Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A comparative study to determine the clinical efficacy of Ramipril versus combination of Ramipril and Telmisartan in reducing microalbuminuria associated with grade 2 hypertension

Inhibition of the renin-angiotensin system causes a reduction in urinary protein excretion. It is uncertain whether Angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) are equally effective antiproteinuric agents as Angiotensin converting Enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, or whether the combination of ACE inhibitors with ARBs is preferable to ACE inhibitor alone? Microalbuminuria is a prognostic marker for cardiovascular and renal risk. The objective of the study was to compare the clinical efficacy of Ramipril alone versus combination of Ramipril and Telmisartan by assessing the fall in B.P. and the improvement in the degree of microalbuminuria in stage II hypertensive patients. 60 patients of stage II hypertension without having any other cause of microalbuminuria were selected as subjects for the present study and were randomly distributed in to 2 groups- Group A included 30 patients who were given Ramipril 5 mg/ day and Group B included the same number of patients who were given a combination of Ramipril 5 mg/day and Telmisartan 40 mg/day. Baseline parameters included were measurement of Systolic, diastolic blood pressure and mean arterial pressure; microalbuminuria, blood urea, serum creatinine and serum potassium estimations. The drugs under trial were given for 20 weeks. Microalbuminuria was determined at 0 and 20 weeks. The mean percentage fall in microalbuminuria and mean arterial pressure were statistically highly significant (p<0.0001) with combination of Ramipril and Telmisartan (Group B) in comparison to Ramipril (Group A) alone. A highly significant (p‹ 0.0001) mean percentage increase in potassium level was observed in group B at the end of 20 weeks. The side effects were less observed in the combination group. Thus to conclude the combination of Ramipril and Telmisartan provides superior blood pressure (BP) lowering and target organ protection than Ramipril alone, hence the combination of Ramipril and Telmisartan is a better choice to treat and to prevent the progression of the disease. Keywords: Hypertension; Microalbuminuria; Ramipril; Telmisartan
Global biodiversity loss: Exaggerated versus realistic estimates

For the past 50 years, the public has been made to feel guilty about the tragedy of human-caused biodiversity loss due to the extinction of hundreds or thousands of species every year. Numerous articles and books from the scientific and popular press and publicity on the internet have contributed to a propaganda wave about our grievous loss and the beginning of a sixth mass extinction. However, within the past few years, questions have arisen about the validity of the data which led to the doom scenario. Here I show that, for the past 500 years, terrestrial animals (insects and vertebrates) have been losing less than two species per year due to human causes. The majority of the extinctions have occurred on oceanic islands with little effect on continental ecology. In the marine environment, losses have also been very low. At the same time, speciation has continued to occur and biodiversity gain by this means may have equaled or even surpassed the losses. While species loss is not, so far, a global conservation problem, ongoing population declines within thousands of species that are at risk on land and in the sea constitute an extinction debt that will be paid unless those species can be rescued.
NUMERICAL CALCULATIONS OF COLLIMATOR INSERTIONS

This report concerns the simulation technique for longitudinal and transverse wakes, including results for some of the proposed collimator designs tested in the SLAC end station wakefield tests. The purpose of this exercise is to verify existing simulation results and to expand the work to include the latest proposals for collimator designs. Several collimator designs including; single steps to tapered structures have been simulated and the results are presented in this paper. For most of the test pieces proposed here there are calculations of the transverse and longitudinal wake functions and the corresponding kick factor or loss factor.
Studying Multiscale Probabilistic and Deterministic Models for the Annotation of Cellular Networks and Tumor Metastases

Comprehensive modeling of the complex behavior of cellular networks during cellular reprogramming or during tumor metastasis, has become possible by integration of different biological scales into a multiscale model. Typically, these multiscale models combine probabilistic and deterministic aspects of cellular behavior. In this paper, a review is given of modeling studies of the group of NSCLC (non-small cell lung cancers), which has a rather amalgamative appearance. Due to the heterogenous genetic background and poor predictability of divergent pathological processes, the prognosis of NSCLC to date is still very poor. The role of two important phenotypic markers, namely the TTF1 (thyroid trancription factor 1) and EGFR (epidermal growth factor receptor), are discussed with respect to disease progression, migration and metastasis potential. A strategy for introducing the cell survival perspective in tumor expansion modeling is discussed in combination with visualization techniques based on cell-state modeling, similar to cell-state modeling in reprogramming studies.
Market versus Contracting: Credit Default Swaps and Creditor Protection in Loans

Although creditor protection plays a critical role in enabling corporate financing, traditional protection measures for loan contracts, such as collateral and covenants, are costly for borrowing firms. Credit defaults swaps (CDS) provide an alternative protection measure that may reduce these contracting costs. We find that once CDS on a given firm begin trading, loans to that firm are less likely to be secured and loan covenants on the firm's net worth are looser. This CDS effect on loan security is more pronounced when the lending bank actively trades CDS, when the CDS market is more liquid, and when the borrower is less subject to agency concerns. Moreover, loans to firms with active CDS contracts are amended less frequently than are loans to firms without active CDS contract. Our findings suggest a potential bright side of credit derivatives, which may improve the efficiency of financial contracting by substituting for loan contract provisions as a means of creditor protection.
Additive main effects and multiplicative interaction (AMMI) analysis of GxE interactions in rice-blast pathosystem to identify stable resistant genotypes

Genotype x environment interaction (GEI) of 42 rice genotypes tested over nine seasons was analyzed to identify stable resistance to blast disease incited by Magnaporthe oryzae. The genotypes were raised in uniform blast nursery in a randomized complete block design with three replications. The GEI was analyzed following the regression models as well as additive main effects and multiplicative interaction (AMMI) model. AMMI analysis of variance revealed that the first two interaction principal component axes (IPCA) explained 37.28 and 33.47% of the interaction effects in 14.63 and 14.02% of interaction degrees of freedom, respectively and rest of the five IPCAs were noisy. Integrating biplot display and genotypic stability statistics enabled five groupings of genotypes based on similarities in their performance across environments. The biplot generated using the environment and genotype scores for the first two IPCAs revealed the positioning of the five host genotype groups (HG) into four sectors. HG-1 constituting of 28 genotypes exhibiting low stability index (Di values), low IPCA-1 as well as IPCA-2 scores and low mean disease scores across seasons of testing, were identified as possessing stable resistance to the disease. Although, both regression and AMMI models were equally potential in partitioning of GEI, AMMI analysis and the biplot display were more informative in differentiating genotype response over environments, describing specific and non-specific resistance of genotypes, identifying most discriminating environments and thus could be useful to plant pathologists as well as breeders in supporting breeding program decisions.
‘Home is Never Fully Achieved … Even When We Are In it’: Migration, Belonging and Social Exclusion within Punjabi Transnational Mobility

ABSTRACT Drawing upon transnational research in the UK and India, primarily over 150 semi-structured interviews in Newcastle, UK and Doaba, Punjab, as well as the ‘mobilities turn’ within contemporary social science, this paper examines the pursuit of ‘home’ within a diasporic British Indian Punjabi community. It is argued that this transnational pursuit of home is significantly shaped by the dynamic social context of South Asia, in particular processes of social inclusion and exclusion therein. Thus, returning Punjabi migrant attempts to distinguish themselves from the resident population through conspicuous consumption, and simultaneous attempts from Punjabi residents to exclude Non-Resident Indians from ‘real’ Indian status, lead to a continual reprocessing of home across different sites of mobility, as well as demonstrating the ‘never fully achieved’ nature of home.
Sensible Use of Technologies to Increase Solubility and Bioavailability in Formulation Development

In drug development process, the formulation of drug and its bioavailability are the major concerns in getting approval to conduct clinical trials. A poor bioavailability and solubility property of a product leads to rejection and fail to reach the market. Poor bioavailability of drugs is due to various factors for example aqueous solubility, drug permeability, dissolution rate, first-pass metabolism, etc. [1]. The most leading factor of poor bioavailability is the low solubility and permeability. Therefore, there are extensive researches to study the Biopharmaceutics Classification System (BCS) class II, III and IV and to develop new technologies to overcome the problem of poor solubility and/or permeability. Alteration in drug delivery process may produce substantial changes in bioavailability and solubility of a drug. There are array of cutting edge techniques which are developed and have been used by some pharmaceutical companies to enhance the solubility and improve bioavailability. Identifying the need of appropriate technologies at the earlier stages of drug discovery may increase the chances of overall success rate of approval which in fact saves unnecessary expenditure and reduce the cost of drug development. The degree of solubility of a drug in a definite solvent is measured as the saturation concentration where adding more solute does not increase its concentration in the solution [2]. Different pharmacopoeias have defined solubility regardless of solvent used, in terms of quantification and defined the criteria as given in Table 1 [3].
Massive Black Hole Binaries: Dynamical Evolution and Observational Signatures

The study of the dynamical evolution of massive black hole pairs in mergers is crucial in the context of a hierarchical galaxy formation scenario. The timescales for the formation and the coalescence of black hole binaries are still poorly constrained, resulting in large uncertainties in the expected rate of massive black hole binaries detectable in the electromagnetic and gravitational wave spectra. Here, we review the current theoretical understanding of the black hole pairing in galaxy mergers, with a particular attention to recent developments and open issues. We conclude with a review of the expected observational signatures of massive binaries and of the candidates discussed in literature to date.
Threshold Activation Policies in a Random Sensing Environment

We consider the problem of how sensor nodes should be activated in so as to maximize a strictly concave utility function in a random sensing environment. Sensors are assumed to be energy-constrained, but rechargeable, and the energy discharge and recharge times are random. Under Markovian assumptions, we study the performance of threshold activation policies, for two different correlation models of the energy discharge and recharge processes. For both models, we show that the optimal threshold policy guarantees performance within factor of 34 of the optimum over all possible policies. We also comment on the effect of the correlation model on the performance of the threshold policies.
Effects of Concentrate Addition on In Vitro Rumen Fluid pH and Forage Fiber Digestion

It is common practice in the dairy industry to use a mixed concentrate and forage diet however, the ways in which feeds interact in the rumen to affect digestion are not well known. Further characterization could aid in the development of a more efficient diet. The objective of this study was to determine the early effects (0-6h) of concentrate type on rumen pH and forage digestion in vitro. An initial trial was conducted to compare the effect of buffer strength (full vs half) on pH change during in vitro digestion of orchard grass (Dactylis glomerata L.) with or without sucrose. It was determined that using a full strength buffer allowed for sufficient changes in pH for the purposes of this study. Two forages, orchard grass and corn (Zea mays L.) stover, were combined in a 50:50 ration with 5 concentrate treatments (no concentrate, corn meal, corn gluten meal, barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) and wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)). The samples were incubated in vitro in a 1:4 buffer to rumen fluid mixture for 420 min. The pH was measured at intervals throughout the trial and samples were collected at the end for volatile fatty acid (VFA) analysis. Samples containing orchard grass and corn stover alone had a significantly lower pH (P<0.05) than those samples containing concentrate beginning at T= 150 min and T=270 min respectively. For the corn stover samples, this correlates with a high mean lactic acid concentration (535 ppm) in comparison to the mean lactic acid concentration of the other four corn stover treatments (177 ppm). The final study measured the change in pH and the difference in neutral detergent fiber (NDF) digestibility of four concentrate treatments (no concentrate, corn meal, corn gluten meal, and barley). In addition, two sample distribution methods were tested; forage and concentrate were mixed together in the same filter bag or separated into individual bags. Barley had the largest inhibitory effect on fiber digestion and caused the largest decline in pH. The treatments with mixed feeds in the same bag showed larger differences in pH and digestibility. These results suggest that a diet containing a mixture of forages or, a mixture of corn and forage minimizes the decline in rumen pH in comparison with a single forage alone, mixed barley and forage, or mixed wheat and forage. They also suggest that the study of associative effects is impeded by separation of feeds through filter bags.
Soil characteristics mediate the distribution and response of boreal trees to climatic variability

We studied the effects of the soil organic layer (SOL) accumulation on growth and distribution of black spruce (Picea mariana (Mill.) BSP) and trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) within the Quebec Clay Belt. At the landscape scale, spruce was present over a much larger gradient in SOL thickness (∼1 to 100 cm) than aspen (∼1 to 30 cm). For trees between 60 and 100 years old, SOL thickness had no effect on the basal area increment (BAI) of spruce but showed a strong and negative correlation with BAI in aspen. Radial growth of black spruce was favored by higher precipitation in June of the previous growing season, higher temperatures in early winter and in spring, and by low temperatures in summer. SOL thickness had statistically significant but moderate effects on the climate–growth relationships in spruce, apparently affecting root insulation during the dormant period and water availability during the growing period. In aspen, current-year June temperature was the most important factor positively .
Connecting ring structure and its significance for classification of the orthoceratid cephalopods

The connecting ring in orthoceratids is composed of two calcified layers: an outer spherulitic-prismatic and an inner calcified-perforate. The spherulitic-prismatic layer is a direct continuation of that layer in the septal neck, whereas the calcified-perforate layer is a structurally modified continuation of the nacreous layer of the septal neck. The latter layer is traversed by numerous pores which are oriented either transversally to the siphuncular surface, or have a somewhat irregularly anastomosing course. The connecting ring structure is positively correlated to the dorsal position of the scars of the cephalic retractor muscles. Asimilar type of connecting ring and a dorsal postion of retractor muscle scars also occur in lituitids, previously assigned to tarphyceratids, and in baltoceratids, previously assigned to ellesmeroceratids. These two taxa are therefore included in the suborder Orthoceratina, which, together with the suborder Actinoceratina, are assigned to the order Orthoceratida Kuhn, 1940.
‘Swan Hill’ as an ornamental olive cultivar

T h e absence of fruit is desirable in ornamental plants, including the olive. The ‘Swan Hill’ olive cultivar is often planted as an ornamental because it flowers profusely each year without setting fruit. A few fruit may persist on mature trees and in environments where root development is restricted; even so, it is rare to see more than four fruit on a large ‘Swan Hill’ tree in California. In previous work, we found that abnormalities in the embryo sac appeared to be the main cause of unfruitfulness in ‘Swan Hill’. In Arizona studies, this cultivar produced virtually no airborne pollen, and only 10 percent as much pollen was collected from around a single tree as from ’Manzanillo’ in a similar setting. In those same studies, pollen grain counts per anther were similar for ‘Swan Hill’ and ‘Manzanillo’, but anther dehiscence, or shedding of pollen, was hindered in ‘Swan Hill’: less than 15 percent of the anthers fully dehisced. We conducted an investigation to compare the pollen production and germination percentages of ‘Swan Hill’ and other selected olive cultivars growing at the University of California, Davis, experimental orchards.
Phenotypic and Genetic Diversity Studies on Selected Rice (Oryza Sativa L.) Genotypes Based on Amylose Content and Gelatinization Temperature

Rice cooking and eating qualities are mostly determined by the grain’s starch content which is composed of amylose and amylopectin. Amylose content is regarded as the most important indicator in classifying rice varieties in terms of starch content. Waxy gene located on chromosome 6 codes for Granule Bound Starch Synthase (GBBS) enzyme which is involved in biocatalysis of amylose synthesis in rice endosperm. In addition, amylopectin content influences gelatinization temperature in rice. Alk gene located on chromosome 6 codes for soluble Starch Synthase II (SSII) enzyme involved biocatalysis of amylopectin. Accurate evaluation of these two traits is difficult and has hindered development of better varieties with good eating and cooking qualities by rice breeders both in Kenya and Tanzania. The aim of the study was to carry out phenotypic characterization and genetic diversity studies on selected rice (Oryza sativa L.) genotypes from Kenya and Tanzania based on amylose content and gelatinization temperature using microsatellite markers. Measurement of 7 grain and kernel traits were determined among 13 rice genotypes studied. Genetic diversity based on amylose content and gelatinization temperature was studied using 8 microsatellite (SSR) markers tightly linked to major QTLs controlling these two traits. Furthermore, presence or absence of waxy and alk genes was determined using markers tightly linked to these two genes. Minitab 15.0 and Power marker version 3.25 softwares were used to analyze the data. A dendrogram was constructed from data set of mean values of grain and kernel traits and showed two super clusters; I and II. The number of alleles per locus ranged from 2 to 4 with an average of 2.75 alleles across 8 loci. The polymorphic information content (PIC) values ranged from 0.2920 (RM 202) to 0.6841 (RM 141) in all 8 loci with an average of 0.4697. Pair-wise genetic dissimilarity coefficients ranged from 0.9003 to 0.2201 with an average of 0.5627. Maximum genetic similarity was observed between R 2793 and BS 17, Supa and IR 64, R 2793 and ITA 310, Saro 5 and ITA 310, Saro 5 and R 2794. Minimum similarity of was observed between Wahiwahi and BW 196, IR 64 and BW 196. The dendogram based on cluster analysis by microsatellite polymorphism grouped 13 rice genotypes into 2 groups effectively differentiating Kenyan and Tanzanian rice genotypes based on amylose content and gelatinization temperature. The waxy gene was amplified in 5 rice genotypes while alk gene was amplified in all the rice genotypes studied. The results obtained suggested that grain and kernel traits measurements and use of SSR markers tightly linked to genes or Quantitative Trait Loci (QTLs) controlling these two traits could effectively be utilized for diversity analysis among diverse rice genotypes.
Influence of silvicultural regimes on the volume and proportion of juvenile and mature wood in boreal Scots pine

Trees from 48 to 78 years old, exposed to three different long-term silvicultural regimes, were examined for transition ages between juvenile (JW), transition (TW) and mature wood (MW), total wood volume and proportions of the same wood types, as defined by fibre length. Twenty one sample trees were collected at sites with similar growing conditions within the same geographical area. Stem discs and fibre samples from breast height (BRH), 20% of tree height, green crown height and 70% of tree height were analysed. Trees growing in an environment with few neighboring trees (Sparse regime) started to produce MW, on average, five years later at BRH and six to nine years later at 20% of total tree height than trees in stands with high stem numbers (Dense regime) and trees growing in stands where the stem number had been heavily reduced after an initial high stand density (Dense/Sparse regime). For all regimes, the greatest mean fibre length was found below the green crown and high initial stem numbers were found to positively influence fibre length. The proportion of MW in the whole stem was 34% at Sparse regime sites, 57–69% at Dense/Sparse sites and 63–64% in sites where there was a Dense regime. The proportion of MW was significantly lower for trees from the Sparse regime on each stem section compared. In conclusion, the results suggest that the initial condition a tree faces affects the stem wood properties and quality output at the end of the rotation period.
Quark stars admixed with dark matter

Compact stars consisting of massless quark matter and fermionic dark matter are studied by solving the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff equations for two fluids separately. Dark matter is further investigated by incorporating interfermionic interactions among the dark matter particles. The properties of stars made of quark matter particles and self-interacting and free dark matter particles are explored by obtaining their mass-radius relations. The regions of stability for such a compact star are determined, and it is demonstrated that the maximum stable total mass of such a star decreases approximately linearly with an increasing dark matter fraction.