Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Protective Effect of Spirulina Versus Vitamin E on Electromagnetic Waves Induced Thyroid Gland Damage in the Adult Albino Rat: A Histological and Immunohistochemical Study

Introduction: The widespread use of several electrical and telecommunication applications that produce electromagnetic fields is increasing rapidly. One of the most important organs which affected by numerous types of electromagnetic waves is the thyroid gland. Aim of the Study: This study targets to explore the effects of electromagnetic fields exposure on the thyroid and the protective influence of Spirulina platensis and vit E . Material and Methods: Fifty healthy rats of adult male albino type were separated into five equal groups. Control group, EMW-exposed at which, rats were subjected to the effect of electric magnetic field individually 4 hours daily for a period of one month. EMW exposed+ Spirulina treated group at which rats received Spirulina at a dosage of 300 mg/kg b.wt. just previous to EMW exposure daily for one month. EMW exposed + Vit E treated group at which , rats were subjected to EMF like that of group II and given Vit E orally at a dosage of 200 mg/kg. b.wt and a recovery group at which the rats kept for one month after one month of exposure to low frequency electro magnetic field then the thyroid tissues were examined for histopathological and immunohistochemical changes. Results: The group subjected to EMW showed thyroid follicles with degeneration and disorganization. Also numerous collagen fibers were present within the CT septa in the masson stained thyroid sections . The amount of PAS positive central colloid showed obvious decrease, with Strong Ki-67 immunoreactivity and TGFᵦ1 immuno expression. Spirulina platensis and vit E reduces the effect of EMW on thyroid gland , but vit E revealed obvious increase in the PAS positive central colloid amount, a significant decrease in collagen fibers, Ki-67 immunoreactivity and TGFᵦ1 immuno expression compared with that in spirulina group. Conclusion: The use of spirulina platensis during the period of EMW exposure considered to has a protecting influence. Meanwhile the utilization of vit E has a more protection than spirulina
First Impressions: Effects of Representation on Video Game Covers

This study presents findings about perceptions and impacts of representation on video game covers. Our analysis contributes to a growing discourse on representation in games and media, to urge designers and researchers alike to consider how perceptions and feelings related to representation begin, and influence interaction, before gameplay starts. We analyzed 298 responses to a survey that asked how participants felt about representation on samples of digital covers from Steam’s best-selling games from 2010-2015, and how those feelings affect their game consumption or purchases. Although our findings describe a consensus on a lack of adequate representation of characters of color, they identify significantly different perspectives, feelings, experiences, and practices related to games, covers, and representation between participants of color and white participants. Our analysis highlights how publishers must not only consider how they include diverse identities in games but communicate that inclusion beyond them.
University of Birmingham Sustainable supply chain management in emerging economies

Manufacturing firms in developing countries have recently started to adopt sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) to manage their environmental responsibility. However, achieving sustainable production within a SSCM context has been one of the most pressing challenges in emerging markets, as it may not involve securing financial benefits. Given the scarcity of empirical evidence, this study raises the proposition that SSCM practices can be both environmentally necessary and good business in the context of emerging economies. In light of this, this paper develops and empirically assesses an integrated SSCM performance framework underpinned by the Resource Dependence Theory (RDT), linking SSCM practices and their relationship with organisational performance. Using the tenants of RDT, this research develops an understanding of how firms use their partners’ resources to implement SSCM practices and manage their performance implications. Conducting an empirical study of 128 manufacturing firms, 72 in China and 56 in Iran, this study examined and compared the impact of SSCM adoption on environmental and cost performance within these two emerging markets. Using a multiple regression analysis, the results show that there are more similarities than differences amongst these two emerging economies. The results reveal that the adoption of SSCM practices results in higher levels of the environmental performance of Chinese and Iranian manufacturers, but does not necessarily lead to improved cost performance. Our findings suggest that firms operating within emerging markets need to undertake SSCM initiatives with a broader consideration of their financial bottom line in order to minimise trade-offs between the environmental and cost performance.
Shape up your root Novel cellular pathways mediating root responses to salt stress and phosphate starvation

SNF1-RELATED PROTEIN KINASES 2 (SnRK2) are important components of early osmotic and salt stress signaling pathways in plants. The SnRK2 family comprises the abscisic acid (ABA) activated protein kinases SnRK2.2, SnRK2.3, SnRK2.6, SnRK2.7 and SnRK2.8, and the ABA-independent subclass 1 protein kinases SnRK2.1, SnRK2.4, SnRK2.5, SnRK2.9 and SnRK2.10. Subclass 1 SnRK2 are rapidly activated within the first minutes after application of salt stress in roots, but their mode of action, on the contrary to ABA-dependent SnRK2s, is not well understood. Here, we identified VCS (VARICOSE), a member of the mRNA decapping complex, as a direct substrate for phosphorylation by SnRK2.5, SnRK2.6 and SnRK2.10. Our results suggest that ABA-dependent and ABA-independent SnRK2 kinases act redundantly in mediating responses to salt stress by the regulation of 5’ mRNA decay. Transcriptome profiling of SnRK2 subclass 1 mutants revealed the aquaporin PIP2;5, and CYP79B2 , coding for an enzyme involved in auxin biosynthesis, as putative genes acting downstream of SnRK2 subclass 1 protein kinases, possibly via 5’ mRNA decay. VCS and 5’->3’exoribonuclease XRN4 were shown to influence root responses to salinity. This study presents identification of the first substrate for SnRK2.4 and SnRK2.10. Phosphorylation of VCS and regulation of the transcription of genes involved in water transport, auxin biosynthesis or cellular signaling can shed some light on the ABA-independent SnRK2 protein kinases signaling pathway acting in responses to salinity. of methionine trypsin for For the sample no was The identified were verified manual inspection of spectra in the raw using the Data Analysis
Severe Weather during the North American Monsoon and Its Response to Rapid Urbanization and a Changing Global Climate within the Context of High Resolution Regional Atmospheric Modeling

10 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION. 11 1.1 The North American monsoon. 11 1.2 NAM extreme precipitation trend relating to changes in atmospheric conditions. 13 1.3 Modeling severe weather during monsoon season . 14 1.3. 1 Convective parameterization. 16 1.3. 2 Rapid urbanization effect and its impact on monsoon precipitation. 17 1.4 Objectives. 18 CHAPTER 2: PRESENT STUDY . 20 2.1 Appendix A: Improvement in the representation of the North American Monsoon convective precipitation using a Modified Kain-Fritsch convective parameterization scheme. 20 2.2 Appendix B: The impact of urbanization on the North American monsoon precipitation in Arizona within the context of modeled severe weather events. 21 2.3 Appendix C: The more extreme nature of monsoon precipitation in the Southwest U.S. as revealed by a long-term climatology of simulated severe weather events. 22 REFERENCES. 24
The Discursive Construction

This article analyzes promotional and educational content published online by newly emerged parenting influencers in Romania to endorse parenting education programs, workshops, seminars, or books. The paper aims to investigate how these programs construct ‘good parenting’ practices at a discursive level, what (de)legitimation strategies they use to promote products or services, and how they shape power relations between experts and parents. The study uses a multidimensional thematic, critical, and pragmatic discourse analysis approach. The results show that, through discursive strategies, influencers portray ‘good parenting’ as an anxiety and value-driven process. This approach is rooted in a parental determinist view that emphasizes the influence of parental actions on children’s health and well-being. On the other hand, parenting expert influencers depict the ‘good parent’ as a ‘conscious parent’ (a parent that is both child-conscious, and attentive to their own needs and emotions) who should reform old parenting practices to ensure a secure relationship with their children and correct old parenting mistakes. The paper contributes to the growing body of knowledge on the changing nature of parental culture in post-industrial countries, with a particular focus on Romania.
Insights into the ecological impact of trout introduction in an oligotrophic lake using sedimentary environmental DNA

Introduced trout can induce trophic cascades, however, a lack of pre-introduction data limits knowledge on their impact in many lakes. Traditional paleolimnological approaches have been used to study historic species changes, but until recently these have been restricted to taxa with preservable body-parts. To explore the ecosystem effects of Salmo trutta (brown trout) introduction on an oligotrophic lake in Aotearoa-New Zealand, we used a multi-marker sedimentary environmental DNA (sedDNA) approach coupled with pigments to detect changes across multiple trophic levels. DNA was extracted from core depths capturing approximately 100 years before and after the expected arrival of S. trutta , and metabarcoding was undertaken with four primer sets targeting the 12S rRNA (fish), 18S rRNA (eukaryotes) and cytochrome c oxidase (COI; eukaryotes) genes. The earliest detection of S. trutta eDNA was 1906 (1892–1919 CE with 95% high proba - bility density function) suggesting their introduction was shortly before this. Native fish diversity (12S and 18S rRNA) decreased after the detection of S. trutta , albeit the data was patchy. A shift in overall eukaryotic and algal communities (18S rRNA and COI) was observed around 1856 (1841–1871 CE) to 1891 (1877–1904 CE), which aligns with the expected S. trutta introduction. However, taxonomy could not be assigned to many of the 18S rRNA and COI sequences. Pigment concentrations did not change markedly after S. trutta introduction. SedDNA provides a new tool for understanding the impact of disturbances such as the introduction of non-native species; however, there are still several methodological challenges to overcome
Removal of methylene blue with a highly effective hydroxyapatite-silica nanocomposite

: Two Hydroxyapatite-silica nanocomposite adsorbent (HApS220 and HApS230) were successfully synthesized using sol-gel technique. The samples were characterized by powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), Infrared spectroscopy (IR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), which confirmed the formation of a Hydroxyapatite-silica nanocomposite. The synthesized powders were then used for adsorption of methylene blue (MB). Both compounds possessed high absorption capacities, the adsorption equilibrium time is around 10 min. HApS230 sample shows higher adsorption capacity compared to HApS220. Furthermore, isotherm studies show that the adsorption used is an ion exchange process and that Temkin isotherm describes the adsorption better compared to the Langmuir and Freundlich and Dubinin-Radushkevich isotherms. Kinetics studies confirm that the adsorption follow the pseudo-second order model and chemisorption mechanism. Thermodynamics’ studies confirm that the adsorption of MB on HApS samples is a spontaneous endothermic process. The average removal effectiveness of MB reached about 89.02% (6.389 mg/g adsorption capacity) and 91.36% (6.55 mg/g adsorption capacity) for HApS220 and HApS230 respectively.
Dynamics of Content Diversity within Issues, Across Platforms: A Pesticide Debate in the News and on Twitter

Diversity of represented viewpoints in media content is a vital aspect of democratic societies. Building on insights about content diversity between topics, this study assesses frame and actor diversity within an issue and across media platforms. We conducted a manual quantitative content analysis of frames and actors in Dutch Twitter posts ( N = 2,224) and newspaper articles ( N = 318) about the banned pesticide fipronil, and we compared categorical and relative diversity of frames and actors between platforms. The results revealed an overall higher diversity for newspaper articles compared with tweets. Most strikingly, the diversity dynamics were quite similar in newspaper content and Twitter messages, but this similarity vanished once we distinguished between diagnostic and prognostic actor and frame diversity, with news articles showing a greater focus on solutions. The proposed diversity measures help discern temporal stages within issues and contribute to our understanding of intraissue dynamics across media platforms.
SuperVision: Self-Supervised Super-Resolution for Appearance-Based Gaze Estimation

Gaze estimation is a valuable tool with a broad range of applications in various fields, including medicine, psychology, virtual reality, marketing, and safety. Therefore, it is essential to have gaze estimation software that is cost-efficient and high-performing. Accurately predicting gaze remains a difficult task, particularly in real-world situations where images are affected by motion blur, video compression, and noise. Super-resolution (SR) has been shown to remove these degradations and improve image quality from a visual perspective. This work examines the usefulness of super-resolution for improving appearance-based gaze estimation and demonstrates that not all SR models preserve the gaze direction. We propose a two-step framework for gaze estimation based on the SwinIR super-resolution model. The proposed method consistently outperforms the state-of-the-art, particularly in scenarios involving low-resolution or degraded images. Furthermore, we examine the use of super-resolution through the lens of self-supervised learning for gaze estimation and pro-pose a novel architecture “SuperVision” by fusing an SR backbone network to a ResNet18. While only using 20% of the data, the proposed SuperVision architecture outperforms the state-of-the-art GazeTR method by 15.5%.
Automatic Signature Extraction from Document Images using Hyperspectral Unmixing

: Signature is one of the most important and widely accepted biometric modality. It is the most common biometric used in documents like financial transactions, legal documents, contracts, etc. Over the years, many signature verification methods have been proposed; however, it is a common notion in most of these methods that signature is available separately for verification purposes. In real world scenarios, signatures are not always available separately particularly in forensics. In documents, signatures usually overlap with other parts of the document, like printed text, lines and graphics, where it becomes practically impossible to detect and localize the signature pixels. In this paper, we present a robust and very effective method for signature segmentation from documents using hyperspectral imaging. A comparative analysis of state of the art key-point detection based method and proposed hyperspectral unmixing method are provided. The preliminary study shows that spectral unmixing offers great potential for automatic signature extraction from document images.
Active Power Oscillation Property Classification of Electric Power Active Power Oscillation Property Classification of Electric Power Systems Based on SVM Systems Based on SVM

Nowadays, low frequency oscillation has become a major problem threatening the security of large-scale interconnected power systems.Accordingtogenerationmechanism,activepoweroscillationofelectricpowersystemscanbeclassifiedintotwocategories: freeoscillationandforcedoscillation.Theformerresultsfrompoorornegativedampingratioofpowersystemandexternal periodicdisturbancemayleadtothelatter.Thuscontrolstrategiestosuppresstheoscillationsaretotallydifferent. Distinctionfrom eachotherofthosetwodifferentkindsofpoweroscillationsbecomesapreconditionforsuppressingtheoscillationswithproper measures.Thispaperproposesapracticalapproachforpoweroscillationclassificationbyidentifyingreal-timepoweroscillation curves.Hilberttransformisemployedtoobtainenvelopecurvesofthepoweroscillationcurves. Twentysamplingpointsofthe envelopecurveareselectedasthefeaturematricestotrainandtestthesupportingvectormachine(SVM). Thetestsonthe16-machine68-busbenchmarkpowersystemandarealpowersysteminChinaindicatethattheproposedoscillationclassification methodisofhighprecision.
Inner Product-based Neural Network Similarity

Analyzing representational similarity among neural networks (NNs) is essential for interpreting or transferring deep models. In application scenarios where numerous NN models are learned, it becomes crucial to assess model similarities in computationally efficient ways. In this paper, we propose a new paradigm for reducing NN representational similarity to filter subspace distance. Specifically, when convolutional filters are decomposed as a linear combination of a set of filter subspace elements, denoted as filter atoms , and have those decomposed atom coefficients shared across networks, NN representational similarity can be significantly simplified as calculating the cosine distance among respective filter atoms, to achieve millions of times computation reduction over popular probing-based methods. We provide both theoretical and empirical evidence that such simplified filter subspace-based similarity preserves a strong linear correlation with other popular probing-based metrics, while being significantly more efficient to obtain and robust to probing data. We further validate the effectiveness of the proposed method in various application scenarios where numerous models exist, such as federated and continual learning as well as analyzing training dynamics. We hope our findings can help further explorations of real-time large-scale representational similarity analysis in neural networks.
Pre-Melt Energy Budget of an Arctic Snowpack on Landfast First-Year Sea Ice

ABSTRACT The pre-melt energy budget of a snowpack on landfast first-year sea ice at a remote site in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago was analyzed. Over a 19-day period, the total heat conducted into the snowpack at the snow–sea-ice interface was the largest single energy transfer to the snowpack, while each of the turbulent heat fluxes removed comparable amounts of energy. The total energy transferred from the snowpack (∑Q ≈ −7027 kJ m−2) should have reduced its temperature; however, the opposite occurred. The snowpack’s temperature at both the 7 and 13 cm depths increased over the pre-melt period. The total change in internal energy and latent heat of the snowpack (ΔUsnowpack), derived from 15-minute changes in the snowpack’s temperature over the pre-melt period, was approximately 672 kJ m−2. Closure of the energy budget was not achieved for either the daily or the total pre-melt period. The terms of the energy budget were determined independently; thus, the failure to close the energy budget was the result of the accumulation of errors associated with all the terms. However, for snow on first-year sea ice, the parameterization of the salinity and temperature dependence of the “specific heat” of the basal layer of the snowpack was likely the primary source of error. The snowpack plays a central role in the transfer of energy across the ocean–sea-ice–atmosphere interface, but an adequate method for modelling the evolution of snow on Arctic sea ice including the energy budget, which determines the warming rate and subsequent melt rate of the snow, has yet to be developed.
IMPACT OF THE COVID−19 PANDEMIC ON STUDENTS´ WELL-BEING

Summary: The Covid−19 pandemic has affected many people’s well-being and mental health since it began in December 2019. This study aims to examine the impact of the pandemic on university students’ well-being and mental health. The main method used was the Nominal Group Technique which helped to show the impact of the pandemic on three groups of university students. The study presents the impacts of the pandemic categorised into five dimensions of well-being, serious impacts and common impacts identified in the groups of respondents. The results highlight the need to introduce mental health support programmes and interventions to improve students’ well-being and mental health in post-pandemic times.
Pregnancy termination in companion animals

Despite a large body of research and numerous review papers on the subject, there is still a great disparity in treatment protocols for mismated companion animals in the USA and elsewhere. Numerous treatment protocols are available. Ovariohysterectomy has the advantage of permanently removing the risk of an unwanted pregnancy. Medical treatments have varying side effects, depending on the protocol selected, and depend on owner vigilance to prevent future pregnancies. Medical treatment is most often performed in early gestation or mid-gestation. Pregnancy termination after fetal ossification results in abortion of non-viable or poorly viable fetuses. Early treatment, prior to or shortly after onset of diestrus, results in resorption of fetal fluids and tissues without vulvar discharge, but must be done prior to pregnancy diagnosis. Treatment protocols for pregnancy termination at this stage are associated with more side effects than those for mid-gestation. Pregnancy termination after ultrasonographic confirmation in mid-gestation may result in resorption of all fetal tissues or in expulsion of bloody discharge. Delaying medical treatment until after pregnancy diagnosis minimizes drug risks by avoiding treatment of non-pregnant animals and through the use of lower doses of medication. Several protocols for pregnancy termination at this stage are discussed in detail in this review article.
Fake or Fact? Factors Predicting the Capability of Recipients to Assess the Truthfulness of Impactful News

Susceptibility to mis-and disinformation constitutes a risk for democracy. Research is needed on how well recipients assess the veracity of news and how their assessments are affected. Using quantitative data from a representative survey for Germany, I determined which features predict susceptibility to misinformation. Regression models show which aspects facilitate misperception and which competencies should be promoted to enhance resilience. The respondents tended to be biased and prone to misperceptions about the topics integrated into the study that surrounded the environment, sustainability, and international affairs. The article recommends media literacy programs to address the challenges of misperception.