Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Freely Dissolved Organochlorine Pesticides (OCPs) and Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) along the Indus River Pakistan: Spatial pattern, Air-water Exchange and Risk Assessment

Freely dissolved OCPs and PCBs were measured by using polyethylene passive samplers, at 15 sites during 2014 throughout the stretch of Indus River to investigate spatial pattern, air−water exchange gradients and risk assessment. Concentrations (pg/L) of dissolved ∑OCPs and ∑PCBs ranged from 34–1600 and 3–230. Among the detected OCPs, dissolved DDTs (p,p′-DDE, followed by p,p′-DDT) predominated with levels of 0.48 to 220 pg/L. The order of occurrence for other studied OCPs was as follows; HCB, Endosulfans, Chlordanes, and HCHs. Spatially, dissolved (pg/L) ∑OCPs varied (p < 0.05) as: surface water of Alluvial Riverine Zone (ARZ) showed highest levels (114) followed by Frozen Mountain Zone (FMZ) (52.9), Low Lying Zone (LLZ) (28.73) and Wet Mountain Zone (WMZ) (14.43) respectively. However, our zone wise PCBs data did not exhibit significant differences (p > 0.05). The PCA/MLR results showed that pesticides usage in crop/orchard fields and health sector, electric & electronic materials, and widespread industrial activities as the main source of OCPs and PCBs along Indus River. Air-water exchange of OCPs at FMZ, o,p′-DDE, p,p′-DDE and o,p′-DDD exhibited net volatilization while p,p′-DDD/o,p′-DDT showed net deposition, while all other studied zones (i.e., WMZ, ARZ and LLZ) showed net deposition of DDTs. Nevertheless, air-water exchange of PCBs showed that, there was net volatilization at the FMZ, WMZ and ARZ and net deposition at LLZ. Our results showed that OCPs and PCBs contaminated water intake, played an important role towards the considerable cancer/non-cancer risk (HI and CR values) along the Indus River Flood-Plain.
Silent hyperlipidaemia modulated vascular endothelial markers

The aetiology of ischemic heart diseases is mainly based on atherosclerosis of coronary artery. Inflammation and oxidative reactions are initiating and aggravating the illness resulting in pathological remodelling of vasculaturze at site of injury. Endothelium lining of blood vessels participated in the reaction biochemically through releasing some proteins into circulatory system which further complicate the condition. The aim of this study was to determine early diagnosed hyperlipidaemia-associated changes of the plasma level of some of these endothelial biomolecules. Compared to healthy control, hyperlipidaemic patients have significantly increased arginase, metalloendopeptidase, peroxidase, myeloperoxidase, and peroxynitrite with concomitant reduction in arylesterase and nitric oxide. The present study concluded that hyperlipidaemia play a great role in modulation of certain plasma protein markers which might be directly related to patient pathological condition or could be used as a tool for diagnosis or patient follow up indicating the stage of vasculature remodelling, healing, inflammation or resolution.
Revisiting Acetonitrile as Tracer of Biomass Burning in Anthropogenic‐Influenced Environments

Acetonitrile (CH3CN) has been widely employed as biomass burning tracer. However, the current application of CH3CN absolute mixing ratio as the thresholds may misidentify biomass burning due to the interference from other CH3CN sources in anthropogenic‐influenced environments. High levels of CH3CN were observed with minor biomass burning impact but still followed a similar correlation with carbon monoxide (CO), suggesting their shared source, most likely, vehicular emission. By analyzing the available literature including more than 30 worldwide field measurements, the enhancement ratios (EnRs) of CH3CN to CO for biomass burning were found as 2.01 ± 0.16 ppbv/ppmv, well distinguished from the EnRs obtained in urban measurement (0.26 ± 0.04 ppbv/ppmv). An example is given and the application of EnR to identify biomass burning is discussed. The results suggest that the correlation between CH3CN and CO and their EnRs can be used as more specific indicators for biomass burning.
Puberty challenges of female adolescents with visual impairment

Physical, psychological, emotional, and social maturity is one of the main challenges occurring during adolescence and is associated with dramatic changes in adolescents. However, these challenges are worsened when the adolescent has a disability in addition to pubertal changes. Accordingly, the present study aimed to explore the puberty challenges of female adolescents with visual impairment.This study is qualitative in terms of its design and an applied study in terms of its objectives and was conducted using a descriptive phenomenology. The research population included all female adolescents with visual impairment who were studying in high school in Tehran in 2020. The participants were blind and visually impaired girls who were selected from the Narjes educational Complex for Blind Girls using purposive sampling. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews and were saturated after interviewing 15 participants. All interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. The collected data were analyzed using Colaizzi’s seven-step method of data analysis. The challenges faced by the female adolescents with visual impairment were categorized into four main themes including “worrying emotions experienced during puberty,” “development of emotional and love needs,” “redefining social relationships with family and others,” and “lack of information resources on puberty. ” This study showed that the lack of information resources, awareness about puberty for female adolescents with visual impairment, the way others treat the puberty of girls, and adolescents’ own reaction to the phenomenon of puberty affect their quality of life in this period. Therefore, paying attention to the experience of female adolescents with visual impairment about the phenomenon of puberty provides a true picture of the feelings, needs, and challenges for visually impaired female adolescents during puberty, their families, school health educators, health professionals, and school counselors.
Studying the Effect of Metallic Precursor Concentration on the Structural, Optical, and Morphological Properties of Zinc Sulfide Thin Films in Photovoltaic Cell Applications

Thin films of zinc sulfide (ZnS) with different concentrations of zinc acetate have been made by chemical bath deposition technique in acidic medium (pH = 5) on glass substrate using zinc acetate and sodium sulfide as sources of Zn+2 ion and S−2 ion, respectively, and ethylenediaminetetraacetate as complexing agents and sulfuric acid to adjust pH value at a constant deposition temperature of 85°C, and the deposition time of 90 minutes was used. The effect of the concentration of metallic precursor on the structural, morphological, and optical properties of chemical bath deposited zinc sulfide thin films was investigated in this study. The XRD result confirmed mixed phases of crystalline and amorphous structure dominating other phases, which is witnessed by larger crystallite size than other phases. It reveals that the thin films had hexagonal structure at the medium concentration with preferred orientation along (111) plane, and at lower and higher concentration, it showed that film has an amorphous structure in nature. The crystallinity of all the phases significantly enlarged with increasing the zinc precursor concentration. The SEM micrographs showed high-pitched edged irregular-shaped grains covering the substrate with pinholes and bangs. The optical properties investigated by the UV-VIS spectrometer specified a decrease in the optical bandgap of the films between 3.5 eV and 2.6 eV as the zinc acetate concentration in the solution increased from 0.1 to 0.2 M. It showed that the zinc sulfide had high absorption in the UV radiation. The main finding of this paper is that metallic precursor concentration has a significant role in the optical, morphological, and microstructural properties of the cobalt sulfide thin films, which are most suitable for photovoltaic applications.
Do socioeconomic variables explain medicinal plant knowledge and the diseases they treat? A case study in the Boa Vista community, Alagoas, Northeastern Brazil

Abstract Local medicinal plants knowledge varies in relation to factors as age, gender, education, and income. Understanding this variation enables the identification of weaknesses in local medical systems, since access to knowledge is well distributed in different social classes. Socioeconomic variables can influence the quantity of known medicinal plants, and therefore, there may be a qualitative variation in the plant and disease repertoire of different social groups. Thus, we aimed to identify if socioeconomic variables influence the set of known medicinal plants and diseases by people in the Boa Vista community, Sao Jose of Tapera, Alagoas. A total of 33 semi-structured interviews were conducted, using the free-listing technique for data collection. There were no significant differences between the knowledge of men and women from a quantitative point of view. We observed that older interviewees knew more medicinal plants than younger, and there was a significant difference between the medicinal plants known to older and younger people. In terms of cited diseases, there was no difference between gender or age. Therefore, making inferences about qualitative-quantitative aspects of medicinal plant and disease knowledge requires understanding the social structure of the studied community, since people with similar social roles tend to have homogeneous knowledge.
Effect of different fractions of weathered pumice in the formation of humic-like substances

Abstract Polycondensation reactions between amino acids and phenols are one of the pathways for the formation of humic substances, and clay minerals are able to catalyse these reactions. To investigate the catalytic power of allophane, an allophane fraction (ALF) was separated from weathered pumice (WP) that contained imogolite as an impurity by taking advantage of differences in sedimentation velocity. The iron content in the separated ALF was increased by up to 3.0% compared to that in the starting WP (1.3%), and the ALF was further treated with sodium dithionate and citric acid (ALF-DC) to remove the iron. The catalytic powers of WP, ALF and ALFDC were evaluated, based on the degree of darkening of reaction mixtures from polycondensation reactions between catechol and tryptophan, model compounds for precursors of humic substances. The catalytic power for ALF was significantly higher than the corresponding values for WP and ALF-DC. This can be attributed to the high iron content of the ALF, which serves as a Lewis acid that can enhance nucleophilic reactions which occur during the polycondensation reactions.
Soil fungal communities of ectomycorrhizal dominated woodlands across West Africa

Abstract Forests and woodlands in the West African Guineo-Sudanian transition zone contain many tree species that form symbiotic interactions with ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi. These fungi facilitate plant growth by increasing nutrient and water uptake and include many fruiting body-forming fungi, including some edible mushrooms. Despite their importance for ecosystem functioning and anthropogenic use, diversity and distribution of ECM fungi is severely under-documented in West Africa. We conducted a broad regional sampling across five West African countries using soil eDNA to characterize the ECM as well as the total soil fungal community in gallery forests and savanna woodlands dominated by ECM host tree species. We subsequently sequenced the entire ITS region and much of the LSU region to infer a phylogeny for all detected soil fungal species. Utilizing a long read sequencing approach allows for higher taxonomic resolution by using the full ITS region, while the highly conserved LSU gene allows for a more accurate higher-level assignment of species hypotheses, including species without ITS-based taxonomy assignments. We detect no overall difference in species richness between gallery forests and woodlands. However, additional gallery forest plots and more samples per plot would have been needed to firmly conclude this pattern. Based on both abundance and richness, species from the families Russulaceae and Inocybaceae dominate the ECM fungal soil communities across both vegetation types. The community structure of both total soil fungi and ECM fungi was significantly influenced by vegetation types and showed strong correlation within plots. However, we found no significant difference in fungal community structure between samples collected adjacent to different host tree species within each plot. We conclude that within plots, the fungal community is structured more by the overall ECM host plant community than by the species of the individual host tree that each sample was collected from.
How Did the COVID-19 Pandemic Affect Trends in Facial Trauma?

Study Design: Retrospective cohort analysis. Objective: To examine the impact the COVID-19 pandemic and its accompanying societal measures had on the incidence, characteristics, and management of maxillofacial traumatic injuries. Methods: This cohort analysis compared facial trauma injuries presenting to the highest-volume Level I Trauma Center in New Jersey, USA from January 1 to July 31 in 2020 and 2019. Differences in demographics, mechanisms, and interventions were compared between the pandemic period (March 16–July 31, 2020) and the equivalent pre-pandemic date period in 2019 using X2, Fishers Exact, and Mann–Whitney U testing. Results: In total, 616 subjects were included. The daily incidence of facial trauma consults during the 2020 pandemic (1.81 ± 1.1) decreased compared to 2019 (2.15 ± 1.3) (p = 0.042). During the outbreak, there was an increase in the proportion of subjects with positive urine drug screens (21.5% vs. 12.2%; p = 0.011) and injuries related to domestic violence (10.2% vs. 4.5%; p = 0.023). Patients were 30% less likely to be transferred from local hospitals (RR, 0.70 [0.53–0.93]; p = 0.014). Although subjects had a 25% increased risk of presenting with injuries deemed procedural (RR, 1.25 [95% CI, 1.05–1.56]; p = 0.048), a greater proportion were discharged with operative procedures scheduled as outpatients (16.0% vs. 4.9%; p = 0.005). Conclusions: The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted both the epidemiology and management of maxillofacial traumatic injuries, perhaps secondary to modifications in personal and community behaviors or the effects on healthcare systems in our region.
Development and Validation of Interpretable Machine Learning for Stroke Occurrence in Older, Community Chinese Dwellers

Background: Prediction of stroke based on individuals’ risk factors, especially for a first stroke event, is of great significance for primary prevention of high-risk populations. Our study aimed to investigate the applicability of interpretable machine learning for predicting a 2-year stroke occurrence in older adults compared with logistic regression.Methods: A total of 5960 participants consecutively surveyed from July 2011 to August 2013 in the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study were included for analysis. We constructed a traditional logistic regression (LR) and two machine learning methods, namely random forest (RF) and extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), to distinguish stroke occurrence versus non-stroke occurrence using data on demographics, lifestyle, disease history, and clinical variables. Grid search and 10-fold cross validation were used to tune the hyperparameters. Model performance was assessed by discrimination, calibration, decision curve and predictiveness curve analysis.Results: Among the 5960 participants, 131 (2.20%) of them developed stroke after an average of 2-year follow-up. Our prediction models distinguished stroke occurrence versus non-stroke occurrence with excellent performance. The AUCs of machine learning methods (RF, 0.823[95% CI, 0.759-0.886]; XGBoost, 0.808[95% CI, 0.730-0.886]) were significantly higher than LR (0.718[95% CI, 0.649, 0.787], p<0.05). No significant difference was observed between RF and XGBoost (p>0.05). All prediction models had good calibration results, and the brier score were 0.022 (95% CI, 0.015-0.028) in LR, 0.019 (95% CI, 0.014-0.025) in RF, and 0.020 (95% CI, 0.015-0.026) in XGBoost. XGBoost had much higher net benefits within a wider threshold range in terms of decision curve analysis, and more capable of recognizing high risk individuals in terms of predictiveness curve analysis. A total of eight predictors including gender, waist-to-height ratio, dyslipidemia, glycated hemoglobin, white blood cell count, blood glucose, triglycerides, and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol ranked top 5 in three prediction models.Conclusions: Machine learning methods, especially for XGBoost, had the potential to predict stroke occurrence compared with traditional logistic regression in the older adults.
X-Ray Tomography-Based Microstructure Representation in the Snow Microwave Radiative Transfer Model

The modular Snow Microwave Radiative Transfer (SMRT) model simulates microwave scattering behavior in snow via different selectable theories and snow microstructure representations, which is well suited to intercomparisons analyses. Here, five microstructure models were parameterized from X-ray tomography and thin-section images of snow samples and evaluated with SMRT. Three field experiments provided observations of scattering and absorption coefficients, brightness temperature, and/or backscatter with the increasing complexity of snowpack. These took place in Sodankylä, Finland, and Weissfluhjoch, Switzerland. Simulations of scattering and absorption coefficients agreed well with observations, with higher errors for snow with predominantly vertical structures. For simulation of brightness temperature, difficulty in retrieving stickiness with the Sticky Hard Sphere microstructure model resulted in relatively poor performance for two experiments, but good agreement for the third. Exponential microstructure gave generally good results, near to the best performing models for two field experiments. The Independent Sphere model gave intermediate results. New Teubner–Strey and Gaussian Random Field models demonstrated the advantages of SMRT over microwave models with restricted microstructural geometry. Relative model performance is assessed by the quality of the microstructure model fit to micro-computed tomography (CT) data and further improvements may be possible with different fitting techniques. Careful consideration of simulation stratigraphy is required in this new era of high-resolution microstructure measurement as layers thinner than the wavelength introduce artificial scattering boundaries not seen by the instrument.
Clinical intervention with autistic adolescents and adults during the first two months of the COVID-19 pandemic: Experiences of clinicians and their clients

This article describes clinical experiences of therapists with autistic clients during early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic while engaged in remote intervention in Canada. The authors polled their team of mental health clinicians through an email questionnaire and infused their own practice experiences to summarize mental health themes, and adaptation to technology-based intervention. Clinicians shared responses to the pandemic and reported on their transition to remote intervention.
Theoretical Study of Hydrogen Bond Formation in Four Rare Sugars: Gulose, Allose, Altrose, and Talose

Rare sugars are monosaccharides with tremendous potential for applications in pharmaceutical, cosmetics, nutraceutical, and flavors industries. The four rare sugars, including; gulose, allose, altrose and talose are stereoisomers that are different in the hydroxyl group orientation (axial or equatorial) on the C2-4 atoms. The DFT, AIM, and, NBO calculations were used to probe the probability of formation of internal H-bonds in four rare sugars. The AIM analysis identified that altrose and talose can form three predominantly intramolecular H-bonds, whereas gulose and allose revealed one and two H-bonds, respectively and these normal intramolecular H-bonds are mostly closed-shell interactions. The theoretical calculated O-H stretching FT-IR vibrational frequencies confirmed that the intramolecular H-bonds shifted toward low frequencies in comparison to the free hydroxyl group, which caused the red-shift. Also, the lowest IR frequency in each sugar was related to the structure with the highest stabilization energy and the most strongest intramolecular H-bonds.
Hugoniot States and Mie–Grüneisen Equation of State of Iron Estimated Using Molecular Dynamics

The objective of this study was to develop a micromechanical approach for determining the Mie–Grüneisen EOS parameters of iron under the Hugoniot states. The multiscale shock technique (MSST) coupled with molecular dynamics (MD) simulations was employed to describe the shocked Hugoniot relation of single-crystal (SC) and nanocrystalline (NC) iron under high pressures. The Mie–Grüneisen equation of state (EOS) parameters, the cold pressure (Pc), the cold energy (Ec), the Grüneisen coefficient (γ), and the melting temperature (Tm) are discussed. The error between SC and NC iron results was found to be less than 1.5%. Interestingly, the differences in Hugoniot state (PH) and the internal energy between SC and NC iron were insignificant, which shows that the effect of grain size (GS) under high pressures was not significant. The Pc and Ec of SC and NC iron calculated based on the Morse potential were almost the same with those calculated based on the Born–Mayer potential; however, those calculated based on the Born–Mayer potential were a little larger at high pressures. In addition, several empirical and theoretical models were compared for the calculation of γ and Tm. The Mie–Grüneisen EOSs were shown on the 3D contour space; the pressure obtained with the Hugoniot curves as the reference was larger than that obtained with the cold curves as the reference.
The Effects of Plasma-Activated Water on Heavy Metals Accumulation in Water Spinach

Toxic heavy metals accumulate in crops from the environment through different routes and may interfere with biochemical reactions in humans, causing serious health consequences. Plasma technology has been assessed for the promotion of seed germination and plant growth in several past studies. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to evaluate whether the growth rate of plants can be increased with the application of non-thermal plasma, as well as to reduce the accumulation of heavy metals in leafy vegetables (water spinach). In this study, several kinds of plasma treatments were applied, such as treatment on the seeds (PTS + NTW), irrigation water (NTS + PAW) or both (PTS + PAW). The results of the study showed that the heavy metals accumulated in water spinach were affected by the heavy metals available in the soil. The bioconcentration factor (BCF) of Cd in water spinach decreased from 0.864 to 0.543 after plasma treatment in seed or irrigating water, while the BCF of Pb was low and did not show any significant changes. Therefore, the results suggest that plasma treatment may suppress Cd absorption, but not for Pb. In this study, plasma treatment did not help to improve the product yield of water spinach planted in Cd-added soil. In the future, fertilizers can be used to supply nutrients that are not provided by plasma-activated water to support the growth of water spinach.