Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spiral Disk Opacity from Occulting Galaxy Pairs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

A spiral galaxy partially overlapping a more distant elliptical offers a unique opportunity to measure the dust extinction in the foreground spiral. From the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR4 spectroscopic sample, we selected 83 occulting galaxy pairs and measured disk opacity over the redshift range z = 0.0-0.2 with the goal of determining the recent evolution of disk dust opacity. The enrichment of the ISM changes over the lifetime of a disk, and it is reasonable to expect the dust extinction properties of spiral disks as a whole to change over their lifetime. When they do, the change will affect our measurements of galaxies over the observable universe. From the SDSS pairs we conclude that spiral disks show evidence of extinction to ∼2 effective radii. However, no evidence for recent evolution of disk opacity is evident, due to the limited redshift range and our inability to distinguish other factors on disk opacity such as the presence of spiral arms and Hubble type. Such effects also mask any relation between surface brightness and optical depth that has been found in nearby galaxies. Hence, we conclude that the SDSS spectral catalog is an excellent way to find occulting pairs and construct a uniform local sample. However, a higher resolution than that of the SDSS images is needed to disentangle the effects of spiral arms and Hubble type from evolution since z = 0.2.
Deterioration of Extra Virgin Olive Oil Caused by Different Processes

Extra virgin olive oil is recognized as a very stable oil because of its composition in fatty acids and its content in natural antioxidants (tocopherols and polyphenols). In the bibliography are works that address different aspects of this stability, from the duration of its useful life to its performance in the frying of foods. Some works also link their stability with the content of natural antioxidants. For example, Franco et al. (2014) studied the content of phenols and their antioxidant capacity in olive oils of seven different varieties. Baccouri et al. (2008) found a good correlation between the oxidative stability (measured in Rancimat) of the oils studied and the concentration of total phenols and tocopherols.
Critical Thinking Ability and Disposition as Factors of Performance on a Written Critical Thinking Test.

In the past, research on critical thinking has focused on discrete critical thinking skills to the exclusion of dispositional factors (Browne, Haas, & Keeley, 1978; Ennis, 1962). Later research has incorporated dispositional factors into a two-factor system in which ability and disposition combine to determine critical think ing performance (Ennis, 1985a, 1991; Siegel, 1988). The present study used confirmatory factor analysis to investigate whether such a two-factor model of critical thinking is more plausible than a model including only a single "critical thinking" factor. Assum ing that the two-factor model was the more plausible, it was ex pected that performance on a semi-structured written critical think ing task would be influenced by both critical thinking ability and critical thinking disposition. Over 40 years ago, the Intercollege Committee on Critical Thinking identified critical thinking as a "pervasive objective" of higher education (Dressel & Mayhew, 1954). Critical thinking received relatively little emphasis for the next 25 years (Ennis, 1985b). Since 1980, however, interest in critical thinking has burgeoned, at least partially due to the widespread perception that critical thinking skills are not being taught (DeNitto & Strickland, 1987; Halpern, 1989). Ennis (1991) reported that the College Board has identified critical thinking (referred to as "reasoning") as one of the seven basic academic competencies. Siegel (1988) stated that:
A refined Hovmöller diagram

A refinement is proposed to the conventional Hovmäoller diagram. The rationale is set out for the refined approach, a description provided of its design, and examples presented to illustrate its value as a diagnostic tool. It is shown that it can depict the dynamical characteristics of synoptic-scale disturbances as they evolve on a meandering tropopause-level waveguide, and in particular it can detect wave-breaking events, cut-off formation and vortex re-connection.
Anti-idiotype antibodies that mimic a conserved aquatic birnavirus epitope induce neutralizing antibodies and bind to fish cells with inhibition of virus replication

Polyclonal anti-idiotype (anti-Id) antibodies were prepared in rats against a monoclonal antibody (MAb AS-1) which defines a highly conserved neutralization epitope on virion protein 2 (VP2) of Serogroup A aquatic birnaviruses. Anti-mouse IgG cross-reactive antibodies were removed from rat sera by adsorption to an affinity column of normal mouse IgG and further punfied by subsequent adsorption to and elution from an affinity column coupled with MAb AS-1. Confirmation that these anti-Id antibodies were directed against the paratope of MAb AS-1 and molecularly mimicked the virus epitope was demonstrated in a variety of assays. Anti-Id antibodies reacted in enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) with both whole MAb AS-1 IgG and F(ab);, fragments, but &d not react with 2 unrelated mouse IgGs or F(ab);, fragments. Anti-Id antibodies blocked binding of virus to MAb AS-1 in a dose-dependent manner with 100% inhibition at the highest concentration. Similarly, virus inhibited anti-Id/i&otype binding by 60 %. Furthermore, anti-Id antibodies inhibited the ability of MAb AS-1 to neutralize virus in plaque reduction assays. Anti-ld antibodies induced the production of virus neutralizing antibodies in mice. Anti-Id antibodies also were used to show that the AS-1 epitope is a presumptive cell attachment site on the virus which recognizes and binds to specific cell receptors Anti-Id antibodies were shown to bind to a variety of both salmonid and non-salmonid fish cell cultures. Pretreatment of fish cell cultures with virus inhibited (28 to 50%) binding of anti-ld antibodies. Treatment of fish cell cultures with anti-Id antibodies also resulted in a decrease (98%) in the yield of progeny virus compared with replication of the virus in untreated cells or cells treated with normal rat immunoglobulin.
Effect of Cyanobacterial Biofertilizer on Soil Quality in Kale (Brassica Oleracea L) Crop Growing Field at Ziway Area, Ethiopia

The agricultural soil of Ethiopia is generally low in nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) which can affect crop production. Basically, commercial fertilizers could improve the soil fertility and crop yield. However, farmers are unwilling to use sources of inorganic fertilizers because of higher costs, accessibility and also in the long run, they affect the soil biota. This experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of cyanobacterial biofertilizer on soil quality on kale (Brassica Oleracea L.) crop growing soil in Ziway. Five treatments: liquid cyanobacterial, dry cyanobacteria, urea, cattle manure and control were laid out in RCBD with three replications. Soil data were collected before and after harvesting the kale crop for selected soil physicochemical properties laboratory analysis and the data subjected to analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results showed that, soil total N, Organic Carbon (OC), available P, available Fe, and available Zn contents have increased by 1.2%, 0.49%, 21.1mg kg- 1 , 3.54 mg kg- 1 , and 5.31mg kg- 1 , respectively over the control when dry Cyanobacteria biofertilizer was applied. Similarly, the incorporation of dry and liquid cyanobacteria biofertilizer was significantly decreased the soil pH to 6.6 and 6.9 over the control 7.75, respectively. Therefore, the use of cyanobacteria as a biofertilizer should be recommended as an alternative source of inorganic N fertilizer to improve the soil quality and reclaim alkaline soil for kale crop yield improvement for medium and small-sized farms in the study area. Keywords : Anabaena species, Biofertilizer, Cyanobacteria, Soil Quality, Kale crop and N-fixing
Correlation Between Hepatitis B and C Positivity and Rheumatoid Factor Levels in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis

Ad dress for Cor res pon den ce: Songül Çildağ MD, Adnan Menderes University, Department of Immunology-Rheumatology, Aydın, Turkey Gsm: +90 506 509 27 53 E-mail: songulcildag@yahoo.com Re cei ved: 19.11. 2013 Ac cep ted: 29.12. 2013 Viral Hepatitis Journal, pub lis hed by Ga le nos Pub lis hing. songül çİLDAğ, Taşkın ŞenTürK Adnan Menderes University, Department of Immunology-Rheumatology, Aydın, Turkey
Timber shear walls with large openings: experimental and numerical prediction of the structural behaviour

A numerical model based on the finite element method is presented for prediction of the cyclic response of wood frame structures. The model predicts the cyclic response of shear walls. Nonlinear phenomena are assumed to be concentrated in the connections that are modelled through elements linking the structural elements including the posts, beams, and sheathing panels. Identification of model parameters relies on tests on individual connections. Connection tests on different nail lengths were conducted under monotonic and cyclic lateral loads. Based on the results from past studies that indicate the pull-through failure is an important failure mode in common nail connections with lumber and oriented strand board (OSB), washers were considered as a means to reinforce the connection. The influence of reinforced nailing on the static and dynamic performance of full-size wood frame shear walls with large openings, sheathed with OSB panels, was evaluated experimentally. Combinations of parameters were studied,.
Boosted Regression Estimates of Spatial Data: Pointwise Inference

In this study simple nonparametric techniques have been adopted to estimate the trend surface of the Swiss rainfall data. In particular we employed the Nadaraya-Watson smoother and in addition, an adapted-by boosting-version of it. Additionally, we have explored the use of the Nadaraya-Watson estimator for the construction of pointwise confidence intervals. Overall, boosting does seem to improve the estimate as much as previous examples and the results indicate that cross-validation can be successfully used for parameter selection on real datasets. In addition, our estimators compare favorably with most of the techniques previously used on this dataset.
IDENTIFYING THE SOURCE OF POLLUTANTS IN MALACCA RIVER USING GIS APPROACH

The study was conducted to determine the dominant source of pollutants in Malacca River using the combined methods of water sampling and GIS approach. The study was conducted in 9 sampling stations based on Malacca River sub-basins. The result of WQI indicated that station 4 and 5 are polluted; station 8 and 9 are clean; and other stations are slightly polluted. PCA identified several pollutant sources, namely agricultural, residential, industrial, animal husbandry activities, as well as sewage treatment plants. Applied GIS technique detected several areas as hotspots pollutants sources, namely agricultural activities in station 5; residential activities in station 1, 2, 5, 6, and 7; industrial activities in station 3, 4, 5, and 7; animal husbandry in station 5 and some scatterings in station 1 to 4; as well as sewage treatment plant in moderate hotspot area between station 5 and 6, respectively. Besides the recommendation to reduce the river water pollution through the control of pollutants source, this study provides crucial information for the identification of problematic areas and spatial database of Malacca River for better understanding and management of river water quality in the future, as well as a reference for future land use and urban design development purposes.
Learning Representation and Control in Markov Decision Processes: New Frontiers

Learning Representation and Control in Markov Decision Processes describes methods for automatically compressing Markov decision processes (MDPs) by learning a low-dimensional linear approximation defined by an orthogonal set of basis functions. A unique feature of the text is the use of Laplacian operators, whose matrix representations have non-positive off-diagonal elements and zero row sums. The generalized inverses of Laplacian operators, in particular the Drazin inverse, are shown to be useful in the exact and approximate solution of MDPs. The author goes on to describe a broad framework for solving MDPs, generically referred to as representation policy iteration (RPI), where both the basis function representations for approximation of value functions as well as the optimal policy within their linear span are simultaneously learned. Basis functions are constructed by diagonalizing a Laplacian operator or by dilating the reward function or an initial set of bases by powers of the operator. The idea of decomposing an operator by finding its invariant subspaces is shown to be an important principle in constructing low-dimensional representations of MDPs. Theoretical properties of these approaches are discussed, and they are also compared experimentally on a variety of discrete and continuous MDPs. Finally, challenges for further research are briefly outlined. Learning Representation and Control in Markov Decision Processes is a timely exposition of a topic with broad interest within machine learning and beyond.
PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSING IN INDIVIDUALS WITH ATTENTION DEFICIT HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER Processamento fonológico em indivíduos com transtorno de déficit de atenção e hiperatividade

Purpose: to analyze e to describe the skills’ performance of the phonological processing components in subjects with Attention Deficit - Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Methods: it is a descriptive analytical study of the evaluation data of the phonological processing skills of 45 subjects, with ages between 7 and 16 years, with a multiprofessional diagnosis of ADHD. All data was obtained from the medical records of the subjects evaluated by the Laboratorio de Estudo dos Transtornos de Aprendizagem (LETRA) of Hospital das Clinicas da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), between the years of 2008 and 2011. The analyzed results include the Phonological Awareness test, proposed by the battery of tests BELEC, the Rapid Serial Naming (RAN) test and Auditory Memory test. Two variables were considered in this analysis: the age and the presence or absence of associated comorbidities. The test used to the sample characterization was the nonparametric of Mann Whitney. Results: groups tend to differentiate themselves when the age variable is analyzed, on the Phonological Awareness tests and RAN. When the comorbidity variable was analyzed, the Phonological Awareness was more influenced by the presence of comorbidities. On the Auditory Memory skills, by the same light, there were no differences between the groups. Conclusion: the largest deficit in phonological processing was observed in phonological awareness skills, according to the age and comorbidity variables, followed by the lexicon’s access skills, according to the age variable. About the Working Memory, there was no significance.
The Relationship between Total Production and Public Spending in Mexico: Keynes versus Wagner

This paper studies the relationship between public spending and production in Mexico. It aims to assess the direction of causality between these two variables ranging from economic growth to public expenditure (Wagner hypothesis) or public spending to economic growth (Keynesian hypothesis). Annual time series for the period 1925–2014 of production and public spending in real terms (1970 based) and logarithms were used. The test method involved three steps: 1) unit root tests; 2) cointegration test of Engle and Granger and 3) evidence of causality in the Granger sense. The paper uses five different specifications recommended by the specialized international literature. It was found that the series are stationary with regards first differences and are cointegrated, so we can say there is a long-term relationship. Statistical tests of Granger causality indicated that the Wagner hypothesis does not hold, while the Keynes hypothesis is validated. The study concludes that public spending and its proper management is one of the keys to promoting economic growth in Mexico. Originality/value: Time series for a long-term period, based on official information, something not done previously, were developed. This allowed the results to be more reliable than those presented by other authors. In addition, a modern procedure of econometric estimation, allowing the assessment of the two proposed scenarios was used. The work is relevant in terms of the design of economic policy and the pursuit of development in Mexico.
Wetting morphologies on substrates with striped surface domains

The wetting and dewetting of chemically structured substrates with striped surface domains is studied theoretically. The lyophilic stripes and the lyophobic substrate are characterized by different contact angles θγ and θδ, respectively. We determine the complete bifurcation diagram for the wetting morphologies (i) on a single lyophilic stripe and (ii) on two neighboring stripes separated by a lyophobic one. We find that long channels can only be formed on the lyophilic stripes if the contact angle θγ is smaller than a certain threshold value θch(V) which depends only weakly on the volume V and attains the finite value θch(∞) in the limit of large V. This asymptotic value is equal to θch(∞)=arccos(π/4)≃38° for all lyophobic substrates with θδ⩾π/2. For a given value of θγ<θch(∞), the extended channels spread onto the lyophilic stripes with essentially constant cross section.
Anticipating species distributions : handling 1 sampling effort bias under a Bayesian 2 framework 3

37 Anticipating species distributions in space and time is necessary for 38 effective biodiversity conservation and for prioritising management in39 terventions. This is especially true when considering invasive species. 40 In such a case, anticipating their spread is important to effectively plan 41 management actions. However, considering uncertainty in the output 42 of species distribution models is critical for correctly interpreting re43 sults and avoiding inappropriate decision-making. In particular, when 44 dealing with species inventories, the bias resulting from sampling effort 45 may lead to an overor under-estimation of the local density of occur46 rences of a species. In this paper we propose an innovative method to 47 i) map sampling effort bias using cartogram models and ii) explicitly 48 consider such uncertainty in the modeling procedure under a Bayesian 49 framework, which allows the integration of multilevel input data with 50 prior information to improve the anticipation species distributions. 51 52
Getting a kick out of it: multimodal signalling during male-male encounters in the foot-flagging frog Micrixalus aff. saxicola from the Western Ghats of India

Several anuran species use multimodal signals to communicate in diverse social contexts. Our study describes acoustic and visual behaviours of the Small Torrent Frog (Micrixalus aff. saxicola), a diurnal frog endemic to the Western Ghats of India. During agonistic interactions males display advertisement calls, foot-flagging and tapping (foot lifting) behaviours to signal the readiness to defend perching sites in perennial streams. Results from a quantitative video analysis of male–male interactions indicate that footflagging displays were used as directional signals toward the opponent male, but were less abundant than calls. The acoustic and visual signals were not functionally linked. The call of Micrixalus aff. saxicola thereby did not act as an alert signal. Analysis of behavioural transitions revealed that kicking behaviours (physical attacks) significantly elicited kicks from interacting males. We suggest that foot-flagging displays ritualized from this frequently observed fighting technique to reduce physical attacks.
Evaluation of the antimicrobial activity of tannin extracted from the barks of Erythrophleum guineensis (Caesalpiniaceae)

Acute diarrheal diseases caused by food poisoning consitute serious public health problem in developing countries where they are the leading cause of death. WHO recommends research towards discovery of new anti-infective molecules that could be used in the treatment of bacterial and fungal infections such food poisoning, diarrhea. Literature reports that tannins are a very effective natural treatment. For example, in Democratic Republic of Congo, MEYAMICINE® was developed as very effective drug against food poisoning and diarrhea. The antimicrobial activity of condensed tannins from Erythrophleum guineensis stem barks (Caesalpiniaceae) was evaluated using the micro-dilution method in a liquid medium on seven reference strains, notably Staphylococcus aureus CIP 7625, Salmonella enterica NR 13555, Shigella flexneri NR 518, Escherichia coli ATCC 25922, Candida albicans NR 29450, Candida krusei ATCC 6258 and Candida parapsilosis ATCC 22019. The hydro-ethanolic crude extract of stem bark contains several classes of secondary metabolites such as polyphenols, tannins, flavonoids, terpenoids, alkaloids, saponins mucilage, coumarin, cardiac glycosides, etc. The partition of this crude extract with ethyl acetate resulted into the isolation of condensed tannins. The determination of condensed tannins via total proanthocyanidin assay yielded a concentration of 0.865 mg EC / mL with an optical density of 0.558. The minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC) ranged from 1.25 to 2.5 mg / mL while the minimum bactericidal or fungicidal concentrations (MBC or MFC) ranged from 1.25 mg / mL to 5 mg / mL. The best bactericidal and absolute fungicidal activities were respectively recorded on Staphylococcus aureus and Candida krusei and Candida parapsilosis with results (MBC/ MIC or MFC / MIC = 1). A relatively bactericidal activity good was also recorded againat Shigella flexneri (MBC / MIC = 2). On the other hand, condensed tannins exhibited bacteriostatic or fungistatic activitities on Salmonella enterica, Shigella flexneri, Escherichia coli and Candida albicans with (MBC / MIC = 4). This study has also led to isolation of a proanthocyanidol. On the basis of the antimicrobial activities of condensed tannins in this study, it can be concluded that condensed tannins from Erytrhophleum guineensis effectively exhibit antimicrobial properties and this may justify the use of this plant in the treatment of diarrhea caused by food poisoning.
Separation of Campesterol and β‐Sitosterol from a Sterol Mixture

Abstract By solvent crystallization using diethyl ether as the solvent on sterol mixture, brassicasterol and stigmasterol that contains a side chain with double bond were separated from campesterol and β‐sitosterol with a saturated side chain. The total campesterol and β‐sitosterol content in the liquid phase was more than 97% with a recovery of 12%. Multistage crystallization using acetone as the solvent could increase the recovery of campesterol and β‐sitosterol to 30%. By employing zeolite selective adsorption on the campesterol and β‐sitosterol fraction, β‐sitosterol can be recovered in the liquid phase with a purity of 95.2% and a recovery of 3% (overall recovery 1%). After desorbing in ethanol, campesterol adsorbed on the zeolite can be recovered with a purity of 95.4% and a recovery of 3.7% (overall recovery 1.6%).