dimensional methods. In this paper we discuss the textual substitution methods for image compression, with particular attention to the AVQ class of algorithms, and review recent advances in the field.
Convergence rates for regularization functionals with polyconvex integrands

Convergence rates results for variational regularization methods typically assume the regularization functional to be convex. While this assumption is natural for scalar-valued functions, it can be unnecessarily strong for vector-valued ones. In this paper we focus on regularization functionals with polyconvex integrands. Even though such functionals are nonconvex in general, it is possible to derive linear convergence rates with respect to a generalized Bregman distance, an idea introduced by Grasmair in 2010. As a case example we consider the image registration problem.
Optimal Monitoring for Project-Based Emissions Trading Systems Under Incomplete Enforcement

Project-based Emissions Trading Schemes, like the Clean Development Mechanism, are particularly prone to problems of asymmetric information between the project parties and the regulator. Given the specificities of these schemes, the regulator’s optimal monitoring strategy significantly differs from the one to be applied for capand- trade schemes or environmental taxes. In this paper, we extend the general framework on incomplete enforcement of policy instruments to reflect these specificities. The main focus of the analysis is to determine the regulator’s optimal spot-check frequency under the plausible assumption that the submitted projects vary with respect to their verifiability. We find that, given a limited monitoring budget, the optimal monitoring strategy is discontinuous, featuring a jump within the set of projects with lower verifiability. In this region, actual abatement is low and can fall to zero. For these cases, the sign of the slope of the strategy function depends on the actual relationship of the abatement cost and the penalty function. We conclude that, in a real-world context, project admission should ultimately be based on the criterion of verifiability.
Default correlation at the sovereign level: evidence from some Latin American markets

Using the eruption of Argentina debt crisis in 2001 as a natural experiment, we investigated the correlated default at the sovereign level for some Latin American countries. Daily closing market quotes for sovereign Credit Default Swaps (CDS) of Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela were obtained from CreditTrade database. Using copula approach, we observed increased dependences among sovereign CDS markets during the crisis period. Their dependence structures were found to be asymmetric. Moreover, the degree of credit contagion was related to the creditworthiness of the country. This study also discussed the implications of these findings for policymakers.
A Case Study on Fog/Low Stratus Occurrence at Las Lomitas, Atacama Desert (Chile) as a Water Source for Biological Soil Crusts

The Atacama Desert is well known for the high occurrence of large-scale fog (spatial extents: hundreds of kilometers) emerging as low stratus (LST) decks over the Pacific Ocean. By contrast, the small-scale and heterogeneous occurrence of small-scale fog (hundreds of meters) particularly during summers is widely unconsidered. However, these events are important for the local vegetation and particularly for the biological soil crusts (BSC) that are widely distributed in this extreme ecosystem. Consequently, a case study in a typical fog oasis in the Pan de Azucar National Park was conducted to test the feasibility combining field measurements, drone profiling, remote sensing and numerical modeling (i) to investigate fog-type specific differences regarding dynamics, physical properties and formation, (ii) to test the applicability of remote sensing technology for fog monitoring based on existing low-resolution and a proposed new high-resolution product and (iii) to estimate the related fog water input to BSCs. Two types of fog were observed. The well-known fog/LST deck emerging from the Pacific Ocean with high water path and large spatial extent was the first type. Fog of the second type was patchier, small-scale and not necessarily connected to the LST over the ocean. Instead, fog formation of the second type was related to thermal breeze systems, which produced shallow clouds containing less water than those of type 1. In general, such small-scale fog events were not captured well by existing remote sensing products but could be detected with the proposed new high-resolution product which provided promising results. Both fog types were important water resources for the BSCs, with approximately 8% to 24% of the fog water flux available to the BSCs at the surface. The results indicated the feasibility of the proposed methods’ pool to estimate the water budget of BSCs with a high spatial resolution in the future.
The Effect of Noise on Emotion Perception in an Unknown Language

This is the first study investigating the influence of realistic noise on verbal emotion perception in an unknown language. We do so by linking emotion perception to acoustic characteristics known to be correlated with emotion perception and investigating the effect of noise on the perception of these acoustic characteristics. Dutch students listened to Italian sentences in five emotions and were asked to indicate the emotion that was conveyed in the sentence. Sentences were presented in a clean and two babble noise conditions. Results showed that the participants were able to recognise emotions in the, for them, unknown language, and continued to perform above chance even in fairly bad listening conditions, indicating that verbal emotion may contain universal characteristics. Noise had a similar detrimental effect on the perception of the different emotions, though the impact on the use of the acoustic parameters for different emotion categories was different.
Simulation of bean crop growth, evapotranspiration and yield in Paraná State by the CROPGRO-Drybean model - doi: 10.4025/actasciagron.v33i3.11793

The performance of the CROPGRO-Drybean model for the prediction of soil water balance, as well as growth components and bean crop yield, was assessed using data from two field experiments conducted at the State University of Maringa Iirrigation Technical Center, Parana, Brazil, (latitude 23°27'S, longitude 51°57' and altitude 542 m) during the 2005 and 2006 growing seasons. This assessment aimed to analyze growth components, evapotranspiration and bean crop yield for the edaphoclimatic conditions of the area as simulated by the CROPGRO-Drybean model. This is a model for legumes, and it is grouped in a Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transference (DSSAT). The model simulates growth, development and yield components of beans as a function of daily climatologic elements for each soil’s specific conditions. It is possible to affirm that water deficit during flowering caused the model to penalize yield severely. It showed discrepant values in leaf area index simulation, and also accentuated discrepancies between measured and simulated values of soil moisture on the day following rainfall. Correlations between measured and simulated values of soil moisture exceeded 70% in both experiments. Yield was underestimated by the model in both experiments.