Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparative Analysis of Growth , Seed Yield , Essential Oil and Fatty Acid Composition of Two Tunisian Caraway ( Carum carvi L . ) Ecotypes

In this study, two Tunisian caraway ecotypes originating from the regions of Menzel Temime and Souassi (Tunisia) were investigated regarding their seed yield and its components as well as the composition of their essential oils and fatty acids. For this purpose, the two ecotypes were cultivated, harvested and processed under the same conditions whereas the seed essential oil was analysed by gas chromatography (GC) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). On one hand, results concerning the biomass production, seed yield and yield components (number of umbels/plant, number of umbellets/umbel and 1000-seed weight) were higher for Menzel Temime ecotype in comparison to Souassi one. On the other hand, total fatty acid (TFA) content was 2.95 and 5.68% in Menzel Temime and Souassi ecotypes, respectively. Petroselinic acid (C18:1n-12) was the major fatty acid in both ecotypes, with a higher proportion being found in Menzel Temime ecotype (38.36% TFA) than in Souassi one (37.39% TFA). In addition, the seed essential oil yields differed significantly between the two ecotypes: 0.82% and 1.20% for Menzel Temime and Souassi ecotypes, respectively. Forty one volatile compounds were identified in the two essential oil samples where carvone and limonene constituted the main components but with significant different proportions. However, the two ecotypes displayed the same chemotype, namely carvone. Since the environmental and technical parameters effects were considered negligible, the observed differences concerning the seed yield and its components as well as the essential oil and fatty acid composition seem likely to result from genetic variation. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
LONG-TERM EFFICIENCY OF BALLAST MATS INSTALLED IN THE RAPID TRANSIT RAILWAY TUNNEL NEAR THE PHILHARMONIC HALL OF MUNICH

In 1983, ballast mats of type Sylomer B 851 were installed in a rapid transit railway tunnel near the Philharmonic Hall of Munich, Germany, in order to shield it from the structure-borne noise emitted from the passage of trains. In 2001, after 18 years of use under extremely demanding load conditions, tests were conducted to determine the long-term effectiveness of the noise mitigation measure adopted. Since their installation, the ballast mats have been exposed to more than 760 million load tons. With the Class ET 420 multiple unit trains that are operated on the line featuring an axle load of 160 kN, this represents a fatigue load of more than 45 million load cycles, which is almost four times the value required as a prerequisite for approval for installation in track operated by German Rail (DB AG). This paper presents the results of laboratory tests that have been carried out on samples of ballast mat removed from the tunnel to determine the static and dynamic parameters of the ballast mats after use under extremely demanding load conditions, and of vibration measurements carried out in the tunnel during the passage of trains to determine the long-term efficiency of the ballast mats installed. The results of these tests indicate that the ballast mats have performed exceptionally well over a period of 18 years under extremely high operational loads. The stringent requirements set for the reduction of structure-borne noise when the mats were originally installed are still fully complied with. The good performance of the ballast mats is very well illustrated by a statement in the report of a test laboratory involved in the evaluation of the ballast mats, which reads “. full functionality of the ballast mats can be expected for at least another 30 years, provided that the loads on the mats remain at the same level”. 1 This paper is based on an article which was published in Rail Engineering International Edition 2002 Number 4
Optimizing planting density for cut Helianthus annuus and Zinnia elegans

A study was conducted to optimize plant spacing for cut Helianthus annuus cv. Pro Cut Orange and Zinnia elegans cv. Double Super Yoga. Seedlings were raised in 128-celled plastic plug trays containing coco coir, compost and silt (1:1:1; v/v/v) as substrate. At 2-4 true leaf stage, seedlings were transplanted outdoors in thoroughly tilled and leveled flat beds at plant and row spacing of 15.0 × 15.0, 15.0 × 22.5, 22.5 × 22.5, 22.5 × 30.0, or 30.0 × 30.0 cm with plant populations of 40, 26, 17, 13 or 10 plants per m2, respectively. Experiments were laid out in randomized complete block design with three replications individually for each species. Findings revealed that for Helianthus annuus, plants grown at 15.0 × 15.0 cm spacing produced tallest plants with greatest plant canopy diameter. While leaf area, stem diameter and vase life were highest for plants spaced at 30.0 × 30.0 cm. Plant spacing had no effect on number of leaves per plant, fresh weight of stem, flower quality and internodal distance. Similar results were recorded when this experiment was repeated on Helianthus annuus during next year for confirmation of results. In case of Zinnia elegans, plants spaced at 30.0 × 30.0 cm exhibited highest plant canopy diameter, number of leaves per plant and number of flowers per plant, while plants spaced at 15.0 × 15.0 cm had highest plant height and leaf area. Flower diameter, stem diameter, flower quality, internodal distance, fresh weight of a stem and vase life were similar irrespective of plant spacing. Based on the findings, it can be concluded that quality cut Helianthus annuus production was greatly improved when plants were spaced at 15.0 × 15.0 cm, while 30.0 × 30.0 cm spacing was optimal for cut Zinnia elegans production and may be used for commercial cultivation of Helianthus and Zinnia in Punjab.
The Welfare Cost of Business Cycles in Developing Countries : Do Currency Unions Matter ?

Adverse macroeconomic shocks have long been acknowledged to be larger and more costly in developing countries, compared to the rest of the world. Yet, while most of the literature continues to hold a monolithic approach to development macroeconomics, it still remains an open question how differently the fluctuations are absorbed by developing countries with different monetary institutional arrangements. Taking stock of the recent developments in the Optimum Currency Area debate and using different parametric and non-parametric models, we show that the welfare cost of business cycles is between 11 and 48 percent higher for the sub-Saharan African countries outside the CFA Franc Zone than for those inside the union. This is a particularly important finding, at a time when the political temptations for some member states to leave the union might trump its economic benefits.
Clinical Spectrum and Outcome of Patient with Acute Kidney Injury-A Hospital Based Study from North East India

Original Research Article Little is known about the epidemiological character of Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) from North East part of India so this study was carried out to know the epidemiology, clinical characteristics, aetiologies, severity and outcome of the AKI patients. This prospective observational study was conducted at Regional institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) Hospital, Imphal during September 2015 to August 2017 among the patients admitted with AKI or who developed AKI in-patient in any ward of RIMS Hospital. Patients of 18 years and above, regardless of gender were included in the study. During the study period a total of 304 patients with AKI were found with an incidence of 1.9 % with a male to female ratio of 1.7:1. Mean age of patient was 44.68±13.13 years and the most common age group was 41-50 years (33.5%) in both the sexes. 46.7% of the patient had associated co-morbidities and the most common cause of AKI was sepsis (38.2%). Drugs induced AKI also was common (15.8%) and anti-retroviral therapy (ART) drugs and amino glycoside, were some of offending agents. Intrinsic renal injury was the most common mode of renal injury comprising around 63.2% of the total AKI (p<0.001). Based on the RIFLE criteria 42.1% patient landed in Injury (I) category which was closely followed by Failure (F) and Risk(R). Of the total admitted, 21.7% required dialysis while 17.1% expired during the course of illness. 52.6% of the patient recovered completely (<0.001) whereas 30.56% had partial recovery.
Comparisons of fuel stick moisture among forest cover types in eastern Austria Seite 301

The moisture of fine dead fuels in the understory is an important factor for forest fire ignition and fire propagation. Temperature and relative humidity have a direct impact on fuel moisture and are known to be influenced by solar radiation, rainfall, and wind speed, all of which vary according to vegetation characteristics. Fuel moisture sticks offer an efficient method for estimating the moisture of natural fuels. The objectives of this study are to compare fuel stick moisture content among various forest cover types and to compare the variation of the moisture content among 3 fuel-stick sizes representing 1-hour, 10-hour, and 100-hour moisture time lags across multiple seasons within 2 consecutive years. The moisture content (MC) of the fuel sticks difSeite 302 Minjian Zhou ,Harald Vacik fered between cover types and among stick sizes, between seasons within the annual cycle, and MC was negatively correlated with calculated Fine Fuel Moisture Code (FFMC) values. The recorded fuel moisture was negatively correlated with canopy openness as measured by sky fraction in the sampled plots, indicating that moisture values are expected to depend on local micro-climatic conditions.
Increasing Knowledge Retention through Gamified Workshops: Findings from a Longitudinal Study and Identification of Moderating Variables

Apathetic and poorly motivated students require educators to redesign their educational measures in order to create inspiring learning environments. One such educational measure is gamification, a new tool for active learning to improve students’ motivation, with the ultimate goal of increasing knowledge retention. In this paper we investigate the effects of gamification on short- and long-term knowledge gains. Moreover, the moderating effects of gender and school type are scrutinized. We conducted a longitudinal study with 384 students using three assessments at different times and compared the results from gamified and non-gamified workshops. Our findings indicate that gamification is an effective tool to increase students’ knowledge retention in the short term, but not necessarily in the long term. There was no significant effect of gender, but we found some preliminary evidence that school type might have a moderating effect on knowledge retention.
Reflection of a Long-period Gravity Wave Observed in the Nightglow over Arecibo on May 8 – 9 , 1989 ?

During the Arecibo Initiative for Dynamics of the Atmosphere (AIDA) campaign in 1989 a characteristic of gravity wave perturbations observed in mesopause region airglow emissions was that airglow brightness fluctuations and airglow-derived temperature fluctuations often occurred either in phase or in antiphase. This stimulated the development of a theory suggesting that such in-phase fluctuations were most probably the result of strong reflections occurring in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere region. Recent examination of a particular wave event and application of simple WKB-type theory has appeared to support this hypothesis. Here we use a full-wave model and a WKB-type model, each coupled with a chemical-airglow fluctuation model describing O2 atmospheric and OH Meinel airglow fluctuations, to assess the strength of wave reflection and also to explicitly calculate the phase difference between the airglow brightness and the temperature fluctuations. Our results suggest that reflection is not strong for the particular wave event, and the model produces fairly large phase differences between the airglow brightness and the temperature fluctuations ( 35° and 134°–165° for the O2 atmospheric and OH airglow emissions, respectively). These results are not particularly sensitive to the nominal mean winds used in the simulations. There is an instance when a region of minimum refractive index occurs directly above a region in which reflection is strongest, suggesting that the two are related. However, the reflection does not appear to be strong. Our results suggest that chemical effects can account for the inferred phases of the observed airglow fluctuations and that effects associated with wave reflection appear to play a relatively minor role in the airglow fluctuations.
Fractional strong matching preclusion for two variants of hypercubes

Let F be a subset of edges and vertices of a graph G. If G − F has no fractional perfect matching, then F is a fractional strong matching preclusion set of G. The fractional strong matching preclusion number is the cardinality of a minimum fractional strong matching preclusion set. In this paper, we mainly study the fractional strong matching preclusion problem for two variants of hypercubes, the multiply twisted cube and the locally twisted cube, which are two of the most popular interconnection networks. In addition, we classify all the optimal fractional strong matching preclusion set of each.
Relationship between Laboratory Facilities ’ Utilization and Senior Secondary School Physics Students ’ Achievement in Federal Capital Territory , Abuja , Nigeria

Department of Science, Technology and Mathematics Education, Faculty of Education, Nasarawa State University, Keffi, Nasarawa State, Nigeria ABSTRACT This study investigated the relationship between laboratory facilities and senior secondary school physics students’ achievement in Federal Capital Territory, Abuja Nigeria. A sample size of 2505 students were selected from a population of 25050 using stratified random sampling based on 10% representation from the six local area councils in FCT were used for the study. Ex-post Facto research was used for the study. The data used for analyses were collected using Physics Laboratory Facilities Assessment Checklist (PLFAC) to classify the school variables into two groups. WASSCE physics result sheets from the year2011 to 2017 were sorted out to classify the students into two groups namely the Pass group with grades A1 to C6 and the Fail group with grades from D7 to F9. The analyses of these data using Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation showed that laboratory facilities had significant relationship with students’ achievement in Physics. Based on this finding, it was recommended that FCT educational authorities should provide adequate and functional laboratory facilities to enhance the teaching of physics in secondary schools.
Increased eosinophil levels in HIV-infected patients with high CD 4 / CD 8 ratio Study from 564 patients in Ramathibodi Hospital

Blood from 564 patients infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) were studied for laboratory analysis. The hematological changes including white blood cell count (WBC), percentage and absolute number of lymphocyte and eosinophil were determined by using the Technicon H*3 RTX hematological analyzer. Analysis of blood cell parameters were done within 4 hours after venous blood collection. It was noted that 201(35.6%) out of 564 patients had eosinophilia and 148 (73.6%) out of those 201 patients with eosinophilia showed increased CD4/CD8 ratio as compared with those in patients with normal eosinophil. Furthermore, we found that the patients with extremely high eosinophilia (greater than 60% eosinophil) had the greatest degree of increased CD4/CD8 ratio. Significant correlation between % eosinophil and absolute CD4 (r = 0.552, p-value = < 0.0001) and between % eosinophil and CD4/CD8 ratio (r = 0.716, p-value = < 0.0001) were also observed. It may be suggested that eosinophil estimation might be used as a simple marker from blood smear observation for an assessment of patient status which could be related to the CD values and possibly prognosis of the HIV-infected patients.
Fast GPU-beamforming of Row-Column Addressed Probe Data

A delay-and-sum beamformer for 3D imaging using row-column arrays and written in CUDA is presented and compared to an existing similar GPU-based beamformer written in the MATLAB programming language. Data from a 192+192 row-column array single element emission sequence is simulated and beamformed. The two beamformers’ performance is evaluated in two synthetic aperture setups comprised of 1) two orthogonal planes and 2) a full volume on three different NVIDIA GPUs: a 1050 Ti, a 1080 Ti, and a TITAN V. The execution time and the sample throughput (samples beamformed per second) are reported. The CUDA beamformer performs consistently better than the MATLAB beamformer with speed-ups ranging from 1.9 to 64.6 times, and the worst-case throughput of the CUDA beamformer exceeds the best-case of the MATLAB beamformer. High-resolution images of crossing planes can be beamformed at up to 13 Hz, while a 50-by-50-by-20 cubic-millimeter high-resolution volume sampled at one quarter of a millimeter is beamformed in 3 seconds.
Preliminary Conception and Test of Global Stability Decomposition for Flow Stability Analysis

Global stability analysis can be applied to study the stability property of twoand three-dimensional inhomogeneous flows. However, traditional global stability analysis (matrix-form) is based on solving the eigenvalue problem of a huge matrix, which makes it inconvenient for users. Several matrix-free or Jacobian-free methods have been developed in recent years. These methods are usually more effective and convenient than the traditional one. With regard to the matrix-free methods, a Global Stability Decomposition (GSD) is developed in the present study. The GSD concerns with a series of initial disturbances and their companions after a small time interval evolution, namely the couples of     0 0 i i u t u t t     . GSD produces modes each of which has a single frequency, growth rate and mode shape. Combined with high-order accurate CFD tools, GSD becomes an effective method in studying global linear instability of arbitrary base flows. The relations of GSD to dynamic mode decomposition and matrix-free method are also discussed.
Structured learning and inference with neural networks and generative models by

Neural networks and probabilistic models have different and in many ways complementary strengths and weaknesses: neural networks are flexible and support efficient inference, but rely on large quantities of labeled training data. Probabilistic models can learn from fewer examples, but in many cases remain limited by time-consuming inference algorithms. Thus, both classes of models have drawbacks that both limit their engineering applications and prevent them from being fully satisfying as process models of human learning. This thesis aims to address this state of affairs from both directions, exploring case studies where we make neural networks that learn from less data, and in which we design more efficient inference procedures for generative models. First, we explore recurrent neural networks that learn list-processing procedures (sort, reverse, etc.), and show how ideas from type theory and programming language theory can be used to design a data augmentation scheme that enables effective learning from small datasets. Next, we show how error-driven proposal mechanisms can speed up stochastic search for generative model inversion, first developing a symbolic model for inferring Boolean functions and Horn clause theories, and then a general-purpose neural network model for doing inference in continuous domains such as inverse graphics. Thesis Supervisor: Tomaso Poggio Title: Professor
Rac 2 functions in both neutrophils and macrophages to mediate motility and host defense in larval zebrafish 1

Leukocyte motility is required for host defense responses. Rac-family Rho GTPases are implicated in leukocyte function, however the distinct roles of different Rac isoforms in host defense in vivo have remained unclear. Here, we generated Rac2-deficient zebrafish using TALENs in order to directly compare the role of Rac2 in vivo in neutrophils and macrophages in motility and the response to infection. This zebrafish larval model is highly amenable to live imaging of leukocyte behavior and we report that in rac2−/− larvae both neutrophils and macrophages are defective in basic motility, leading to impaired responses to localized wounds or infections. rac2−/− larvae are highly susceptible to infection with Pseudomonas aeruginosa which can be almost fully rescued by ectopic expression of either Rac2 or Rac1 specifically in neutrophils, indicating that these isoforms have partially overlapping functions in vivo. Rescue of Rac2 expression specifically in macrophages also confers resistance to Pseudomonas infection, highlighting an important role for Rac2 in this leukocyte population as well. Surprisingly, in contrast to neutrophils expressing a Rac2 dominant inhibitory human disease mutation, rac2−/− neutrophils do not have altered polarity or mobilization from hematopoietic tissue, suggesting that a different Rac isoform, such as Rac1, also contributes to these phenotypes in vivo.
Disease-specific haptoglobin-β chain N-glycosylation as biomarker to differentiate non-small cell lung cancer from benign lung diseases

Background: The association of pathological states with N-glycosylation of haptoglobin-β has attracted increasing attention. Materials & Methods: In the present study, disease-specific haptoglobin-β (DSHp-β) was separated from serum immunoinflammation-related protein complexes (IIRPCs) of 600 participants including 300 patients with benign lung diseases (BLDs) and 300 patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The enriched glycopeptides of the tryptic digests of the DSHp-β were analyzed using matrix assisted laser desorption/ionization-Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (MALDI-FTICR MS). Results: 20 of glycopeptides were detected for each sample. The statistical analysis has indicated that significant changes in the sialylation of DSHp-β between BLDs and NSCLC patients were observed. The age- and sex-matched participants were randomly clarified into the training set and the validation set. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis has revealed that the level ratio of glycopeptides (G2G3/G2G3S4) at the sites of Asn207/211 has potential capability to distinguish BLDs from NSCLC, with the sensitivity of 74.4%, the specificity of 82.8%, and the area under curve (AUC) of 0.805. Conclusion: The glycosylation of DSHp-β can distinguish NSCLC from BLDs with high diagnostic accuracy compared with current clinical available serum markers.