Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Origanum vulgare Terpenoids Induce Oxidative Stress and Reduce the Feeding Activity of Spodoptera littoralis

Terpenoids are toxic compounds produced by plants as a defense strategy against insect herbivores. We tested the effect of Origanum vulgare terpenoids on the generalist herbivore Spodoptera littoralis and the response of the plant to herbivory. Terpenoids were analyzed by GC-FID and GC-MS and quantitative gene expression (qPCR) was evaluated on selected plant genes involved in both terpene biosynthesis. The insect detoxification response to terpenes was evaluated by monitoring antioxidant enzymes activity and expression of insect genes involved in terpene detoxification. O. vulgare terpenoid biosynthesis and gene expression was modulated by S. littoralis feeding. The herbivore-induced increased level of terpenoids (particularly carvacrol and p-cymene) interacted with the herbivore by decreasing larval survival and growth rate. The assimilation by S. littoralis of more than 50% of ingested terpenes correlated with the possible toxic effects of O. vulgare terpenoids. In choice test experiments, carvacrol and γ-terpinene mediated the larval feeding preferences, wherease the prolonged feeding on O. vulgare terpenoids (particularly on γ-terpinene) exerted relevant antinutritional effects on larvae. S. littoralis was found to react to O. vulgare terpenoids by increasing its antioxidant enzymes activities and gene expression, although this was not sufficient to sustain the toxicity of O. vulgare terpenoids.
Aufnahmefähigkeit von Niederspannungsverteilnetzen für die Einspeisung aus Photovoltaikkleinanlagen

Die starke Forderung der Erneuerbaren Energien bedingt eine zunehmend hohe Einspeisung aus Photovoltaikkleinanlagen in die Niederspannungsnetze. Die eingespeiste Leistung in die Niederspannungsnetze betrug 2009 bereits mehrere Gigawatt. In der Arbeit wird die Aufnahmefahigkeit von Niederspannungsverteilnetzen fur eine solche Einspeisung untersucht. Es werden typische und extreme Netze fur verschiedene Netzstrukturen aus einer Vielzahl von realen Netzen ermittelt, die Dachflachenpotenziale bestimmt und die Auswirkung der veranderten Lastprofile auf die Betriebsmittel untersucht. Grundsatzuberlegungen zur Anrechenbarkeit der Verbraucherlast werden durchgefuhrt. Vorschlage zur Erhohung der Aufnahmefahigkeit der Netze mittels einer aktiven Regelung der Einspeisewechselrichter werden gemacht. Fur verschiedene Szenarien des zukunftigen Zuwachses von PV-Anlagen werden die technischen und wirtschaftlichen Implikationen betrachtet.
Artificial Intelligence Scientific Documentation Dataset for Recommender Systems

The existing scientific documentation-based recommender systems focus on exploiting the citations and references information included in each research paper and also the lists of co-authors. In this way, it can be addressed the recommendation of related papers and even related authors. The approach we propose is original because instead of using each paper citations and co-authors, we relate each of the papers with their main research topics. This approach provides a semantic level superior to that currently used, which allows us to obtain useful results. We can use collaborative filtering recommender systems to recommend research topics related to each paper and also to recommend papers related to each research topic. In order to face this innovative proposal, we have solved a series of challenges that allow us to offer various resources and results in the paper. Our main contributions are: 1) making a data mining of scientific documentation; 2) creating and publishing an open database containing the data mining results; 3) extracting the research topics from the available scientific documentation; 4) creating and publishing a recommender system data set obtained from the database and the research topics; 5) testing the data set through a complete set of collaborative filtering methods and quality measures; and 6) selecting and showing the best methods and results, obtained using the open data set, in the context of scientific documentation recommendations. Results of the paper show the suitability of the provided data set in collaborative filtering processes, as well as the superiority of the model-based methods to face scientific documentation recommendations.
Spontaneous pulmonary hypertension in genetic mouse models of natural killer cell deficiency

Natural killer (NK) cells are cytotoxic innate lymphoid cells with an established role in the regulation of vascular structure in pregnancy and cancer. Impaired NK cell function has been identified in patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), a disease of obstructive vascular remodeling in the lungs, as well as in multiple rodent models of disease. However, the precise contribution of NK cell impairment to the initiation and progression of PAH remains unknown. Here, we report the development of spontaneous pulmonary hypertension in two independent genetic models of NK cell dysfunction, including Nfil3−/− mice, which are deficient in NK cells due to the absence of the NFIL3 transcription factor, and Ncr1-Gfp mice, which lack the NK activating receptor NKp46. Mouse models of NK insufficiency exhibited increased right ventricular systolic pressure and muscularization of the pulmonary arteries in the absence of elevated left ventricular end-diastolic pressure, indicating that the development of pulmonary hypertension was not secondary to left heart dysfunction. In cases of severe NK cell impairment or loss, a subset of mice failed to develop pulmonary hypertension and instead exhibited reduced systemic blood pressure, demonstrating an extension of vascular abnormalities beyond the pulmonary circulation into the systemic vasculature. In both mouse models, the development of PAH was linked to elevated interleukin-23 production, whereas systemic hypotension in Ncr1-Gfp mice was accompanied by a loss of angiopoietin-2. Together, these results support an important role for NK cells in the regulation of pulmonary and systemic vascular function and the pathogenesis of PAH.
MicroRNA-27a alleviates LPS-induced acute lung injury in mice via inhibiting inﬂammation and apoptosis through modulating TLR4/MyD88/NF-κB pathway

ABSTRACT Acute lung injury (ALI) is a critical clinical condition with a high mortality rate, characterized with excessive uncontrolled inflammation and apoptosis. Recently, microRNAs (miRNAs) have been found to play crucial roles in the amelioration of various inflammation-induced diseases, including ALI. However, it remains unknown the biological function and regulatory mechanisms of miRNAs in the regulation of inﬂammation and apoptosis in ALI. The aim of this study is to identify and evaluate the potential role of miRNAs in ALI and reveal the underlying molecular mechanisms of their effects. Here, we analyzed microRNA expression profiles in lung tissues from LPS-challenged mice using miRNA microarray. Because microRNA-27a (miR-27a) was one of the miRNAs being most significantly downregulated, which has an important role in regulation of inflammation, we investigated its function. Overexpression of miR-27a by agomir-27a improved lung injury, as evidenced by the reduced histopathological changes, lung wet/dry (W/D) ratio, lung microvascular permeability and apoptosis in the lung tissues, as well as ameliorative survival of ALI mice. This was accompanied by the alleviating of inflammation, such as the reduced total BALF cell and neutrophil counts, decreased levels of tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), interleukin-1 (IL-6) interleukin-1β (IL-1β) and myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity in BAL fluid. Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), an important regulator of the nuclear factor kappa-B (NF-κB) signaling pathway, was identified as a novel target of miR-27a in RAW264.7 cells. Furthermore, our results showed that LPS stimulation increased the expression of MyD88 and NF-κB p65 (p-p65), but inhibited the expression of inhibitor of nuclear factor-κB-α (IκB-α), suggesting the activation of NF-κB signaling pathway. Further investigations revealed that agomir-miR-27a reversed the promoting effect of LPS on NF-κB signaling pathway. The results here suggested that miR-27a alleviates LPS-induced ALI in mice via reducing inﬂammation and apoptosis through blocking TLR4/MyD88/NF-κB activation.
Doing stigma: Online commenting around weight-related news media

Weight stigma results from the mediatisation of ‘obesity’: conceptually, a medicalised problem resulting from personal bodily irresponsibility. We undertake a frame analysis of 1452 comments on a thematically related online news article published via The Guardian, about the status of ‘obesity’ as a disability in European Union (EU) employment law. We identify three themes: (1) weight as a lifestyle choice or disability, (2) weight as an irresponsible choice and (3) weight as a simple or complex issue. We contend that the design of the commenting platform prevents counter-narratives from challenging the dominant (‘obesity’) framing for three reasons: (1) content is driven by comments appearing earlier in the corpus, (2) the commenting system primarily supports argument between polarised rhetorical positions and (3) the platform design discourages users from developing alternative terminologies for producing counter-narratives. In this way, we explore how weight stigma is propagated through online media, and how users’ comments intersect with the affordances of the platform itself.
Naturally Occurring Canine Glioma as a Model for Novel Therapeutics

Abstract Background: Current animal models of glioma are limited to small animal models, which are less predictive of treatment of human disease. Canines often develop gliomas de novo, but the natural history of the disease is not well described. Objective: We provide data for naturally occurring canine gliomas; evaluating medical and surgical therapies. Methods: We reviewed medical records of pet dogs with a presumptive diagnosis of glioma from MRI imaging that underwent surgery as part of the Canine Brain Tumor Clinical Trials Program. Breed, age, sex, median progression-free, and overall survival times and cause of death were recorded for multivariate analysis. Results: Ninety five dogs (56 male; mean age = 8.3 years) were included, but nine were excluded as final pathology was non-neoplastic. Gross total resection was reported in 81 cases based on postoperative MRI. Seventy had high-grade tumors (grade III or IV). Eighty three dogs presented with seizures, being the most common presenting clinical sign. Median survival after surgery was 723 days (95% CI 343–1103) for grade II tumors, 301 days (197–404) for grade III and 200 days (126–274) for grade IV (p = .009 Kaplan–Meier survival analysis; Log Rank test). Age (cox regression, p = .14) or sex (Kaplan–Meier test, p = .22) did not predict survival. Conclusions: This study establishes normative data for a model exploiting dogs with naturally occurring glioma, which can be used to test novel therapies prior to translation to human trials. Further work will focus on the effects of different therapies, including chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and immunotherapy.
Methodological Approaches to Study Extracellular Vesicle miRNAs in Epstein–Barr Virus-Associated Cancers

Epstein Barr-virus (EBV) was the first virus identified to be associated with human cancer in 1964 and is found ubiquitously throughout the world’s population. It is now established that EBV contributes to the development and progression of multiple human cancers of both lymphoid and epithelial cell origins. EBV encoded miRNAs play an important role in tumor proliferation, angiogenesis, immune escape, tissue invasion, and metastasis. Recently, EBV miRNAs have been found to be released from infected cancer cells in extracellular vesicles (EVs) and regulate gene expression in neighboring uninfected cells present in the tumor microenvironment and possibly at distal sites. As EVs are abundant in many biological fluids, the viral and cellular miRNAs present within EBV-modified EVs may serve as noninvasion markers for cancer diagnosis and prognosis. In this review, we discuss recent advances in EV isolation and miRNA detection, and provide a complete workflow for EV purification from plasma and deep-sequencing for biomarker discovery.
Analysis and Implementation of a New SEPIC-Based Single-Switch Buck–Boost DC–DC Converter With Continuous Input Current

In this paper, a novel buck–boost dc–dc converter with continuous input current is proposed. The voltage gain of the presented converter is higher than conventional converters, such as buck–boost, single-ended primary-inductance converter, Cuk, and Zeta converters. This converter works only by one switch and voltage stress across the switch is low. Input current of the proposed converter is continuous so a large filter at the input is not needed. Furthermore, continuous input current has made this converter suitable for renewable energy and fuel cell applications. In this converter, noninverting output voltage is obtained and high gain of voltage is achieved as well. So it can operate at wide output voltage range only by changing the duty cycle of the power switch pulse. The presented converter can easily controlled in continuous conduction mode operation, because of using only one power switch. In the following, the principle of operation and the mathematical analyses of the proposed converter are explained, finally, validity of the proposed dc–dc converter is verified by the experimental results.
TriZone: A Design of MLC STT-RAM Cache for Combined Performance, Energy, and Reliability Optimizations

Spin-transfer torque random access memory (STT-RAM) is a promising technology for future nonvolatile caches and memories. To increase the storage density, multilevel cell (MLC) technique was recently introduced to STT-RAM designs at the cost of degraded access speed, reliability, and energy efficiency. Existing MLC STT-RAM cache architectures primarily focus on the performance and energy optimizations but ignore the crucial demand for reliability. In this paper, we propose “TriZone”—a holistic design scheme for MLC STT-RAM cache to simultaneously meet the requirements of performance, energy, and reliability. Three cache block configurations, namely hard, soft, and mixed, are constructed with the hard-bit, soft-bit, and both hard-bit and soft-bit of MLC STT-RAM, respectively. By observing the difference of these cache blocks, a nonuniform strength ECC (NUS-ECC) is developed to guarantee the operational reliability of a cache block with a variable decoding delay adapting to the needs of error correction (e.g., the number of the erroneous bits). The whole MLC STT-RAM cache is then partitioned into three regions, each of which is composed of different cache blocks. In order to achieve the best tradeoff among performance, energy, and reliability, we then introduce the dynamic cache partitioning to determine the partition of this tri-way MLC STT-RAM cache according to the runtime characteristic of various applications. Experiment results show that compared with conventional performance-driven MLC STT-RAM cache design with pessimistic ECC, TriZone can improve the system performance and energy by averagely 11.7% (10.0%) and 13.3% (15.7%), respectively, for single-threaded (multiprogram) applications. The additional area overhead associated with NUS-ECC is limited by ~ 3%.
Unsupervised cross-lingual matching of product classifications

Unsupervised cross-lingual embeddings mapping has provided a unique tool for completely unsupervised translation even for languages with different scripts. In this work we use this method for the task of unsupervised cross-lingual matching of product classifications. Our work also investigates limitations of unsupervised vector alignment and we also suggest two other techniques for aligning product classifications based on their descriptions: using hierarchical information and translations.
Perspectives on using decision-making nudges in physician-patient communications

Patients engaging in shared decision making must weigh the likelihood of positive and negative outcomes and deal with uncertainty and negative emotions in the situations where desirable options might not be available. The use of “nudges,” or communication techniques that influence patients’ choices in a predictable direction, may assist patients in making complex decisions. However, nudging patients may be perceived as inappropriate influence on patients’ choices. We sought to determine whether key stakeholders, physicians, and laypersons without clinical training consider the use of nudges to be ethical and appropriate in medical decision making. Eighty-nine resident-physicians and 336 Mechanical-Turk workers (i.e., non-clinicians) evaluated two hypothetical preference-sensitive situations, in which a patient with advanced cancer chooses between chemotherapy and hospice care. We varied the following: (1) whether or not the patient’s decision was influenced by a mistaken judgment (i.e., decision-making bias) and (2) whether or not the physician used a nudge. Each participant reported the extent to which the communication was ethical, appropriate, and desirable. Both physicians and non-clinicians considered using nudges more positively than not using them, regardless of an initial decision-making bias in patients’ considerations. Decomposing this effect, we found that physicians viewed the nudge that endorsed hospice care more favorably than the nudge that endorsed chemotherapy, while non-clinicians viewed the nudge that endorsed chemotherapy more favorably than the nudge that endorsed hospice care. We discuss implications and propose exploring further physicians’ and patients’ differences in the perception of nudges; the differences may suggest limitations for using nudges in medical decisions.
The Use of Subliminal and Supraliminal Messages in Phishing and Spear Phishing Based Social Engineering Attacks; Feasibility Study

This paper evaluates the background research to identify the possibility of using a new vector of social engineering attack using a psychological concept which thus far had been only used in marketing and promotional campaigns. Subliminal and supraliminal messages have been studied by academia with respect to its ability to influence individual behavior. Social engineering attacks are defined as the art of manipulating people into performing actions or divulging confidential information. Most of modern social engineering attacks depend on phishing and spear phishing attacks. This paper explores the possibility of identifying a correlations between the above mentioned psychological concepts and phishing/spear phishing attacks in the domain of cyber security.
Risk stratification for complex ventricular arrhythmia complicating ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction

Objectives The primary aim of the study was to evaluate risk factors for ventricular fibrillation/sustained ventricular tachycardia (VF/VT) and to develop the risk score for prediction of VF/VT in patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) treated invasively. The secondary aim was to assess the effect of VF/VT on mortality depending on timing of arrhythmia. Patients and methods We analyzed 4363 consecutive patients with STEMI treated invasively. Among them, 163 patients with pre-reperfusion arrhythmia were excluded from the study. Group ventricular arrhythmias (VA) encompassed patients with VF/VT – those with reperfusion-induced arrhythmia were included into group VA1, whereas group VA2 consisted of patients with postreperfusion arrhythmia. The control group comprised patients free of VF/VT. Results VF or VT occurred in 313 (7.45%) patients – group VA1 encompassed 103 (32.9%) and group AV2 210 (67.1%) patients. Cardiogenic shock on admission [hazard ratio (HR) 3.5], new-onset atrial fibrillation (HR 2.1), incomplete revascularization (HR 1.7), prior myocardial infarction (HR 1.6) and symptom-to-balloon time more than 3 h (HR 1.3) were the independent predictors of VF/VT occurrence. In group VA2, the in-hospital and long-term mortality were 4- and 1.5-fold higher than in the arrhythmia-free population (20.5 vs. 4.5% and 36.2 vs. 22.6%, respectively; P<0.001). On the contrary, in group VA1, the long-term mortality was not significantly higher compared with the control group (26.2 vs. 22.6%; P=NS), whereas in-hospital mortality was almost three-fold increased (12.5 vs. 4.5%, respectively; P<0.001). Conclusion The risk score based on simple clinical parameters might be useful for risk stratification for VF/VT in patients with STEMI. The predictive value of VF/VT was strongly dependent on timing of arrhythmia.
Incidence of congenital anomalies in a rural population of Jammu - A prospective study

Background: Congenital anomalies (CAs) are a major cause of stillbirths and neonatal mortality in India. Its magnitude and pattern reportedly vary over time and across geographical locations. Objectives: The objective of the study is to estimate the incidence of CAs in community development block RS Pura of District Jammu. Methods: The present study is a community-based prospective study. The field workers were trained with the help of “Birth Defect Surveillance” Atlas issued by WHO and ICBDMS (International Clearinghouse for Birth Defects Monitoring Systems) 2014. Pregnant women (registered or unregistered) with all health institutions in RS Pura Block on or after April 1, 2014, were followed till September 2015 for the ascertainment of CAs. All CAs detected during antenatal period (by ultrasonography), after delivery and abortion at any site were counted as events and classified by organ system according to the 10th version of the WHO International Classification of Diseases-10. Results: A total of 1670 mothers were followed till their pregnancy outcome was recorded. Among 1600 live births recorded, 54 babies had CAs resulting in the incidence rate of 33.7/1000 live births. The incidence rate was comparatively higher among women aged <20 years (71.4/1000 live births) and with Para 4 (43.5/1000 live births) as compared to other women. Digestive system was the most common system involved (35%) followed by the Central nervous system (26.6%). The U-shaped pattern in the incidence of CAs with regards to parity and maternal age was observed. Conclusion: The study demonstrated that the CAs continue to occur in Jammu at a similar magnitude as reported from other parts of the country.
Applying the differential evolution algorithm with the fuzzy selection mechanism for the flexible job shop scheduling problem

This paper proposed the new algorithm which applied the fuzzy selection mechanism with the differential evolution (DE) algorithm for solving the flexible job shop scheduling problem (FJSP). The proposed algorithm is mainly based on the concept of the DE algorithm. In the first step, the population is created by randomly using the population generation rules. Next step, this paper utilized the fuzzy selection mechanism to select the proper machine according to the number of operation load and the machine processing time load. The POX and the uniform crossover operation are used to enhance the exploitation capability in the third step. The finally, the local search based on the critical path operation is applied to explore the neighbor solution in the surrounding areas of the best population. The experimental result shows that, the proposed algorithm is best among the other comparison algorithm.