Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The solution structure and activity of caerin 1.1, an antimicrobial peptide from the Australian green tree frog, Litoria spzendida

Caerin 1.1 is one of the major antimicrobial peptides isolated from the skin of the Australian green tree frog, Litoria splendida. Two-dimensional 'H-'H and 'H'T NMR spectroscopy in trifluoroethanol/ H,O (50: 50, by vol.) have been used to assign the 'H and 'T-NMR spectra of this 25-amino-acid peptide. From an examination of these data, and using distance geometry and molecular dynamics calculations, the solution conformation of caerin 1.1 has been determined. The peptide adopts two well-defined helices from Leu2 to Lysll and from Val17 to His24 separated by a region of less-defined helicity and greater flexibility. Overall, the peptide has a distinct amphipathic charge distribution. The solution structure of caerin 1.1 is compared with activity data against a variety of micro-organisms for the parent peptide and some naturally occurring and synthetic variants of caerin 1.1. The structural and activity data are consistent with caerin 1 . I interacting with membranes in a similar manner to other antimicrobial peptides, i.e. via a carpet-like mechanism whereby the individual peptides aggregate in a helical manner and orient themselves parallel to the membrane in a sheet-like arrangement [Shai, Y. (1995) Trends Biochem. Sci.
High-performance work systems in Russian and Indian IT companies

High-performance work systems (HPWSs) represent one of the key topics in contemporary strategic HRM. This study aims to examine the HPWSs in the IT sector of two emerging markets, Russia and India. The research based on the survey of 132 companies indicates that there are differences in HRM practices between Russian and Indian IT companies which constitute high-involvement and high-commitment HPWSs. Further, regression analysis reveals that these systems impact the firm performance differently. The findings extend the literature on HPWSs in knowledge-intensive firms in emerging markets. High-performance work systems (HPWSs) represent one of the key topics in contemporary strategic HRM. This study aims to examine the HPWSs in the IT sector of two emerging markets, Russia and India. The research based on the survey of 132 companies indicates that there are differences in HRM practices between Russian and Indian IT companies which constitute high-involvement and high-commitment HPWSs. Further, regression analysis reveals that these systems impact the firm performance differently. The findings extend the literature on HPWSs in knowledge-intensive firms in emerging markets.
Models and Implementations of Timing Processes Using Artiﬁcial Life Techniques

This work presents the implementation of the Scalar Timing Model idea (STM) in a speciﬁc artiﬁcial neural networks environment, and examines the general algorithmic complexity and possible architectures for the task of selecting the longest stimulus from a sequence of stimuli. The STM is a popular and commonly used model that concerns perception of time intervals in studies on humans and animals. Many experiments are conducted nowadays in order to verify and study parameters and attributes of the STM. One of the goals of this work has been to implement this theoretical model in the setting of the artiﬁcial neural networks. The implementation demonstrated the need of some extra components in order to maintain functional adequacy of the model. Another goal was to study the inﬂuence of pulse generation on the representation of time within the implementation (i.e., the pacemaker-accumulator part). No additional mechanisms have been included that provide the scalar property, so the implementation follows the typical behavior of the clock-counter model. Experiments have been described that illustrate the process of comparison of lengths of two stimuli by an artiﬁcial neural network.
Biofilm is a predominant habitat of microbe and ubiquities in aquatic environments. Biofilm is formed when bacteria and other microorganisms attach on a surface and then replicate with producing extracellular polymers

ubiquities in aquatic environments. Biofilm is formed when bacteria and other microorganisms attach on a surface and then replicate with producing extracellular polymers (Costerton et al. 1995). Biofilm has high sorption capacities and low production cost that attracted attention of many specialists in the field of water treatment (Chubar et al. 2008; Gadd 2009). However, the study concerning the utilization of biofilm formed in natural environment in development of water purification technologies such as biosorption of pollutant ions has been rarely conducted. The recent works mainly focus on the adsorption of heavy metal ions to bacteria or biofilm formed under artificial condition (Almaguer-Cantú et al. 2011; Fang et al. 2010; Joo et al. 2010; Pérez Silva et al. 2009; Quintelas et al. 2009; Vijayaraghavan and Yun 2008). Heavy metal ions have been one of the biggest water contamination problems (Chubar et al. 2008; Volesky 2007). One of the heavy metals that recently become a serious pollutant is lithium. Lithium is utilized as an important compound of various things such as high-performance grease, heat-resistant ceramics, flux for welding, batteries, pharmaceuticals and nuclear fusion furnace (Kaneko and Takahashi 1990; Miyai et al. 1978; Dang and Steinberg 1978; Harlty et al. 1978). Therefore, the cleaning up of lithium contamination in the environment is an important subject particularly in the development of environmentally and economically water purification technology in order to support sustainable development (Tsuruta 2005). In this study, the polymer characteristics of biofilms collected from the surface of the stone in a Lake Biwa as one of the natural biofilm were clarified. The biofilms formed on stones were used for following considerations: 1) stone is the substrate that exist nearly in all aquatic environments, 2) the condition of stone as biofilm substrate is relatively stable during seasonal changes, and 3) to collect sufficient amounts of biofilms for the experiments. The utilization of this natural biofilm for biosorption of lithium was also investigated. The purpose of the use of the natural biofilm is to improve the application possibility in the real aquatic ecosystem. Moreover, the comparison of lithium adsorption capacity of biofilms formed in Vol.9, No.3, September 2015, p 106-112 DOI: 10.5454/mi.9. 3.2
MAXILLARY TEETH EXTRACTION WITHOUT A PALATAL INJECTION: A RANDOMIZED CONTROL TRIAL

Purpose: The aim of this research was to assess the clinical effectiveness of buccal infiltration of 4% Articaine hydrochloride in comparison to routine buccal and palatal infiltration during the extraction of maxillary molars. Patients and Methods: Current research were carried out on 200 patients where study group included 100 patients, and 100 were controls. Unilateral extractions were made to patients in the research group. All patients were injected with 1.8 ml of 4% Articaine hydrochloride with 1:100.000 epinephrine in the buccal vestibule of chosen tooth for removal without performing palatal injection. The maxillary tooth was removed after 8 minutes. One hundred participants in the control group were subject to the same procedure with palatal injection. Upon extracting, every patient completed a face pain scale (FPS) and visual analog scale (VAS). Results: According to the FPS and VAS scores, the difference in pain rates was statistically non-significant (p>0.05) when compared with permanent maxillary dental removal with or without palatal injection. Conclusion: Permanent maxillary tooth extraction is possible when 1.8 mL of 4% Articaine is deposited in the buccal vestibule of the tooth without palatal anesthesia.
How do firms adjust to a negative labor supply shock? Evidence form migration outflows

Understanding how firms can accommodate negative labor supply shocks has important consequences both in terms of the performance of firms, and in terms of job and career opportunities of workers. I study the consequences of a unique quasi-experiment where Italian firms are affected by an exogenous negative labor supply shock of migration outflows from Italy to Switzerland. I implement a Diff-in-Diff specification leveraging on exogenous variation from the implementation of a policy in which Switzerland granted free labor market mobility to EU citizens, and on different treatment intensity of Italian firms, based on their distance to the Swiss border. I use detailed social security data on the universe of Italian firms and workers, together with firms’ balance sheet data. I find 3 percentage points of treated firm does not survive. Surviving firms show a puzzling result: despite replacing the lost workers and becoming more capital intensive, treated firms are less productive and have a lower wage growth. I explain this puzzle through the lens of a simple model of imperfect substitutability of workers. I show that low-skill intensive firms do not suffer from any productivity losses and are able to pay their workers higher wages. High-skill intensive ones instead face a tighter market for high skilled labor and drive the negative results on productivity and wage growth. ∗Department of Economics, University of Zurich. Email: emanuele.dicarlo@econ.uzh. ch. I am grateful to my advisors Josef Zweimüller and Pietro Biroli, as well as to Andreas Beerli, Nir Jaimovich, Simon Jäger, and Michael Siegenthaler for invaluable support and encouragement during this project. I also thank Massimo Anelli, Teodora Boneva, Lorenzo Casaburi, Daniele Checchi, Luca Citino, Greg Crawford, Giuseppe Dachille, David Dorn, Edoardo DiPorto, Chiara Fumagalli, Giulia Giupponi, David Hemous, Francesca Lotti, Paolo Naticchioni, Giovanni Pica, Fabiano Schivardi, Mike Simmons, Joachim Voth, David Yanagizawa-Drott, Ulf Zölitz and all participants to the seminars in Zürich, at INPS, and at the IHED for precious comments and discussions. I am deeply grateful to the entire DC Studi e Ricerche for the constant support and help with the data.
A review on hepatoprotective and Anti-HIV action of traditional herbs to reduce the hepatotoxicity of highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART)

Drugs are well thought-out to be one among the significant causes of liver injury and drug-induced hepatotoxicity may result in asymptomatic elevation of liver enzymes to hepatic failure. In the present scenario, the advent of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has dramatically reduced morbidity and mortality among patients with advanced human immunodeficiency virus infection. However to date, hepatotoxicity has been associated with all currently used antiretroviral (ARV) drug regimens. Therefore it is the need of this hour to seek for solutions from ancient herbs that has been reported to have anti-retroviral as well as hepatoprotective activity in order to maximize the benefit and minimize the risk of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). Since age-old times, medicinal plants play a significant role against on various diseases. The traditional Siddha system of medicine is one among the oldest traditional system which holds enormous literary evidences of various medicinal herbs that have potent hepatoprotective activity. The present article explores the scientific basis for the traditional literature evidences on the hepatoprotective and antiretroviral action of selective herbs so that they can complement in reducing the hepatotoxicity of conventional antiretrovirals.
Safeguarding freshwater life beyond 2020: Recommendations for the new global biodiversity framework from the European experience

Plans are currently being drafted for the next decade of action on biodiversity—both the post‐2020 Global Biodiversity Framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and Biodiversity Strategy of the European Union (EU). Freshwater biodiversity is disproportionately threatened and underprioritized relative to the marine and terrestrial biota, despite supporting a richness of species and ecosystems with their own intrinsic value and providing multiple essential ecosystem services. Future policies and strategies must have a greater focus on the unique ecology of freshwater life and its multiple threats, and now is a critical time to reflect on how this may be achieved. We identify priority topics including environmental flows, water quality, invasive species, integrated water resources management, strategic conservation planning, and emerging technologies for freshwater ecosystem monitoring. We synthesize these topics with decades of first‐hand experience and recent literature into 14 special recommendations for global freshwater biodiversity conservation based on the successes and setbacks of European policy, management, and research. Applying and following these recommendations will inform and enhance the ability of global and European post‐2020 biodiversity agreements to halt and reverse the rapid global decline of freshwater biodiversity.
A real-time fault diagnosis system for high-speed power system protection based on machine learning algorithms

This paper puts forward a real-time smart fault diagnosis system (SFDS) intended for high-speed protection of power system transmission lines. This system is based on advanced signal processing techniques, traveling wave theory results, and machine learning algorithms. The simulation results show that the SFDS can provide an accurate internal/external fault discrimination, fault inception time estimation, fault type identification, and fault location. This paper presents also the hardware requirements and software implementation of the SFDS.
Numerical modeling and experimental validation of passive microfluidic mixer designs for biological applications

The present work reports numerical simulation and experimental validation of novel designs of microfluidic mixers that can be employed for biological mixing applications. Numerical simulations involving various geometrical models were performed for design optimization. The effect of the presence of embedded obstacles was studied in detail, in order to understand the effect of channel occlusion on micromixing. The mixing performance of various channel designs was compared, and crossover in the mixing performance of the designs was observed in response to a change in the flow Reynolds number (Re). The improvement in micromixing efficiency was discussed in connection with the variations in local values of the Reynolds number and Dean number. It was observed that the presence of obstacles contributes to a significant increase in local Re in the vicinity of sharp-edged obstacles, thereby enhancing the efficiency of mixing. In addition, the local Dean number is observed to increase significantly inside spiral microfluidic designs. We validate the optimized microfluidic mixer designs by performing micromixing experiments and image analysis based on regions of interest along the length of the channels. Numerical predictions were observed to be in reasonable agreement with experimental results. Finally, we demonstrated the biological applicability of an optimized micromixer design for on-chip detection of calcium levels in blood serum. The passive mixing designs presented in this work are useful for chip-scale implementations of cell-drug biology, where some of the key cell signaling processes appear at second time scales.
Pricing Analytics for Rotable Spare Parts

The authors developed a comprehensive approach to pricing analytics for rotable spare parts (i.e., parts that can be repaired and resold repeatedly). They describe a large-scale implementation of their approach, which resulted in a profit improvement of more than 3.9% over a 10-month period for their industry partner, a major aircraft manufacturer.
Risk of human‐to‐wildlife transmission of SARS‐CoV‐2

Abstract It has been a long time since the world has experienced a pandemic with such a rapid devastating impact as the current COVID‐19 pandemic. The causative agent, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2), is unusual in that it appears capable of infecting many different mammal species. As a significant proportion of people worldwide are infected with SARS‐CoV‐2 and may spread the infection unknowingly before symptoms occur or without any symptoms ever occurring, there is a non‐negligible risk of humans spreading SARS‐CoV‐2 to wildlife, in particular to wild non‐human mammals. Because of SARS‐CoV‐2’s apparent evolutionary origins in bats and reports of humans transmitting the virus to pets and zoo animals, regulations for the prevention of human‐to‐animal transmission have so far focused mostly on these animal groups. We summarise recent studies and reports that show that a wide range of distantly related mammals are likely to be susceptible to SARS‐CoV‐2, and that susceptibility or resistance to the virus is, in general, not predictable, or only predictable to some extent, from phylogenetic proximity to known susceptible or resistant hosts. In the absence of solid evidence on the susceptibility and resistance to SARS‐CoV‐2 for each of the >6500 mammal species, we argue that sanitary precautions should be taken by humans interacting with any other mammal species in the wild. Preventing human‐to‐wildlife SARS‐CoV‐2 transmission is important to protect these animals (some of which are classed as threatened) from disease, but also to avoid establishment of novel SARS‐CoV‐2 reservoirs in wild mammals. The risk of repeated re‐infection of humans from such a wildlife reservoir could severely hamper SARS‐CoV‐2 control efforts. Activities during which direct or indirect interaction with wild mammals may occur include wildlife research, conservation activities, forestry work, pest control, management of feral populations, ecological consultancy work, management of protected areas and natural environments, wildlife tourism and wildlife rehabilitation in animal shelters. During such activities, we recommend sanitary precautions, such as physical distancing, wearing face masks and gloves, and frequent decontamination, which are very similar to regulations currently imposed to prevent transmission among humans. We further recommend active surveillance of domestic and feral animals that could act as SARS‐CoV‐2 intermediate hosts between humans and wild mammals.
Large‐Eddy Simulation of Idealized Hurricanes at Different Sea Surface Temperatures

Idealized hurricanes are studied at four different sea surface temperatures (SSTs) of 26°, 27°, 28°, and 29°C in six nested domains down to 62‐m grid size. For the maximum and the distribution of wind speed, domain D6 (62 m) is similar to domain D5 (185 m) showing convergence near 200 m. For SST of 26°, domain D5 does not have small‐scale turbulence structures like the other three cases, which is an extension of the previous work of Rotunno et al. (2009; https://doi.org/10.1175/2009BAMS2884.1) who only obtained resolved gusts at 62 m. The distribution function of speed changes between the 27° and 28° cases, the latter one having a second peak, related to a structural change. Finally, it is suggested that the damage potential is not simply determined by the maximum wind speed because of the distribution change so a new damage indicator that represents potential damage is proposed.
The Mechanism Behind the Promotive Effect of Foliar Application of 5-Aminolevulinic Acid (ALA) in Tomato Plants Under Salt Stress

The effect of foliar ALA application on the internal ALA concentration in tomato plants grown in soil containing high levels of NaCl was investigated. Six week old plants were treated with 100, 50, and 25 mmol/L NaCl on a weekly basis and they were simultaneously treated with 5-ALA at a concentration of 5% by foliar spray. The effect of foliar ALA application on plant growth, chlorophyll contents and internal ALA concentration was studied. The internal ALA shoot concentrations ranged between 27.50±2.12 and 34.35±1.48 µg g-1 dry weight with no significant difference (p<0.05) recorded between plants treated with NaCl alone and those treated with both NaCl and ALA. The concentrations of chlorophyll a and b were elevated only in tomato plants treated with NaCl and ALA, whereas their levels decreased in plants treated with NaCl only. An adverse significant effect (p<0.05) of salinity stress was recorded on plants length, number of leaves, shoot and root fresh and dry weight. However, no significant difference (p<0.05) was observed in plants treated with NaCl alone with those treated with NaCl plus ALA in comparison to the control. The results of the present study suggested that foliar ALA treatment had no effect on the Na and Cl uptake, the internal ALA concentration, and had no role in adverting the effects of salinity on plant growth. The present study has proven that foliar ALA is directly used by the plant for the synthesis of chlorophyll in order to increase the photosynthetic rate and thus to help tomato plants to survive the salinity stress.
ContraGAN: Contrastive Learning for Conditional Image Generation

Conditional image generation is the task of generating diverse images using class label information. Although many conditional Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) have shown realistic results, such methods consider pairwise relations between the embedding of an image and the embedding of the corresponding label (data-to-class relations) as the conditioning losses. In this paper, we propose ContraGAN that considers relations between multiple image embeddings in the same batch (data-to-data relations) as well as the data-to-class relations by using a conditional contrastive loss. The discriminator of ContraGAN discriminates the authenticity of given samples and minimizes a contrastive objective to learn the relations between training images. Simultaneously, the generator tries to generate realistic images that deceive the authenticity and have a low contrastive loss. The experimental results show that ContraGAN outperforms state-of-the-art-models by 7.3% and 7.7% on Tiny ImageNet and ImageNet datasets, respectively. Besides, we experimentally demonstrate that ContraGAN helps to relieve the overfitting of the discriminator. For a fair comparison, we re-implement twelve state-of-the-art GANs using the PyTorch library. The software package is available at this https URL.
EXPLORING THE BARRIERS THAT PREVENT PRACTITIONERS FROM IMPLEMENTING MOTIVATIONAL INTERVIEWING IN THEIR WORK WITH CLIENTS

Motivational interviewing (MI) is an evidence-based counselling technique that is used by psychologists, doctors, nurses, midwives and social workers as an effective intervention aimed at behavioural change. Despite its efficacy, it is not commonly used in South Africa. Our aim was to explore the barriers that social and health practitioners who were trained in administering MI experienced in implementing MI in their work with clients. We used a qualitative approach to explore these barriers and a phenomenological research design to explore the research question. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 MI practitioners (social workers, registered counsellors, an educational psychologist, a life coach and an addiction counsellor) who were living and working in the Western Cape and deemed competent in MI. Our thematic analysis resulted in four broad areas being identified. These were practitioner-related factors, client-related factors, lack of continuous training and supervision, and workplace-related factors.
Effect of Secondary and Micronutrients on Yield Forming Traits of Maize (Zea mays L.)

Maize (Zea mays L.) is the most important food grain crop next only to rice and wheat in World and India. It is one of the most important cereal crop in the world’s agricultural economy, both as a food and feed crop and its value added products have a good export potential. Due to its versatile characteristics of suitability and adaptability to various Agro-climates, maize is gaining popularity among the Indian farmers. It is known as the ‘‘Queen of Cereals’’ due to its high yielding potential. Globally maize is cultivated in an area of 170.39 Million hectares with a production of 883.46 Million tonnes and productivity of 5.18 tonnes ha -1