Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nanobiosensor for Diclofop Detection Based on Chemically Modified AFM Probes

Highly sensitive and selective functional nanobiobreaksensors are being developed because they have significant applications in the sustenance and conservation of natural resources and can be used in projects to identify degraded and contaminated areas (of both soil and water) and as environmental quality indicators. In the present study, a nanobiosensor was developed based on using theoretical models (molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulations) based on biomimicry of the action mechanism of herbicides in plants coupled with atomic force microscopy (AFM) tools. The herbicide molecules were detected at very low concentrations using a unique sensor construction: the AFM probes and the substrate were chemically functionalized to favor covalent bonding and promote molecular flexibility, as well as to achieve reproducible and accurate results. Computational methods were used to determine the binding energies associated with the enzyme-herbicide interactions, which were compared with experimental results for adhesion forces. The theoretical results showed that the diclofop herbicide could be assembled and attached onto the mica substrate surface and the ACCase enzyme on the AFM probe without damaging the diclofop molecule. The experimental results showed that using a specific agrochemical target molecule was more efficient than using other nonspecific agrochemicals. On average, there was a 90% difference between the values of specific recognition (diclofop) and nonspecific recognition (imazaquin, metsulfuron, and glyphosate). This result validated the selectivity and specificity of the nanobiosensor. The first evidence of diclofop detection by the AFM probe sensors has been presented in this paper.
OECD Employment Outlook 2008

Sources and definitions Most of the statistics shown in these tables can also be found in two other (paper or electronic) publication and data repository, as follows: ● the annual edition of OECD Labour Force Statistics, 1987-2007; ● OECD.Stat, the OECD’s central data warehouse (www.oecd.org/els/employment/data), which contains both raw data and derived statistics. These references, which include information on definitions, notes and sources used by OECD countries, contain longer time series and more detailed data by age group, gender, duration of unemployment, etc., than are shown in this annex. Please note that the data on employment, unemployment and the labour force are not necessarily the same as the series used for analyses and forecasting by the OECD Economics Department and reproduced in Tables 0.2 and 0.3 of the “Recent Developments” section at the beginning of this publication. Interested users can refer to the on-line database (www.oecd.org/els/employment/data), which contains data series on the labour market situation in OECD countries: population, labour force, employment and unemployment disaggregated by gender and age, educational attainment, employment status and sector of activity, participation and unemployment rates, statistics on part-time employment and duration of unemployment, job tenure, etc. The on-line database contains a number of additional series on labour market performances and on features of the institutional and regulatory environment affecting the functioning of labour markets. Among these are the following: ● annual hours of work data for comparisons of trends over time; ● distribution of gross earnings of full-time workers by earnings decile and by sex to derive various measures of earnings dispersion; ● gross mean and median earnings of full-time workers by age group and gender; ● statutory minimum wages; ● public expenditure on labour market programmes and number of participants; ● trade union density rates in OECD countries.
School Reform: America’s Winchester Mystery House

This quantitative study examines the correlation between international student achievement test outcomes and national competitiveness rankings. Student achievement data are derived from a variation-adjusted, common metric data set for 74 countries that have participated in any of the international mathematics and science achievement tests since 1964. National competitiveness data are taken from the 2014-15 Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) published by the World Economic Forum. A Spearman’s rank-order correlation was run to assess the relationship between student performance on international achievement tests and the competitiveness of nations. For all nations, there was a moderate positive correlation between student performance on international achievement tests and the competitiveness of a nation, rs(98)=0.688, p<0.001. However, this relationship disappeared among the 18 most competitive nations, the cohort to which the United States belongs. The relationship also disappeared among the 18 nations with the highest achievement scores on international tests. Student performance on international assessments appears to have no relationship to the competitiveness of the United States. This study has implications for legislators and public education leaders who want to maximize the return on investments in education. Education dollars and reform initiatives should be diverted toward addressing poverty, equitable school funding, social stress and violence, support for young families, and support for students of immigrant families.
Clipping-Based Complexity Reduction in Explicit MPC

The idea of explicit model predictive control (MPC) is to characterize optimal control inputs as an explicit piecewise affine (PWA) function of the initial conditions. The function, however, is often too complex and either requires too much processing power to evaluate on-line, or consumes a prohibitive amount of memory. The paper focuses on the memory issue and proposes a novel method of replacing a generic continuous PWA function by a different function of significantly lower complexity in such a way that the simple function guarantees the same properties as the original. The idea is based on eliminating regions of the PWA function over which the function attains a saturated value. An extensive case study is presented which confirms that a significant reduction of complexity is achieved in general.
The Natural Resource Curse and Economic Transition

Using cross-country regressions, we examine the relationship between “point-source” resource abundance and economic growth, quality of institutions, investment in human and physical capital, and social welfare (life expectancy and infant mortality) for all countries and for the economies in transition. Contrary to most literature, we find little evidence of a natural resource curse for all countries. Only the “voice and accountability” measure of institutional quality is negatively and significantly affected by oil wealth. In the economies in transition, there is some evidence that natural resource wealth is associated with lower primary school enrollment and life expectancy and higher infant mortality compared to other resource rich countries. Compared to other economies in transition, however, natural resource abundant transitional economies are not significantly worse off with respect to our indicators.
The ionic currents underlying pacemaker activity in rabbit sino-atrial node: experimental results and computer simulations

The membrane currents underlying the pacemaker depolarization have been investigated in rabbit s.a. node preparations using the twomicroelectrode voltage clamp technique. Many of the experimental results have been simulated using a computer model of s.a. node electrical activity. Changes of three time-dependent membrane currents which could contribute to pacemaker depolarization are found to occur in the relevant potential range: decay of the potassium current, iK, and activation of the inward current, it,and of the slow inward current isi
Wideband measurements and analysis of the single-floor indoor radio channel at 2.4 GHz

In this paper we present analysis of radio measurements at 2.4 GHz conducted in an indoor environment of out- faculty building. A significant correlation between coherence bandwidth and delay-spread is noticed, which is in accordance to previous results. Correlation noticed by certain authors between delay-spread and antenna separation could not be confirmed in this scenario. The analysis and comparison with other references show that different indoor radio channels may have certain common features in sense of power-distance law and delay-spread characteristics.
The New Goods Margin in Japanese-Chinese Trade

This paper uses the methodology developed in Kehoe and Ruhl (2013) to measure the change in the extensive, or new goods, margin of trade between Japan and China after China's entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001. The new goods account for 15.9% of Japanese exports to China and 22% of Chinese exports to Japan after trade liberalization. For the case of Chinese exports to Japan, a time series measure shows the growth in new goods coincides with the timing of the trade liberalization.
Institutions and Macroeconomic Outcomes - The Empirical Evidence

The literature on credibility issues in monetary and fiscal policy predicts that inflation and budget deficits are affected by a set of institutional variables. However, these institutional variables should have no effect on the average rate of unemployment. In this paper I confront these hypotheses with data from the last three decades for 18 OECD countries. 'The main results are the following: (i) Inflation is negatively related to central bank independence, fixed exchange rate regimes and conservative governments, as predicted by the theory. (ii) Central bank independence has a larger dampening effect on inflation under a floating exchange rate regime, but there is no support for the hypothesis that it also has a stronger negative effect on inflation when the government is less conservative. (iii) Central bank independence tends to reduce the budget deficits, while the impact of the exchange rate regime and government regime is ambiguous. (iv) Finally, neither the level of nor the variance of unemployment are correlated with the institutional variables studied. H
Connective tissue responses to calcium hydroxide-based root canal medicaments.

AIM The objective of the present study was to evaluate the tissue inflammatory response induced by calcium hydroxide pastes, with or without paramonochlorophenol and camphor. METHODOLOGY Isogenic BALB/c mice were inoculated into the subcutaneous tissue with either 0.1 mL of a suspension of Calen, Calen with camphorated paramonochlorophenol, Calen with paramonochlorophenol, Calasept paste or phosphate-buffered saline (control). After 6, 12 and 24 h and 2, 3, 5, 7 and 15 days, three animals in each group were sacrificed and the excised lesions processed for histopathological evaluation of the inflammatory response. Events monitored and graded included the assessment of vascular congestion, oedema, haemorrhage, inflammatory infiltrate, necrosis and tissue repair. RESULTS The pastes induced an inflammatory response at every observation period, although the intensity, duration and extension of inflammation varied. Calen paste always produced an initial short-term inflammatory response whilst the other pastes produced extended reactions. All pastes allowed repair to take place by the end of the experimental period, although the speed of this process varied between the materials. Calen presented the best biocompatibility; the phenolic compound caused greater tissue response, which was even more severe in the absence of camphor. Calasept paste was damaging and the repair process slower. CONCLUSIONS All calcium hydroxide formulations caused an inflammatory response. The severity and longevity of the responses varied between pastes as a result of the various antiseptic agents. Although irritating, repair was apparent with all formulations.
Direct loading of polymer matrices in plastic microchips for rapid DNA analysis: A comparative study

We report the design and performance validation of microfluidic separation technologies for human identification using a disposable plastic device suitable for integration into an automated rapid DNA analysis system. A fabrication process for a 15‐cm long hot‐embossed plastic microfluidic devices with a smooth semielliptical cross section out of cyclic olefin copolymer is presented. We propose a mixed polymer solution of 95% w/v hydroxyethylcellulose and 5% w/v polyvinylpyrrolidone for a final polymer concentration of 2.5 or 3.0% to be used as coating and sieving matrix for DNA separation. This formulation allows preparing the microchip without pretreatment in a single‐loading step and provides high‐resolution separation (≈1.2 bp for fragments <200 bp), which is superior to existing commercial matrices under the same conditions. The hot‐embossed device performance is characterized and compared to injection‐molded devices made out of cyclic olefin copolymer based on their respective injector geometry, channel shape, and surface charges. Each device design is assessed by fluorescence videomicroscopy to evaluate the formation of injection plugs, then by comparing electropherograms for the separation of a DNA size standard relevant to human identification.
Onset of obsessive-compulsive disorder in pregnancy.

OBJECTIVE Although the role of pregnancy and childbirth in postpartum psychosis and depression has been studied, the association between pregnancy and obsessive-compulsive disorder has not been specifically addressed. The authors evaluated the role of pregnancy in the onset of obsessive-compulsive disorder. METHOD Female patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (N = 106) completed a questionnaire assessing age at onset of symptoms, marital status, number of children, age at each pregnancy, and life events associated with the onset of obsessive-compulsive disorder. RESULTS Of the 106 women, 42 were childless and 59 had at least one child each; five others were also childless but had had abortions (N = 4) or a miscarriage (N = 1). Of the 42 women without children, 12 (28.6%) had first experienced obsessive-compulsive symptoms between the ages of 13 and 15 years, but there were two peaks of onset for the women with children: ages 22-24 and 29-32 years. Of the 59 patients with children, 23 (39.0%) had experienced symptom onset during pregnancy; this was the first pregnancy for 12, the second pregnancy for eight, and the third pregnancy for three. Four of the five women who had had abortions or a miscarriage had experienced the onset or an exacerbation of obsessive-compulsive symptoms during pregnancy. CONCLUSIONS The association between pregnancy and the onset of obsessive-compulsive symptoms in these female patients highlights the need for further research on psychological and biological factors associated with pregnancy and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Evaluation of Glycomic Profiling as a Diagnostic Biomarker for Epithelial Ovarian Cancer

Background: Prior studies suggested that glycans were differentially expressed in patients with ovarian cancer and controls. We hypothesized that glycan-based biomarkers might serve as a diagnostic test for ovarian cancer and evaluated the ability of glycans to distinguish ovarian cancer cases from matched controls. Methods: Serum samples were obtained from the tissue-banking repository of the Gynecologic Oncology Group, and included healthy female controls (n = 100), women diagnosed with low malignant potential (LMP) tumors (n = 52), and epithelial ovarian cancers (EOC) cases (n = 147). Cases and controls were matched on age at enrollment within ±5 years. Serum samples were analyzed by glycomics analysis to detect abundance differences in glycan expression levels. A two-stage procedure was carried out for biomarker discovery and validation. Candidate classifiers of glycans that separated cases from controls were developed using a training set in the discovery phase and the classification performance of the candidate classifiers was assessed using independent test samples that were not used in discovery. Results: The patterns of glycans showed discriminatory power for distinguishing EOC and LMP cases from controls. Candidate glycan-based biomarkers developed on a training set (sensitivity, 86% and specificity, 95.8% for distinguishing EOC from controls through leave-one-out cross-validation) confirmed their potential use as a detection test using an independent test set (sensitivity, 70% and specificity, 86.5%). Conclusion: Formal investigations of glycan biomarkers that distinguish cases and controls show great promise for an ovarian cancer diagnostic test. Further validation of a glycan-based test for detection of ovarian cancer is warranted. Impact: An emerging diagnostic test based on the knowledge gained from understanding the glycobiology should lead to an assay that improves sensitivity and specificity and allows for early detection of ovarian cancer. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 23(4); 611–21. ©2014 AACR.
Human cardiac fibroblasts adaptive responses to controlled combined mechanical strain and oxygen changes in vitro

Upon cardiac pathological conditions such as ischemia, microenvironmental changes instruct a series of cellular responses that trigger cardiac fibroblasts-mediated tissue adaptation and inflammation. A comprehensive model of how early environmental changes may induce cardiac fibroblasts (CF) pathological responses is far from being elucidated, partly due to the lack of approaches involving complex and simultaneous environmental stimulation. Here, we provide a first analysis of human primary CF behavior by means of a multi-stimulus microdevice for combined application of cyclic mechanical strain and controlled oxygen tension. Our findings elucidate differential human CFs responses to different combinations of the above stimuli. Individual stimuli cause proliferative effects (PHH3+ mitotic cells, YAP translocation, PDGF secretion) or increase collagen presence. Interestingly, only the combination of hypoxia and a simulated loss of contractility (2% strain) is able to additionally induce increased CF release of inflammatory and pro-fibrotic cytokines and matrix metalloproteinases. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.22847. 001
Economic (Benefit Cost Ratio) Status of Summer Pearlmillet at Different NPK Levels

Pearlmillet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.)] is largely grown for grain and fodder purpose under those situations where other crops generally fail. Pearlmillet as a food crop is limited to the developing countries in Asia, and particularly in Africa and ranked sixth in the world following rice, wheat, corn, barley and sorghum (Anonymous, 2010-11). The important pearlmillet growing countries are India, China, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan, Egypt, Arabia, and Russia. It is estimated that over 95% of pearlmillet production is used as food, the reminder being divided between animal and poultry feed (7%), other uses (seed, bakery products, snacks, etc.) and waste. The genus Pennisetum is distributed throughout the tropics and subtropics of the world. It includes about 140 species, one In India, pearlmillet is popularly known as Bajra, and it is the fourth most important cereal crop after rice, wheat and sorghum. It has the greatest potential among all the millets. Annual planting area of the country under pearlmillet is 9.5 million hectares producing nearly 10.1 International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 6 Number 6 (2017) pp. 1074-1079 Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas. com
Estrogen Blocks Early T Cell Development in the Thymus

PROBLEM: Pregnancy and estrogen are known to suppress B lymphopoiesis as well as lead to thymic involution in the mouse. Additionally, estrogen deficiency by oophorectomy reportedly causes a selective increase in the B220+ B cells in the murine bone marrow. The purpose of this study was to determine if estrogens played a regulatory role in T cell development.
Physiological subgroups of nonpyramidal cells with specific morphological characteristics in layer II/III of rat frontal cortex

Physiological and morphological properties of nonpyramidal cells in layer II/III of frontal cortex of young rats were studied in vitro by whole-cell recording and intracellular staining with biocytin. Layer II/III nonpyramidal cells could be divided into four subgroups by their firing patterns in response to depolarizing current pulses and their patterns of dendritic and axonal arborizations. (1) Fast-spiking (FS) cells (35% of the total sample) showed an abrupt episode of nonadapting repetitive discharges of shorter-duration action potentials. FS cells had local and horizontal axonal arbors which did not enter layer I. This type of FS cell was immunoreactive for parvalbumin and included some basket cells. Three chandelier cells were identified as FS cells, although one chandelier cell was not identified as an FS cell. (2) Late- spiking (LS) cells (11%) exhibited slowly developing ramp depolarizations near threshold. LS cells were neurogliaform cells. (3) Low-threshold spike (LTS) cells (5%) had prominent low-threshold spikes when stimulated from hyperpolarizations. The main axons of LTS cells ascended, and the collaterals entered into layer I. (4) The remaining cells [regular-spiking nonpyramidal (RSNP) cells] (49%) could not be categorized into the above three subgroups. In some RSNP cells depolarizing pulses from hyperpolarizations induced fast depolarizing notches with small amplitude. RSNP cells had vertically elongated axonal fields, extending from layer I to V, sometimes to layer VI. This subgroup included double bouquet cells and bipolar cells. Each subgroup with a different firing mode may differentially contribute to neocortical laminar and columnar circuitry.
Prospective study of posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms and coronary heart disease in the Normative Aging Study.

CONTEXT Various correlates of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), such as high levels of sympathetic activation and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis dysregulation, have been linked to arterial damage and coronary heart disease (CHD) risk. While psychological disturbance is frequently found among patients with cardiac disease, whether psychological problems precede or occur as a result of having a potentially fatal disease is not clear. To our knowledge, no prospective studies to date have evaluated whether PTSD is associated with increased risk of CHD. OBJECTIVE To test the hypothesis that high levels of PTSD symptoms may increase CHD risk, using 2 different measures of PTSD. DESIGN Prospective cohort study. SETTING Community-dwelling men from the Greater Boston, Mass, area who served in the military. PARTICIPANTS Data are from the Veterans Affairs Normative Aging Study. Men who completed either the Mississippi Scale for Combat-Related PTSD in 1990 (n = 1002) or the Keane PTSD scale in 1986 (n = 944) were included in the study. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Incident CHD occurring during follow-up through May 2001. RESULTS Levels of PTSD symptoms in this cohort were low to moderate. Men with preexisting CHD at baseline were excluded, and PTSD was measured with the Mississippi Scale for Combat-Related PTSD. For each SD increase in symptom level, men had age-adjusted relative risks of 1.26 (95% confidence interval, 1.05-1.51) for nonfatal myocardial infarction and fatal CHD combined and 1.21 (95% confidence interval, 1.05-1.41) for all of the CHD outcomes combined (nonfatal myocardial infarction, fatal CHD, and angina). Findings were replicated using the Keane PTSD scale and somewhat strengthened after controlling for levels of depressive symptoms. CONCLUSIONS To our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate a prospective association between PTSD symptoms and CHD even after controlling for depressive symptoms. These results suggest that a higher level of PTSD symptoms may increase the risk of incident CHD in older men.