Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Isotopic and Geochemical Investigation of the Chilwa Island Carbonatite Complex, Malawi: Evidence for a Depleted Mantle Source Region, Liquid Immiscibility, and Open-System Behaviour

Initial Nd, Pb, and Sr isotopic data from carbonatites and associated intrusive silica-undersaturated rocks from the early Jurassic, Chilwa Island complex, located in southern Malawi, central Africa, suggest melt derivation from a Rb/Srand Nd/Sm-depleted but Th/Pband U/Pb-enriched mantle source. Initial Nd/*Nd (051265-0-51270) isotope ratios from the Chilwa Island carbonatites are relatively constant, but their initial Sr/Sr (070319-070361) ratios are variable. The b^O^oy, (9-53—1415%o) and (5CpDB ( — 3-27 to — l-50%o) isotope ratios of the carbonates are enriched relative to the range of mantle values, and there is a negative correlation between <5O and Sr isotope ratios. The variations in Sr, C, and O isotopic ratios from the carbonatites suggest secondary processes, such as interaction with meteoric groundwater during late-stage carbonatite activity. The initial . 43Nd/i44Nd (0-51246-051269) and initial "Sr/^Sr (070344-070383) isotope ratios from the intrusive silicate rocks are more variable, and the Sr more radiogenic than those from the carbonatites. Most of the Pb isotope data from Chilwa Island plot to the right of the geochron and close to the oceanic regression line defined by MORBs and OIBs. Initial Pb isotopic ratios from both carbonatites (207pb/204pb i5-63_i5-7i; 206pb/204pb 1913-19-78) and silicate rocks ( Pb/Pb 15-61-15-72; Pb/Pb 1818—2012) show pronounced variations, and form two groups in Pb-Pb plots. The isotopic variations shown by Nd, Pb, and Sr for the Chilwa Island carbonatites and intrusive silicates suggest that these melts underwent different evolutionary histories. The chemical data, including isotopic ratios, from the carbonatites and olivine nephelinites are consistent with magmatic differentiation ofacarbonated-nephelinite magma. A model is proposed in which differentiation of the carbonatite magma was accompanied by fenitization (metasomatic alteration) of the country rocks by carbonatite-derived fluids, and subsequent alteration of the carbonatite by hydrothermal activity. The chemical and isotopic data from the non-nephelinitic intrusive silicate rocks reveal a more complex evolutionary history, involving either selective binary mixing of lower-crustal granulites and a nephelinite magma, or incremental batch melting of a depleted source and subsequent crustal contamination.
In Vitro Antibacterial Activity of four Saudi Medicinal Plants

In the current study, we tested, evaluated and compared the antibacterial activity of twenty four extracts prepared from four traditional Saudi medicinal plants (Jatropha pelargoniifolia, Euphorbia inaequilatera, Cadaba glandulosa and Cadaba rotundifolia). The plant materials were extracted in six organic solvents with different polarity by two different extraction methods. The activity of these plant extracts were tested against three Gram-positive bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus, bacillus megaterium and Bacillus cereus) and four Gram-Negative bacteria (Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli and Salmonella enteretidis. Minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of the extracts were determined using the agar dilution method. Our results indicated that most of the tested extracts exhibited a significant broad-spectrum antibacterial activity against both Gram-Positive and Gram-Negative bacteria. The Euphorbia inaequilatera extracts were active against all tested bacterial strains whereas the other plant extracts showed selective activity at the level of both organic solvent and bacterial strain. The use of different extraction solvents resulted in a substantial differences in the potency of the antibacterial activity of the extracts with acetone being the most effective solvent in the extraction of bioactive compounds from the tested plant species. In addition, a number of the tested plant extracts successfully recovered more than 70% of the Ciprofloxacin antibacterial activity. Cadaba glandulosa extracts showed the most potent antimicrobial activity against B. megaterum (MIC of 16 and 32 mg/l). Different organic solvents as well as different extraction methods can be effectively employed to mine plants' phytochemical profiles and consequently illustrate their antibacterial activity against antibiotic resistant bacterial strains.
Influence of the Big Five personality traits on academic motivation among higher education students: Evidence from developing nation

This study examines the association between the personality traits and academic motivation among higher education institution students of Pakistan. The data is collected from the survey-questionnaire using the convenience sampling technique. In total, 350 questionnaires are collected, however, the useful sample id 320. The technique through which the analysis was performed is PLS-SEM. The dependent variable of the study is academic motivation which was measured by using the LASSI scale. The independent variables of the study are personality traits i.e., Conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, extraversion, and openness which is measured by using NEO-FFI. The result shows that all the personality traits create a significant positive effect on academic motivation except for agreeableness which has an insignificant effect on academic motivation. This study highlights the importance of personality trait in forming academic motivation of the students and also help the educational institutions and teachers to develop strategies accordingly.
Food Commodity Prices Volatility: The Role of Biofuels

Food commodity prices have recently increased sharply and become more volatile, highlighting greater uncertainty in markets and threatening global food security. High fuel prices combined with legislative mandates have increased biofuel production raising the average cost of food on the global market and particularly in developing countries and established a link between crude oil and agricultural prices. We investigate the role of biofuels in explaining increased volatility in food commodities. Multivariate GARCH models and volatility decompositions are estimated on grains and crude oil daily prices over a twelve-year sample from 2000-2011. We find increases in correlations and co-movements between grains and crude oils prices after 2006 and particularly in 2008 when crude oil prices were high. Increased volatility in grains during the 2008-09 spike was largely due to shocks transmitted from crude oil to grains especially corn, wheat and soybean prices.
Hierarchical Deep Generative Models for Multi-Rate Multivariate Time Series

Multi-Rate Multivariate Time Series (MR-MTS) are the multivariate time series observations which come with various sampling rates and encode multiple temporal dependencies. State-space models such as Kalman filters and deep learning models such as deep Markov models are mainly designed for time series data with the same sampling rate and cannot capture all the dependencies present in the MR-MTS data. To address this challenge, we propose the Multi-Rate Hierarchical Deep Markov Model (MR-HDMM), a novel deep generative model which uses the latent hierarchical structure with a learnable switch mechanism to capture the temporal dependencies of MR-MTS. Experimental results on two real-world datasets demonstrate that our MR-HDMM model outperforms the existing state-of-the-art deep learning and state-space models on forecasting and interpolation tasks. In addition, the latent hierarchies in our model provide a way to show and interpret the multiple temporal dependencies.
Hybrid Ensemble Framework for Heart Disease Detection and Prediction

Data mining techniques have been widely used in clinical decision support systems for detection and prediction of various diseases. As heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women, detection and prediction of the heart disease is one of the most important issues in medical domain and many researchers developed intelligent medical decision support systems to improve the ability of the CAD systems in diagnosing heart disease. However, there are almost no studies investigating capabilities of hybrid ensemble methods in building a detection and prediction model for heart disease. In this work, we investigate the use of hybrid ensemble model in which a more reliable ensemble than basic ensemble models is proposed and leads to better performance than other heart disease prediction models. To evaluate the performance of proposed model, a dataset containing 278 samples from SPECT heart disease database is used that after applying the model on the data, 96% of classification accuracy, 80% of sensitivity and 93% of specificity are obtained that indicates acceptable performance of the proposed hybrid ensemble model in comparison with basic ensemble model as well as other state of the art models.
EVALUATION OF HOSPITAL WARDS INDOOR AIR QUALITY: THE PARTICLES CONCENTRATION

Introduction : Indoor air quality in hospitals plays an important role in prevention of infectious disease and inhibits the transmission of infections to staff and patients. The aim of this study is to evaluate the indoor air quality and its relation with environmental air in one of the public hospitals in Qazvin. This cross-sectional study was carried out in a densely occupied educational hospital affiliated with Qazvin University of Medical Sciences. Materials and methods: In this study, several factors those affect the air quality (including carbon dioxide, temperature, relative humidity, and particulate matters sized PM10, PM2.5, and PM0.3) were measured using direct measurement data logger tools in different wards of hospital in various weather conditions. All data obtained was analyzed by SPSS 20. Results: The collected data was analyzed using SPSS with a confidence interval of 95% and α=0.05. The mean 24 h concentrations of PM10, PM2.5 and PM0.3 were 83.09, 21.47 and 1.6 μg/m3 at indoor parts of the hospital, respectively. The highest concentrations were observed in men cardiac, women internal, and women cardiac wards. The mean 8 h concentration of carbon dioxide, temperature, and relative humidity were significantly associated with American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) standards. Conclusions: The highest Indoor to outdoor air quality ratio for particulate matters was PM10=3.75 in men cardiac ward, PM2.5=2.6 in women internal ward and PM0.3=1.31 at women cardiac ward. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards, the air quality is divided in several categories based on the concentration of particulate matters, and in this study the level of air quality was moderate. Air quality can be improved to optimal levels and pollutants can be reduced through corrective measures such as suitable and efficient ventilation system and further measurements.
Effect of dietary energy and protein levels on growth performance , carcass yield and some blood constituents of Japanese quails ( Coturnix coturnix Japonica )

Japanese quails (Coturnix coturnix Japonica) is a diversified poultry species reared for commercial egg and meat production. It is blessed with the unique characteristics of fast growth, early sexual maturity, high rate of egg production, short generation interval and shorter incubation period that makes it suitable for diversified animal agriculture. The meat production performance of Japanese quails has also been improved during recent years due to genetic selection. Therefore, there is a need of updating optimal nutritional requirements of Japanese quails with the improvement in genetic make up to exploit production potentiality. Precise nutrient supply reduces feed cost, wastage of nutrients, environmental pollution, and bad aroma in poultry house, and thus improves animal welfare. In maize-soyabean meal based diets of growing Japanese quails, methionine, threonine and lysine are the first, second and third limiting amino acids respectively. Generally the crude protein content in diets of growing quails ranges from 24 to 27 % (NRC, 1994; SHRIVASTAVA and PANDA, 1999; BALDINI et al., 1995; WEBER and RIED, 1967;
Chlorophyll a and chlorophyllide a inside liposomes made of saturated and unsaturated lipids: A possible impact of the lipids microenvironment

The aim of this work was to examine a possible impact of liposomes lipids microenvironment, dictated by a chemical composition of the fatty acid branches, on incorporation and spectral behaviour of chlorophyll a, and its derivative, chlorophyllide a inside small liposomes. The liposomes with the incorporated chlorophylls were made of dimirystoyl phosphatidylcholine (DMPC), and unsaturated phosphatidylcholine (PC), containing significant fractions of unsaturated fatty acid moieties. In order to achieve the goal, both absorption and fluorescence polarization spectroscopy were applied, and the obtained data for the two incorporated pigments, which play a role of molecular sensors, were compared. In addition, quercetin, a well-known antioxidant, was used as the (chlorophylls) emission quencher, in order to estimate the type of environment sensed by the two pigments for the two liposomes that differ in chemical composition. The results, based primarily on fluorescence polarization data have shown that the emissions as well as the emission quenching were notably affected by a change in the lipids’ chemical composition. That is an indirect proof of the impact of the liposomes microenvironment on the incorporated pigments’ spectral behaviour. [ Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. TR-34012 i br. OI-172044]
Chemical Composition and Antifungal Activity of Vitex agnus-castus l . Seeds Oil Growing in Morocco

The present study describes the chemical composition and the antifungal activity of Vitex agnus-castus L. oil extracted from seeds using Soxhlet apparatus. The Vitex seeds oil contains significant quantity of fixed oil (7.9 ± 0.75 %). Unsaturated fatty acids are the major component of Vitex oil. Oleic and linoleic acids constitute 87% of the fatty acids. While, very low percentage of linolenic acid was found in Vitex seeds oil (<0.4%). -sitosterol and stigmasterol were among the major components, together constituting about 69 % of total sterols. In Vitex seeds oil, cholesterol was found at about 0.1% of the total sterols. Vitex oil has a strong antifungal activity compared with the conventional fungicides. The MIC50, MIC90 and the Minimal Fungicidal Concentration (MFC) were respectively 1.75, 7 and 7 (mg/ml) against all tested Candida species isolated from nosocomial infections in hospitals. Our findings demonstrate that Vitex oil possesses antifungal activity that might be a natural potential source of antifungal used in food, in cosmetics and in pharmaceuticals products.
Histological structures of Nile Tilapia Oreochromis niloticus Linn. Ovary

Basic Histology of female reproductive organ of Nile tilapia Oreochromis niloticus Linn. was studied. Sampling was initiated at the age of 4 months until the age of 8 months. The data on relative ovary weight showed that the GSI of O. niloticus increased in the initial phase and then became stable at the later period. Ovaries were processed by standard histological technique. Histological characteristics of ovarian tissues and oocyte stages were studied by light microscopy. It revealed different histological structure of each oocyte developmental stage: Chromatin nucleolar stage; Perinucleolar stage; Cortical alveoli formation stage; Vitellogenic (yolk) stage; Ripe (mature) stage. Ovarian interstitial tissues were found to consist of interstitial cells, adipose cells, yolk granules and blood capillaries. Oogonial cyst was noted in ovarian tissues of the fish at the age of 5 months. Postovulatory structure, corpora lutea was also observed in the ovary at the age above 6 months. Intraoocytic and extraoocytic deposition of yolk granules and yolk materials was always seen at the age above 6 months. The ovary of the fish that reached the age of 5 months contained all oocytes of different stages.
Critical Review: Examining the efficacy of a telerehabilitation model for the delivery of Lee Silverman Voice Treatment

This critical review examines the current evidence regarding the efficacy of telerehabilitation delivery of the Lee Silverman Voice Treatment (LSVT) to patients with Parkinson’s disease. Telerehabilitation includes delivery of therapy to a patient in a remote location through the use of any information or communication technologies. Examination of the studies revealed that results comparable to those achieved in face-to-face LSVT are possible, however more rigorous guidelines and protocols for delivery are necessary. Recommendations for further clinical research and clinical implications are provided.
GIS Based Soil Loss Estimation Using RUSLE Model: The Case of Jabi Tehinan Woreda, ANRS, Ethiopia

Soil degradation in the form of soil erosion is a serious and continuous environmental problem in Jabi Tehinan Woreda. Uncontrolled land use, deforestation, over cultivation, overgrazing and exploitation of biomass for firewood, construction and other household uses due to increasing population ultimately lead to severe soil erosion. The impact of natural hazards like erosion can be minimized and ultimately controlled by disaster preparedness maps. Therefore, the overall objective of this paper is to quantify and map an estimated soil loss by examining different topographic and anthropogenic factors for the planning and implementations of sustainable soil conservation and management system in the study area. This study had integrated Geographic Information System (GIS), Remote Sensing (RS) and Multi-Criteria Evaluation (MCE) techniques to quantify and map erosion vulnerable areas using RUSLE model. Slope gradient, slope length, soil type, soil conservations techniques, cover management and rainfall variables were used as input model parameters/variables. The data had been collected and analyzed from different land sat imageries, SRTM data, topomaps and point interpolations of primary data. Finally, the aggregated effects of all parameters had been analyzed and soil loss from the area was calculated using RUSEL models. After analyzing all model parameters, areas in steeper slope with Lithosols, Eutric Nitosols, Orthic Luvisols, croplands, bare lands and river banks have been identified as the most erosion vulnerable areas. Quantitatively, an estimated annual soil loss in Jabi Tehinan Woreda ranges from nearly 0 in south and central parts of the area to 504.6 t/ha/yr in steeply sloping mountainous areas of the north and north-eastern parts of the catchments.
A computational model for the evaluation of complement system regulation under homeostasis, disease, and drug intervention

Highlights Computational model describing dynamics of complement system activation pathways Complement dysregulation leads to deviation from homeostasis and to inflammatory diseases Model identifies biomarkers to quantify the effects of complement dysregulation Known drugs restore impaired dynamics of complement biomarkers under dysregulation Disease-specific models are suitable for diagnosis and patient-specific drug treatment Abstract The complement system is a part of innate immunity that rapidly removes invading pathogens and impaired host-cells. Activation of the complement system is balanced under homeostasis by regulators that protect healthy host-cells. Impairment of complement regulators tilts the balance, favoring activation and propagation that leads to inflammatory diseases. The most potent regulator of the complement system is Factor H (FH), and its impairment induces improper complement activation that leads to inflammatory diseases, such as atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome and age related macular degeneration. To understand the dynamics involved in the pivotal balance between activation and regulation, we have developed a comprehensive computational model of the alternative and classical pathways of the complement system. The model is composed of 290 ordinary differential equations with 142 kinetic parameters that describe the state of complement system under homeostasis and disorder through FH impairment. We have evaluated the state of the system by generating concentration-time profiles for the biomarkers C3, C3a-desArg, C5, C5a-desArg, Factor B (FB), Ba, Bb, and fC5b-9 that are influenced by complement dysregulation. We show that FH-mediated disorder induces substantial levels of complement activation compared to homeostasis, by generating reduced levels of C3 and FB, and to a lesser extent C5, and elevated levels of C3a-desArg, Ba, Bb, C5a-desArg, and fC5b-9. These trends are consistent with clinically observed biomarkers associated with complement-mediated diseases. Furthermore, we introduced therapy states by modeling known drugs of the complement system, a compstatin variant (C3 inhibitor) and eculizumab (a C5 inhibitor). Compstatin demonstrates strong restorative effects for early-stage biomarkers, such as C3a-desArg, FB, Ba, and Bb, and milder restorative effects for late-stage biomarkers, such as C5a-desArg and fC5b-9, whereas eculizumab has strong restorative effects on late-stage biomarkers, and negligible effects on early-stage biomarkers. These results highlight the need for patient-specific therapies that target early complement activation at the C3 level, or late-stage propagation of the terminal cascade at the C5 level, depending on the specific FH-mediated disease and the manifestations of a patient’s genetic profile in complement regulatory function.
Physiological and Agronomic Strategies to Increase Mungbean Yield in Climatically Variable Environments of Northern Australia

Mungbean (Vigna radiata (L.) Wilczek) in Australia has been transformed from a niche opportunistic crop into a major summer cropping option for dryland growers in the summer-dominant rainfall regions of Queensland and New South Wales. This transformation followed stepwise genetic improvements in both grain yields and disease resistance. For example, more recent cultivars such as ‘Crystal’, ‘Satin II’, and ‘Jade-AU‘ have provided up to a 20% yield advantage over initial introductions. Improved agronomic management to enable mechanised management and cultivation in narrow (<50 cm) rows has further promised to increase yields. Nevertheless, average yields achieved by growers for their mungbean crops remain less than 1 t/ha, and are much more variable than other broad acre crops. Further increases in yield and crop resilience in mungbean are vital. In this review, opportunities to improve mungbean productivity have been analysed at four key levels including phenology, leaf area development, dry matter accumulation, and its partitioning into grain yield. Improving the prediction of phenology in mungbean may provide further scope for genetic improvements that better match crop duration to the characteristics of target environments. There is also scope to improve grain yields by increasing dry matter production through the development of more efficient leaf canopies. This may introduce additional production risks as dry matter production depends on the amount of available water, which varies considerably within and across growing regions in Australia. Improving crop yields by exploiting G × E × M interactions related to cultivar photo-thermal sensitivities and make better use of available water in these variable environments is likely to be a less risky strategy. Improved characterisation of growing environments using modelling approaches could also better define and identify the risks of major abiotic constraints. This would assist in optimising breeding and management strategies to increase grain yield and crop resilience in mungbean for the benefit of growers and the industry.