Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mechanisms of Neuroprotection Against Retinal Ganglion Cell Loss Using an In Vivo Glaucoma Model

Glaucoma is an incurable ocular disease characterized by apoptotic cell death and degeneration of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), and is one of the leading causes of blindness worldwide (Quigley and Broman, 2006; Quigley et al., 1995). While current treatments are effective at slowing vision loss, glaucoma’s multifactorial etiology has made it difficult for researchers to identify a target for treatment that will permanently halt RGC degeneration. Previous studies have proposed a glutamate-induced excitotoxic mechanism of RGC death in glaucoma, and neuroprotective agents have been investigated to prevent this effect. One agent, acetylcholine, has been shown to initiate pro-survival signaling cascades by binding to α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) on RGCs, and prevents glutamate excitotoxicity when applied prior to glutamate insult. PNU-282987, a drug developed by Pharmacia and Upjohn, is a specific α7 nAChR agonist that has been shown to prevent RGC death in an in vivo rat model of glaucoma in a dosedependent manner. In this study, immunofluorescent staining techniques were utilized to investigate the effects of 2mM PNU-282987 on RGC survival when applied as an eye drop for varying amounts of time before performing a procedure to elicit glaucoma-like conditions in rats. In addition, experiments investigating the involvement of caspase-3 in the apoptotic mechanism of the in vivo glaucoma model were conducted. It was determined that 2mM PNU-282987 provided a neuroprotective effect against RGC death when applied to eyes for short periods of time prior to the onset of glaucoma-like conditions, but also resulted in apoptotic and proliferative effects when applied for extended periods of time. Additionally, it was found that caspase-3 was involved in the apoptotic mechanism associated with the in vivo model of
The influence of perceived costs and perceived benefits on AI-driven interactive recommendation agent value

ABSTRACT This study investigates the effects of perceived costs and benefits on the value of an AI-driven recommendation agent (AIRA) by examining an AIRAs influence on the perceived costs and benefits of an information search done during a consumers’ decision-making process. AIRAs use AI-driven algorithms that accelerate and integrate information search, the evaluation of alternatives, and the full decision process by extracting users’ preferences and acting on their behalf. These specialized agents facilitate searches for information or alternatives and offer recommendations to help consumers make decisions. This study contributes to the building of a theoretical model of AI-driven recommendation agent values and provides new resources for AI-driven marketing academics and practitioners.
Caracterización de la generación segregante de un híbrido de tomate con genes nor y silvestres

The objective of this work was to study recombination of the productive and fruit quality traits in the segregating generation of the hybrid between a cultivated variety of Lycopersicon esculentum homozygous for nor and the accession LA1385 of L. esculentum var. cerasiforme using multivariate statistical analysis. F 1 and F2 generations and the parents were evaluated for vegetative and productive traits (internode length, stem perimeter at the basal, middle and apical parts, number of flowers per cluster, number of clusters per plant and days to harvest) and quality fruit traits (weight, shape, soluble solids content, acidity, firmness, color and shelf life). A canonical correlation between vegetative and productive traits and those of fruit quality and clustering for fruit traits performed with the F 1 and F2 and the parents were used. The productive and fruit quality traits showed recombination in the segregating generation. Shelf life was the most outstanding fruit trait to discriminate groups in the F2. For three cluster levels each group of F 2 individuals behaved each one of the parents and the F 1.
Sexual Health of Women with Obesity: A Review of the Literature

ABSTRACT While sexual health problems due to obesity is more pronounced in women than men, which biopsychosocial factors compound this effect is not clear. In this systematic review, the authors collected 63 studies that met the inclusion and exclusion criteria on the biopsychosocial factors associated with sexual problems in women with obesity and highlighted the gaps. More research and clinical attention on social context and intersectionality and its connections to other biopsychosocial factors are needed to better serve women with obesity and their romantic partners, as well as combat obesity and sexual health disparities. Recommendations for clinicians and researchers are provided.
Supporting Concurrency Abstractions in High-level Language Virtual Machines

During the past decade, software developers widely adopted JVM and CLI as multi-language virtual machines (VMs). At the same time, the multicore revolution burdened developers with increasing complexity. Language implementers devised a wide range of concurrent and parallel programming concepts to address this complexity but struggle to build these concepts on top of common multi-language VMs. Missing support in these VMs leads to tradeoffs between implementation simplicity, correctly implemented language semantics, and performance guarantees. Departing from the traditional distinction between concurrency and parallelism, this dissertation finds that parallel programming concepts benefit from performance-related VM support, while concurrent programming concepts benefit from VM support that guarantees correct semantics in the presence of reflection, mutable state, and interaction with other languages and libraries. Focusing on these concurrent programming concepts, this dissertation finds that a VM needs to provide mechanisms for managed state, managed execution, ownership, and controlled enforcement. Based on these requirements, this dissertation proposes an ownership-based metaobject protocol (OMOP) to build novel multi-language VMs with proper concurrent programming support. This dissertation demonstrates the OMOP's benefits by building concurrent programming concepts such as agents, software transactional memory, actors, active objects, and communicating sequential processes on top of the OMOP. The performance evaluation shows that OMOP-based implementations of concurrent programming concepts can reach performance on par with that of their conventionally implemented counterparts if the OMOP is supported by the VM. To conclude, the OMOP proposed in this dissertation provides a unifying and minimal substrate to support concurrent programming on top of multi-language VMs. The OMOP enables language implementers to correctly implement language semantics, while simultaneously enabling VMs to provide efficient implementations.
Which Firm-specific Characteristics Affect the Market Reaction of Chinese Listed Companies to the COVID-19 Pandemic?

ABSTRACT This paper investigates market reaction to the novel corona virus (COVID-19) pandemic. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms, we find that market reaction to the COVID-19 outbreak is more intense in firms within the industries that are vulnerable to the virus, and those with high institutional investors. Furthermore, firms with larger scale, better profitability and growth opportunity, higher combined leverage, and less fixed assets experience less adverse impact of the COVID-19 outbreak than other firms.
The Empirical Analysis on the Import and Export Technology Effect of Agricultural FDI in China

ABSTRACT The paper analyzes the formative mechanism of the import and export technology effect, the trade contribution and squeezing effect on technology of agricultural FDI, and further regionally discusses this issue in China. The contribution of agricultural FDI to the import and export of agricultural products is remarkable. The agricultural FDI and growth rate of international trade had crowding out effects on domestic agricultural investment. There is a significant positive correlation in the study of regional technical spillover. Agricultural FDI investment enhances the ability of agricultural research and development, to produce technology spillover. Midwest regional technology spillover is not obvious.
Kinetics of Fe(II) Oxidation in a Verticle Tube Reactor: A Pilot Scale Study

ABSTRACT A vertical tubular reactor is used for the oxidative leaching process in the mineral processing industry, especially sphalerite. Oxygen could oxidise ferrous ions (Fe2+), and ferric ions (Fe3+) are generated as the principal oxidation agent in the reactor afterward. The partial pressure of oxygen is an instrumental parameter that could change according to reactor height. Despite the extensive studies on Fe(II) oxidation in the high-pressure reactor, there is no published work on its oxidation behaviour in the tubular reactor. Hence, the Fe3+ ion's oxidation in sulfuric acid solutions was investigated in atmospheric condition. The effects of the FeSO4, H2SO4, ZnSO4 concentration, and pressure in the reactor bottom were studied on the rate of ferrous oxidation at different temperatures, i.e. T = 70, 87 and 95°C. Sulfuric acid drops the kinetic of ferrous oxidation, whereas temperature and pressure of the reactor bottom increase this criterion. The apparent activation energy obtained was 67.22 kJ/mol, and an empirical equation for the oxidation rate of Fe2+ by air is as follows:
Role of the nitrogen-fixing bacterial microflora in the epiphytism of Tillandsia (Bromeliaceae)

Nitrogen-fixing activity in the phyllosphere of 12 species of Tillandsia from different Mexican habitats was evaluated by the acetylene reduction assay, and nitrogen-fixing microorganisms were isolated and characterized. The leaves from eight of the 12 Tillandsia species examined exhibited nitrogenase activity in enrichment cultures. Among the microorganisms implicated-Agrobacterium, Bacillus, Erwinia, Pseudomonas, Rahnella, Vibrio, and Xanthomonas-only Bacillus megatherium reduced acetylene in pure culture. Our findings suggest that nitrogen fixation in the phyllosphere of the sampled epiphytes occurs under suitable conditions and that most of the bacteria involved are primarily soil and water inhabitants. The results also suggest a relationship between the composition of the nitrogen-fixing microbial communities grown on the leaf and the different development of the leaf area in Tillandsia due to the aerial components (wings) of the trichomes. The epiphyte strategy for higher plants was a subject of inquiry from the point of view of the source of nutriment and nutrient absorption mechanisms. In particular, the epiphytism of Tillandsia (Bromeliaceae) is especially interesting because these neotropical plants have completely lost contact with the ground, living in some cases on inert supports such as high-tension wires. This behavior is possible because the absorbing foliar trichome (a structure that characterizes, at different stages
Annual and seasonal variability of net heat flux in the Northern Indian Ocean

ABSTRACT We investigate the spatial and temporal variability of the net ocean–atmosphere heat flux (Q net) over the Indian Ocean (north of 30 S) for the period 2005–2008, as estimated from remotely sensed observations. Net heat flux data are based on turbulent fluxes from the Institut Français pour la Recherche et l’Exploitation de la MER (IFREMER) and radiative fluxes, both shortwave (SW) and longwave (LW) as produced at the University of Maryland (UMD). Special attention is given to the Arabian Sea (AS) and the Bay of Bengal (BoB). The estimates are evaluated against the Research Moored Array for African–Asian–Australian Monsoon Analysis and Prediction (RAMA). Results are also compared to several widely used atmospheric re-analyses products such as the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Re-Analysis-Interim (ERA-I), the ERA5, the Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA-2), and the Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR). It is demonstrated that satellite-based estimates of heat flux components are in better agreement with in-situ buoy observations than re-analysis-based products. As such, the satellite products can be instrumental in diagnosing model performance and utilized for addressing research issues related to atmospheric and oceanic dynamics in the Indian Monsoon. It was found that the mean Q net is higher in the AS than in the BoB, yet the phase of their monthly time series is well correlated with ocean heat gain/loss extremes. We have also investigated the relationship between Q net and Sea Surface Temperature (SST) (mixed layer temperature proxy) with respect to their consistency. It was found that over most of the open Indian Ocean, at least half of the seasonal SST magnitude is explained by the seasonal Q net. Given the small ( month) delay between an annual maximum of the seasonal mixed layer heat content rate of change and the seasonal Q net, it is concluded that Q net data presented in this paper are generally consistent with independently observed SST.
The Urban Distribution of Lung Cancer Mortality in England and Wales 1980-1983

Lung cancer area mortality rates for the period 1980-1983 in England and Wales followed the pattern observed for previous years, with high rates concentrated in urban districts and low rates in remote rural districts. Using data for 401 local government districts, estimates of smoking prevalence were made from socio-economic distributions and regional smoking variations. Confounding effects of migration and errors in mortality records were investigated by comparing the pattern of recorded lung cancer mortality with that of all other cancers. Holding these variables constant by statistical means reduced the correlation between lung cancer SMRs and population density from 0.65 to 0.53 for males and from 0.54 to 0.46 for females, so a large proportion of the urban-rural gradient remained unexplained. It is likely that a combination of several effects rather than a single urban risk factor is responsible for the urban concentration of lung cancer mortality.
Incorporating Māori values into land management decision tools

ABSTRACT Environmental sustainability and the long-term wellbeing of Māori (the indigenous people of New Zealand) are interdependent and degradation of landscapes risks the progressive degradation of Māori wellbeing. The present study developed an analysis framework based on Ki Uta Ki Tai (holistic-mountains to the sea- management philosophy advocated by Ngāi Tahu) for exploring relationships between landcover and Māori values to enable predictions of cultural values through space and time. We used this framework to predict how two Māori values (Overall Health and Cultural Land Use) have been altered as a result of landcover change between 2001–2012 in three Canterbury catchments. The area of native vegetation declined while exotic pasture increased between 2001–2012, and there were corresponding declines in both cultural health scores. These results suggest that the change in landcover has reduced the ability of the landscape to support Māori values. This framework for assessing changes in Māori values with respect to changing environmental conditions may identify opportunities for Māori to better engage in land use management decisions.
Phylogenetic relationships within Pseudamnicola Paulucci, 1878 (Caenogastropoda: Truncatelloidea) indicate two independent dispersal events from different continents to the Balearic Islands

Until recently, the evolutionary origin of aquatic organisms in the Balearic archipelago (western Mediterranean) had been scarcely addressed. The freshwater gastropod genus Pseudamnicola Paulucci, 1878 (Hydrobiidae), consisting of ∼60 species in the Mediterranean area, is widely distributed across the major islands of Majorca and Minorca. From phylogenetic datasets of limited geographic coverage, a recent well-supported split has been inferred between the Minorca and Iberian Pseudamnicola species, but the phylogenetic position of the Majorca clade composed of three species remained uncertain. In this study, we extend published sequence data for the COI and 16S rRNA mitochondrial genes and the 28S rRNA nuclear gene in western Mediterranean populations of Pseudamnicola with homologous sequences from individuals of the non-surveyed region of Morocco to assess the origin of the Balearic species from a wider geographic perspective. Our maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference analyses recovered a strongly supported clade comprising the Majorcan species and four phylogenetic lineages in Morocco, two of which are new to science (described here as P. ramosae sp. nov. and P. ouarzazatensis sp. nov.). Dating the nodes using an external molecular clock rate, younger ages were estimated for the Majorcan species (∼1 Mya) than for the Moroccan ones (∼5 Mya), which were still younger than the formation of the Balearic Islands (∼30 Mya). An independent well-supported clade grouped the Minorca and Iberian species diverging at ∼4 Mya. Thus, we found two independent evolutionary origins within the Balearic archipelago likely attributable to long-distance dispersal events from the African and Eurasian continents. http://zoobank.org:pub:24D17C1D-4A42-4722-9867-D8D84465F55A http://zoobank.org:act:85EC4DF1-9BFA-4B28-B3F2-C091212AFCF1 http://zoobank.org:act:C790EAC6-F22B-489A-93EB-CABF9EEAF282
When Auditors Say ‘No,’ Does the Market Listen?

Previous research on whether the market responds to auditors’ opinions has provided mixed results. We revisit this issue in China, where individual investors who are more likely to neglect value-relevant information dominate the stock market. In addition to going concern opinions (GCOs), China permits modified audit opinions (MAOs) on violations of accounting standards or disclosure rules (GAAP/DISC MAOs), providing an opportunity not available in the literature to enrich the study of audit-opinion pricing. We find that, ceteris paribus, MAO recipients underperform in the future and have a higher incidence of adverse outcomes such as misreporting and stock delisting, and the market reacts negatively to MAOs during the short window around MAO disclosure. Importantly, MAO disclosure is not followed by negative long-term stock returns, suggesting stock price adjustments to MAOs are speedy and unbiased. These findings hold for both GCOs and GAAP/DISC MAOs. Together, our findings support the informativeness of audit opinions and cast doubt on the argument that investors inefficiently price audit opinions due to information-processing bias.
Ambivalence, Avoidance, and Appeal: Alliterative Aspects of Anglo Anthroponyms

In several countries, one of the most pronounced trends in contemporary baby naming is selecting a comparatively uncommon name. Nevertheless, although a well-documented phenomenon, studies of uncommon name use are often limited to forenames. This study analyses approximately 22 million full names from England and 1 million from Wales, given between 1838 and 2014. It addresses the hypothesis that, consistent with the contemporary desire to choose an uncommon name, alliterative names – uncommon by definition – would become increasingly popular. More broadly, this study charts the long-term trends in alliterative naming over time. In both England and Wales, this pattern is consistent with a random expectation for much of the 19th century but declines significantly throughout the 20th century to its lowest use in the 1970s. This trend reverses towards the end of the 20th century, with alliterative naming becoming more common in contemporary records. These three aspects of alliterative name use are thematically referred to as ‘ambivalence’, ‘avoidance’ and ‘appeal’; and may reflect changing attitudes towards alliterative naming. The relatively renewed appeal of alliterative names towards the end of the 20th century complements previous research on the preponderance of uncommon names and the contemporary ‘need for uniqueness’ in naming.
Russel’s score and diabetes mellitus type 2 “finding the association”: a cross sectional study from one of the districts in Bihar, India

Background: Diabetes has been on the rise since last decade or so with prevalence rate changing as more research is being done. India is one of the most burdened country from diabetes specially type 2. With changing life style other diseases are also on the rise and evidence is being generated to find tangible association. One such disease is periodontitis. As evidence from the State of Bihar for association between periodontitis and diabetes mellitus is negligible this study was conducted to find the same.Methods: A cross sectional observational study in community settings was done for three months on 200 diabetic willing participants. Data was generated using a semi structured pretested questionnaire. Data analysis was done using SPSS version 22.0 and statistical measures of central tendency like mean, mode, median and standard deviation were used. For establishing association chi square tests were used. P values<0.05 were considered to be statistically significant.Results: 61.5% of the participants were male while 65.5% were from rural area. The study population was on an average on the older side with a mean age of 52±12.15 and on the bulky size with a BMI of 28.85±4.08. Authors got the average Russel’s score to be 1.1±1.79. The mean blood sugar level for fasting was 146.40±59.99 and post prandial levels was 211.59±82.49. A Russel score category of established periodontal disease and terminal disease was present in 77.5% of participants having an altered fasting blood sugar level. Majority of the males had established periodontal disease and terminal disease. Patients with elevated postprandial blood sugar levels had more established periodontal disease and terminal disease.Conclusions: Oral health is definitely associated with diabetes mellitus type 2 and its other factors like duration, glycaemic control, blood sugar levels etc. Public awareness regarding this is minimal. More research and awareness regarding this will help in keeping the diabetic population healthy.
Light‐based Regeneration Niches: Evidence from 21 Dipterocarp Species using Size‐specific RGRs

A continuing challenge in tropical ecology is to explain the coexistence of large numbers of rain forest tree species. One possible coexistence mechanism is partitioning of the highly variable and dynamic forest light environment, in which species that grow better in one light treatment grow worse in another. To test whether species respond differently to the light environment, we estimated growth rates of 21 Dipterocarpaceae species from Malaysian Borneo grown in shade houses for 2 yr in three light treatments (0.3%, 3%, and 18% full sunlight). We made regular measurements of height, diameter, and aboveground biomass, enabling us to calculate growth rates for each response. We estimated size‐specific growth rates using nonlinear mixed‐effects models, as average relative growth rate was strongly size dependent. For all species, the greatest diameter growth rate was achieved in 18 percent full sunlight, whereas for five of the twenty‐one species, the greatest height growth rate was achieved in three percent full sunlight. We investigated correlations among growth rates in different light treatments, but no negative correlations were found, indicating that species growing well in one light treatment did not grow poorly in the others. There were substantial crossovers, however, in species ranks among the three light treatments, indicating that there was no single growth rate hierarchy common to all light treatments. The lack of a single consistent growth hierarchy across light treatments indicates that heterogeneity in the forest light environment could contribute to the maintenance of the diversity of Dipterocarpaceae found in lowland Bornean rain forests via light‐based regeneration niches.