Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inhibitory effect of K+ ions and influence of other ions and osmolality on the spermatozoa motility of European burbot (Lota lota L.)

Background In fish with external fertilization, two main start-up mechanisms of the path that blocks or activates the spermatozoan motility apparatus are known. The main factor managing the path is osmolality or potassium ion. In burbot from the European and North American population, contradictory findings regarding the factors influencing the onset of spermatozoa motility were reported. The objective of the current study was to determine the effect of potassium and osmolality on the spermatozoa activation of European burbot, Lota lota (Actinopterygii, Gadiformes, Lotidae). Moreover, the influence of pH, as well as sodium ion concentrations on spermatozoa motility was investigated. Seven parameters characterising motility were traced by means of computer-assisted sperm analysis (CASA). Principal findings The spermatozoa of European burbot are K+ ion-sensitive. A 6-mM KCl solution significantly decreased motility, and above 12-mM (50 mOsm kg-1) totally ceased spermatozoa movement. Sucrose and Na+ solutions inhibited spermatozoa movement only at concentrations > 450–480 mOsm kg-1. Greater differences in the percentage of motile sperm between individuals were noted in solutions containing high concentrations of chemicals triggering sperm motility. The optimum osmolality for spermatozoa motility is in the range of 100–200 mOsm kg-1. The burbot spermatozoa were motile over a wide range of pH values with the best activation at pH 9. Conclusion It was demonstrated that the spermatozoa of European burbot are inhibited by K+ ions similarly as in North American burbot. Other electrolyte and non-electrolyte solutions inhibit spermatozoa movement only if their osmolality is greater than that of the physiological osmolality of seminal plasma. The data provided on basic knowledge of burbot spermatozoa allow to ensure appropriate conditions during artificial reproduction and scientific research.
QuoteRec: Toward Quote Recommendation for Writing

Quote is a language phenomenon of transcribing the statement of someone else, such as a proverb and a famous saying. An appropriate usage of quote usually equips the expression with more elegance and credibility. However, there are times when we are eager to stress our idea by citing a quote, while nothing relevant comes to mind. Therefore, it is exciting to have a recommender system which provides quote recommendations while we are writing. This article extends previous study of quote recommendation, the task that recommends the appropriate quote according to the context (i.e., the content occurring before and after the quote). In this article, a quote recommender system called QuoteRec is presented to tackle the task. We investigate two models to learn the vector representations of quotes and contexts, and then rank the candidate quotes based on the representations. The first model learns the quote representation according to the contexts of a quote. The second model is an extension of the neural network model in previous study, which learns the representation of a quote by concerning both its content and contexts. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the two models in learning the semantic representations of quotes, and the neural network model achieves state-of-the-art results on the quote recommendation task.
Hot Accretion Flows Around Black Holes

Black hole accretion flows can be divided into two broad classes: cold and hot. Whereas cold accretion flows consist of cool optically thick gas and are found at relatively high mass accretion rates, hot accretion flows, the topic of this review, are virially hot and optically thin, and occur at lower mass accretion rates. They are described by accretion solutions such as the advection-dominated accretion flow and luminous hot accretion flow. Because of energy advection, the radiative efficiency of these flows is in general lower than that of a standard thin accretion disk. Moreover, the efficiency decreases with decreasing mass accretion rate. Observations show that hot accretion flows are associated with jets. In addition, theoretical arguments suggest that hot flows should produce strong winds. Hot accretion flows are believed to be present in low-luminosity active galactic nuclei and in black hole X-ray binaries in the hard and quiescent states. The prototype is Sgr A*, the ultralow-luminosity supermassive black hole at our Galactic center. The jet, wind, and radiation from a supermassive black hole with a hot accretion flow can interact with the external interstellar medium and modify the evolution of the host galaxy.
ANALISA PERBEDAAN KINERJA KEUANGAN PEMERINTAH KOTA KEDIRI SEBELUM DAN SESUDAH PEMBERLAKUAN ANGGARAN BERBASIS KINERJA

Target of this research is to find empirical evidence of differentiation of monetary independence storey and fiscal decentralization Government of Kediri before and after application of budget base on performance. Method which used in this research is monetary ratio consisting of independence ratio. fiscal decentralization. efficiency ratio and effectiveness ratio, for knowing monetary independence storey of region, fiscal decentralization storey; effectiveness and efficiency of PAD which workable of government. From calculation of the monetary ratio different test by using F-Test to know the existence of difference before and after application of budget based on performance. Result of calculation showed monetary independence storey is existence of difference before and after application of budget base on performance, fiscal decentralization storey there isn’t differentiation before and after application of budget base on performance, effectiveness storey of PAD and efficiency storey of PAD experiencing of difference before and after application of budget base on performance
Obesity, physical activity, and dietary behaviors in an ethnically-diverse sample of cancer survivors with early onset disease

ABSTRACT Purpose: To assess weight status, physical activity, and dietary behaviors in an ethnically-diverse sample of breast and colorectal cancer survivors with early onset disease (≤ 50 years). Methods: Breast and colorectal cancer survivors, diagnosed between 1999 and 2009 with early-stage cancer diagnosed by 50 years of age, were identified through a population-based cancer registry and surveyed. Descriptive and regression analyses were conducted to characterize the sample and identify correlates of lifestyle behaviors. Findings: The majority of participants (n = 156) were female (83%), insured (84%), and racial/ethnic minorities (29% Asian, 24% Latino, 15% African American). Participants' mean age at response was 50 years and mean time since diagnosis was 9 years. Over half of survivors were overweight or obese. Few participants reported engaging in regular physical activity (31%) and adhering to minimum guidelines for fruit and vegetable consumption (32%). A substantial proportion of survivors consumed fast food in the past week (75%) and nearly half (48%) reported daily consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages. Lower income was associated with inadequate fruit and vegetable intake. Fast food and sugar-sweetened beverage consumption was significantly higher among racial/ethnic minority survivors compared to non-Latino whites. Conclusions: High prevalence of overweight and suboptimal adherence to recommended nutrition and physical activity behaviors were observed among cancer survivors with early onset disease. Cancer survivors diagnosed at a young age may benefit from targeted interventions to address overweight and suboptimal nutrition and physical activity.
Adult Neurogenesis in Injury-Induced Self-Repair: Use It or Lose It

One of the most hotly pursued topics in neuroscience and therapeutic medicine is the use of stem cells in the adult brain. Growing in parallel to this emerging field is the recognition that the adult brain is indeed capable of generating new cells. While neurogenesis was understood to be restricted to a few areas, recent studies suggest that damage to the adult brain can trigger neurogenesis even in regions outside of these specific areas. This finding raises the possibility that neurons born in response to perturbation in the brain may be involved in the recovery of function in the damaged adult brain. The key is understanding how to cultivate these newborn cells, because they do not remain viable if they are not accepted into the damaged network of interconnected neurons which support specific functions. From a birth site, undifferentiated precursor cells or neurons undergo migration and differentiation. Many factors influence the safe journey of migrating cells and their survival after maturation at their destination. This review will present evidence from ring dove studies that an activity-dependent mechanism underlies the survival of adult newborn neurons and establishment of their functionality. This evidence includes: [1] unique electrophysiological properties or specific connectivity associated with various type of neurons involved in ring dove coo behavior and reproductive function, [2] emergence of electrophysiological properties and specific projection neurons emanating from newborn neurons after hypothalamic lesion, and finally [3] collective behavioral analyses of social stimulations suggesting that sensorimotor events contribute to the integration of new neurons and reinstatement of function.
Incidence of Leptospirosis in Humans and the Epidemiological Pattern of Occurrence

A total of 725 serum samples obtained over a period of 12 months from human patients with acute, febrile illness were tested to detect an early infection of leptospirosis by employing dark field microscopy as a rapid diagnostic technique. An incidence rate of 53.0% was recorded with livestock and pet owners (72.7%) being predominant risk group. Young people within 0-20 age group (60.5 %) and males (59.4%) were found more susceptible to this infection and occurrence was higher in Northeast monsoon (58.2%) of the year.
Biotechnological Comparative Assessment of Mutagenic Agents on Morphological Traits and Phenology in Wild Chickpea

The chickpea is the third important legume crop in the world. The wild species of the chickpea is a valuable source of genetic variation for cultigens breeding programme. The few undesirable traits and properties of the wild species constraint the use of the wild species in improvement breeding programme as well as the crossability barriers in interspecific crossbreeding. The mutation breeding is the useful method to bring the desirable traits in the genome and elimination of undesirable character. The suitable and desirable induced mutants could be used in the breeding programme of the cultigens.
Measuring the Price Effects of Import Restrictions: Theory and Evidence

In a world of decreasing tariffs, non-tariff barriers (NTBs) have gained in importance and are receiving growing attention in trade negotiations. Comprising a myriad of different policies, NTBs are not straightforward to quantify. An intuitive and meaningful equivalence measure is the price impact of non-tariff policies. This paper offers a theoretical foundation for the previously rather 'atheoretical' literature of such price comparisons. The effects of quantitative restrictions and technical barriers to trade (TBT and SPS) on final consumption prices are estimated for 35 products comprised in the sectors fruits & vegetables, meat and textiles in a large cross-section of countries for the year 2008. Price increasing effects of both NTB types turn out to be large and statistically significant in many cases. Results, however, are very sensitive to different empirical specifications and sometimes exhibit theory-inconsistent coefficients. Measurement issues are therefore discussed in detail and should serve as a guideline for further research.
Conflict Tasks of Different Types Divergently Affect the Attentional Processing of Gaze and Arrow

The present study explored the attentional processing mechanisms of gaze and arrow cues in two different types of conflict tasks. In Experiment 1, participants performed a flanker task in which gaze and arrow cues were presented as central targets or bilateral distractors. The congruency between the direction of the target and the distractors was manipulated. Results showed that arrow distractors greatly interfered with the attentional processing of gaze, while the processing of arrow direction was immune to conflict from gaze distractors. Using a spatial compatibility task, Experiment 2 explored the conflict effects exerted on gaze and arrow processing by their relative spatial locations. When the direction of the arrow was in conflict with its spatial layout on screen, response times were slowed; however, the encoding of gaze was unaffected by spatial location. In general, processing to an arrow cue is less influenced by bilateral gaze cues but is affected by irrelevant spatial information, while processing to a gaze cue is greatly disturbed by bilateral arrows but is unaffected by irrelevant spatial information. Different effects on gaze and arrow cues by different types of conflicts may reflect two relatively distinct specific modes of the attentional process.
Quantifying and estimating the predictive accuracy for censored time‐to‐event data with competing risks

This paper focuses on quantifying and estimating the predictive accuracy of prognostic models for time‐to‐event outcomes with competing events. We consider the time‐dependent discrimination and calibration metrics, including the receiver operating characteristics curve and the Brier score, in the context of competing risks. To address censoring, we propose a unified nonparametric estimation framework for both discrimination and calibration measures, by weighting the censored subjects with the conditional probability of the event of interest given the observed data. The proposed method can be extended to time‐dependent predictive accuracy metrics constructed from a general class of loss functions. We apply the methodology to a data set from the African American Study of Kidney Disease and Hypertension to evaluate the predictive accuracy of a prognostic risk score in predicting end‐stage renal disease, accounting for the competing risk of pre–end‐stage renal disease death, and evaluate its numerical performance in extensive simulation studies.
Is music a memory booster in normal aging? The influence of emotion

ABSTRACT Age-related differences in episodic memory have been explained by a decrement in strategic encoding implementation. It has been shown in clinical populations that music can be used during the encoding stage as a mnemonic strategy to learn verbal information. The effectiveness of this strategy remains equivocal in older adults (OA). Furthermore, the impact of the emotional valence of the music used has never been investigated in this context. Thirty OA and 24 young adults (YA) learned texts that were either set to music that was positively or negatively valenced, or spoken only. Immediate and delayed recalls were measured. Results showed that: (i) OA perform worse than YA in immediate and delayed recall; (ii) sung lyrics are better remembered than spoken ones in OA, but only when the associated music is positively-valenced; (iii) this pattern is observed regardless the retention delay. These findings support the benefit of a musical encoding on verbal learning in healthy OA and are consistent with the positivity effect classically reported in normal aging. Added to the potential applications in daily life, the results are discussed with respect to the theoretical hypotheses of the mechanisms underlying the advantage of musical encoding.
Increasing the feeling of social presence by incorporating realistic interactions in multi-party VR

Behavioral realism and realistic interactions are major criteria for improving social presence in virtual reality environments. We focus on multi-party VR applications where computer agents and avatars interact, share and collaborate with each other using objects. Our formulation employs realistic animations to simulate human-like behavioral motions of computer agents while they interact with avatars to enhance the sense of social presence in the VR environment. We exemplify our proposed model in a VR volleyball game setup. We model specific underlying interactions like gazing, collision detection and miscellaneous reactions (like how to pick a volleyball, how to transfer the ball to server) between computers players and avatars in the VR Volleyball game. We conduct a preliminary user survey to illustrate the significance of inclusion of realistic interactions for improving sense of social presence in a multi-party VR environment.
Taxation, Innovation and Entrepreneurship

We examine how basic research should be financed. While basic research is a public good benefiting innovating entrepreneurs it also affects the entire economy: occupational choices of potential entrepreneurs, wages of workers, dividends to shareholders, and aggregate output. We show that the general economy impact of basic research rationalizes a pecking order of taxation to finance basic research. In particular, in a society with desirable dense entrepreneurial activity, a large share of funds for basic research should be financed by labor taxation and a minor share is left to profit taxation. Such tax schemes induce a significant share of agents to become entrepreneurs, thereby rationalizing substantial investments in basic research. These entrepreneurial economies, however, may make a majority of citizens worse off if those individuals do not possess shares of final good producers in the economy. In such circumstances, stagnation may prevail.
Tomato-Associated Endophytic Bacteria with Fusarium Wilt Suppression and Tomato Growth Promotion Abilities

Eight endophytic bacterial strains (Bacillus spp., Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, and Pseudomonas geniculata) recovered from healthy cultivated tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) were screened for their plant growth-promoting potential on tomato plants challenged with Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici (FOL) and for their in vitro and in vivo antifungal activity against FOL. S. maltophilia CT16 and Bacillus subtilis subsp. inaqosorum CT43 and their filtrates were the most efficient in controlling disease by 55-87.5% and in improving growth parameters in inoculated tomato plants by 8.4-46.8%. Pathogen sporulation was inhibited and FOL mycelial growth was reduced using whole-cells and filtrates of the eight strains, and organic extracts from the two active ones. Extracellular metabolites remained effective after heating at 50-100°C with a decline in activity beyond 100°C, when added with proteinase K and their pH adjusted at 2 and 12. Chitinase and surfactin genes were detected using PCR amplification and sequenced for S. maltophilia CT16 and B. subtilis subsp. inaqosorum CT43, respectively. Five strains have shown chitinase- and proteases-activities. B. subtilis subsp. inaqosorum CT43 and S. maltophilia CT16 were able to produce siderophores and salicylic acid. Hydrogen cyanide production was achieved only with S. maltophilia CT16.
Fabrication and Characterization of Nanoenergetic Hollow Spherical Hexanitrostibene (HNS) Derivatives

The spherization of nanoenergetic materials is the best way to improve the sensitivity and increase loading densities and detonation properties for weapons and ammunition, but the preparation of spherical nanoenergetic materials with high regularization, uniform size and monodispersity is still a challenge. In this paper, nanoenergetic hollow spherical hexanitrostibene (HNS) derivatives were fabricated via a one-pot copolymerization strategy, which is based on the reaction of HNS and piperazine in acetonitrile solution. Characterization results indicated the as-prepared reaction nanoenergetic products were HNS-derived oligomers, where a free radical copolymerization reaction process was inferred. The hollow sphere structure of the HNS derivatives was characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscope (TEM), and synchrotron radiation X-ray imaging technology. The properties of the nanoenergetic hollow spherical derivatives, including thermal decomposition and sensitivity are discussed in detail. Sensitivity studies showed that the nanoenergetic derivatives exhibited lower impact, friction and spark sensitivity than raw HNS. Thermogravimetric-differential scanning calorimeter (TG-DSC) results showed that continuous exothermic decomposition occurred in the whole temperature range, which indicated that nanoenergetic derivatives have a unique role in thermal applications. Therefore, nanoenergetic hollow spherical HNS derivatives could provide a new way to modify the properties of certain energetic compounds and fabricate spherical nanomaterials to improve the charge configuration.
Solving Multiobjective Optimization Problems Using Hybrid Cooperative Invasive Weed Optimization With Multiple Populations

In this paper, hybridization of invasive weed optimization (IWO) and space transformation search (STS) are presented to solve, by applying multiple populations for multiple objectives individually, multiobjective optimization. This whole process is addressed as hybrid cooperative multiobjective optimization IWO (HCMOIWO). We carried out an application to solve system of nonlinear equations. In HCMOIWO, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${M}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> single objectives are optimized simultaneously using the hybrid IWO with STS and all the nondominated solutions that are extracted from the group of parent weeds and offspring are stored in an archive, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${A}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. This archive is used not only to store nondominated solutions, but also to exchange information among subpopulations to explore the new search areas along the Pareto front. To exploit the nondominated solutions, a local search technique is adopted in HCMOIWO. The performance of HCMOIWO is evaluated with different sets of benchmark problems having different characteristics. Empirical results reveal the supremacy of HCMOIWO over state-of-the-art algorithms reported in recent literature.
Demineralized bone matrix and calcium-phosphate cement in bone regeneration in rats.

PURPOSE To compare bone regeneration in critical-sized defects in rat calvarium using demineralized bone matrix and calcium phosphate cement. METHODS Thirty Wistar rats were divided into 3 groups of 10 animals each. Two defects of 5-mm were made in the parietal bones of each animal. Group I had calcium phosphate cement placed in the experimental defect, Group II had filled with demineralized bone matrix and Group III had with the combination of the matrix and cement in equal parts. All animals had one defect left unfilled to serve as controls. Five animals in each group were sacrificed at 4 and 8 weeks. Histomorphometric analysis was used to quantify the amount of new bone within the defects. RESULTS The results showed that demineralized bone matrix-treated defects had significantly more new bone at 4 weeks compared to calcium phosphate cement-treated defects (p=0.03) and also had significantly more new bone at 8 weeks compared to unfilled defects (p=0.04). CONCLUSIONS The demineralized bone matrix was superior to calcium phosphate cement in bone regeneration. It seems that calcium phosphate cement acted by inhibiting the osteogenesis when associated with a demineralized bone matrix and this combination should not be recommended.