Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sedimentary, Geochemical and Micropaleontological Responses to Sea Level Variations in the Vitoria Estuary, Espírito Santo

Abstract Marine insertion indicators in the Vitoria estuary (ES) revealed relative variations in sea level during the Holocene in three sediment cores. Sedimentological, geochemical (C/N ratio), and paleontological (shells and palynomorphs) analysis and 14C dating associated five sedimentary facies to different estuarine deposits. A C/N ratio <10 at the core base indicated organic matter of marine origin. Moving up the cores to 110–150 cm, an abrupt increase in C/N to 26–63 in every core suggests the sudden entry of higher plants into the estuary, potentially the moment sea level retreated. High continental (10,743 palynomorphs/g) and low marine palynomorph concentrations (323 palynomorphs/g) suggest a primarily continental source even during transgression and at high sea level. Around 8973 cal BP, an open bay already existed in the region of Vitoria. Sea level potentially exceeded the current level around 7110 cal BP. The transgressive maximum was at 5567 cal BP. Marine insertion indicators, such as marine shells, low C/N ratios and foraminiferal linings, did not always respond directly to sea level oscillations. These discrepancies probably result from lateral variations in sedimentary deposits from transport patterns and from variations in organic matter and palynomorph preservation due to differences in river and obstacle proximity.
Hunting the primary: novel strategies for defining the origin of tumours

In 1995, two methods of genome‐wide expression profiling were first described: expression microarrays and serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE). In the subsequent 10 years, many hundreds of papers have been published describing the application of these technologies to a wide spectrum of biological and clinical questions. Common to all of this research is a basic process of data gathering and analysis. The techniques and statistical and bio‐informatic tools involved in this process are reviewed. The processes of class discovery (using clustering and self‐organizing maps), class prediction (weighted voting, k nearest neighbour, support vector machines, and artificial neural networks), target identification (fold change, discriminant analysis, and principal component analysis), and target validation (RT‐PCR and tissue microarrays) are described. Finally, the diagnostic problem of adenocarcinomas that present as metastases of unknown origin is reviewed, and it is demonstrated how integration of expression profiling techniques promises to throw new light on this important clinical challenge. Copyright © 2005 Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Influence of Roasting Treatment on the Antioxidant Activities and Color of Burdock Root Tea

The major trend in the antioxidant market is the growing consumer demand for natural antioxidants. Tea, one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world, is an easy way to obtain antioxidant components from a natural source. Our objective was to develop burdock root tea (BRT) with potent antioxidant activity and good color quality. In order to obtain maximum antioxidant activity and quality, the effect of roasting was determined. The antioxidant capacities and total phenolic contents of BRT increased as roasting increased. The color of BRT became darker with increased roasting, extraction time, and amount of burdock roots. Color of BRT was also positively correlated with total antioxidant capacity. Roasting significantly enhanced the total antioxidant activities and color quality of BRT. These results suggest that roasting BRT increases beneficial antioxidant components from burdock roots.
Gender and depressive symptoms in 711 patients with bipolar disorder evaluated prospectively in the Stanley Foundation bipolar treatment outcome network.

OBJECTIVE The authors assessed gender differences in the proportion of clinical visits spent depressed, manic, or euthymic in patients with bipolar disorder. METHOD Data were analyzed from 711 patients with bipolar I or II disorder who were followed prospectively over 7 years (13,191 visits). The main outcome measures were the presence of symptoms of depression or of hypomania or mania, measured by the Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology and the Young Mania Rating Scale. Data were analyzed using three separate repeated-measures regressions with a logistic link function to model the probability that an individual was depressed, manic, or euthymic. The models controlled for bipolar I or bipolar II diagnosis, rapid cycling, age, time in the study, comorbid anxiety disorders, and comorbid substance use disorders. RESULTS In approximately half of visits, patients had depressive, manic, or hypomanic symptoms. The likelihood of having depressive symptoms was significantly greater for women than for men. This was accounted for by higher rates in women of rapid cycling and anxiety disorders, each of which was associated with increased rates of depression. All patient groups showed an increase in number of euthymic visits and a decrease in number of visits with depressive and manic symptoms with increased time in study. CONCLUSIONS Bipolar patients spend a substantial proportion of their time ill. Significant gender differences exist, with women spending a greater proportion of their visits in the depressive pole. This finding appears to be related to the corresponding differences in rates of rapid cycling and anxiety disorders.
DELINEATION OF SALTWATER ZONES AROUND THE COASTAL AREA OF OGIDIGBEN IN THE WESTERN NIGER DELTA FROM 2D ELECTRICAL RESISTIVITY TOMOGRAPHY

The area under consideration is faced with absence of fresh groundwater for the people of the community, especially from shallow aquifers. Consequently a 2D electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) was employed to investigate the subsurface geology so as to ascertain why shallow aquifers are not harnessed by shallow dug and borehole wells. Interpreted 2DERT data revealed that profiles nearer the coast depicted significant thin lenses of freshwater zones and thick saltwater zones. Thickness of freshwater lenses varied from 4 mthrough8 to 16 m. These lenses have thickness that increases with distance from the shoreline towards the land. The low resistivity images which characterized the uppermost layers of some of the profiles at seashore area (911 Night Club) suggest inundation and infiltration of saltwater into the groundwater aquifers caused by tide due to the proximity of the aquifer to the sea. The potentiality of saltwater intrusion into groundwater aquifer is more pronounced around the vicinity of the sea than inland areas. The interface between saltwater and freshwater is situated at 60 m depth below the surface. Consequent upon the identification of saltwater and freshwater zones, the paper suggests pumping optimization of freshwater lenses and management approach centered on continuous monitoring of groundwater quality and water levels.
Development of phosphorus recovery technologies in European countries

In working towards a sustainable society, recycling and recovery of products together with handling of scarce resources must be considered. The growing quantities of sludge from wastewater treatment plants and the increasingly stringent restrictions on landfilling and on agricultural use of sludge are promoting other disposal alternatives. Sludge fractionation, providing sludge volume reduction, product recovery and separation of toxic substances into a small stream, has gained particular interest. In this thesis, the potential for phosphate release and recovery from treated sewage sludge is investigated as an alternative for agricultural use in urban areas. Leaching and recovery experiments were performed on sludge residue from supercritical water oxidation, ash from incineration and dried sludge at different temperatures. Results showed that acid or alkaline leaching is a promising method to release phosphate from sewage sludge treated with supercritical water oxidation, incineration, or drying at 300°C. The leaching is affected by a number of factors, including how the sludge residue has been produced, the origin of the sludge residue, the quantity of chemicals added and the presence of ions in the leachate. The implementation of any particular sludge treatment technology would depend on cost, environmental regulations, and social aspects. The results of this thesis may be beneficial for minimizing the use and cost of chemicals, and give increased knowledge for further development of technology for phosphate recovery.
Single-phase 3L PR controlled qZS inverter connected to the distorted grid

This paper presents a single-phase three-level NPC qZS inverter connected to a distorted grid using PID and PR regulators. A case study system along with the control strategy are described. Tuning approaches for PID and PR regulators are addressed and validated by means of simulation results. The stability domain and limitations of the regulator parameters are also discussed.
Prediction of the flexural behavior of fibre composite sandwich beams

One of the core assumptions underlying the construction industry is that the true potential of fibre composite sandwich structures can only be exploited through the use of complex mathematical theories and sophisticated analysis techniques. Research experience at the Centre of Excellence in Engineered Fibre Composites at the University of Southern Queensland has shown that with correct material data, the behaviour of composite sandwich structures can be analysed within acceptable levels of confidence using simple techniques. In this paper, a simplified Fibre Model Analysis (FMA) to describe the approximate behavior and the governing failure mechanisms of composite sandwich structures under flexural load is presented. This fundamental design methodology is based on sectional equilibrium, strain compatibility, and the constitutive material behaviour using a layer-by-layer approach to evaluate the sectional forces and to calculate the nominal flexural capacity of a composite sandwich section. An important advantage of the proposed model is that it can account for the nonlinear behaviour of the core in compression, the effect of core cracking in tension and the linear elastic behaviour of the fibre composite skins. This method also allows analysing composite sandwich structures with non-symmetric section and using only MS Excel spreadsheet program. The efficiency and practical application of this prediction equation is demonstrated by analysing the behavior of individual and glue-laminated composite sandwich beam structures made from the glass fibre composite skins and phenolic core material and comparing with the results of experimental investigation and numerical simulation. This method was found to reasonably describe the behavior of the fibre composite sandwich structures in flexure, therefore suggested as very useful for engineering design and calculations.
Survival of patients with ovarian cancer in central and northern Denmark, 1998–2009

Objective To examine time trends of survival and mortality of ovarian cancer in the central and northern Denmark regions during the period 1998–2009. Study design and setting We conducted a cohort study including women recorded with a first-time diagnosis of ovarian cancer in the Danish National Registry of Patients (DNRP) between 1998 and 2009. Patients were followed for survival through the Danish Civil Registration System. We determined survival stratified by age, and used Cox proportional hazard regression analyses to obtain mortality rate ratios (MRRs) to assess changes over time. Results We found no improvement in overall ovarian cancer survival between 1998 and 2009. One-year survival was 71% in 1998–2000 and 68% in 2007–2009. Three-year survival declined from 48% in 1998–2000 to 46% in 2007–2009 (predicted), and 5-year survival declined from 40% in 1998–2000 to 37% in 2007–2009 (predicted). Compared with the period 1998–2000, the age-adjusted 1-year MRR was 1.05 (95% confidence interval CI: 0.86–1.28) for the period 2007–2009, and the predicted age-adjusted 3- and 5-year MRRs were 0.96 (95% CI: 0.83–1.12) and 0.99 (95% CI: 0.86–1.14), respectively. Results are not adjusted for tumor stage as this information was not available. We also observed a decline in the annual number of incident ovarian cancer patients during the study period, most pronounced in the youngest age group. Conclusion The survival of ovarian cancer patients did not improve during the study period. This lack of improvement contrasts with the national cancer strategies implemented during this last decade, focusing on improving the survival of ovarian cancer patients.
A Business Intelligence Technique for Forecasting the Automobile Sales using Adaptive Intelligent Systems (ANFIS and ANN)

Sales forecasting plays a key role for each business in this competitive environment. The forecasting of sales data in automobile industry has become a primary concern to predict the accuracy in future sales. This work addresses the problem of monthly sales forecasting in automobile industry (maruti car). The data set is based on monthly sales (past 5 year data from 2008 to 2012). Primarily, we used two forecasting methods namely Moving Average and Exponential smoothing to forecast the past data set and then we use these forecasted values as a input for ANFIS (Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System). Here, MA and ES forecasted values used as input variable for ANFIS to obtain the final accurate sales forecast. Finally we compare our model with two other forecasting models: ANN (Artificial Neural Network) and Linear Regression. Empirical results demonstrate that the ANFIS model gives better results out than other two models.
PTMD: pairwise testing based on module dependency

This paper proposes a modified pairwise test case generation algorithm, named PTMD (Pairwise Testing based on Module Dependency) algorithm. The proposed algorithm produces additional test cases that may not be covered by the typical pairwise algorithm due to the dependency between internal function modules of software. The additional test cases effectively increase the coverage of testing without significantly increasing the number of test cases. The performance of proposed algorithm is evaluated with a part of function of procps[4], which is a well-known UNIX utility utilized for displaying process information.
Effective Teaching Behaviors in the College Classroom: A Critical Incident Technique from Students' Perspective.

Teaching is a multidimensional, complex activity. The use of the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) has the potential to be effective in improving teaching as it reveals successful behaviors by identifying key actions associated between excellent/poor performances. The present study sought to identify teaching behaviors that differentiate excellent and very poor performance of undergraduate college teachers in India using CIT, from the perspective of students. Two hundred thirty-seven critical incidents were collected from 60 female students from three different undergraduate humanities courses using questionnaires and personal interviews. Qualitative procedures emphasizing the verbatims students generated were used for data analysis. The data generated from the incidents was subjected to content analysis, and sorted into 6 categories. The six categories identified were: rapport with students, course preparation and delivery, encouragement, fairness, spending time with students outside of class, and control. The frequency with which students reported each behavior as either good or bad is presented. The study yields specific behaviors for faculty to follow to yield improvement in teaching evaluations by students. A list of critical behaviors may have implications in selection, training and performance evaluation of teachers. The present study also underlines the robustness of CIT in education research.
Tumor‐Node‐Metastasis Staging of Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma

Accurate disease staging of patients with pancreatic cancer is essential to divide patients into prognostic subgroups, to allow delivery of stage‐specific therapies, and to facilitate meaningful discussions between physicians and patients regarding management and expected outcomes. The tumor‐node‐metastasis staging system of the American Joint Commission on Cancer has undergone significant revisions over the past 2 decades. In its current form, the system places an emphasis on preoperative clinical staging and facilitates division of patients with pancreatic cancer into 4 groups based on a determination of local resectability and the presence or absence of distant disease as determined on high‐quality cross‐sectional imaging. A modern understanding of local tumor factors that influence technical resectability is incorporated into the algorithm. In this review, we examine the American Joint Commission on Cancer staging system, describe the rationale for its use, and demonstrate how it is a clinically relevant tool for the staging and management of patients with pancreatic cancer.
A monoclonal antibody for distinction of invasive and noninvasive clinical isolates of Entamoeba histolytica

Approximately 10% of the world population is infected with Entamoeba histolytica, but only 10% of the carriers develop symptomatic amebiasis. This discrepancy could be explained by the genotypic differences between the morphologically indistinguishable invasive and noninvasive strains of E. histolytica currently identified by zymodeme analysis, a technique that is unsuitable for routine diagnostic laboratories. Here we report the production of a monoclonal antibody against E. histolytica and its use in an immunofluorescence assay to identify invasive isolates cultured from stool samples of infected patients in several regions where amebiasis is endemic: Bangladesh, Colombia, and Mexico. After testing a total of 88 E. histolytica isolates, the correlation between zymodeme characterization and the immunofluorescence assay with the invasive isolate-specific monoclonal antibody was 100%. The epitope detected by the invasive isolate-specific monoclonal antibody resides in a previously undescribed internal protein with molecular masses of 84 and 81 kDa in axenic and polyxenic E. histolytica strains, respectively.
Performance catalytic ozonation over the carbosieve in the removal of toluene from waste air stream.

BACKGROUND Toluene is a volatile organic compound, one of 189 hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) and the most important pollutant found in most industries and indoor environments; owing to its adverse health, toluene must be treated before being released into the environment. METHODS In this research study, a continuous-flow system (including an air compressor, silica gel filters and activated charcoal, impinger, an ozone generation and a fixed bed reactor packed with the carbosieve in size 1.8-2.3 mm, specific surface: 972 m2/g,) was used. This glass reactor was 0.7 m in height; at a distance of 0.2 m from its bottom, a mesh plane was installed so as to hold the adsorbent. Moreover, 3 l/min oxygen passed through this system, 0.43 g/h ozone was prepared. The flow rate of waste airstream was 300 ml/min. The efficiency of this system for removal of toluene was compared under the same experimental conditions. RESULTS Under similar conditions, performance of catalytic ozonation was better in toluene removal than that of ozonation and carbosieve alone. On average, increasing the removal efficiency was 45% at all concentrations. When carbosieve and ozone come together, their synergistic effects increased on toluene degradation. CONCLUSIONS Catalytic ozonation is a suitable, high-efficient and available method for removing toluene from various concentrations of waste air stream. This process due to the short contact time, low energy consuming and making use of cheap catalysts can be used as a novel process for removing various concentrations of volatile organic compounds.
Meta-Analysis of the Association between Insulin-Like Growth Factor Binding Protein 3 Genetic Polymorphisms and Colorectal Cancer Susceptibility

Insulin-like growth factor binding protein 3 (IGFBP-3) plays an important role in the development and progress of cancers. The association between IGFBP-3 polymorphisms and colorectal cancer remains controversial and ambiguous. The aim of this study is to explore the association between IGFBP3 A-202C and Gly32Ala polymorphisms and colorectal cancer susceptibility using meta-analyisi. Case-control studies on the association between IGFBP3 A-202C and Gly32Ala polymorphisms and colorectal cancer, which had sufficient data for estimating an odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (CI), were included in the meta-analysis. Abstracts, case reports, editorials, and review articles were excluded. Heterozygous and homozygous mutants were compared with the wild types to estimate combined OR values and 95%CIs with Review Manager 5.0. Six eligible studies were included, with 3157 patients and 6027 controls for A-202C and 1711 patients and 2995 controls for Gly32Ala. No significant association was found in all genetic models (for A-202C, AC vs. AA, OR = 0.99(0.88–1.11), CC vs. AA, OR = 1.06(0.92–1.22), dominant model, OR = 0.98(0.88–1.09), recessive model, OR = 0.94(0.84–1.05); and for Gly32Ala polymorphism, GC vs. GG, OR = 1.10(0.92–1.31), CC vs. GG, OR = 0.93(0.76–1.14), dominant model, OR = 1.05(0.89–1.24), recessive model, OR = 0.90(0.77–1.05)). The results suggest that the IGFBP3 A-202C and Gly32Ala polymorphisms are not associated with colorectal cancer susceptibility.
Density-friendly Graph Decomposition

Decomposing a graph into a hierarchical structure via k-core analysis is a standard operation in any modern graph-mining toolkit. k-core decomposition is a simple and efficient method that allows to analyze a graph beyond its mere degree distribution. More specifically, it is used to identify areas in the graph of increasing centrality and connectedness, and it allows to reveal the structural organization of the graph. Despite the fact that k-core analysis relies on vertex degrees, k-cores do not satisfy a certain, rather natural, density property. Simply put, the most central k-core is not necessarily the densest subgraph. This inconsistency between k-cores and graph density provides the basis of our study. We start by defining what it means for a subgraph to be locally-dense, and we show that our definition entails a nested chain decomposition of the graph, similar to the one given by k-cores, but in this case the components are arranged in order of increasing density. We show that such a locally-dense decomposition for a graph G = (V, E) can be computed in polynomial time. The running time of the exact decomposition algorithm is O(|V|^2|E|) but is significantly faster in practice. In addition, we develop a linear-time algorithm that provides a factor-2 approximation to the optimal locally-dense decomposition. Furthermore, we show that the k-core decomposition is also a factor-2 approximation, however, as demonstrated by our experimental evaluation, in practice k-cores have different structure than locally-dense subgraphs, and as predicted by the theory, k-cores are not always well-aligned with graph density.