Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Use of Thymol in Nosema ceranae Control and Health Improvement of Infected Honey Bees

Simple Summary In the European Union, there is no registered product for the control of the honey bee endoparasite Nosema ceranae. Thus, researchers are looking for options for Nosema treatment. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of a natural essential-oil ingredient (thymol) derived from Thymus vulgaris on honey bees infected with N. ceranae. Thymol exerted certain positive effects (increasing bee survival, immunity, and antioxidative protection), as well as positively affecting the spore loads in Nosema-infected bees. However, when applied to Nosema-free bees, thymol caused certain health disorders; therefore, beekeepers should be careful with its use. Abstract Nosema ceranae is the most widespread microsporidian species which infects the honey bees of Apis mellifera by causing the weakening of their colonies and a decline in their productive and reproductive capacities. The only registered product for its control is the antibiotic fumagillin; however, in the European Union, there is no formulation registered for use in beekeeping. Thymol (3-hydroxy-p-cymene) is a natural essential-oil ingredient derived from Thymus vulgaris, which has been used in Varroa control for decades. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of thymol supplementation on the expression of immune-related genes and the parameters of oxidative stress and bee survival, as well as spore loads in bees infected with the microsporidian parasite N. ceranae. The results reveal mostly positive effects of thymol on health (increasing levels of immune-related genes and values of oxidative stress parameters, and decreasing Nosema spore loads) when applied to Nosema-infected bees. Moreover, supplementation with thymol did not induce negative effects in Nosema-infected bees. However, our results indicate that in Nosema-free bees, thymol itself could cause certain disorders (affecting bee survival, decreasing oxidative capacity, and downregulation of some immune-related gene expressions), showing that one should be careful with preventive, uncontrolled, and excessive use of thymol. Thus, further research is needed to reveal the effect of this phytogenic supplement on the immunity of uninfected bees.
Remote Photoplethysmography Is an Accurate Method to Remotely Measure Respiratory Rate: A Hospital-Based Trial

Remote photoplethysmography imaging (rPPG) is a new solution proposed to measure vital signs, such as respiratory rate (RR) in teleconsultation, by using a webcam. The results, presented here, aim at evaluating the accuracy of such remote measurement methods, compared with existing measurement methods, in a real-life clinical setting. For each patient, measurement of RR, using the standard system (control), has been carried out concomitantly with the experimental system. A 60-s time frame was used for the measurements made by our rPPG system. Age, gender, BMI, and skin phototype were collected. We performed the intraclass correlation coefficient and Bland–Altman plot to analyze the accuracy and precision of the rPPG algorithm readings. Measurements of RR, using the two methods, have been realized on 963 patients. Comparison of the two techniques showed excellent agreement (96.0%), with most of the patients (n = 924—standard patients) being in the confidence interval of 95% in Bland–Altman plotting. There were no significant differences between standard patients and outlier patients for demographic and clinical characteristics. This study indicates a good agreement between the rPPG system and the control, thus allowing clinical use of this remote assessment of the respiratory rate.
descriptive study of post-operative complications of transurethral resection of prostate

Introduction: Because of the introduction of improved technology like diathermy and visual scopes, Transurethral resection of prostate (TURP) has become a comparatively safer treatment in recent years. However, there is a danger of developing TURP syndrome and electrolyte imbalance, particularly in individuals with high-risk cardiac disease. Aim: This study was performed for the identification of course, duration, and occurrence of complications in post-operative patients with TURP. Materials and Methods: A descriptive study comprising 52 patients was conducted at C.U. Shah Medical College and Hospital, Surendranagar, Gujarat, India from 8th February 2019 to 1st November 2020, covering 20 months. Results: The study focused on the distribution of patients as per age and post-op complications, co-morbid conditions, DRE grading, etc. Also, the study correlates the volume of the prostate with post-operative complications, prostate volume with S-PSA, etc. Furthermore, the study focused on early complications after TURP as well as late post-operative complications after TURP. Conclusion: This descriptive observational study highlighted several postoperative complications after TURP. It was observed that the incidence of complication rate is increasing with an increasing volume of the prostate.
Spectroscopic Characteristics and Speciation Distribution of Fe(III) Binding to Molecular Weight-Dependent Standard Pahokee Peat Fulvic Acid

Peat-derived organic matter, as powerful chelators, is of great significance for the transport of Fe to the ocean and the enhancement of dissolved Fe. However, the iron binding capacity of molecular weight (MW)-fractionated dissolved organic matter is variable, due to its structure and composition heterogeneity. In this work, we used the standard Pahokee Peat fulvic acid (PPFA) as an example, and investigated the spectroscopy properties and Fe(III) binding ability of PPFA and different molecular weight fractions by UV–Vis absorbance and fluorescence spectroscopy and the Donnan Membrane Technique (DMT). The results showed binding sites for Fe(III) at the 263 nm and >320 nm regions in differential absorbance spectra. Upon increasing the iron concentration to 18.00 μmol·L−1, the critical binding capacity was exceeded, which resulted in a decrease in absorbance. Fe(III) was found to prefer to bind to humic-like components, and ultraviolet humic-like fluorophores displayed stronger binding strength. High molecular weight PPFA fractions (>10 kDa) possessed more aromatic and hydrophobic components, displayed a higher degree of humification, and exhibited higher metal binding potential. Furthermore, the speciation analysis and stability constant (cK) were calculated using Donnan membrane equilibrium. The correlation between cK values and PPFA spectral properties demonstrated that aromaticity, hydrophobicity, molecular weight and humification degree were crucial indices of PPFA–Fe(III) affinity. Significantly, the humification degree, represented by HIX, showed the strongest correlation (r = 0.929, p = 0.003), which could be used to estimate the binding strength. This study provides further understanding of the complexation mechanism of iron and DOM in the peat environment and identifies the considerable effect of molecular weight.
Economic impact analysis of the demonstrations in task-forces TF1 and TF3 - Deliverable D15.1: WP15. Economic impacts of the demonstrations, barriers towards scaling up and solutions

García-González, Javier ; Contreras, Alejandro ; Formozo, Camila ; Vallés, Mercedes ; Rivero, Enrique ; Lobato, Enrique ; Ramos, Andrés ; Frías, Pablo ; Egido, Ignacio ; Sánchez, Pedro ; Altiparmakis, Argyrios; Litong-Palima, Marisciel; Cutululis, Nicolaos Antonio; Sørensen, Poul Ejnar; Stryg, Morten ; Hansen, Jan ; Detlefsen, Nina ; Villumsen, Jonas Christoffer ; Andersen, Jeanne; Wöllner, Stephan; Lyck Falk, Kirsten ; Ostos, Plácido ; Rivier, Juan ; Azpiri, Íñigo
Human Evaluation of English-Irish Transformer-Based NMT

In this study, a human evaluation is carried out on how hyperparameter settings impact the quality of Transformer-based Neural Machine Translation (NMT) for the low-resourced English–Irish pair. SentencePiece models using both Byte Pair Encoding (BPE) and unigram approaches were appraised. Variations in model architectures included modifying the number of layers, evaluating the optimal number of heads for attention and testing various regularisation techniques. The greatest performance improvement was recorded for a Transformer-optimized model with a 16k BPE subword model. Compared with a baseline Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) model, a Transformer-optimized model demonstrated a BLEU score improvement of 7.8 points. When benchmarked against Google Translate, our translation engines demonstrated significant improvements. Furthermore, a quantitative fine-grained manual evaluation was conducted which compared the performance of machine translation systems. Using the Multidimensional Quality Metrics (MQM) error taxonomy, a human evaluation of the error types generated by an RNN-based system and a Transformer-based system was explored. Our findings show the best-performing Transformer system significantly reduces both accuracy and fluency errors when compared with an RNN-based model.
The Effect of Vitamin D Deficiency Treatment on Hemoglobin Levels in Hemodialysis Patients: A Double-blind, Randomized Controlled Trial

Background: The role of vitamin D deficiency and inflammation levels in renal anemia is well established. However, few studies with inconsistent findings have examined the relationship between vitamin D supplementation and the prevalence and severity of anemia in the chronic kidney disease. Objectives: The present study aimed to evaluate the effect of vitamin D deficiency treatment on hemoglobin levels in hemodialysis patients. Methods: The present study was a double-blind, randomized controlled trial on 60 hemodialysis patients aged 18 - 83 years, who were undergoing weekly dialysis and receiving erythropoietin. These patients with vitamin D (< 30 ng/mL) referred to the dialysis wards of Imam Khomeini, Razi, and Sina hospitals in Ahvaz in 2019 and were assigned into two groups. One group was treated with 500 mg oral calcium-D tablets three times a day, and another group was treated with 50,000 units of D-Pearls weekly. The two groups were treated for 12 weeks. Then they were re-evaluated in terms of response to treatment and the rate of improvement in hemoglobin levels and erythropoietin dose. Results: In each intervention group, vitamin D levels increased significantly (P < 0.001). D-Pearls improved vitamin D deficiency; however, the difference was not statistically significant. This study also showed a significant increase in hemoglobin (> 1 unit) in the Calcium-D group; however, such a change was not observed in the D-Pearls group (P = 0.3824). Moreover, there was no difference between the two groups in terms of erythropoietin consumption (P = 0.98), blood calcium level (P = 0.57), parathyroid level (P = 0.20), and phosphorus (P = 0.99). Conclusions: Despite its significant limitations, this study revealed vitamin D supplements compensated for vitamin D deficiency, and Calcium-D tablets could improve hemoglobin levels in patients.
Does Technological Innovation Curb O3 Pollution? Evidence from Three Major Regions in China

At the end of 2020, when China’s three-year Blue Sky Protection Campaign was successfully concluded, the main pollutants, led by O3, increased instead of decreasing, creating a new air pollution problem. In this paper, the impact of the technological innovation level on O3 pollution and its inter-regional differences across three major regions from 2014 to 2019 are studied using the dynamic spatial Durbin model. Generally, in terms of ozone pollution showing significant spatial correlation, technological innovations in China are still not effective in curbing ozone pollution. Furthermore, technological innovation is a key factor affecting ozone pollution, and it is heterogeneous, demonstrating that the impact of technological innovation on O3 pollution is different among regions. Technological innovation in Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei significantly reduces local O3 pollution with spillover, while technological innovation in the Yangtze River Delta instead significantly exacerbates local O3 pollution, and the impact of technological innovation on O3 pollution in the Fenwei Plain is not significant. Third, other factors in O3 pollution also differ between regions, with the number of cars and the amount of foreign capital actually utilized being the main factors. Therefore, we should pay attention to the spillover of O3 pollution and technological innovation and strengthen regional cooperation according to our own characteristics to effectively suppress O3 pollution. Finally, the findings of this paper are representative, which provides a possible reference for other similar national or regional studies.
Effect of COVID-19 on Internet Usage of People with Disabilities: A Secondary Data Analysis

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has led our society to lead a life different than before. People, including those with disabilities, have come to rely on information from the Internet. However, there is a lack of empirical studies on the impact of the pandemic on the Internet usage of people with disabilities. To address this gap, this study analyzed data from the 2020 Digital Divide Survey, which comprised data on 7000 non-disabled people and 2200 people with disabilities. This was used to compare the changes in usage of Internet services, and awareness and experience of COVID-19-related non-face-to-face services among non-disabled people and people with physical disabilities, brain lesions, visual impairments, hearing impairments, and language impairments. People with and without disabilities reported increased internet usage, but the increase was significantly higher in the non-disabled population than in people with disabilities (p < 0.05), except for people with language impairments. Specific changes to service usage, experience, and usefulness were different according to the type of disability. The non-disabled population showed a significantly greater increase in the use of social participation services than people with physical disabilities (p < 0.05). The results of this study suggest that digital services need to be developed flexibly to address the unique needs of people with different types of disabilities.
Microplastics Affect the Inflammation Pathway in Human Gingival Fibroblasts: A Study in the Adriatic Sea

The level of environmental microplastics in the sea is constantly increasing. They can enter the human body with food, be absorbed through the gut and have negative effects on the organism’s health after its digestion. To date, microplastics (MPs) are considered new environmental pollutants in the air sea and they are attracting wide attention. The possible toxic effects of MPs isolated at different sea depths of 1, 24 and 78 m were explored in an in vitro model of human gingival fibroblasts (hGFs). MPs isolated from the sea showed different size and were then divided into different sample groups: 1, 24 and 78 m. The results obtained revealed that MPs are able to activate the inflammatory pathway NFkB/MyD88/NLRP3. In detail, the exposure to MPs from 1 and 78 m led to increased levels of inflammatory markers NFkB, MyD88 and NLRP3 in terms of proteins and gene expression. Moreover, cells exposed to MPs showed a lower metabolic activity rate compared to unexposed cells. In conclusion, these findings demonstrate that the inflammation process is stimulated by MPs exposure, providing a new perspective to better understand the intracellular mechanism.
Possibility of Metal Accumulation in Reed Canary Grass (Phalaris arundinacea L.) in the Aquatic Environment of South-Western Polish Rivers

A four-year research study was conducted on aquatic plants (reed canary grass) growing in the beds of three rivers and their tributaries in Lower Silesia, Poland. Metal contents (Cu, Cd, Ni, Pb, Zn, Fe, Mn) were determined in plant samples, metal accumulation in water (BCFw) and sediment (BCFB), Metal Pollution Index (MPI) and Enrichment Factor (EF) were calculated. The highest contents of copper, lead, nickel and cadmium were found in reed canary grass sampled from the Nysa Szalona River. The highest values were recorded for zinc in the Bystrzyca River, and for iron and manganese in the Strzegomka River. The series of metals were as follows: Nysa Szalona and Strzegomka: Cd < Ni < Pb < Cu < Zn < Mn < Fe, Bystrzyca: Cd < Ni < Cu < Pb < Zn < Mn < Fe. Throughout the study period, the lowest values of metals in plants were recorded in 2015 and 2018, and the highest in 2017. The general picture of MPI in aquatic plants is arranged in the series Bystrzyca < Strzegomka < Nysa Szalona. These values classify the studied material at a high level of pollution in all rivers. In the comparison of the two extreme sites, i.e., source–mouth, higher values were found at the mouth of the reservoir, which suggests that metals move with the water current and accumulate more with the direction of the river flow, which is most likely a consequence of the influence of the catchment area as the source of metals. The series of EF enrichment factor values were as follows: Bystrzyca—Ni < Cd < Fe < Cu < Zn < Mn < Pb, Nysa Szalona—Ni < Fe < Zn < Cd < Mn < Cu < Pb, Strzegomka—Ni < Cd < Fe < Zn < Cu < Pb < Mn. For all the samples studied, the values found in spring were much higher than in autumn, which indicates the great importance for research in that area. The levels of copper and iron were within the range of moderate values, lead and manganese reached very high and exceptionally high values, and the remaining metals were within the values described as significant. Bioaccumulation of metals determined relative to bottom sediments was highest in 2017 and lowest in 2018, while bioaccumulation relative to water was highest in 2018 and lowest in 2016. The four-year study found that the metal content in reed canary grass was mostly within the range of mean values presented in the literature from moderately polluted areas. Also, no significant deviation was found from levels that have been recorded for the same rivers for more than two decades.
Individualized Wound Closure—Mechanical Properties of Suture Materials

Wound closure is a key element of any procedure, especially aesthetic and reconstructive plastic surgery. Therefore, over the last decades, several devices have been developed in order to assist surgeons in achieving better results while saving valuable time. In this work, we give a concise review of the literature and present a biomechanical study of different suturing materials under mechanical load mimicking handling in the operating theatre. Nine different suture products, all of the same USP size (4-0), were subjected to a standardized crushing load by means of a needle holder. All materials were subjected to 0, 1, 3 and 5 crushing load cycles, respectively. The linear tensile strength was measured by means of a universal testing device. Attenuation of tensile strength was evaluated between materials and between crush cycles. In the pooled analysis, the linear tensile strength of the suture materials deteriorated significantly with every cycle (p < 0.0001). The suture materials displayed different initial tensile strengths (in descending order: polyglecaprone, polyglactin, polydioxanone, polyamid, polypropylene). In comparison, materials performed variably in terms of resistance to crush loading. The findings were statistically significant. The reconstructive surgeon has to be flexible and tailor wound closure techniques and materials to the individual patient, procedure and tissue demands; therefore, profound knowledge of the physical properties of the suture strands used is of paramount importance. The crushing load on suture materials during surgery can be detrimental for initial and long-term wound repair strength. As well as the standard wound closure methods (sutures, staples and adhesive strips), there are promising novel devices.
Hubungan Explosive Power Otot Tungkai dan Koordinasi Mata-kaki dengan Accuracy Shooting pada Tim Sepak Bola SMA Negeri 1 Dumai

Abstrack: The problem of this research is not optimal of leg muscle power and coordination eye-leg to do shooting football. This research was conducted to determine whether there is relationship of explosive leg muscle power and coodination of eye-leg with shooting accuracy on the football team of SMA N 1 Dumai. Sample in this study is the football team of SMA N 1 Dumai and totaled 18 people. The technique to collecting of sample was ( total sampling). The instrument of this research is test vertical power test jump which aims to measure the skill of shooting a ball. After that processing data with statistic, to test for normality with lilifor test at significant level α0,05. Based on the result of research, it can be concluded as follows. Of the result obtained explosive leg muscle power has no significant relationship with the result accuracy shooting on the football team of SMA N 1 Dumai rcount(0,178) rtab (0,468), there is significant relationship together between explosive leg muscle power and coordination eye-leg against result acuracy shooting on fotball team of SMA N 1 Dumai because Rcount (0,706) >Rtab (0,468).
Investigation of Structural Features of Two Related Lipases and the Impact on Fatty Acid Specificity in Vegetable Fats

One of the indispensable applications of lipases in modification of oils and fats is the possibility to tailor the fatty acid content of triacylglycerols (TAGs), to meet specific requirements from various applications in food, nutrition, and cosmetic industries. Oleic acid (C18:1) and stearic acid (C18:0) are two common long fatty acids in the side chain of triglycerides in plant fats and oils that have similar chemical composition and structures, except for an unsaturated bond between C9 and C10 in oleic acid. Two lipases from Rhizomucor miehei (RML) and Rhizopus oryzae (ROL), show activity in reactions involving oleate and stearate, and share high sequence and structural identity. In this research, the preference for one of these two similar fatty acid side chains was investigated for the two lipases and was related to the respective enzyme structure. From transesterification reactions with 1:1 (molar ratio) mixed ethyl stearate (ES) and ethyl oleate (EO), both RML and ROL showed a higher activity towards EO than ES, but RML showed around 10% higher preference for ES compared with ROL. In silico results showed that stearate has a less stable interaction with the substrate binding crevice in both RML and ROL and higher tendency to freely move out of the substrate binding region, compared with oleate whose structure is more rigid due to the existence of the double bond. However, Trp88 from RML which is an Ala at the identical position in ROL shows a significant stabilization effect in the substrate interaction in RML, especially with stearate as a ligand.