Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of the epiphytic patterns on endophytes and metabolites of Dendrobium nobile Lindl

Introduction Dendrobium is an epiphytic herb plant with neuroprotective, gastroprotective, anti-inflammatory, and immunomodulatory effects. It is often found attached to tree trunks or rocks. With the development of the dendrobium industry, numerous epiphytic patterns exist, such as crushed stone, stump, and sawdust. The study of metabolites and endophytes of D. nobile under different epiphytic patterns, which revealed the effects of epiphytic patterns on D. nobile from the perspectives of metabolomics and microbiology, is of great significance for the healthy development of D. nobile. Methods In the study, the D. nobile under five epiphytic patterns grown in the same environment were selected. The metabolites were investigated by widely targeted metabolomics, and the endophytes were sequenced using high-throughput sequencing methods. Then, a correlation analysis between the different metabolites and endophytes was performed. Results A total of 1,032 metabolites were annotated in D. nobile. There are more flavonoids and phenolic acids accumulated on the epiphytic pattern of Danxia stone, whereas the accumulation of lipids on the other epiphytic patterns and 16 differential metabolites was screened out. The endophyte composition of D. nobile was dominated by Proteobacteria, Actinomycetes, unidentified bacteria, Firmicutes, and Cyanobacteria. For endophytic fungi, Basidiomycota and Ascomycota were the dominant phyla of D. nobile. The relative abundance of Spirosoma, Nocardioides, and Arrhenia in the Danxia stone was significantly higher than that of other epiphytic patterns. According to correlation analysis, we found a significant correlation between differential metabolites and Spirosoma, Nocardioides, and Arrheni. Discussion This study confirmed that Dendrobium quality was affected by its epiphytic patterns and revealed its possible causes from a microbiological point of view.
Decision Making in an Academic Department of Medicine: The Role of a Management Control System

Academic Departments of Medicine have several challenges in managing resources, meeting academic goals and clinical demands. In this paper, we describe a management control system installed in 2014: the Strategic Plan, a Balanced Scorecard reflecting clinical research and educational performance, Annual feedback and review by Departmental and Divisional Chairs, and Improvement Plans. This system over 8 years resulted in a reduction in 30-day re-admissions of 14%, a decline in length of stay of 0.55 days, and reduced absolute in-hospital mortality of nearly 2%. Clinical revenue increased 42% from 2016 to 2022 largely due to increased ambulatory and procedural volumes. Teaching time and ratings were unaffected by the installation of this system. Return on investment for newly hired researchers and scientists was 67.5% with a 12.7% increase in peer-reviewed funding. We conclude that the Decision Management Control System was feasible to create and allowed capable monitoring of performance and informed decision-making. Major metrics improved after its implementation.
Centrally Infused Atrial Natriuretic Polypeptide Attenuates Exaggerated Salt Appetite in Spontaneously Hypertensive Rats

We have previously shown that atrial natriuretic polypeptide is present in the brain with the highest concentration in the hypothalamus and septum and that intracerebroventricular injection of atrial natriuretic polypeptide inhibits water drinking induced by centrally injected angiotensin II or 24-hour water deprivation in rats. To study further the role of brain atrial natriuretic polypeptide in the control of water and electrolyte balance, the effect of chronic intracerebroventricular infusion of atrial natriuretic polypeptide on salt appetite in spontaneously hypertensive rats and normotensive Wistar-Kyoto rats was examined with a free-choice, two-bottle preference test. The intracerebroventricular infusion of 100 ng/hour and 500 ng/hour of α-human atrial natriuretic polypeptide preferentially suppressed the intake of 0.30 M NaCI solution and attenuated the elevated preference for the hyper-tonic saline in spontaneously hypertensive rats while centrally infused α-human atrial natriuretic polypeptide had no significant effects on drinking behavior in Wistar-Kyoto rats. Blood pressure did not change significantly throughout the experiment in either rat strain. It is concluded that the exaggerated salt appetite in spontaneously hypertensive rats is blunted by centrally administered atrial natriuretic polypeptide. Such an effect of atrial natriuretic polypeptide along with its antidipsogenic effect suggests that brain atrial natriuretic polypeptide plays a role in water and electrolyte homeostasis and in blood pressure control.
Planting the seed of Hare Krishna consciousness in Kenya: The beliefs and activities of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) in Kenya

: The world is the birthplace of many faiths and has accommodated and nourished multiple religions. The intricate mosaic of diverse faiths, beliefs, traditions and languages in many countries is indeed amazing. The central aim of this study is to examine the activities of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) in Kisumu County. This is a transnational religious movement with its roots in Chaitanya Vaishnavism, a Hindu tradition originating in India. The central argument of this research is that Hare Krishna’s in Kenya are generally viewed in several restricted ways, notwithstanding their material or financial assistance to victims of calamities for philanthropic purposes. This study is an attempt to isolate one of the many Hindu socio-religious groups in Kenya - the Hare Krisha also referred to as ISKCON, and trace its entry into Kenya and outline its doctrinal principles and practices. There are very low levels of religious literacy and lack of knowledge among Kenyans on the Hare Krishna movement. To many Kenyans, the ISKCON movement exists below the radar and often out of the public eye and largely unfamiliar and unknown to most Kenyans. The lack of public knowledge of Hare Krishna has been a major source of misrepresentation, stigmatization, and demonization of the movement which underscores the importance of disseminating accurate facts about Hare Krishna as one of the New Religious Movements in Kenya. This study established that ISKCON came into Kenya through Mombasa and spread to Nairobi in 1970 and was facilitated by local Indian businessmen who extended this consciousness to Kisumu. Its core beliefs are based on traditional Hindu scriptures. It systematically propagates spiritual knowledge to society at large and to educate all people in the techniques of spiritual life in order to check the imbalance of values in life and to achieve real unity and peace in the world. The study demonstrates that “conversion” in the ISKCON context is marked by a process of gradual “drifting” into ISKCON’s fold, not a sudden change and conversion to ISKCON’s belief system is facilitated by the adoption of the ritual practices central to ISKCON.
Information Status Distinctions and Referring Expressions: An Empirical Study of References to People in News Summaries

Although there has been much theoretical work on using various information status distinctions to explain the form of references in written text, there have been few studies that attempt to automatically learn these distinctions for generating references in the context of computer-regenerated text. In this article, we present a model for generating references to people in news summaries that incorporates insights from both theory and a corpus analysis of human written summaries. In particular, our model captures how two properties of a person referred to in the summary—familiarity to the reader and global salience in the news story—affect the content and form of the initial reference to that person in a summary. We demonstrate that these two distinctions can be learned from a typical input for multi-document summarization and that they can be used to make regeneration decisions that improve the quality of extractive summaries.
Comprehensive whole-genome resequencing unveils genetic diversity and selective signatures of the Xiangdong black goat

Xiangdong black goats, indigenous to Hunan Province, China, exhibit remarkable adaptation to challenging environments and possess distinct black coat coloration alongside exceptional meat quality attributes. Despite their significance, comprehensive genomic investigations of this breed have been notably lacking. This study involved a comprehensive examination of population structure, genomic diversity, and regions of selection in Xiangdong black goats utilizing whole-genome sequencing data from 20 samples of this breed and 139 published samples from six other Chinese goat breeds. Our genomic analysis revealed a total of 19,133,125 biallelic single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within the Xiangdong black goat genome, primarily located in intergenic and intronic regions. Population structure analysis indicated that, compared with Jintang, Guizhou and Chengdu goats, Xiangdong black goats exhibit a reduced level of genetic differentiation but exhibit relatively greater divergence from Jining goats. An examination of genetic diversity within Xiangdong black goats revealed a moderate level of diversity, minimal inbreeding, and a substantial effective population size, which are more reflective of random mating patterns than other Chinese goat breeds. Additionally, we applied four distinct selective sweep methods, namely, the composite likelihood ratio (CLR), fixation index (F ST), θ π ratio and cross-population extended haplotype homozygosity (XP-EHH), to identify genomic regions under positive selection and genes associated with fundamental biological processes. The most prominent candidate genes identified in this study are involved in crucial aspects of goat life, including reproduction (CCSER1, PDGFRB, IFT88, LRP1B, STAG1, and SDCCAG8), immunity (DOCK8, IL1R1, and IL7), lactation and milk production (SPP1, TLL1, and ERBB4), hair growth (CHRM2, SDC1, ITCH, and FGF12), and thermoregulation (PDE10A). In summary, our research contributes valuable insights into the genomic characteristics of the Xiangdong black goat, underscoring its importance and utility in future breeding programs and conservation initiatives within the field of animal breeding and genetics.
Increased invasive behaviour in cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma with loss of basement-membrane type VII collagen

Type VII collagen (ColVII) is the main component of anchoring fibrils, attachment structures within the lamina densa of the basement membrane that are responsible for attachment of the epidermis to the dermis in skin. Mutations in the human ColVII gene, COL7A1, cause the severe inherited blistering disorder recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (RDEB) affecting skin and mucosae, associated with a greatly increased risk of skin cancer. In this study, we examined the effect of loss of ColVII on squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) tumourigenesis using RNAi in a 3D organotypic skin model. Our findings suggest that loss of ColVII promotes SCC migration and invasion as well as regulating cell differentiation with evidence for concomitant promotion of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). Immunostaining of RDEB skin and a tissue array of sporadic cutaneous SCCs confirmed that loss of ColVII correlates with decreased involucrin expression in vivo. Gene-expression-array data and immunostaining demonstrated that loss of ColVII increases expression of the chemokine ligand-receptor CXCL10-CXCR3 and downstream-associated PLC signalling, which might contribute to the increased metastatic potential of SCCs with reduced or absent ColVII expression. Together, these findings may explain the aggressive behaviour of SCCs in RDEB patients and may also be relevant to non-RDEB skin cancer, as well as other tumours from organs where ColVII is expressed.
Structural growth trajectories and rates of change in the first 3 months of infant brain development.

IMPORTANCE The very early postnatal period witnesses extraordinary rates of growth, but structural brain development in this period has largely not been explored longitudinally. Such assessment may be key in detecting and treating the earliest signs of neurodevelopmental disorders. OBJECTIVE To assess structural growth trajectories and rates of change in the whole brain and regions of interest in infants during the first 3 months after birth. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Serial structural T1-weighted and/or T2-weighted magnetic resonance images were obtained for 211 time points from 87 healthy term-born or term-equivalent preterm-born infants, aged 2 to 90 days, between October 5, 2007, and June 12, 2013. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES We segmented whole-brain and multiple subcortical regions of interest using a novel application of Bayesian-based methods. We modeled growth and rate of growth trajectories nonparametrically and assessed left-right asymmetries and sexual dimorphisms. RESULTS Whole-brain volume at birth was approximately one-third of healthy elderly brain volume, and did not differ significantly between male and female infants (347 388 mm3 and 335 509 mm3, respectively, P = .12). The growth rate was approximately 1%/d, slowing to 0.4%/d by the end of the first 3 months, when the brain reached just more than half of elderly adult brain volume. Overall growth in the first 90 days was 64%. There was a significant age-by-sex effect leading to widening separation in brain sizes with age between male and female infants (with male infants growing faster than females by 200.4 mm3/d, SE = 67.2, P = .003). Longer gestation was associated with larger brain size (2215 mm3/d, SE = 284, P = 4×10-13). The expected brain size of an infant born one week earlier than average was 5% smaller than average; at 90 days it will not have caught up, being 2% smaller than average. The cerebellum grew at the highest rate, more than doubling in 90 days, and the hippocampus grew at the slowest rate, increasing by 47% in 90 days. There was left-right asymmetry in multiple regions of interest, particularly the lateral ventricles where the left was larger than the right by 462 mm3 on average (approximately 5% of lateral ventricular volume at 2 months). We calculated volume-by-age percentile plots for assessing individual development. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE Normative trajectories for early postnatal brain structural development can be determined from magnetic resonance imaging and could be used to improve the detection of deviant maturational patterns indicative of neurodevelopmental disorders.
Impact of Financial Development on Economic Growth in Nigeria

This paper examined the impact of financial development on economic growth in Nigeria. The paper employed time series data (1985-2022) using ARDL approach, the objective of the study to access the causal relationship between financial development and economic growth in Nigeria. The data were obtained from Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and (WDI, 2023); Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Domestic Credit to Private Sector(DCRS), Market Capitalization (MACAP), Consumer Price Index (CPI), Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), Interest Rate (INTR) and Financial Development (FD) proxies by the ratio of broad money stock (M2). The study was anchored on Supply-Leading Hypothesis theory by Robinson 1952. The results show that all the indicators of financial development and its influence on economic growth, the DCRS has a negative influence on GDP, its impact is not statistically significant, implying an indirect effect, the CPI and FDI significantly affect GDP with CPI excreting a negative impact and FDI demonstrating a strong negative correlation. The ECM explores short term relationship among these variables and their implication for FD. Based on the following conclusion the following recommendations were made among others; strengthen price stability and implemented effective monetary policies and price control mechanism to maintain stable and controlled inflation.
The Electrical and Mechanical Study of the Flexible Organic Light Emitting Diodes

This work begins from depositing the same organic light emitting diode (OLED) structure on the glass substrate and the Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate. The result suggests that the transparency of the substrates, the microcavity effect arising from different anode thicknesses and the surface roughness of the anode all come into play to lower the device efficiency of the PET device. The Young’s moduli of the Tris-(8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminum (Alq3) and N,N'-Bis(naphthalen-1-yl)-N,N'-bis(phenyl)benzidine (NPB) are measured using the nanoindentation technique. Although the substrate effect cannot be completely filtered out due to the thin film thickness and the softness of base (PET), with a Young’s modulus of around 40-100 GPa, the small molecule layer can still be considered to be applied in the flexible devices. The stress in the indium-tin-oxide (ITO) of the multi layer OLED device when being bent is then calculated using this elastic parameter. A buffer layer inserted between the ITO and PET substrate with an optimized Young’s modulus and film thickness is suggested so that, according to theoretical calculations, the stress in the ITO layer can be reduced by up to 60%. Finally the flexible OLED devices were fabricated and their electroluminescence (EL) was measured when the OLED layers were applied with a tensile strain and compressive strain. It is observed that the compressive strain caused less damage than the tensile strain during the bending. It is also observed that a 4 µm thick buffer layer does protect the OLED device in terms of EL brightness while bending with the radius of curvature R = 6 mm. Without the buffer layer, the brightness of the device drops by 40% compares to merely 10% with this buffer layer. It is finally concluded that with the proper mechanical design of the device structure, the small molecule based OLED devices using the ITO as anode can still be considered as one of the candidates of the flexible display or lighting devices.
Using Mined Coreference Chains as a Resource for a Semantic Task

We propose to use coreference chains extracted from a large corpus as a resource for semantic tasks. We extract three million coreference chains and train word embeddings on them. Then, we compare these embeddings to word vectors derived from raw text data and show that coreference-based word embeddings improve F1 on the task of antonym classification by up to . 09.
Variation in foraging success among predators and its implications for population dynamics

Abstract The effects of the expected predation rate on population dynamics have been studied intensively, but little is known about the effects of predation rate variability (i.e., predator individuals having variable foraging success) on population dynamics. In this study, variation in foraging success among predators was quantified by observing the predation of the wolf spider Pardosa pseudoannulata on the cricket Gryllus bimaculatus in the laboratory. A population model was then developed, and the effect of foraging variability on predator–prey dynamics was examined by incorporating levels of variation comparable to those quantified in the experiment. The variability in the foraging success among spiders was greater than would be expected by chance (i.e., the random allocation of prey to predators). The foraging variation was density‐dependent; it became higher as the predator density increased. A population model that incorporates foraging variation shows that the variation influences population dynamics by affecting the numerical response of predators. In particular, the variation induces negative density‐dependent effects among predators and stabilizes predator–prey dynamics.
A fuzzy-based approach for approximating depth information in RGB-D images

Robot navigation has several security and defence applications. The major technical challenges include measuring the distance between a robot and its surrounding obstacles and modelling the sensing environment. Existing methods using stereo cameras, laser sensors, and low-cost MS Kinect cameras have been suggested for the problems. In this paper, we propose a fuzzy-based approach for approximating the missing depth values in RGB-D images collected from a MS Kinect camera. By investigating different noise models, the missing information, and the relations between the depth and colour images, the proposed approach produces an accurate approximation for missing depth values, which enhances results of subsequent steps in RGB-D image processing.
Secure and efficient range queries on outsourced databases using Rp-trees

We show how to execute range queries securely and efficiently on encrypted databases in the cloud. Current methods provide either security or efficiency, but not both. Many schemes even reveal the ordering of encrypted tuples, which, as we show, allows adversaries to estimate plaintext values accurately. We present the R̂-trees, a hierarchical encrypted index that may be securely placed in the cloud, and searched efficiently. It is based on a mechanism we design for encrypted halfspace range queries in ℝd, using Asymmetric Scalar-product Preserving Encryption. Data owners can tune the R̂-trees parameters to achieve desired security-efficiency tradeoffs. We also present extensive experiments to evaluate R̂-trees performance. Our results show that R̂-trees queries are efficient on encrypted databases, and reveal far less information than competing methods.
RangeMerge : Online Performance Tradeoffs in NoSQL Datastores

Datastores are distributed systems that manage enormous amounts of structured data for online serving and batch processing applications. The NoSQL datastores weaken the traditional relational and transactional model in favor of horizontal scalability. They usually support concurrent operations with demanding throughput and latency requirements which may vary across different workload types. A typical tradeoff between query handling and total update costs frequently leads to design decisions that sacrifice query responsiveness for higher update throughput. For this tradeoff, critical component at each storage server is a storage layer that schedules data transfers between memory and disk. After consideration of a similar function in full-text search engines, we systematically examine alternative approaches for online maintenance of structured data over a datastore. Subsequently, we introduce and analyze the Rangemerge algorithm to minimize search time at reasonable total insertion cost. We implement several representative algorithms and experimentally evaluate their update and query cost under the same conditions. We conclude that the Rangemerge algorithm achieves minimal search time and substantially reduces the data insertion time of known methods with comparable search efficiency.
Obstacle Classification Method Based On 2D LIDAR Database

We propose obstacle classification method based on 2D LIDAR Database. The existing obstacle classification method based on 2D LIDAR, has an advantage in t erms of accuracy and shor ter calculation time. However, it was difficult to classifier the type of obstacle and therefore accurate path planning was not pos sible. In order to overcome this problem, a method of classifying obstacle type based on width data of obstacle was proposed. However, width data was not sufficient to improve accuracy. In this paper, database was established by width and intensity data; th e first c lassification was processed by the width data; the second classification was processed by the intensity data; classification was processed by comparing to database; result of obstacle classification was determined by finding the one with highest similarity values. An experiment using an actual autonomous vehicle under real environment shows that calculation time declined in comparison to 3D LIDAR and it was possible to classify obstacle using single 2D LIDAR. Keywords—Obstacle, Classification, LIDAR, Segmentation, Width, Intensity, Database.