Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antimicrobial Potential of Extract from a Pseudomonas aeruginosa Isolate

Microorganisms are one of the main sources of antimicrobial agents and over 50% of antibiotics currently used in hospitals are metabolites from microbes. This study aimed to isolate microorganisms from the Dompoase landfill site, Kwame Nkrumah University Physics Garden, Kosiko River, and Ada Foah seashore of Ghana and screen their metabolites for antimicrobial activity. Forty-eight (48) microorganisms were isolated and their metabolites were screened against Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococcus faecalis, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Vibrio cholerae, Salmonella typhi, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Streptococcus pyogenes, Proteus mirabilis, and Candida albicans using the agar well diffusion method. Ten (10) of the isolates exhibited antimicrobial activity. Isolate DO5, identified as P. aeruginosa isolate, from the Dompoase landfill site was selected for fermentation because it exhibited the highest activity against all the test organisms. DO5 produced optimum antimicrobial activity when fermented for 11 days at 30°C. In the agar diffusion method, the extract of isolate DO5 recorded zones of inhibition ranging between 11.67 ± 0.23 and 21.50 ± 0.71 mm. The MIC and MBC recorded for the DO5 extract ranged from 3.13–25.0 mg/mL and from 6.25–50.0 mg/mL, respectively. Column chromatography analysis yielded eight (8) subfractions from the DO5 extract. IR analysis revealed the presence of functional groups such as alcohols, esters, and hydrocarbons in the fractions. GC-MS analysis identified nine compounds that have been reported to have antimicrobial agents. The DO5 metabolites stand the chance to be developed into potent antibiotics for infection treatment.
Narrow transmission bottlenecks and limited within-host viral diversity during a SARS-CoV-2 outbreak on a fishing boat

Abstract The long-term evolution of viruses is ultimately due to viral mutants that arise within infected individuals and transmit to other individuals. Here, we use deep sequencing to investigate the transmission of viral genetic variation among individuals during a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) outbreak that infected the vast majority of crew members on a fishing boat. We deep-sequenced nasal swabs to characterize the within-host viral population of infected crew members, using experimental duplicates and strict computational filters to ensure accurate variant calling. We find that within-host viral diversity is low in infected crew members. The mutations that did fix in some crew members during the outbreak are not observed at detectable frequencies in any of the sampled crew members in which they are not fixed, suggesting that viral evolution involves occasional fixation of low-frequency mutations during transmission rather than persistent maintenance of within-host viral diversity. Overall, our results show that strong transmission bottlenecks dominate viral evolution even during a superspreading event with a very high attack rate.
Association Between Sarcoidosis and Risk of Venous Thromboembolism: A Retrospective Chart Review

Introduction Sarcoidosis is a multisystemic disorder of an unclear etiology. It has been postulated that sarcoidosis is a chronic autoimmune inflammation, which may predispose to venous thromboembolism (VTE). Recent studies showed increased VTE events in patients with sarcoidosis and other autoimmune disorders. This multicenter retrospective study aims at determining a possible correlation between VTE and sarcoidosis. Subjects and Method We reviewed charts from a commercial database (Explorys Inc, Cleveland, OH, USA), which is an aggregate of electronic health records from 26 major health care systems. We included patients between 30 and 69 of age. Patients with a condition known to cause a hypercoagulable state were excluded. We calculated the prevalence of VTE in patients with and without a diagnosis of sarcoidosis and compared the results. A multivariate analysis was performed to adjust for gender, race, age, tobacco use, and obesity. Results The overall prevalence of the VTE in patients without sarcoidosis was 1.4% compared to 4.9% in patients with sarcoidosis. Patients with sarcoidosis were more likely to develop VTE (OR: 2.96; 95% CI: 2.84-3.08; p < 0.001). Predictors of VTE in patients with sarcoidosis were gender, age, race, and obesity. Conclusion Our study indicates that sarcoidosis poses a risk of developing VTE. Further prospective studies are needed to shed light on this association and explain the prothrombotic phenotype of sarcoidosis.
MATERIAIS ONLINE DE ACESSO LIVRE PARA APOIO A FORMAÇÃO DO PENSAMENTO CIENTÍFICO

We need internationally available and effective science inquiry curriculum materials and instructional strategies. Inquiry instruction is especially important to prepare students to deal with the complex science issues we face today such as setting sustainable energy policies, making sensible health-related decisions, and ensuring food safety. We report on a successful, open source learning environment that supports authoring and customization of inquiry science materials. The Technology-Enhanced Learning in Science (TELS) National Science Foundation (NSF) funded center for learning and teaching created an educational accelerator to promote inquiry learning. The educational accelerator includes the Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE), a set of curriculum units implemented in WISE, and a synthesis of research on science inquiry called knowledge integration (Linn & Eylon, 2011).
Manufacturing Processes for the Development of Unmanned Vehicles

In the scope of composite materials processing, namely in Liquid Composite Moulding (LCM), permeability is a property of the medium composed by reinforcement fibres. The prediction of permeability is paramount to process optimization and possible elimination of defects in manufactured parts. By applying a representative volume element approach with stochasticity, permeability is derived from randomly generated porous media at different values of fibre volume fraction, for the case of longitudinal flow in a unidirectional ply. Analysis of the obtained results suggests that permeability follows indeed a normal distribution model. Also, parameters from models that predict permeability as a function of fibre volume fraction of the medium, are revisited for a porosity range of 22% to 50%, in light of the previous results. An equation was developed for each parameter, describing it as a function of the fibre volume fraction of the medium. Finally, a point-by-point analysis of permeability is done along the RVE length, whose results suggest that for the case of 3D CFD simulations, the aspect ratio of the RVE is a very important parameter, in order to avoid over-predictions in permeability results.
Development ofBacillus thuringiensisCryIC Resistance by Spodoptera exigua(Hubner) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae)†

Selection of resistance in Spodoptera exigua (Hubner) to an HD-1 spore-crystal mixture, CryIC (HD-133) inclusion bodies, and trypsinized toxin from Bacillus thuringiensis subsp. aizawai and B. thuringiensis subsp. entomocidus was attempted by using laboratory bioassays. No resistance to the HD-1 spore-crystal mixture could be achieved after 20 generations of selection. Significant levels of resistance (11-fold) to CryIC inclusion bodies expressed inEscherichia coliwere observed after seven generations. Subsequent selection of the CryIC- resistant population with trypsinized CryIC toxin resulted, after 21 generations of CryIC selection, in a population ofS. exiguathat exhibited only 8% mortality at the highest toxin concentration tested (320 mg/g), whereas the 50% lethal concentration was 4.30 mg/g for the susceptible colony. Insects resistant to CryIC toxin from HD-133 also were resistant to trypsinized CryIA(b), CryIC from B. thuringiensis subsp. entomocidus, CryIE-CryIC fusion protein (G27), CryIH, and CryIIA. In vitro binding experiments with brush border membrane vesicles showed a twofold decrease in maximum CryIC binding, afivefold difference inKd, and no difference in the concentration of binding sites for the CryIC-resistant insects compared with those for the susceptible insects. Resistance to CryIC was significantly reduced by the addition of HD-1 spores. Resistance to the CryIC toxin was still observed 12 generations after CryIC selection was removed. These results suggest that,inS.exigua,resistancetoasingleproteinismorelikelytooccurthanresistancetospore-crystalmixtures and that once resistance occurs, insects will be resistant to many other Cry proteins. These results have important implications for devisingS. exiguaresistance management strategies in thefield.
Design and Implementation of Smart Dust Sensing System for Baghdad City

The atmosphere in the world and especially in Iraq is yearly exposed to many dust storms that cause dust floated, which negatively affects the health of people, animals and agriculture. In this research, a system is proposed that used sensor to continuously measure the level of dust in the air of Baghdad city 24 hours /7 days a week. Then analyzing these measurements to determine the level of risk impact on people health especially people with respiratory diseases. The proposed system has the ability of sending warning text message expressing the level of potential threat to the people. In order to accelerate the rapid processing, an accurate Arduino Uno microcontroller was used to measure the density of the dust and make the required processing. In addition to, using the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) type SIMS900 as SMS sender. The advantages of this system is represented by its ability to alert the people about air pollution in real time, ease of use (where mobile devices are available to most people in Baghdad) and the low cost of sending a message.
Association between perceived social support and depression in postmenopausal women

Lipomas are the most common type of nonepithelial benign tumors of the gastrointestinal tract. This is a report of a case of transverse colonic lipoma which presented with a misleading Gastroenteritis for which upper and lower endoscopies were done for recurrent and persistent symptoms and revealed tumor-like mass in the transverse colon for which transverse colectomy with primary anastamosis was done and histopathology came as the rare colonic lipoma. The gastrointestinal lipoma is a relatively rare disease, and originates from the submucosa of the gastrointestinal tract and occurs the most frequently in the cecum and ascending colon. One of the challenges in the management of colonic lipoma is to establish the diagnosis preoperatively. Three diagnostic tools can bring arguments in favor of the diagnosis: colonoscopy, barium enema and CT
Performance bonuses and the quality of primary health care delivered by family health teams in Brazil: A difference-in-differences analysis

Background Pay-for-performance (P4P) programmes to incentivise health providers to improve quality of care have been widely implemented globally. Despite intuitive appeal, evidence on the effectiveness of P4P is mixed, potentially due to differences in how schemes are designed. We exploited municipality variation in the design features of Brazil’s National Programme for Improving Primary Care Access and Quality (PMAQ) to examine whether performance bonuses given to family health team workers were associated with changes in the quality of care and whether the size of bonus mattered. Methods and findings For this quasi-experimental study, we used a difference-in-differences approach combined with matching. We compared changes over time in the quality of care delivered by family health teams between (bonus) municipalities that chose to use some or all of the PMAQ money to provide performance-related bonuses to team workers with (nonbonus) municipalities that invested the funds using traditional input-based budgets. The primary outcome was the PMAQ score, a quality of care index on a scale of 0 to 100, based on several hundred indicators (ranging from 598 to 660) of health care delivery. We did one-to-one matching of bonus municipalities to nonbonus municipalities based on baseline demographic and economic characteristics. On the matched sample, we used ordinary least squares regression to estimate the association of any bonus and size of bonus with the prepost change over time (between November 2011 and October 2015) in the PMAQ score. We performed subgroup analyses with respect to the local area income of the family health team. The matched analytical sample comprised 2,346 municipalities (1,173 nonbonus municipalities; 1,173 bonus municipalities), containing 10,275 family health teams that participated in PMAQ from the outset. Bonus municipalities were associated with a 4.6 (95% CI: 2.7 to 6.4; p < 0.001) percentage point increase in the PMAQ score compared with nonbonus municipalities. The association with quality of care increased with the size of bonus: the largest bonus group saw an improvement of 8.2 percentage points (95% CI: 6.2 to 10.2; p < 0.001) compared with the control. The subgroup analysis showed that the observed improvement in performance was most pronounced in the poorest two-fifths of localities. The limitations of the study include the potential for bias from unmeasured time-varying confounding and the fact that the PMAQ score has not been validated as a measure of quality of care. Conclusions Performance bonuses to family health team workers compared with traditional input-based budgets were associated with an improvement in the quality of care.
Effect of barnacle fouling on ship resistance and powering

Abstract Predictions of added resistance and the effective power of ships were made for varying barnacle fouling conditions. A series of towing tests was carried out using flat plates covered with artificial barnacles. The tests were designed to allow the examination of the effects of barnacle height and percentage coverage on the resistance and effective power of ships. The drag coefficients and roughness function values were evaluated for the flat plates. The roughness effects of the fouling conditions on the ships’ frictional resistances were predicted. Added resistance diagrams were then plotted using these predictions, and powering penalties for these ships were calculated using the diagrams generated. The results indicate that the effect of barnacle size is significant, since a 10% coverage of barnacles each 5 mm in height caused a similar level of added power requirements to a 50% coverage of barnacles each 1.25 mm in height.
Bridging macroecology and macroevolution in the radiation of sigmodontine rodents

Investigations of phenotypic disparity across geography often ignore macroevolutionary processes. As a corollary, the random null expectations to which disparity is compared and interpreted may be unrealistic. We tackle this issue by representing, in geographical space, distinct processes of phenotypic evolution underlying ecological disparity. Under divergent natural selection, assemblages in a given region should have empirical disparity higher than expected under an evolutionarily oriented null model, whereas the opposite may indicate constraints on phenotypic evolution. We gathered phylogenies, biogeographic distributions, and data on the skull morphology of sigmodontine rodents to discover which regions of the Neotropics were more influenced by divergent, neutral, or constrained phenotypic evolution. We found that regions with higher disparity than expected by the evolutionary‐oriented null model, in terms of both size and shape, were concentrated in the Atlantic Forest, suggesting a larger role for divergent natural selection there. Phenotypic disparity in the rest of South America, mainly the Amazon basin, northeastern Brazil, and Southern Andes, was constrained—lower than predicted by the evolutionary model. We also demonstrated equivalence between the disparity produced by randomization‐based null models and constrained‐evolution null models. Therefore, including evolutionary simulations into the null modeling framework used in ecophylogenetics can strengthen inferences on the processes underlying phenotypic evolution.
Object-Agnostic Vision Measurement Framework Based on One-Shot Learning and Behavior Tree

Vision measurement is important for intelligent systems to obtain the precise structural and spatial information of objects. Beyond the object-specific vision measurement developed for fixed object type, it is appealing to explore the object-agnostic vision measurement, which can be efficiently reconfigured and adapted to various novel objects. This article proposes a framework to mimic the human’s versatile visual measurement behavior: extract a set of contour primitives of interest (CPIs) from an image, then utilize the CPIs to calculate the key geometric information. First, a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) CPieNet+ is proposed under the one-shot learning scheme, aiming to extract the pixel-level object CPI from a raw query image, given an annotated support image. The fine-grained CPI prototypes are formed by sampling multiple points on the feature map of the support image. To leverage the explicit geometric knowledge in the CNN inference, the annotation map is encoded as a shape descriptor to guide the feature channel attention, and the geometric attribute awareness is realized by supervising the model to predict the direction and size of CPI. Second, the measurement behavior tree (BT) is designed to model the hierarchical geometric calculation procedure, which is flexibly configurable for different measurement requirements and is interpretable for nonexpert users. After the execution of the measurement BT, the pixel-level CPIs are converted to the required key geometric data. The effectiveness of the proposed methods is validated by a series of experiments.
Differences in distance perception for sounds from the front and back with and without hearing aid satellites

Spectral filtering of the outer ear is important for the spatial perception of sounds, with monaural pinna cues helping to resolve front back confusions and to discriminate differences in elevation. Missing pinna cues are believed to be a major reason for deteriorated spatial perception, internalization and an increased number of front-back confusions. To analyze any effects caused by the hearing aid microphone position, and therefore also by missing pinna cues, we conducted an experiment on distance perception, comparing a reference non-aided condition with two aided conditions, namely an in-the-ear (ITE) hearing aid satellite that still captures pinna cues, and a behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aid satellite with the microphone placed such that it doesn’t capture pinna cues. We played sounds from the front at 30° and the back at 150° in random order at three different distances at 0.75 m, 2 m and 9 m. Stimuli were reverberated sentences of 2-4 seconds length spoken by different male speakers in a virtual room, auralized with the Simulated Open Field Environment’s (SOFE) [1] 48 channels loudspeaker ring. Normal hearing participants conducted the experiment in darkness, leaning their heads onto a headrest to restrict head movements. A linear hearing aid algorithm was used in the aided conditions, using a real time Simulink model to process and play back the sounds over the ITE receivers, with a gain of 5 dB compared to the unaided reference condition to mask leaked sounds at lower frequencies due to venting effects. Preliminary results for six subjects show differing distance perception between conditions (BTE, ITE, unaided) and between the front and back.
Pathophysiology roles for adenosine 2A receptor in obesity and related diseases

Obesity, a burgeoning worldwide health system challenge, is associated with several comorbidities, including non‐alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), diabetes, atherosclerosis, and osteoarthritis, leading to serious problems to people's health. Adenosine is a critical extracellular signaling molecule that has essential functions in regulating most organ systems by binding to four G‐protein‐coupled adenosine receptors, denoted A1, A2A, A2B, and A3. Among the receptors, a growing body evidence highlights the key roles of the adenosine 2A receptor (A2AR) in obesity and related diseases. In the current review, we summarize the effects of A2AR in obesity and obesity‐associated non‐alcoholic fatty liver disease, diabetes, atherosclerosis, and osteoarthritis, to clarify the complicated impacts of A2AR on obesity and related diseases.
The impact of employment programs on common mental disorders: A systematic review

Background: While employment programs were not created with the intent to improve common mental disorders (CMDs), they may have a positive impact on the prevalence, incidence, and severity of CMD by reducing poverty and increasing access to economic mobility. Aim: To examine and synthesize the available quantitative evidence of the impact of employment programs on outcomes of CMD. Methods: Embase, Econlit, Global Health, MEDLINE, APA PsychINFO, and Social Policy and Practice were searched for experimental and quasi-experimental studies which investigated the impact of employment programs on primary and secondary outcomes of a CMD. A narrative synthesis according to Popay was conducted. The methodological quality of studies was assessed with the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool and the Newcastle-Ottawa Assessment Scale. Results: Of the 1,327 studies retrieved, two randomized controlled trials, one retrospective cohort, one pilot study with a non-randomized experimental design, and one randomized field experiment were included in the final review. Employment programs generally included multiple components such as skills-based training, and hands-on placements. Depression and anxiety were the CMDs measured as primary or secondary outcomes within included studies. Findings regarding the impact of employment programs on CMD were mixed with two studies reporting significantly positive effects, two reporting no effects, and one reporting mixed effects. The quality among included studies was good overall with some concerns regarding internal validity. Conclusion: Employment programs may support a decrease in the prevalence, incidence, and severity of CMDs. However, there is high heterogeneity among study effects, designs, and contexts. More research is needed to gain further insight into the nature of this association and the mechanisms of impact. This review highlights the potential for employment programs and other poverty-reduction interventions to be utilized and integrated into the wider care, prevention, and treatment of common-mental disorders.