Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Physical activity levels affect mental health and behavior in men

Psychological, nutritional, oral health, and physical activity habits are behavioral factors previously linked to depression. The objective of this study was to analyze differences in behavioral patterns, in terms of psychological, nutritional, oral health, and physical activity habits, in a sample of men. Six hundred and five men (36.7 ± 15 years, 25.7± 4.3 kg/m2) were interviewed through an online questionnaire due to the pandemic. A compendium of factors related to psychological parameters, oral health, nutritional habits, and physical activity was analyzed through a set of online questionnaires. We found that participants with higher levels of both aerobic and self-loading physical activity generally demonstrated better nutritional habits, including higher water intake (p < 0.001; Effect Size (ES) = 0.62 and p < 0.001; ES = 0.69, respectively), higher weekly consumption of meat (p = 0.007; ES = 3.10 and p < 0.001; ES = 0.40, respectively), fish (p < 0.001; ES = 3.13 and p = 0.023; ES = 0.22, respectively), eggs (p = 0.002; ES = 2.80 and p = 0.002; ES = 0.30, respectively), greater vitality (p < 0.001; ES = 0.50 and p = 0.006; ES = 0.21, respectively), and lower alcohol consumption, including beer (p = 0.007; ES = 0.25 and p < 0.001; ES = 0.36, respectively) and wine (p = 0.001; ES = 0.30 and p < 0.001; ES = 0.50), among other healthy habits compared to participants with lower levels of physical activity. We also found that participants with higher self-loading physical activity reported higher perceived stress (p = 0.003; ES = 0.02) and conscientiousness (p < 0.001; ES = 1.86).
The application of the scratching technique has the same effect on Pleurotus spp.?

: The present work evaluated the agronomic behavior of species and varieties of Pleurotus submitted or not to the scratching technique. The cultivated species/varieties were Pleurotus ostreatus and Pleurotus ostreatus var. Florida, and Pleurotus djamor , where half of the treatments were scratched before the first and second flushes, while the rest were only scratched before the second flush. Yield (%), biological efficiency (%), weight of mushroom (g) and number of mushrooms (uni) were evaluated. It was observed that scratching harmed the mushroom weight for P. ostreatus , where the treatment without scratching produced significantly higher values, in the first harvest flush. On the other hand, scratching favored yield and the number of mushrooms for P. djamor . When the species are compared, it is noted that P. ostreatus obtained a lower yield, which was also reflected in the biological efficiency. P. djamor stood out with a large number of mushrooms, statistically higher than the other species, on the other hand, producing mushrooms of low weight of mushroom. The use of the scratched technique is not recommended for the conditions used in the work, due to the increase in labor and loss of mushroom weight
Agreeing possessors and the theory of case

: I argue that the so-called “possessive adjectives” are not really adjectives, but pronouns (D-projections). Agreement features on possessors do not compete with genitive-marking, as it seems at first sight: they never attach directly to DP, but rather to KP (i.e. to a projection of Case), as shown by the obligatory presence of a possessive suffix (which I analyze as K) separating the root from the agreement morpheme. I argue that this explains why the unvalued  -features of the possessor do not agree with the inherent  -features (I show that some agreeing possessors do have inherent  -features): concord applies inside a DP-phase, and given that DP is a phase, the features attached to K above DP belong to the phase of the possessee rather than to the phase of the possessor. Further evidence for this proposal comes from agreeing genitive markers attached at the phrasal level and from agreeing markers attached to a genitive morpheme. I then discuss the implications of this analysis for the theory of structural case: given that agreeing possessors can represent structural case, but their K must be specified as possessive from the beginning of the derivation, structural case cannot be considered to be unvalued case. Moreover, the fact that case concord is often found among agreeing possessors also shows that one and the same K head can have structural case in need of licensing and an unvalued Case feature valued by concord. Finally, I propose an account for agreeing possessors which seem to be doubly marked, both by a case ending or possessive suffix + agreement (at the word level) and by a preposed agreement marker attached at the phrasal level.
Physical parameters of stellar population in star formation regions of galaxies

We present the results of a study of young unresolved stellar groupings (clusters, OB associations, and their complexes) associated with HII regions, based on the coupling of spectroscopic, photometric and H{\alpha} spectrophotometric observations of star formation regions. Along with our own observations, we use a part of the spectroscopic and H{\alpha} data from the literature and open databases. The study is based on the catalogue of 1510 star formation regions with ages ~10-20 Myr in 19 spiral galaxies, compiled by us earlier. We study the morphology of stellar groupings and their relation with the associated H{\alpha} emission region. Extinctions, gas chemical abundances, and sizes of star formation regions are measured. Using numerical SSP models computed for metallicities fixed from observations to intrinsic colours of the studied star formation regions, we estimated ages and masses of stellar population of 400 young stellar groupings. Different relations between observational and physical parameters of the young stellar population in star formation regions are discussed.
Mechanisms of Piperacillin/Tazobactam Nephrotoxicity: Piperacillin/Tazobactam-Induced Direct Tubular Damage in Mice

Piperacillin/tazobactam (PT) is one of the most commonly prescribed antibiotics for critically ill patients in intensive care. PT has been reported to cause direct nephrotoxicity; however, the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. We investigated the mechanisms underlying PT nephrotoxicity using a mouse model. The kidneys and sera were collected 24 h after PT injection. Serum blood urea nitrogen (BUN), creatinine, neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL), and renal pathologies, including inflammation, oxidative stress, mitochondrial damage, and apoptosis, were examined. Serum BUN, creatinine, and NGAL levels significantly increased in PT-treated mice. We observed increased IGFBP7, KIM-1, and NGAL expression in kidney tubules. Markers of oxidative stress, including 8-OHdG and superoxide dismutase, also showed a significant increase, accompanied by mitochondrial damage and apoptosis. The decrease in the acyl-coA oxidase 2 and Bcl2/Bax ratio also supports that PT induces mitochondrial injury. An in vitro study using HK-2 cells also demonstrated mitochondrial membrane potential loss, indicating that PT induces mitochondrial damage. PT appears to exert direct nephrotoxicity, which is associated with oxidative stress and mitochondrial damage in the kidney tubular cells. Given that PT alone or in combination with vancomycin is the most commonly prescribed antibiotic in patients at high risk of acute kidney injury, caution should be exercised.
Clinical Profile and Pharmacological Management of Snakebites in Community Care Units: A Retrospective Study Using Two Military Hospital Databases in South Thailand

Snakebite envenoming is an occupational hazard in remote rural areas of South Thailand, where the highest incidence of snakebites is reported. In this work, a hospital-based retrospective study of snakebite patients from 2012 to 2022 at Fort Wachirawut Hospital and Fort Thepsatrisrisunthon Hospital, located in Nakhon Si Thammarat province, Thailand was conducted. Data from the laboratory investigation, physical examinations of snakebite victims, and clinical management, including pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments, were evaluated. A total of 54 snakebite victims were included. The median age of patients was 49 years (IQR, 28 to 63). Males accounted for 74.1% of all participants. The majority of patients were bitten by Malayan pit vipers (68.5%), followed by unidentified snakes (18.5%), other non-venomous snakes (7.4%), and cobras (5.6%). The most common clinical manifestations were swelling (90.2%) and local pain (73.2%). One patient experienced respiratory failure following an envenoming by an unidentified venomous snake. No deaths were observed in this study. In total, 24 patients received antivenom administration (44.4%), most of whom were from Fort Wachirawut Hospital. Patients who were administered antivenom showed a median admission duration of three days (IQR, 3 to 4), compared with two days (IQR, one to three) for those who did not receive antivenom treatment (p < 0.001). In addition, paracetamol and prophylactic antibiotics, namely, amoxicillin-clavulanate and dicloxacillin, were the most common pharmacotherapies following snakebites. Overall, it was observed that these two community hospitals undertook appropriate clinical management under the standard guidelines for snakebite patients. This might be due to the effective emergency management, facilities, and clinical consultations. Finally, the management process in the medical teams also plays a crucial role in minimizing the severity of snakebite outcomes.
Influence of Quality Appraisal Techniques on Deputy School Principals’ Performance in Nandi North Sub-County, Kenya

Deputy principals play a crucial role in the management of secondary schools. Yet, their performance is often a product of diverse factors, among them being the pressure exerted from frequent performance appraisals. The study investigated the influence of techniques adopted for performance appraisal on the work output of deputy principals in public secondary schools in Nandi-North Sub-County, Kenya. The study was guided by Scientific Management Theory and used ex-post facto design. The target population included 55 principals, 67 deputy principals, and 1197 students of Form Three. Stratified and simple random sampling was used to sample schools and the respondents. The sample size was 328, comprising 16 principals, 21 deputy principals, and 291 students. Data was collected using questionnaires and analysed using both descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. The hypothesis was tested using an independent t-test. The study found a significant relationship between techniques of performance appraisal and the performance of deputy principals. Effective implementation of the techniques of performance appraisal could lead to the improved job performance of the deputy principals. Nevertheless, the performance of the deputy principals had a lower rating, particularly on the evaluation of classroom presentation, development of performance improvement plan and effective provision of feedback after evaluation after performance appraisal. It is recommended that performance appraisal techniques should be tailored to meet the unique environment in which deputy principals operate. The study findings are beneficial to the Teachers Service Commission, as the policy maker at the national level, in providing insights on the role of the performance appraisal system and how to effectively monitor and assess the performance of the deputy principals
Apoptosis as a Potential Target to Arrest and Survival of Hydatid Cyst

Background: Hydatidosis is a serious and life-threatening disease that may lead to the death of the host if diagnosed and treated improperly. Apoptosis has been investigated as a mechanism of host innate immunity in suppressing parasites and also the survival of cysts in the human body. The present study investigates the process and role of apoptosis caused by a host cell or parasite in hydatid cysts. Materials and Methods: Survey cytotoxic effect and apoptotic mortality of hydatid-treated lymphocytes were investigated. Also, to determine the mechanism of apoptosis in host and parasite, the mean gene expressions of Bcl-2, Bax, Caspase 3 in hydatid-treated lymphocytes, and Fas-L gene in the laminated-germinal layer of fertile and infertile hydatid cysts were evaluated. Results: The viability of fertile and infertile hydatid fluid-treated lymphocytes was significantly different compared with the control group. Flow cytometry also showed apoptotic cells. Bax mean gene expression was significantly different between fertile and infertile treated lymphocytes. However, there was no significant difference in the mean expression of Caspase 3, and Bcl-2 genes in these two groups. Although the expression of the Fas-L gene in infertile cysts was higher than in fertile cysts, the result was not significant. Conclusion: It seems that hydatid cyst fluid may induce apoptosis in lymphocytes so that, hydatid cysts can escape from the immune system and stay alive. On the other hand, the results represent the possible immune path of host apoptosis against the parasite as one of the important routes in infertility of hydatid cysts.
Biodiversity and relationship between phytoplankton and aquatic environment in the Majakerta coastal waters, Indramayu, West Java, Indonesia

Coastal area of Majakerta has a high potential fishery resource and it is commonly utilized by the surrounding community. The fluctuation on the aquatic environment around the coastal area can affect the sustainability of the phytoplankton. Sampling of this study was conducted once in each month at four stations distributed from river to the sea from December 2014 to May 2015, aiming to evaluate biodiversity and relationship between phytoplankton and the aquatic environmental condition in that coastal area. Based on the observation, phytoplankton in Majakerta coastal area consisted of six classes, i.e., Bacillariophyceae (36 genera), Cyanophyceae (7 genera), Dinophyceae (5 genera), Chlorophyceae (4 genera), Zygnemaphyceae (2 genera) and Euglenophyceae (2 genera). Based on the phytoplankton diversity index, it can be inferred that the value is relatively low. There were two habitat groups, namely group 1 (Station 1 and 2; river and estuary) and group 2 (Station 3 and 4; sea), which have influencing parameters: turbidity, pH, and salinity.
Variation in Solar Limb Darkening Coefficient Estimated from Solar Images Taken by SOHO and SDO

The sun is not equally bright over the whole sphere, but rather is darkened toward the limb. This effect is well-known as limb darkening. The limb darkening coefficient is defined by the ratio of the center intensity to limb intensity. In this study, we calculate the limb darkening coefficient using the photospheric intensity estimated from solar images taken by solar and helispheric observatory (SOHO) and solar dynamics observatory (SDO). The photospheric intensity data cover almost two solar cycles from May 1996 to December 2016. The limb darkening coefficient for a size of 0.9 diameter is about 0.69 and this value is consistent with solar limb darkening. The limb darkening coefficient estimated from SOHO shows a temporal increase at solar maximum and a gradual increase since the solar minimum of 2008. The limb darkening coefficient estimated from SDO shows a constant value of about 0.65 and a decreasing trend since 2014. The increase in the coefficient reflects the effect of weakened solar activity. However, the decrease since 2014 is caused by the aging effect.
Use of DES in mildly separated internal flow: dimples in a turbulent channel

ABSTRACT Detached eddy simulation (DES) is investigated as a means to study an array of shallow dimples with depth to diameter ratios of 1.5% and 5% in a turbulent channel. The DES captures large-scale flow features relatively well, but is unable to predict skin friction accurately due to flow modelling near the wall. The current work instead relies on the accuracy of DES to predict large-scale flow features, as well as its well-documented reliability in predicting flow separation regions to support the proposed mechanism that dimples reduce drag by introducing spanwise flow components near the wall through the addition of streamwise vorticity. Profiles of the turbulent energy budget show the stabilising effect of the dimples on the flow. The presence of flow separation however modulates the net drag reduction. Increasing the Reynolds number can reduce the size of the separated region and experiments show that this increases the overall drag reduction.
New State-of-the-Art for Question Answering on Portuguese SQuAD v1.1

In the Natural Language Processing field (NLP), Machine Reading Comprehension (MRC), which involves teaching computers to read a text and understand its meaning, has been a major research goal over the last few decades. A natural way to evaluate whether a computer can fully understand a piece of text or, in other words, test a machine’s reading comprehension, is to require it to answer questions about the text. In this sense, Question Answering (QA) has received increasing attention among NLP tasks. For this study, we fine-tuned BERT Portuguese language models (BERTimbau Base and BERTimbau Large) on SQuAD-BR - the SQuAD v.1. 1 dataset translated to Portuguese by the Deep Learning Brazil group - for Extractive QA task, in order to achieve better performance than other existing models trained on the dataset. As a result, we accomplished our objective, establishing the new state-of-the-art on SQuAD-BR dataset using BERTimbau Large fine-tuned model.
Multimodality Imaging Evaluation to Detect Subtle Right Ventricular Involvement in Patients with Acute Myocarditis and Preserved Left Ventricular Ejection Fraction

Background: Evaluation of the right ventricle (RV) in patients with acute myocarditis (MY) remains challenging with both 2D transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) and cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR). We examined the incremental diagnostic value of CMR feature tracking (FT) to evaluate RV involvement in patients with myocarditis. Methods: We enrolled 54 patients with myocarditis and preserved left ventricle (LV) ejection fraction (EF). The CMR protocol included T2-weighted images for edema detection and late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) images. Global longitudinal strain (GLS) of the left ventricle (LV) and RV free wall strain (CMR-FWS) were obtained with CMR-FT. We identified 34 patients (62%) with inferior and lateral segment (IL-MY) involvement and 20 (38%) noIL-MY in case of any other myocardial segment involved. Here, 20 individuals who underwent CMR for suspected cardiac disease, which was not confirmed thereafter, were considered as the control population. Results: TTE and CMR showed normal RV function in all patients without visible RV involvement at the LGE or T2-weighted sequences. At CMR, LV-GLS values were significantly lower in patients with MY compared to the control group (median −19.0% vs. −21.0%, p = 0.029). Overall, CMR RV-FWS was no different between MY patients and controls (median −21.2% vs. −23.2 %, p = 0.201) while a significant difference was found between RV FWS in IL-MY and noIL-MY (median −18.17% vs. −24.2%, p = 0.004). Conclusions: CMR-FT has the potential to unravel subclinical RV involvement in patients with acute myocarditis, specifically in those with inferior and lateral injuries that exhibit lower RV-FWS values. In this setting, RV deformation analysis at CMR may be effectively implemented for a comprehensive functional assessment.
Muscle Coactivation Index during Walking in People with Multiple Sclerosis with Mild Disability, a Cross-Sectional Study

Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease characterized by axonal degeneration and demyelination. Changes in gait, related to joint kinematics and kinetics, especially at the ankle and knee, have been observed in people with MS (pwMS). Muscle coactivation plays an important role in joint stabilization; however, excessive coactivation may interfere with gait. The aim of this study was to analyze the differences in muscle activation during gait in pwMS compared to healthy individuals. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted involving pwMS and healthy controls. Surface electromyography was used to record muscle activity during gait. The main outcome measures were the coactivation index (CI) and the area under the curve (AUC), which were calculated for several pairs of lower extremity muscles. Results: Nine pwMS and nine healthy controls were included. When comparing the MS group to the control group, the AUC was significantly higher in the lateral gastrocnemius (p = 0.023) and the CI for the lateral gastrocnemius-anterior tibialis (p = 0.022) and gluteus maximus-lateral gastrocnemius (p = 0.047). Conclusion: Mildly affected pwMS have altered muscle coactivation patterns during gait, especially in the most affected limb. The results highlight the importance of muscle coactivation in pwMS and its possible role in the early detection of gait abnormalities.
Water use efficiency, morpho-physiological and biochemical reactions of some bedding plants to drought stress

The purpose of this experiment is to compare the growth and water consumption efficiency of five garden plants (marigold (Tagetes erecta ‘Red Brocade’), moss-rose (Portulaca grandiflora ‘Sun Rose’), dahlia (Dahlia sp. ‘Double Opra’), gazania (Gazania splendens ‘New Day’), and Indian blanket (Gaillardia pulchella. ‘Sun Dance’)) during the warmer seasons of the year under various levels of drought stress based on field capacity (FC; 25, 50, 75, and 100 %). The interaction effect of plant × drought stress (FC) on the fresh and dry mass of aerial and underground organs was significant. Decreased water availability resulted in a drop in growth parameters (leaf fresh and dry mass and leaf area). In compared to the growth of aerial organs, root biomass increased in response to drought stress. Marigold, Indian blanket, and dahlia plants had the highest root-to-shoot ratio in extreme stress, i.e., FC 25 %. The plant × drought stress interaction significantly influenced flower number, whereas flower diameter was influenced by the main effect of plant and drought stress (not their interaction). The FC 100 % and FC 25 % treatments had the highest and the lowest accumulations of proline and soluble sugars, respectively. Moss-rose, gazania, and marigold ornamental plants had the highest water use efficiency at 75 %, followed by Dahlia at 50 % and moss-rose at 25 %.