Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE BASED PERSONALIZED DIET: A PILOT CLINICAL STUDY FOR IBS

Background and aims: Certain diets often used to manage functional gastrointestinal symptoms in patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Personalized diet-induced microbiome modulation is being preferred method for symptom improvement in IBS. Although personalized nutritional therapies targeting gut microbiota using artificial intelligence (AI) promises a great potential, this approach has not been studied in patients with IBS. Therefore, in this study we investigated the efficacy of AI-based personalized microbiome diet in patients with IBS-Mix (M). Methods: This study was designed as a pilot, open-labelled study. We enrolled consecutive IBS-M patients (n=25, 19 females, 46.06 (std. 13.11 years) according to Rome IV criteria. Fecal samples were obtained from all patients twice (pre- and post-intervention) and high-througput 16S rRNA sequencing was performed. Patients were divided into two groups based on age, gender and microbiome matched. Six weeks of AI-based microbiome diet (n=14) for group 1 and standard IBS diet (Control group, n=11) for group 2 were followed. AI-based diet was designed based on optimizing a personalized nutritional strategy by an algorithm regarding individual gut microbiome features. An algorithm assessing an IBS index score using microbiome composition attempted to design the optimized diets based on modulating microbiome towards the healthy scores. Baseline and post intervention IBS-SSS (symptom severity scale) scores and fecal microbiome analyses were compared. Results: The IBS-SSS evaluation for both pre- and post-intervention exhibited significant improvement (p<0.02 and p<0.001 for the control and intervention groups, respectively). While the IBS-SSS evaluation changed to moderate from severe in 82% (14 out of 17) of the intervention group, no such change was observed in the control group. After 6-weeks of intervention, a major shift in microbiota profiles in terms of alfa- or beta-diversity was not observed in both groups. A trend of decrease in Ruminococcaceae family for the intervention group was observed (p=0.17). A statistically significant increase in Faecalibacterium genus was observed in the intervention group (p = 0.04). Bacteroides and putatively probiotic genus Propionibacterium were increased in the intervention group, however Prevotella was increased in the control group. The change (delta) values in IBS-SSS scores (beforeafter) intervention and control groups are significantly higher in the intervention group. Conclusion: AI-based personalized microbiome modulation through diet significantly improves IBS-related symptoms in patients with IBS-M. Further large scale, randomized placebo controlled trials with long-term follow-up (durability) are needed.
Genetic Diversity Assessment of Ex Situ Collections of Endangered Quercus hinckleyi

Premise of research. Conservation of imperiled plant species can benefit from ex situ collections, including the living collections of botanic gardens and arboreta. Such living collections should strive to capture and maintain the genetic diversity found in the remaining wild populations. Ex situ collections may also harbor genetic variability that has been lost from wild populations. Quercus hinckleyi is an extremely rare (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources [IUCN] Critically Endangered) oak known from a few sites in Presidio County, Texas. It is the only native US oak protected under the Endangered Species Act. Here we evaluate the genetic variation of the Q. hinckleyi ex situ metacollection relative to that of the remnant in situ population. Methodology. We apply microsatellite genotyping to Q. hinckleyi sampled from plants growing in ex situ collections (N=22, from nine gardens) and compare the results with genetic studies of the in situ population. We compare allelic diversity, genotypic diversity, and population structure. Pivotal results. The ex situ metacollection is small but has high allelic diversity and captures about 57% of the allelic diversity of the wild population. Ex situ plants contain 22 new alleles that contribute 13% of the species’ total allelic diversity. All ex situ individuals have unique genotypes, none of which were found in situ, and thus they comprise 15% of the species’ genotypic variation. The ex situ plants align with only one of three genetic clusters identified in situ, demonstrating an important gap in the ex situ metacollection. Conclusions. The ex situ collection of Q. hinckleyi, while small, is genetically diverse and provides additional allelic and genotypic diversity not currently existing in situ. However, a significant portion of genetic diversity is lacking from ex situ plants, with the metacollection likely derived from only one of the in situ clusters. Collecting seed from the other clusters is a high priority.
Sexual Conflict in Hermaphroditic Flowers of an African Aloe

Premise of research. In hermaphroditic plants, pollen production can enhance fitness through siring success by attracting pollen-seeking pollinators. However, pollen production can also decrease female fitness if ovules penetrated by self-pollen tubes are usurped, thereby limiting opportunities for seed production. Methodology. We investigated the hermaphroditic aloe Aloe pruinosa, which is pollinated by birds and native bees. We performed manual crossed and selfed hand-pollinations and examined pollen tube growth rates to locate the self-incompatibility (SI) barrier. To quantify the effects of pollen production on pollinator visitation and fecundity, we compared experimentally emasculated plants with intact controls. Pivotal results. Pollen tubes grew into the ovaries and penetrated the ovules of both crossed and selfed flowers, indicating a putative late-acting SI system. Experimental emasculation resulted in reduced bee visitation but had no effect on bird visitation. Emasculation led to reduced pollen deposition on stigmas and slightly reduced fruit production but also led to marked increases in the number of seeds per fruit and overall seed production. Conclusions. These results demonstrate that hermaphroditism can involve trade-offs between the quantity of visiting pollinators and the quality of pollen transfer between plants, thus highlighting the roles of sexual conflict and fitness compromise in flowering plants.
The Rise of Asian Aid Donors: Recipient-to-Donor Transition and Implications for International Aid Regime

The aims of this article are twofold. First, from a historical perspective, it examines the recipient-to-donor transition of five Asian aid donors, namely Japan, Korea, China, India, and Thailand. Specifically, it examines the evolution of their foreign aid programs and practices. Second, it analyzes the effects of Asian aid donors on the international aid regime. We argue that the mix of economic and security goals, which motivated Asian donors to develop their initial economic cooperation programs, have persisted over time. This explains why Asian aid donors have allotted a disproportionate share of their assistance to neighboring countries and their use of foreign aid as a key tool of their commercial and diplomatic policies. Moreover, we contend that the rise and experience of Asian aid donors have created a new dynamic to donor–recipient partnerships and development cooperation like new approaches and modalities. Key findings of this study add to the growing literature on emerging donors and aid effectiveness debate.
European Respiratory Society International Congress 2020: highlights from best-abstract awardees

During the 2020 European Respiratory Society (ERS) International Congress, the author of the best abstract (highest average score of abstract reviewers and only those who had not applied or were not eligible for a sponsored award) of every Assembly was awarded “a best-abstract certificate”. Best-abstract awardees were invited to write a short summary about their virtual Congress experience and their view on the evolving field of research in light of their respective ERS Assembly. The purpose of this article is to give the readers a quick overview of some of the Congress highlights and to give the stage to the promising best-abstract awardees as they are the future of the ERS. #ERSCongress 2020 best-abstract awardees summarise their virtual European Respiratory Society International Congress experience and views on the evolving field of research for their respective assembly https://bit.ly/3kJ9JrJ
Students’ Voice on the NET Formative Writing Feedback in Emergency Remote Teaching during the COVID-19 Period

This study explored students voice on the value of the NET (native English teacher) feedback in EFL students’ collaborative essay writing. The NET feedback included video feedback and e-written feedback. A total of 43 EFL students volunteered to participate in this study. They completed two collaborative essays in the international EFL writing project in the COVID-19 emergency remote teaching semester. Students’ final reflections on the NET feedback were analyzed using content analysis to obtain the results. The findings showed that both video and e-written feedback was beneficial for all the participants in their essay writing improvement. The students in the video feedback group reported that their Chinglish expressions, lack of reading authentic materials, and run-on sentences were top 3 concerns in the NET feedback. The students in the e-written feedback group reported that grammar error, run-on sentences, and improving academic writing were top 3 concerns in the NET feedback. These findings help language teachers understand different feedback designs and consider the pros and cons of different feedback modes. The pedagogical implications of using formative feedback during the writing process in EFL teaching are provided.
ANTIINFLAMMATORY ACTIVITY OF THE FRUIT OF Kigelia pinnata DC

Summary Extracts obtained from fruit of Kigelia pinnata (family: Bignoniaceae) are used as folk remedy worldwide for the treatment of various inflammatory ailments and rheumatism. Effects of the methanolic extract of Kigelia pinnata fruit was studied using various in vivo models of inflammation in mice and rats and observed potent inhibiting activity in formaldehyde-induced paw edema, acetic acid–induced vascular permeability, cotton pellet-induced granuloma, estimation of plasma MDA levels and carrageenan induced peritonitis models. MEKP (100, 200 and 400 mg/kg, p.o) exhibited a dosedependent and significant inhibition (p<0.01) in all the experimental models. The antiinflammatory activity observed was comparable to the respective standard drugs. Preliminary phytochemical screening revealed the presence of flavonoids, carbohydrates, glycosides, proteins and alkaloids. Acute toxicity studies were performed and produced no mortality in dose up to 2000 mg/kg, p.o. The results gave a scientific basis to the traditional uses of K.pinnata particularly involved in inflammation.
Understanding Decline in Medical Video Consultation: A User-Centred Approach

The world’s population is growing and ageing. Consequently, the demand for health care services increases, which leads to the need for health care providers to find new ways to provide services. Video consultations (VCs) are a cost-efficient way to address this problem. However, they can only work if both health professionals and patients trust and make use of VC systems. We describe our work on determining the reasons behind why the use of VC declined after an initial period of intensive use at a local Dutch medical centre. Questioning patients why they no longer contact their doctors via video was not possible as it would violate privacy law. We propose an alternative method that combines interviews with medical professionals and vignette studies, which can be used to follow up with patients potentially using VCs. We provide a set of lessons learned, which can support future inquiries in the medical domain.
PassO – New Circular Patter Lock Scheme Evaluation

Majority of the touch devices use 3X3 grid-based pattern lock scheme to prevent unauthorized access. The 3X3 pattern lock scheme is popular compared to textual and numerical PINs. Users tend to use very simple patterns due to lack of guidance on its complex drawing rules, making it vulnerable to attacks. In this work, we developed a mobile App-Lock tool, which implements PassO - circular grid layout for pattern creation as an alternative to 3X3 layout. We analyzed the PassO patterns collected through a lab-study with 32 participants on actual mobile device. The study investigates the impact of various factors such as gender, age, handedness and lock preferences on formation of patterns through PassO interface. Our results show that PassO interface performed near excellent on System Usability Scale (SUS) metrics.
Flipping the Classroom: Will the Changes of Teachers Influence Learning Outcomes?

The flipped classroom approach is one of the widely adopted instructional strategies that transform the traditional teaching practice into a technology-enriched learning practice. With the use of eLearning technology tools, it holds promises to enhance learning performance and enrich learning experiences through restructuring the teaching and learning activities. Beyond this, the flipped classroom approach is also promising in promoting the interactions between teachers and students. However, there is an insufficient understanding of the effect of teachers’ characteristics on learning performance. To address this, we intended to advance the understanding of the interactions between teachers and students in a flipped learning course. Specifically, we attempted to investigate the consequences of learning performance if a flipped course was facilitated by different teaching staff. We adopted a purposive sampling to recruit students who attended the same course with the same course design and curriculum but taught by different teaching staff to evaluate their learning outcomes after their flipped learning experiences. Results indicated that students did not show significant differences in their generic skills of critical thinking and problem-solving skills, as well as their communication and interpersonal skills. These results indicated that students’ learning outcomes are not directly influenced by the different teaching staff. Practical and theoretical implications will be discussed.
Emobook: A Multimedia Life Story Book App for Reminiscence Intervention

Physical Life Story Books are widely used as part of reminiscence interventions, where people with dementia (PWD) recount their life experiences and memories to family and caregivers supported by pictures. This paper reports the design of a tablet app, Emobook, to facilitate the implementation of Digital Life Story Book workshops in the context of therapeutic day care centres specialized in PWD. Our digital app facilitates not only preparing life stories flexibly based on multimedia but also captures emotional responses associated to each memory. This can bring an opportunity to assess how the disease progresses and rely on mood trackers to provide personalized and more positive future interventions, which remain still unexplored.
Effect of physical activity through virtual reality on design creativity

Abstract A deeper understanding of creativity and design is essential for the development of tools to improve designers’ creative processes and drive future innovation. The objective of this research is to evaluate the effect of physical activity versus movement in a virtual environment on the creative output of industrial design students. This study contributes a novel assessment of whether the use of virtual reality can produce the same creative output within designers as physical activity has been shown to produce in prior studies. Eighteen industrial design students at the Georgia Institute of Technology completed nine design tasks across three conditions in a within-subjects experimental design. In each condition, participants independently experienced one of three interventions. Solutions were scored for novelty and feasibility, and self-reported mood data was correlated with performance. No significant differences were found in novelty or feasibility of solutions across the conditions. However, there are statistically significant correlations between mood, interventions, and peak performance to be discussed. The results show that participants who experienced movement in virtual reality prior to problem solving performed at an equal or higher level than physical walking for all design tasks and all designer moods. This serves as motivation for continuing to study how VR can provide an impact on a designer's creative output. Hypothesized creative performance with each mode is discussed using trends from four categories of mood, based on the combined mood characteristics of pleasantness (positive/negative) and activation (active/passive).
The names don't matter but the numbers do: searching for stability in Carboniferous brachiopod paleocommunities from the North American Midcontinent

Abstract. A key question in paleoecology and macroevolution is whether assemblages of species (paleocommunities) are persistent entities that endure over millions of years. While community turnover in the face of abiotic change is the presumed norm, paleocommunities have been shown to persist for long time periods and regardless of environmental disruption. It remains an open question, however, as to what processes allow for this. We investigate these questions by analyzing the Carboniferous brachiopod paleocommunities from the Midcontinent of North America. These diverse communities were subjected to repeated and geologically rapid changes in sea level. Using a suite of statistical techniques, we characterize the nature and scope of changes in these paleocommunities over time. We find that, at the paleocommunity scale, there is no evidence for obdurate ecological stasis, with fluctuations in both taxonomic composition and the associated abundance of taxa. However, at a higher ecological scale, stability is manifest, as diversity patterns remain stable across time, with a consistent number of species that can exist in any given paleocommunity. This suggests ecological rules such as taxon packing are in effect, resulting in a form of ecological stability even in the face of constant disequilibrium, and parallels ecological patterns of disruption and recovery previously observed for invertebrate communities from modern marine systems. Based on these results, we advocate for consideration of different hierarchical entities and scales when interpreting the ecological dynamics of fossil assemblages, as focusing exclusively on changes in taxon identity/abundance or diversity levels can lead to very different results.
Brand anthropomorphism, love and defense: does attitude towards social distancing matter?

ABSTRACT Several hospitality brands changed their logos to reinforce the importance of social distancing in reducing the risk of virus infection. Since social distancing is a polarizing topic, this research intends to understand consumers’ attitudes towards social distancing and their response to branding change by hospitality brands. Study 1 creates and validates a multiple-item scale to examine consumers’ attitudes towards social distancing, which is then adopted for two subsequent studies. Study 2 tests consumers’ awareness and perceived brand anthropomorphism during a sensitive situation like a global pandemic and the impact of perceived brand anthropomorphism on brand love and brand defense. Study 3 tests the proposed model in study 2 across two customer segments, i.e. those in favor of social distancing and its effectiveness and those against it. Results indicate that brand anthropomorphism and brand love have a significantly positive impact on brand defense. Additionally, these relationships differ for consumers who favor or oppose social distancing. Our research contributes to the hospitality branding literature by studying relatively understudied branding constructs in an unprecedented context and offers insights for hospitality branding and marketing managers.
Masked smiles matter – employee verbal expertise and emotion display during COVID-19

ABSTRACT Throughout the customer journey, the employee-customer interaction drives customer responses. The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically influenced shopping behavior with face masks playing a major role. This research investigates how consumer behavior has changed and how frontline employee (FLE) non-verbal (emotional facial expressions) and verbal cues (verbal expertise) influence customer responses dependent on whether FLEs wear a face mask or not. Semi-structured interviews among consumers, an open association study among students and an experimental study using Panel data were conducted. Findings of these online studies with German-speaking consumers show that face masks do not exclusively cause negative feelings and problems; they also reduce the perceived risk of a COVID-19 infection. Importantly, customers can correctly decode FLE smiling even when wearing face masks; however, the relevance of verbal expertise increases compared to FLE emotion displays. This state-of-the-art research during COVID-19 provides novel insights into dyadic service interactions for research and management.
Applying corpus linguistics to videogame data: Exploring the representation of gender in videogames at a lexical level

This paper argues for the examination of lexical patterns within videogames. In particular, it posits that researchers should examine lexical patterns across large representative samples from a variety of games in order to make more generalizable claims about how discourses around social identities are (re)produced. I thus argue for the use of a method called corpus linguistics. I demonstrate that corpus approaches to videogames can reveal fruitful information about how language is used within games of the same genre. This paper is designed to illustrate applications of corpora to the language of videogames. Throughout this paper, I outline the fundamental aspects of this method, primarily due to the dearth of literature which combines this method with videogame texts. In this paper, I demonstrate the validity of corpus approaches to videogame language via an analysis of the representation of gender. I argue that male and female social actors are represented in different ways, with male characters being associated with physical violence and female characters being constructed in more multifaced ways. Non-binary characters proved representationally lacking in this corpus, and thus because they were statistical outliers in the data are not reported on here.
An ontology-based compliance audit framework for medical data sharing across europe

Complying with privacy in multi-jurisdictional health domains is important as well as challenging. The compliance management process will not be efficient unless it manages to show evidences of explicit verification of legal requirements. In order to achieve this goal, privacy compliance should be addressed through “a privacy by design” approach. This paper presents an approach to privacy protection verification by means of a novel audit framework. It aims to allow privacy auditors to look at past events of data processing effectuated by healthcare organisation and verify compliance to legal privacy requirements. The adapted approach used semantic modelling and a semantic reasoning layer that could be placed on top of hospital databases. These models allow the integration of fine-grained context information about the sharing of patient data and provide an explicit capturing of applicable privacy obligation. This is particularly helpful for insuring a seamless data access logging and an effective compliance checking during audit trials