Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bioremediation Technology Potential for Management of Soil and Water Pollution from Anticipated Rapid Industrialization and Planned Oil and Gas Sector in Uganda: A Review

Oil exploitation in many African countries is associated with litigation and conflicts to water and soil pollution. It is because of inadequate planning for management of oil spills and industrial effluents in environmentally sustainable manner. Uganda’s natural resources such as soils and water bodies are threatened by contamination due to rapid industrialization and rural-urban migration in established Industrial Business Parks and planned oil and gas production at Albertine Graben Region. The low level of compliance to industrial effluents discharge standards relevant to specific environmental receptors and activities within oil and gas sector development pose a big question of how to sustain the biodiversity and natural resource management. Experiences from elsewhere have shown bioremediation as a viable and proven option to provide potentially manageable solutions to resulting pollution as a substitute to modern well-known remediation methods, for it is relatively cheaper, more efficient and minimal toxic byproducts after treatment. The most used bioremediation agents in different studies reviewed are bacterial species especially Pseudomonas and Bacillus, followed by Aspergillus a fungi species, microalgae and aquatic plants such as duckweed, macrophytes and pteridophytes. Regardless of the waste produced in either oil and gas sector or industries, these agents have shown greater biodegradation rates. Pseudomonas sp. has a degradation efficiency of oil compounds ranging from 90% - 100%, and Aspergillus sp. 75% - 95%. Some aquatic plants can thrive in created wetlands with relatively still water such as Phragmites australis which can degrade hydrocarbons especially Aromatic compounds with benzene ring up to 95%. It can thrive in salty water with high pH range of 4.8 - 8.2. With industrial wastewater, algae is the most dominant with the degradation rates varying from 65% -100% and bacteria at 70% - 90%. Most of the reported results are in the developed country context. In developing countries, duckweed is reported as the commonest aquatic plant in wastewater treatment for removal of heavy metals because it is more tolerant to a wide range of environmental conditions and produce biomass faster. It has a removal rate of heavy metals between 90% and 100%. Basing on literature data analysis, bacteria are more suitable for treating water from oil pollution using Pseudomonas sp. Phragmites australis is suited for cleaning up oil in both water and soil. Duckweed is the best in treating water polluted with industrial effluents. This paper presents the different bioremediation methods that Uganda can potentially apply to mitigate the increased risk of environmental pollutions from planned industrialization and oil and gas development in the Albertine Graben Region.
Transitions from Separately Crystallized CL-20 and HMX to CL-20/HMX Cocrystal Based on Solvent Media

Cocrystallization is a helpful method for explosives improvement. However, lack of knowledge of the formation mechanism leads to low efficiency in cocrystal preparation. In order to enhance the understanding of the cocrystal formation mechanism, the formation process of CL-20/HMX cocrystals are investigated by using the X-ray diffraction qualitative/quantitative analysis and scanning electron microscopy methods in anhydrous acetone, acetone/H2O solvent, and slightly soluble-medium transition experiments. We find that the formation process of CL-20/HMX cocrystal experiences significant phase transition from CL-20 and HMX separated precipitations to CL-20/HMX cocrystal in acetone solvent, and also in slightly soluble medium. The solvent media and tiny active secondary nuclei are necessary in the phase transition process. On the basis of this paper, we have a more profound understanding of the formation mechanism of cocrystals. It is helpful to select more suitable experimental conditions and make access to .
Between Scylla and Charybdis: Balancing Among Structural Stability and Energy Density of Layered NCM Cathode Materials for Advanced Lithium-Ion Batteries

Two major strategies are currently pursued to improve the energy density of lithium-ion batteries using LiNixCoyMnzO2 (NCM) cathode materials. One is to increase the fraction of redox active Ni (≥80%), which allows larger amounts of Li to be extracted at a given cutoff voltage (Umax). The other is to increase Umax, in particular for medium-Ni content NCM materials. However, the accompanying lattice changes ultimately lead to capacity fading in both cases. Here the structural changes occurring in Li1.02NixCoyMnzO2 (with x = 1/3, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8 and 0.85) during cycling operation in the voltage range between 3.0 and 4.6 V vs Li are quantified by means of operando X-ray diffraction combined with detailed Rietveld analysis. All samples show a large decrease in unit cell volume upon charging, ranging from 2.4% for NCM111 (33% Ni) to 8.0% for NCM851005 (85% Ni). To make a fair comparison of the structural stability of the different NCM materials, energy densities as a function of Umax are estimated and corre.
Distribution of microbial biomass and phospholipid fatty acids in Podzol profiles under coniferous forest

Microbial‐derived phospholipid fatty acids (PLFAs) can be used to characterize the microbial communities in soil without the need to isolate individual fungi and bacteria. They have been used to assess microbial communities of humus layers under coniferous forest, but nothing is known of their distribution in the deeper soil. To investigate the vertical distribution we sampled nine Podzol profiles on a 100‐m‐long transect in a coniferous forest and analysed for their microbial biomass and PLFA pattern to a depth of 0.4 m. The transect covered a fertility gradient from Vaccinium vitis‐idaea forest site type to Vaccinium myrtillus forest site type. The cores were divided into humus (O) and eluvial (E) layers and below that into 10‐cm sections and designated as either illuvial (B) or parent material (C), or as a combination (BC). Two measures of microbial biomass analyses were applied: substrate‐induced respiration (SIR) to determine microbial biomass C (Cmic), and the sum of the extracted microbial‐derived phospholipid fatty acids (totPLFA). The soil fertility had no effect on the results. The Cmic correlated well with totPLFA (r= 0.86). The microbial biomass decreased with increasing depth. In addition the PLFA pattern changed with increased depth as assessed with principal component analysis, indicating a change in the microbial community structure. The composition of the PLFAs in the O layer differed from that in the E layer and both differed from the upper part of the B layer and from the rest of the BC layers. The deeper parts of the B layer (BC1, BC2 and BC3) were similar to one other. The O layer had more 18:2ω6, a PLFA indicator of fungi, whereas the E layer contained relatively more of the PLFAs 16:1ω9, 18:1ω7 and cy19:0 common in gram‐negative bacteria. With increased depth the relative amount of 10Me18:0, the PLFA indicator for actinomycetes, increased. We conclude that the PLFA method is a promising discriminator between the microbial community structures of the horizons in Podzols.
Environmental Chemistry INFLUENCE OF CARBON AND LIPID SOURCES ON VARIATION OF MERCURY AND OTHER TRACE ELEMENTS IN POLAR BEARS (URSUS MARITIMUS)

In the present study, the authors investigated the influence of carbon and lipid sources on regional differences in liver trace element (As, Cd, Cu, total Hg, Mn, Pb, Rb, Se, and Zn) concentrations measured in polar bears (Ursus maritimus) (n1⁄4 121) from 10 Alaskan, Canadian Arctic, and East Greenland subpopulations. Carbon and lipid sources were assessed using dC in muscle tissue and fatty acid (FA) profiles in subcutaneous adipose tissue as chemical tracers. A negative relationship between total Hg and dC suggested that polar bears feeding in areas with higher riverine inputs of terrestrial carbon accumulate more Hg than bears feeding in areas with lower freshwater input. Mercury concentrations were also positively related to the FA 20:1n-9, which is biosynthesized in large amounts in Calanus copepods. This result raises the hypothesis that Calanus glacialis are an important link in the uptake of Hg in the marine food web and ultimately in polar bears. Unadjusted total Hg, Se, and As concentrations showed greater geographical variation among polar bear subpopulations compared with concentrations adjusted for carbon and lipid sources. The Hg concentrations adjusted for carbon and lipid sources in Bering–Chukchi Sea polar bear liver tissue remained the lowest among subpopulations. Based on these findings, the authors suggest that carbon and lipid sources for polar bears should be taken into account when one is assessing spatial and temporal trends of long-range transported trace elements. Environ. Toxicol. Chem. 2012;31:2739–2747. # 2012 SETAC Keywords—Polar bear Mercury Trace elements Spatial trends Carbon and lipid sources
Tumor Necrosis Factor Alpha (TNF-α) and Plasma Glucose Level Changes Due to Dietary Fat and Beta Carotene in Wistar Rats

Background: Beta-carotene (βC), an antioxidant present in fruits and vegetables responsible for the yellow coloration of these plants has been used for ages as remedies against different ailments. The present study was aimed at investigating tumor necrosis factor (TNF-α) and plasma glucose level changes due to dietary fat and β-carotene in Wistar rats. Methods: Thirty (30) male Wistar rats were grouped into 6. Group A was the Control and received distilled water, Group B received high fat diet of 60% fat and 40% rat chow, Group C received 300 mg/kg body weight (bwt) of βC, Group D received high-fat diet for 12 weeks and was treated with 300 mg/kg bwt of βC for 2 weeks, Group E received 300mg/kg bwt of βC for 2 weeks and then high-fat diet for 12 weeks while Group F received high-fat diet for 12 weeks and then treated with 150 Original Research Article mg/kg bwt of βC for 2 weeks. At the end of 14 weeks, the animals were sacrificed; blood samples collected and the livers were harvested, homogenised and assayed. Results: The results showed a significant decrease in plasma glucose level in Groups C and D when compared to Groups A, B and F (P≤0.05). The result of TNF-α assay showed that the TNF-α was significantly higher in Group B compared with the other Groups and was significantly lower in Group E compared to the treatment Groups (P≤0.05). Conclusion: The results of the present study suggest that β carotene can be effective in reducing blood glucose and that consumption of dietary fats sequel the increase in TNF-α and as such could predispose to dietary obesity and cancer in humans and animals.
Clay Addition to Sandy Soil Reduces Nutrient Leaching—Effect of Clay Concentration and Ped Size

ABSTRACT Leaching of nutrients, particularly in sandy soil with low nutrient and water holding capacity (WHC), is a major threat to marine and fresh water pollution. Addition of clay soil to sandy soil could be an option to increase water and nutrient holding capacity of sandy soils, but the effect of clay soil addition may depend on the form in which the clay soil is added and the addition rate. Clay soil was added to sandy soil at rate of 10 or 20% (w/w) finely ground (<2 mm) or 2 and 5 mm peds with and without nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) fertilizer equivalent to 60 kg N ha−1 and 15 kg P ha−1. The clay sand mixture for each treatment was weighed (30 g) in cores with nylon mesh at the bottom. The soils were incubated at 80% WHC for 7 weeks. To obtain leachate, 20 mL reverse osmosis (RO) water was added every week to each core. Leachate was analysed for inorganic N, P, and pH. Soil was analyzed for N, P, and pH before and after the leaching. Clay addition significantly reduced the leaching of N and P compared to sandy soil alone, with greatest reduction by finely ground clay soil and least with 5 mm peds. Compared to sandy soil alone, 83% more N was retained in clay-amended soil and P retention was doubled. This study showed that addition of finely ground clay soil can substantially reduce N and P leaching and thereby increase fertilizer retention compared to sandy soil alone.
Machine Learning Approaches to Refining Post-translational Modification Predictions and Protein Identifications from Tandem Mass Spectrometry

Tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) is the dominant approach for large-scale peptide sequencing in high-throughput proteomic profiling studies. The computational analysis of MS/MS spectra involves the identification of peptides from experimental spectra, especially those with post-translational modifications (PTMs), as well as the inference of protein composition based on the putative identified peptides. In this thesis, we tackled two major challenges associated with an MS/MS analysis: 1) the refinement of PTM predictions from MS/MS spectra and 2) the inference of protein composition based on peptide predictions. We proposed two PTM prediction refinement algorithms, PTM-Clust and its Bayesian nonparametric extension iPTMClust, and a protein identification algorithm, pro-HAP, that is based on a novel two-layer hierarchical clustering approach that leverages prior knowledge about protein function. Individually, we show that our two PTM refinement algorithms outperform the state-of-the-art algorithms and our protein identification algorithm performs at par with the state of the art. Collectively, as a demonstration of our end-to-end MS/MS computational analysis of a human chromatin protein complex study, we show that our analysis pipeline can find high confidence putative novel protein complex members. Moreover, it can provide valuable insights into the formation and regulation of protein complexes by detailing the specificity of different PTMs for the members in each complex.
Difference in volatile composition between the pericarp tissue and inner tissue of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) fruit

Numerous studies have reported the volatile profiles in the whole fruit or pericarp tissue of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) fruit; however, information is limited on the volatile composition in the inner tissue and its contribution to tomato aroma. For this, the pericarps and inner tissues of “Moneymaker,” “UglyRipe,” and “FL 47” fruits were separated before volatile analysis. Result showed that the volatile profiles were quite similar between the pericarp and inner tissue, suggesting the inner tissues also have a contribution to overall aroma quality. Besides the difference in volatile profile among cultivars, a higher concentration of alcohols was observed in the inner tissues of tomato fruit in comparison with that in the pericarp, which was associated with higher levels of 3-methylbutanal, 2-methylbutanal, 3-methylbutanol, and 2-methylbutanol in the inner tissue. These results also imply that different sampling methods might impact tomato aroma quality, which needs further verification via sensory penal. Practical applications The information on the volatile profile in the inner tissue and its contribution to tomato aroma is still rudimentary. In this study, the pericarp and inner tissue were separated from three tomato cultivars of different genetic background, and the volatile compositions were analyzed with HS-SPME-GC-MS. Result showed that the volatile compositions were quite similar between the pericarp and inner tissue, suggesting that the inner tissues also have a contribution to overall aroma quality. Besides, a higher concentration of alcohols was observed in the inner tissues of tomato fruit in comparison with that in the pericarp, which was associated with higher levels of 3-methylbutanal, 2-methylbutanal, 3-methylbutanol, and 2-methylbutanol in the inner tissue. This study will provide the researchers and consumers some useful information on volatile composition in the inner tissue, its contribution to tomato aroma, and the impact of different sampling methods on the volatile profile.
Does the Effect of Revealed Private Information on Initial Public Offering (IPO) First Trading Day Return Differ by IPO Market Heat

By IPO market regime, I decompose the effect of revealed private information on the initial return of IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) into adjusted and unadjusted private information and find: (i) investment banks partially adjust the offer price in return for revealed private information in all but the non-hot IPO market; (ii) the economic importance of private information associated with IPOs (and hence agency costs) is procyclical; and (iii) industry information spillovers between IPOs occur only in the hot and very-hot IPO markets.
Transport, fate, and toxicity of selected public health insecticides in waterways

ABSTRACT Application of public health insecticides for mosquito control has increased dramatically with the recent outbreaks in the continental United States of dengue, chikungunya, and Zika. Mosquito control is often controversial because of the potential impacts on health and the environment due to the chemicals used. The emphasis in this review is to examine the transport, fate, and potential effects of the active ingredients in selected public health insecticides used for mosquito control. Due to the many potential entry points for insecticides, especially in urban areas where use is less monitored and application may be in greater amounts per unit area, this review suggests that a potential focus might be on the prevalence and quantification of the cumulative concentrations of these insecticides in natural systems. Often concentrations resulting from a single application are unlikely to cause mortality, but multiple applications may result in concentrations of environmental concern. Minimizing entrance to waterways and public water supply sources can be achieved by applying insecticides during prime meteorological conditions where drift and volatilization are minimized, using vegetated buffer zones in agricultural areas to prevent runoff, and avoiding application to impervious surfaces in urban areas.
PERUBAHAN POLA KONSUMSI PANGAN RUMAHTANGGA RAWAN PANGAN

Food insecurity in households level is coverage multidimensional problems so that the rate of deteriorate is surely determined by negative interaction of many factors. This paper aims to analyze the changing in food consumption pattern of food insecure households due to the dynamic of situation of national economic using SUSENAS raw data 1996, 1999, and 2002. The food insecure households define as households who consump energy less than 80 % of energy sufficiency (2100 Kcal/cap/day). The result show that: (1) in 1996-2002 period, the share of food expenditure of food insecure households in out Java, in rural and households with agriculture as the main source of income always higher than those who are live in Java, in urban and who their main source of income come from non agriculture activities. When in crisis, the prosperity level of all type of households declined. But, in 2002 it raised back in line with the recovery of national economic (2) energy consumption of food insecure households is always low, only around 70 % of energy sufficiency, and (3) the level of protein consumption is only 40 gram/cap/day in average or about 83.3 % of protein sufficiency. Although there are a difference on protein consumption by island, region, and main source of income, but it is not significant. The same situation appears for the differentiation by time. As the implication, because the dynamic of national economic influenced the consumption pattern and the level of food insecurity so the government programs for economic recovery which deal with income rising should be conducted across all of the region. The priority target should be directed to households with low income who live in rural and who food insecure. Keywords : change, consumption pattern, food insecure households
Production Complementarities in Asset Management

Incentive provision is expected to be a key driver of asset managers’ compensation, yet empirical evidence on performance-based pay has been limited and mixed. This paper delivers a novel perspective on managerial incentives by examining the role of production complementarities between managers and firms, and quantifying to what extent such complementarities are internalized into compensation. Production complementarities naturally arise in asset management because a firm can influence a manager’s expected productivity by teaming her up with the right skill set and by advertising her performance to investors. Different managers benefit from firm externalities differently, and hence face different trade-offs between their current monetary compensation and firm support. Using a unique registry-based dataset on the production and compensation of Israeli mutual fund managers, we find that managers working with more skilled teammates and receiving more advertising receive lower salary today in return for higher expected productivity. Such effects are stronger for more skilled and less visible managers. The results are consistent with the incentive provision theory for forward-looking agents in the presence of production complementarities.
The Informative Value of Central Banks Talks: A Topic Model Application to Sentiment Analysis

Central banks communication has lately become an important tool to guide expectations and its impact on the economy has been acknowledged by the literature. Nowadays central banks speeches face an increasing variety of topics, which are not discriminated by text analysis. In this paper we build a topic-weighted central bank sentiment index as a combination of machine learning and text analysis techniques to investigate large datasets. First, we develop a methodological framework to grid search the best Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model to uncover the latent topics in central banks' speeches and releases published between 2000 and 2021. Then, we build a topic-specific sentiment index based on dictionary techniques. Next, we summarise the results in a topic-weighted Central Bank Sentiment Index (CBSIw) for the Bank of Canada (BoC), the Bank of England (BoE), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Federal Reserve (Fed). We find that the main common driver of the CBSIw is the monetary policy topic, followed by macroprudential policy and payments and settlements. We also uncover bank-specific topics and topics related to new challenges, for example innovation and climate change. Moreover, we find that the CBSIw decreases after the Great Recession, signalling a worsening in sentiment, as well as during the COVID-19 crisis. Finally, we employ a probit regression to further assess the predictive power of our monetary policy topic-specific index. We find that the indicator helps predicting future changes in policy rate, corroborating the evidence that central banks communication signals future monetary policy decisions.
Extreme Temperatures and Loan Defaults: Evidence from Bank-Firm Level Data in Mexico

The frequency and intensity of extreme weather events are likely to increase as climate change unravels. Although there is a large literature documenting detrimental effects on economic activity, there is a lack of evidence on firms' responses to temperature extremes, particularly how their credit management and their ability to repay their existing debt are impacted. We fill this gap by exploiting an extraordinarily detailed data set containing loan-level information for the universe of loans extended by commercial banks to private firms in Mexico. We find that anomalous days of extreme temperature increase quarterly county-level rates of non-performing loans and that the results are driven mainly by excessive heat. The impact is concentrated on agricultural firms, but there is also a non-negligible impact on non-agriculture firms in sectors that are more dependent on local demand. Our results are consistent with general equilibrium effects originated in agriculture that expand to non-agriculture sectors in agricultural regions.