Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fish quality and nutritional assessment of yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares) during low temperature storage

Assessment of fish freshness is the most important and frequently difficult to determine. Moreover, fish spoilage generally depends on the temperature to control the bacterial and the autolytic development. This research was aimed to determine the quality of yellowfin tuna and skipjack tuna using physical, sensory, microbiology and chemical methods as well as their nutritional quality during certain time of freezing temperatures storage. Methods applied in this study were: organoleptic test with semi-trained panelist, pH, TPC and TVB determination monthly during 6 months of storage. Nutritional values were determined by the variation of their amino acid and lipid profiles. The results indicated that the pre-rigor phase was happened during storage until the 3rd month. In the 4th month of storage to the last month the fish samples were in the phase of rigor mortis. Organoleptic and pH value trends were decreased while the value of TPC and TVB were increased during 6 months freezing temperatures. In conclusion, during 6 months low temperature storage, the freshness quality of yellowfin and skipjack tuna as well as their nutritional value were decreased. Thus, there was fixed correlation between pH, TVB, TPC, organoleptic and nutritional values with fish freshness quality.
Less influence of body mass index on bone mineral density of radius as compared to proximal femur: Possible role in the diagnosis of osteoporosis

It has been shown that body mass index (BMI) and obesity may affect the mineral density of bones, regionally on weight-bearing bones or systemically through hormones and cytokines. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of BMI on bone mineral density (BMD) of the radius. In this cross-sectional study, 260 patients, 233 postmenopausal women and 27 men over 50, were included who underwent a bone densitometry scanning using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry after obtaining an informed consent. The scanning was performed in three areas (i.e., spine, proximal femur, and radius), then densitometric data (BMD, T- and Z-score) were extracted. Regression analysis was performed to evaluate the effect of independent variables of age, gender, and BMI on the BMD of the above regions. By grouping the patients in two categories (BMI <25 as normal or underweight and BMI >25 as overweight and obese), the discordance in the diagnosis following the inclusion of radius into interpretation (diagnosis based on 2 vs. 3 areas), was assessed by an agreement test. The study is approved by the ethics committee of the university. Of 260 participants in the present study, mean and standard deviation for age were 61.48 ± 8.95 for all patients, 65.81 ± 10.59 for male and 60.98 ± 8.62 for women. An increasing effect of BMI was found to be statistically significant in weight-bearing areas (total femur and femoral neck) and BMI increase was not associated with increased BMD of radius. An agreement test between two diagnoses is used that showed a discordance of 28.5% in diagnosis (diagnosis based on 2 vs. 3 areas) with a kappa coefficient of 0.547 (P = 0.001). In total, 25.4% was minor discordance and 3.1% was major discordance. Based on the results of this study, it is concluded that the BMI is not associated with increased BMD in bones that are not weight bearing, such as radius. Therefore, it may be preferred to include the densitometric data of radius into the diagnosis.
Health Care Reform and Workers’ Compensation: Evidence from Massachusetts

The authors provide evidence of important spillover effects of comprehensive health care reform on workers’ compensation (WC) that are likely to reduce WC costs. Using data on more than 20 million emergency room (ER) discharges in Massachusetts and three comparison states, they find that Massachusetts health care reform caused a 6.2 to 8.2% decrease in the per capita number of ER discharges billed to WC. The authors document heterogeneity in the impacts of the reform, shedding light on the mechanisms generating the overall decline in ER discharges billed to WC. Results indicate a larger decrease in WC claiming for weekday admissions than for weekend admissions and for harder-to-verify musculoskeletal discharges than for wounds. The decline in WC discharges is driven both by injured workers increasingly seeking care outside of the ER and by changes in the propensity to bill WC for a given ER discharge.
Does Space Matter? A Cross-Disciplinary Investigation upon Spatial Abilities of Architects

Spatial perception is a fundamental cognitive skill devel­ oped lifelong. In architecture, this skill is taken for granted. However, evidence from decades of psycholinguistic research shows that spatial cognition is not universal but depends on factors like native language, gender, or expertise. This interdisciplinary study aims to identify patterns of visual attention characteristic for architects. Results of an eye-tracking experiment provide evidence that architectural expertise influences the distribution of visuospatial attention: In outdoor contexts architects pay more attention to upper parts of buildings; in indoor contexts they pay less attention to people. In both contexts, architects allocate more attention to the spatial layout itself compared with a non­ architect control group. We interpret these differences as arising from architects using the grammar of space to decode spatial information. lt is desirable for architects to implement the insights from research on spatial cognition when designing spaces, since their own spatial percep­ tion differs from that of the users they are designing for.
Critical Success Factors for ERP Projects: Recommendations from a Canadian Exploratory Study

This research paper discusses key recommendations for improving future Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementations based on insights from an exploratory qualitative single case study in the Canadian Oil and Gas Industry. The study was conducted using a semi-structured interview guide from twenty participants belonging to four project role groups of senior leaders, project managers, project team members, and business users. The research evoked a comprehensive list of forty-two critical success factors (CSFs) and out of which, top ten CSFs discussed include: Know your data, longer and more integrated testing, utilization of the right people, longer stabilization period (hyper-care), communication, address legal and fiscal requirements, hyper-care must be longer, early buy-in from business, have a Lean Agile program, less customization and more vanilla out of the box, and project must be business-driven and not IT-driven. This study is one of first ERP case studies in the Canadian oil and gas industry and the research recommendations can prove to be beneficial for organizations when undertaking ERP implementations.
Qui bono? Foreign military, economic, diplomatic interventions, and the termination of civil wars: An integrative approach

ABSTRACT Foreign interventions are generally considered as game changers in civil wars. Yet the extant literature on this topic typically focuses on a single type of intervention, neglecting the effect of other intervention types deployed within the same conflict. Breaking with tradition, this article proposes a more extensive, multi-faceted bargaining model that integrates multiple types of interventions – military, economic, and diplomatic – that may be employed in a given conflict. The new framework analyzes how the interventions – either alone or in combination with others – shift the balance of power, often partly because interventions reveal previously private information regarding the true capacities of the warring parties. By including the asymmetrical aspects of civil wars in the framework, the article argues and finds support that although rebel-sided interventions usually produce their desired effect by enhancing the opposition’s military capacity, state-sided interventions tend to backfire and ultimately undermine the government.
Performance evaluation of exponential distribution using Six Sigma-based tail probabilities

Abstract While it is customary and simple to deal with normality assumption of the data on hand, such assumption may lead to inaccurate outcomes if the underlying distribution is non-normal. Six Sigma analysis of any process is, in general, based on normality assumption irrespective of the nature of the original data. There are studies where non-normal data is transformed into normal data before performing Six Sigma analysis. In this paper, we have proposed to study the Six Sigma metrics for life test data that follow exponential distribution by matching the Six Sigma-based tail probabilities. Both centered and shifted cases of the exponential data are considered. Further, we considered higher-the-better and lower-the-better type product specifications to determine defects per million opportunities (DPMO) and extremely good units per million opportunities (EGPMO) based on the exponential distribution. Extensive numerical computations are done in addition to simulations to illustrate how DPMO and EGPMO are determined for centered or shifted exponential distribution. Some comparisons are also done with the existing approaches.
Blockchain technology for enhancing swift-trust, collaboration and resilience within a humanitarian supply chain setting

There has been tremendous interest in blockchain technology (BT) (also known as distributed ledger technology) around the globe and across sectors. Following significant success in the financial sector, other sectors, such as humanitarian sector, have started deploying BT at various levels. Although the use of BT in the humanitarian sector is in its infancy, donors and government agencies are increasingly calling for building BT-enabled swift-trust (ST) and more collaborative relationships among various humanitarian actors in order to improve the transparency and traceability of disaster relief materials, information exchanges and flow of funds in disaster relief supply chains. Our study, which is informed by organisational information processing theory and relational view, proposes a theoretical model to understand how BT can influence operational supply chain transparency (OSTC) and ST among actors engaged in disaster relief operations. Our model also shows how BT-enabled ST can further improve collaboration (CO) among actors engaged in disaster relief operations and enhance supply chain resilience (SCR). We formulated and tested six research hypotheses, using data gathered from international non-governmental organisations with the help of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) database. We received 256 usable responses using a pre-tested survey-based instrument designed for key informants. Our results confirm that our six hypotheses were supported. Our study offers significant and valid contributions to the literature on ST, CO and SCR and BT/distributed ledger technology. We have also noted the limitations of our study and have offered future research directions.
Forecasting Chinese Corporate Bond Defaults: Comparative Study of Market- vs. Accounting-Based Models

This paper provides the first empirical study on bond defaults in the Chinese market. It overcomes the deficiencies of existing methods, which suffer from lack of actual default data for back testing. With newly available bond default data, we analyze the roles of market variables against accounting variables under various models. While we find that Merton's market-based structural model and KMV's Distance to Default exhibit languid discriminating power compared with hazard models that have carefully constructed predictors, other market variables carry significant information about bond defaults and could help improve on models with only the accounting variables. This implies that the collective intelligence of the market could somehow mitigate the distortion caused by misreported accounting information. Further, model performance can be significantly improved by adding predicting variables that link an individual financial measure to the broader market performance, such as the relative margin—a business environment proxy introduced in this study. We not only shed light on the default behavior of the Chinese bond market, but also provide a promising approach to improve the variable selection process.
Prognostic importance of acute heart failure persistence in patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction

Introduction: Acute heart failure (AHF) is one of the most frequent complication of acute myocardial infarction (AMI). It is not only associated with a several-fold increase of in-hospital mortality but also, worsens the long-term survival in comparison to those without AHF. The AHF is observed to be more in AMI patients whose in-hospital stay is more than 3 days. The clinical implications and prognostic accuracy of the AHF term in the setting of AMI are yet unknown. Methods: We observed 1,104 consecutive cardiac care patients, who were admitted with ST-elevation AMI (STEMI). They were divided into groups according to the AHF presence {AHF(+) n=334 and AHF(-) n=764}. Among 334 AHF(+) patients: 252 patients were found to have a transient AHFt(+), whereas 82 of AHF(+) patients had persistent AHFp(+) during in-hospital period. Patients' baseline characteristics, blood analysis, left ventricle (LV) and renal function data were assessed and analyzed on the admission day and 10th day post-admission. The follow-up was conducted on the 30th day and after 2 years. Results. STEMI patients accompanied by AHF(+) were older, presented mostly with anterior AMI (p<0.01), had lower LV ejection fraction (EF) (p<0.01) and a higher heart rate (p<0.05). Their rates of comorbidities and of in-hospital complications such as recurrent angina, reinfarction, LV aneurism were higher in comparision to AHF(-) patients. AHFp(+) patients had the shortest time from symptoms onset before thrombolysis in comparision to AHFt(+) and AHF(-) groups. Partial recovery of cardiac function according to Left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) and end-systolic volume index, occurred mainly in AHF(-) and AHFt(+) patients on the 10th day post-admission, but not in AHFp(+). STEMI patients with AHFp(+) demonstrated a larger infarct size, higher C-reactive protein and VGEF level, fasting glucose and heart rate on admission, higher erythrocyte sedimentation rate, absence of heart rate normalization on the 10th day post-admission. All of these markers were the signs of severe myocardial damage and inflammation, which can reflect worse recovery in AHF patients despite optimal management. Patients with AHF(+) had renal dysfunction on admission while its creatinine clearance (CrCl) decreased during the in-hospital period which is the reflection of a poor prognosis. Сardiovascular mortality and non-fatal MI were significantly higher in the AHFp(+) group as compared to the AHFt(+) and the AHF(–) groups during the 30 days and 2 years of follow-up. Conclusion: The AHF is a frequent STEMI complication. AHF lasting >3 days had worse short- and long-term prognosis. Therefore, an aggressive strategy should be recommended particularly in patients who have clinical signs and symptoms of persistent AHF.
Nonmedical stream students' insight into oral cancer: A school-based study

Context: Oral cancer incidences are increasing in young generation for the past few decades. Gutkha chewing and cigarettes smoking being responsible for oral cancer, increase in consumption of these products among younger generation have significant impact on incidence of oral cancer. Those who are having nonmedical background may have less exposure to the information of oral cancer. This study was aimed to find out the information of nonmedical stream students perception about oral cancer. Materials and Methods: Nonmedical stream students between ages 19 and 25 years were evaluated for their insight about oral cancer using self-administered questionnaire. Questionnaire has included the questions about general knowledge about oral cancer, causative factors, signs and treatment of oral cancer. Students habits in relation to tobacco-related products were also evaluated. Results: Majority of the students has heard about oral cancer, but hardly have picture about causative factors and their clinical signs. Gutkha and cigarette smoking are still the major forms of tobacco product consumption among nonmedical stream students. Oncologist is the preferred choice for consultation of oral cancer treatment, though nearly half of the participants do not know about the treatment and how to seek it. Conclusion: The nonmedical stream students have less awareness about oral cancer. There is a great need for increase in oral cancer awareness programs as well as may be educational syllabus can have dedicated portion for such a preventable disease such as oral cancer.
Structural studies on transmembrane signalling mechanism of histidine kinase CitA.

Perception of environmental changes and subsequent signal transduction are key aspects for the survival of an organism. In bacteria, two component systems (TCSs) consisting of a homodimeric receptor histidine kinase (HK) and a response regulator (RR) are the prevalent mechanism of stimulus sensing and cell signalling. They regulate motility, metabolism and development, and in addition, they are essential for virulence in a number of pathogenic species. The investigation of the signal transduction in TCSs is therefore essential to deepen our understanding of cell signalling and to develop a new class of antimicrobial drugs. The Geobacillus thermodenitri cans citrate receptor A (CitA) is used in this study as a model system for HKs. CitA is responsible for the activation of the citrate metabolism together with its cognate regulate receptor CitB. The periplasmic PAS (Per-Arnt-Sim) receptor is able to recognise the citrate molecule. The signal is then transferred across the membrane to a second, cytosolic PAS domain before reaching the conserved kinase core and triggering the auto-phosphorylation reaction. Although both citrate-binding and phosphate transfer has been described thoroughly, the signal relay from one domain to another remain poorly understood. Therefore, a combination of liquid- and solid-state NMR is adopted in this PhD project together with other biophysical techniques, such as X-ray crystallography and uorescence microscopy, to unveil details of the signalling mechanism of CitA. Our results show that an helical element is formed at the periplasm-membrane interface upon the citrate binding event both in the isolated periplasmic PAS domain and in a liposome-embedded CitA construct. The formation of the C-terminal - helix extends the results previously published on CitA and con rm the piston model proposed for the transmembrane helix motion. In addition, the existence of di erent dimer arrangements of the cytosolic PAS domain previously observed only in crystal structures is con rmed also in solution. These alternative dimeric conformations are then associated for the rst time with the relaying mechanism of the cytosolic PAS, shedding light on the role of the additional signalling domains interposed between the membrane and the kinase core.
Isolation and purification of lactoferrin from Kazakhstan mare milk

The single chemical composition of mare milk, rich in whey proteins is similar to human milk. Lactoferrin is one of the important compounds contained in whey protein fraction, and has multiple biological functions such as antimicrobial and activation of human and animal immune system. Due to its strong antimicrobial activity, lactoferrin has potential pharmaceutical applications. The present work is mainly focused on the isolation and purification of the lactoferrin from mare’s milk. First, the lactoferrin from Kazakhstan mare milk has been purified by gel filtration Sephadex G-100 chromatography in two steps. The column of Sephadex G-100 was eluted with 0.01 M sodium phosphate buffer (pH 6.8). Lactoferrin enriched fractions were detected using UV absorbance at 280 nm and were identified in the first peak. Second, the purity of lactoferrin was checked by 12% SDS–PAGE and the molecular weight of lactoferrin (in the range of 80-82 kDa) was estimated using protein standard, which is recombinant human lactoferrin (expressed in rice, iron saturated, molecular weight 82.4 kDa).
Characterization of the complete mitochondrial genome of the Tianjun yak (Bos grunniens)

Abstract Tianjun yak (Bos grunniens) is a yak breed with strong adaptation to the high-elevation, cold and anoxic environments. Its complete mitochondrial genome is 16,323 bp long with an asymmetric base composition, and harbors the 37 typical mitochondrial genes and one noncoding control region. The PCGs are initiated with the typical ATA or ATG codons, and are terminated with TAA, TAG or the incomplete stop codon T––. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that Tianjun yak is most closely related to the polled yak.
Relating quantitative 7T MRI across cortical depths to cytoarchitectonics, gene expression and connectomics

Ultra‐high field MRI across the depth of the cortex has the potential to provide anatomically precise biomarkers and mechanistic insights into neurodegenerative disease like Huntington's disease that show layer‐selective vulnerability. Here we compare multi‐parametric mapping (MPM) measures across cortical depths for a 7T 500 μm whole brain acquisition to (a) layer‐specific cell measures from the von Economo histology atlas, (b) layer‐specific gene expression, using the Allen Human Brain atlas and (c) white matter connections using high‐fidelity diffusion tractography, at a 1.3 mm isotropic voxel resolution, from a 300mT/m Connectom MRI system. We show that R2*, but not R1, across cortical depths is highly correlated with layer‐specific cell number and layer‐specific gene expression. R1‐ and R2*‐weighted connectivity strength of cortico‐striatal and intra‐hemispheric cortical white matter connections was highly correlated with grey matter R1 and R2* across cortical depths. Limitations of the layer‐specific relationships demonstrated are at least in part related to the high cross‐correlations of von Economo atlas cell counts and layer‐specific gene expression across cortical layers. These findings demonstrate the potential and limitations of combining 7T MPMs, gene expression and white matter connections to provide an anatomically precise framework for tracking neurodegenerative disease.