Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Morphological responses of Daphnia pulex to Chaoborus americanus kairomone in the presence and absence of metals

Daphnia pulex neonates develop neck teeth in the presence of predatory kairomone from Chaoborus americanus that are fed D. pulex. These neck teeth reduce the susceptibility of the neonates to predation. Evidence suggests that aqueous metals interfere with chemical communication in fish. The objective of our study was to determine if Cu or Ni at environmentally relevant concentrations affects predatory kairomone response in D. pulex. To test this possibility, D. pulex were placed in increasing waterborne concentrations of Cu or Ni in the presence or absence of predatory kairomone. Both Cu and Ni reduced neck tooth induction in D. pulex neonates in the presence of predatory kairomone. Copper had a significant nonlinear effect on neck tooth length consistent with a hormetic response, where neck tooth length was highest at 5 μg/L Cu, but not significantly different than 0 μg/L Cu at higher Cu concentrations. A Ni concentration of 200 μg/L caused D. pulex to become hypersensitive to Chaoborus regardless of Chaoborus' diet, leading to increased neck tooth number but decreased neck tooth length. Neither Ni nor Cu produced any significant effects on body length or brood size. These results suggest that metal inhibition of neck tooth induction probably occurs along the signal transduction pathway. Impairment of chemosensory response to predatory chemical cues may have widespread ecological consequences in aquatic systems contaminated by metals.
Analysis of Retrofitted Reinforced Concrete Shear Beams using Carbon Fiber Composites

This paper presents the numerical study to simulate the behavior of retrofitted reinforced concrete (RC) shear beams. The study was carried out on the unretrofitted RC beam designated as control beam and RC beams retrofitted using carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) composites with ±45 and 90 fiber orientations. The effect of retrofitting on uncracked and precracked beams was studied too. The finite elements adopted by ANSYS were used in this study. A quarter of the full beam was used for modeling by taking advantage of the symmetry of the beam and loadings. The load deflection plots obtained from numerical study show good agreement with the experimental plots reported by Tom Norris, et al (1997). There is a difference in behavior between the uncracked and precracked retrofitted beams though not significant. The crack patterns in the beams are also presented.
Social Competence and Moderate to Vigorous Physical Activity of School-Aged Children through a Creative Physical Education Intervention

Traditional school physical education focuses on physical skills or strategies with an expectation that learning these skills lead to healthier lifestyle outside physical education classes, while children’s overall moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) is widely decreasing. Creative Physical Education (CPE) understands physical education more holistically, as the central pedagogical element of movement is social learning. The current study examined the development of social competence in school physical education (PE) and total moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) participation through a CPE-based intervention. Participants were 363 (177 intervention, 186 control) children from public elementary schools in Central Finland. The data collection was completed across two measurement points using questionnaires. The key findings were that: 1) the associations between social competence and MVPA engagement were relatively weak and 2) the 12-month intervention was effective in increasing students’ social competence in PE and total MVPA engagement. CPE teaching practices could provide positive social experiences in PE. However, applying new strategies into actual school settings may take time, and therefore, children need to be given sufficienttimeframe to take ownership of the activities.
Microproteinuria for detecting calcineurin inhibitor-related nephrotoxicity after liver transplantation.

AIM To investigate whether microproteinuria could be used as an early and sensitive indicator to detect calcineurin inhibitor (CNI)-related nephrotoxicity after liver transplantation. METHODS All liver transplant recipients with normal serum creatinine (SCr) and detectable microproteinuria at baseline were included in this study. The renal function was monitored by the blood clearance of (99m)Tc-diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid every 6 mo. Microproteinuria, SCr and blood urea nitrogen (BUN) were measured at entry and at subsequent follow-up visits. The patients were divided into different groups according to the mean values of glomerular filtration rate (GFR) at the follow-up time points: Group 1, GFR decreased from baseline by 0%-10%; Group 2, GFR decreased from baseline by 11%-20%; Group 3, GFR decreased from baseline by 21%-40%; Group 4, GFR decreased from baseline by > 40% and/or SCr was increasing. RESULTS A total of 143 patients were enrolled into this study (23 females and 120 males). The mean follow-up was 32 mo (range 16-36 mo). Downward trends in renal function over time were observed in the study groups. SCr and BUN increased significantly only in Group 4 patients (P < 0.001). beta2-microglobulin (beta2m) and alpha1-microglobulin (alpha1m) significantly increased with the subtle change of renal function in recipients who were exposed to CNI-based immunosuppression regimens. The reductions in GFR were closely correlated with elevated alpha1m (r(2) = -0.728, P < 0.001) and beta2m (r(2) = -0.787, P < 0.001). CONCLUSION beta2m and alpha1m could be useful as early and sensitive indicators of CNI-induced nephrotoxicity.
Child pedestrian injuries and urban change

Background The health impacts of rapid changes in urban environments due to economic growth and/or retraction are not widely known. This study looks at the effects of urban change on the risk of child pedestrian injury in Edmonton, Alberta, a city that has experienced large economic and population growth following the expansion of the oil and gas industry in Canada. Methods A longitudinal ecological study design was used to model the relationships between several built and social environmental variables and the risk of child pedestrian injury and severe child pedestrian injury between 1996 and 2007. Results The incidence of child pedestrian injury was stable, but the incidence of severe injury increased over the study period. Areas with higher proportions of families on low incomes had higher injury incidence. While new residential development is associated with a lower incidence of injury in most areas, in poor areas, new residential development is associated with a higher incidence, even after controlling for urban planning features and traffic intensity. Conclusion While suburban areas have a lower incidence of child pedestrian injury, residential development in poorer areas is associated with a higher child pedestrian injury risk. Child pedestrians may be less able to adapt to changes in the urban environment due to rapid growth and increasing income, and as a result, may be at greater risk of injury.
Hippocampal gene expression analysis using the ORESTES methodology shows that homer 1a mRNA is upregulated in the acute period of the pilocarpine epilepsy model

In the study of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) the characterization of genes expressed in the hippocampus is of central importance for understanding their roles in epileptogenic mechanisms. Although several large‐scale studies on TLE gene expression have been reported, precise assignment of individual genes associated with this syndrome is still debatable. Here we investigated differentially expressed genes by comparison of mRNAs from normal and epileptic rat hippocampus in the pilocarpine model of epilepsy. For this we used a powerful EST sequencing methodology, ORESTES (Open Reading frame Expressed Sequence Tags), which generates sequence datasets enriched for mRNAs open reading frames (ORFs) rather than simple 5′ and 3′ ends of mRNAs. Analysis of our sequences shows that ORESTES readily enables the identification of epilepsy associated ORFs. PFAM analysis of protein motifs present in our ORESTES epilepsy database revealed diverse important protein family domains, such as cytoskeletal, cell signaling and protein kinase domains, which could be involved in processes underlying epileptogenesis. More importantly, we show that the expression of homer 1a, known to be coupled to mGluR and NMDA synaptic transmission, is associated with pilocarpine induced status epilepticus (SE). The combined use of the pilocarpine model of epilepsy with the ORESTES technique can significantly contribute to the identification of specific genes and proteins related to TLE. This is the first study applying a large‐scale method for rapid shotgun sequencing directed to ORFs in epilepsy research. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
In vitro AN69 and Polysulphone Membrane Permeability to Ceftazidime and in vivo Pharmacokinetics during Continuous Renal Replacement Therapies

Background: Ceftazidime is a third-generation cephalosporin almost entirely eliminated by glomerular filtration and dose reductions are essential in patients with renal impairment. The physicochemical and pharmacokinetic properties of ceftazidime make it susceptible to be eliminated by continuous renal replacement therapies (CRRT), but there is little clinical information to guide the correct administration in patients undergoing these techniques. Methods: In vitro procedures were carried out in three different fluids, using AN69 or polysulphone membranes. Four patients entered the in vivo study. Two patients received 1,000 mg every 6 h and the other two 2,000 mg every 6 h. Concentrations of ceftazidime were measured by high-performance liquid chromatography. Results: No differences were detected in thesieving coefficients (Sc) or saturation coefficients (Sa)between membranes during continuous venovenous hemofiltration (CVVH) or continuous venovenous hemodiafiltration (CVVHD). Sc-Sa values were close to 1 when Ringer’s lactate was used as ceftazidime vehicle, but were lower in plasma samples (p < 0.05). In patients, the Sc-Sa was 0.93 ± 0.06 and correlated well with the unbound fraction (0.86 ± 0.08). The contribution of CRRT to ceftazidime clearance was higher in anuric patients than in nonanuric patients. Conclusions: No differences were shown in vitro in the Sc obtained with both membranes during CVVH or the Sa obtained during CVVHD. The contribution of clearance by CRRT to total clearance is clearly dependent on the renal function. The administration of ceftazidime every 6 h could be associated with unnecessarily high trough levels which increase the risk of drug nephrotoxicity. Nonanuric patients undergoing CRRT need higher ceftazidime doses to reach adequate plasma concentrations against pathogens isolated in the critically ill.
Unsupervised Cross-lingual Word Embeddings Based on Subword Alignment

Cross-lingual word embeddings are crucial building blocks for multilingual models, and recent studies indicate that they are obtainable without any bilingual resources [4, 8]. However, the reported experimental results (replicated in this study) indicate that the performance of such cross-lingual word embeddings degrades on distant language pairs such as English-Japanese and EnglishFinnish. In this paper, we propose an unsupervised method to obtain cross-lingual word embeddings by exploiting unambiguously-translatable word pairs such as loanwords and named entities as a dictionary to induce mappings. Given an initial bilingual dictionary (obtained in an unsupervised manner), our method learns a subword alignment model to extract unambiguously translatable word pairs whose surfaces are alignable with each other. We then employ the bilingual dictionary refined with the subword alignment model to induce accurate crosslingual word embeddings. Experimental results indicate that cross-lingual word embeddings obtained with our method were more accurate than those obtained by the state-of-the-art method, especially on distant language pairs.
Analysis of Histopathological Lesions in Hysterectomy Specimens at Two Teaching Hospitals in Rwanda : A Two Year Review

The common lesions on histopathology were uterine leiomyomata (35%), malignant tumors of the female reproductive organs (16.8%), and cervical dysplasia (9.7 %). Overall, 83% of all the clinical indications for hysterectomy were confirmed by histopathology. The correlation between clinical diagnosis and histopathology was strong and significant, with a correlation coefficient of 0.724, and the significance level <0.05, using Pearson correlation. The most common lesion found incidentally on histopathology was adenomyosis.
Effect of the Level of Seed Tuber Infection by Colletotrichum coccodes at Planting on Potato Growth , Black Dot Severity and Subsequent Yield Reduction

A great deal of attention has been given to tuber infections of Colletotrichum coccodes as skin blemishes depreciate the tuber’s commercial value and serve as means of pathogen spread into new productions areas. This study was carried out on cv. ‘Spunta’ potato plants to compare, quantitatively, the relative impact of different tuber-borne inoculum levels on black dot severity, plant growth and expected yield loss. Black dot severity recorded 60 (pot experiment) or 90 days post-planting (field experiment) on the below-ground plant parts varied significantly depending on inoculum levels tested. The severest symptoms were induced by the highest seed tubers infections corresponding to more than 50% of the seed tuber surface area covered with black dot lesions. The recorded disease severity was found to be highly and positively correlated with the level of seeds contamination. The aerial part fresh weight noted 60 DPP was reduced, compared to plants grown from the symptomless seed tubers, by 24 and 42% when heavily infested seeds were planted. This growth parameter was also negatively correlated with black dot severity on seed tubers and on the below-ground plant parts. In the pot experiment, tuber weight was reduced by about 14-21% on plants grown from extremely infected seeds as compared with the non infested control plants. Yield decrease, subsequent to the planting of diseased seeds, varied between 15 and 27% when C. coccodes inoculum levels ranged between 1 and 5. The field study revealed the existence of significant and negative correlations between the tuber yield, the level of seed-borne inoculum and disease severity on the below-ground stems, roots and stolons. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Cardiomyocyte loss in experimental renal failure: prevention by ramipril.

BACKGROUND The development of left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) and of structural abnormalities of the heart is a key abnormality in renal failure that potentially contributes to the high rate of cardiac death. In renal failure, the behavior of cardiomyocyte volume and number in the development of LVH has so far not been investigated. A potential role of the (local) renin-angiotensin system (RAS) in the genesis of LVH has been suspected. It was the aim of the present study in short-term experimental renal failure (1) to characterize cardiomyocyte volume and number and (2) to study whether they are affected by the angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor ramipril. METHODS Sprague-Dawley rats (N = 8 to 10 per group) had a subtotal nephrectomy (SNX) or sham operation and followed for 8 weeks. One SNX group received the ACE inhibitor ramipril (0.5 mg/kg body weight) in the drinking fluid. After perfusion fixation, the morphology of the heart was investigated using stereologic techniques. RESULTS Systolic blood pressure was slightly, but not significantly, higher in untreated SNX, but the left ventricular (LV) weight and LV weight/body weight ratio (2.32 +/- 0.20 mg/g) were significantly higher in SNX than in sham-operated animals (1.90 +/- 0.16 mg/g). Sarcomeric length was not significantly different between SNX and sham-operated animals. There was an increase in the number of terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated uridine triphosphate nick end labeling (TUNEL)-positive myocytes in SNX compared to sham-operated animals and a significant increase in cardiomyocyte volume (15,713 +/- 4557 microm3 vs. 10,067 +/- 2242 microm3, P < 0.01) as well as a decrease of cardiomyocyte numbers per unit myocardial volume (61.2 +/- 16.2 vs. 92.2 +/- 20.9 x 103/mm3) and per left ventricle (70.9 +/- 16.5 x 106 vs. 94.8 +/- 18.1 x 106, P < 0.05). Both abnormalities were abrogated by treatment with ramipril (6347 +/- 972.4 microm3 and 106 +/- 18.9 103/mm3 or 118 +/- 39.5 x 106, respectively), which also completely prevented the increase in LV weight/body weight ratio (1.83 +/- 0.14 mg/g). CONCLUSION LVH in renal failure is characterized by cardiomyocyte hypertrophy, but also cardiomyocyte drop out. A role of the RAS is suggested by the beneficial effect of ramipril treatment that is not accounted for by differences in blood pressure.
Power Doppler Assessment of Vascular Changes During Fracture Treatment With Low‐Intensity Ultrasound

Objective. To study the use of power Doppler sonography for assessing changes in vascularity during treatment of fracture sites with low‐intensity ultrasound. Methods. In 6 dogs (3 pairs), subcutaneous dissection of the midshaft of the ulna allowed symmetrical osteotomies to be made with a reciprocation saw. Three dogs were treated and 3 were used as controls. The fracture site was subjected to 1.5‐MHz low‐intensity ultrasound (30 mW/cm2) for 20 minutes daily from a therapeutic ultrasonic device. Gray scale sonography was performed to evaluate the fracture site. Power Doppler sonography was used to assess flow patterns at the fracture site and surrounding soft tissue. A sonographic contrast agent was administered intravenously. The dose was 0.2 mL/kg. Results. Power Doppler sonography showed an increase in flow around the fracture site in the treated dogs compared with that in control dogs. Color pixel values on day 7 were 3‐fold higher in treated legs than control legs and on day 11 were 33% higher in treated legs than control legs. Enhancement after contrast agent administration was consistently higher in treated legs than control legs. Conclusions. Power Doppler sonography showed increased vascularity around the fracture sites in treated dogs with and without contrast agent administration.
Experimentation in human populations.

This paper offers a definition of experimentation in the context of health related research on human populations, reviews the history of such experimentation, and discusses some issues relevant to health-related experimentation. The present role of experimentation in research on human beings developed from the continuing need to test all innovations in the treatment of human beings, and the empiricism pervading modern scientific research, 2 approaches which were combined in the pioneering clinical trials of Bradford Hall in Britain in the early 1960s. 4 areas in which the feasibility of health-related experimentation on human populations is frequently challenged are randomization, cost, population definition and availability, and observation of responses. Despite the need to avoid subjective bias in unit assignment and the high and uncontrollable variation in human subjects, randomization is not always accepted as necessary or feasible by researchers. Researchers must be convinced that there is no clear evidence of superiority of 1 treatment protocol over another in order to accept the randomization procedure. A major problem of cost is how to combine elements of financial cost with the risks of adverse effects. In some situations there is a need to establish a sequence of experiments which progress from limited to wider populations and from rigid to more flexible protocols. Similarly, statistical methods that utilize a partially sequential design are needed to minimize the exposure of subjects to inferior treatment while insuring that the experiment is not prematurely terminated. Even apparently objective responses may be affected by bias and human judgment.
Border Thinking as Historical Decolonial Method: Reframing Dependence Studies to (Re)Connect Management&Development

We want to apply border thinking as historical method in management and organization knowledge to bring to the fore the knowledge produced by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and in particular by Brazilian Celso Furtado. The knowledge produced by them has been taken as “dependence theory” rather than as “dependence studies” and correspondingly suppressed by the enduring forces and mechanisms of geo-epistemic coloniality imposed by the North since colonial times. We aim to show that dependence is a missing link for us to connect management and development from a decolonial perspective from the South.
Skills for Today: What We Know about Teaching and Assessing Creativity

creative-thinking skills, which is exemplified in the Innovation and Creativity course. This course frequently involves hands-on creative work applying different skills. In one activity, Dr. Carpenter presented students with the problem of how to improve snow removal at their university. Students then engaged in creative problem-solving, using everyday objects such as crayons and rubber bands to devise solutions. Students utilized the strategy of shifting perceptions to think deeply about the objects and how they could function in new and innovative ways. Collaboration is used intentionally to enhance the creative process. Group work supports the use of piggybacking, where students expand and build upon each others’ ideas. Dr. Carpenter describes this activity as helping students “look at the ordinary in extraordinary ways. ” These activities are designed to challenge students, which is instrumental to the learning process. Creative production is often about pushing boundaries, and these activities help students become comfortable with this process. In the minor’s capstone course, students engage in creative production, with the ultimate goal of generating change. Students work with community and campus partners to apply the creative process in a real-world setting. Courses within the minor often incorporate reflection. Students construct creativity narratives where they describe the evolution of their creativity skills, and portfolios are used to track the development of creative artifacts. These self-reflections serve to assess student progress and support future learning. By critically examining their past work, students can identify the next steps needed to further develop their creative-thinking skills. Through instruction, applied activities, community projects, and self-reflection, Dr. Carpenter and his colleagues aim to provide EKU students with the creative-thinking skills needed to drive innovation in their other courses and future careers.
Improving the quality of prestack inversion by prestack data conditioning

AbstractPrestack seismic inversion techniques provide valuable information of rock properties, lithology, and fluid content for reservoir characterization. The confidence of inverted results increases with increasing incident angle of seismic gathers. The most accurate result of simultaneous prestack inversion of P-wave seismic data is P-impedance. S-impedance estimation becomes reliable with incident angles approaching 30°, whereas density evaluation becomes reliable with incident angles approaching 45°. As the offset increases, we often encounter “hockey sticks” and severe stretch at large offsets. Hockey sticks and stretch not only lower the seismic resolution but also hinder long offset prestack seismic inversion analysis. The inverted results are also affected by the random noises present in the prestack gathers. We developed a three-step workflow to perform data conditioning prior to simultaneous prestack inversion. First, we mitigated the hockey sticks by using an automatic nonhyperbolic velocity a.