Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cells Derived from Human Long Bone Appear More Differentiated and More Actively Stimulate Osteoclastogenesis Compared to Alveolar Bone-Derived Cells

Osteoblasts derived from mouse skulls have increased osteoclastogenic potential compared to long bone osteoblasts when stimulated with 1,25(OH)2 vitamin D3 (vitD3). This indicates that bone cells from specific sites can react differently to biochemical signals, e.g., during inflammation or as emitted by bioactive bone tissue-engineering constructs. Given the high turn-over of alveolar bone, we hypothesized that human alveolar bone-derived osteoblasts have an increased osteogenic and osteoclastogenic potential compared to the osteoblasts derived from long bone. The osteogenic and osteoclastogenic capacity of alveolar bone cells and long bone cells were assessed in the presence and absence of osteotropic agent vitD3. Both cell types were studied in osteogenesis experiments, using an osteogenic medium, and in osteoclastogenesis experiments by co-culturing osteoblasts with peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). Both osteogenic and osteoclastic markers were measured. At day 0, long bones seem to have a more late-osteoblastic/preosteocyte-like phenotype compared to the alveolar bone cells as shown by slower proliferation, the higher expression of the matrix molecule Osteopontin (OPN) and the osteocyte-enriched cytoskeletal component Actin alpha 1 (ACTA1). This phenotype was maintained during the osteogenesis assays, where long bone-derived cells still expressed more OPN and ACTA1. Under co-culture conditions with PBMCs, long bone cells also had a higher Tumor necrose factor-alfa (TNF-α) expression and induced the formation of osteoclasts more than alveolar bone cells. Correspondingly, the expression of osteoclast genes dendritic cell specific transmembrane protein (DC-STAMP) and Receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa-Β ligand (RankL) was higher in long bone co-cultures. Together, our results indicate that long bone-derived osteoblasts are more active in bone-remodeling processes, especially in osteoclastogenesis, than alveolar bone-derived cells. This indicates that tissue-engineering solutions need to be specifically designed for the site of application, such as defects in long bones vs. the regeneration of alveolar bone after severe periodontitis.
Molecular identification and phylogenetic analysis of a Callosciurus notatus complete mitogenome from Peninsular Malaysia

Abstract The mitogenome of a plantain squirrel, Callosciurus notatus, collected from Bukit Tarek Forest Reserve (Extension), Selangor, Malaysia was sequenced using BGISEQ-500RS technology. The 16,582 bp mitogenome consists of 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA genes, 2 ribosomal RNA genes, and 1 control region. A phylogenetic and BLASTn analysis against other available datasets showed that the mitogenome matched with 99.49% similarity to a previously published C. notatus mitogenome from Peninsular Malaysia. However, it also diverged by nearly 8% (92.24% match) from a second previously published mitogenome for the same species, sampled in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. This suggests a difference in landscape features between both localities might affect its genetic connectivity.
A role for long-range, through-lattice coupling in microtubule catastrophe

Microtubules are cylindrical polymers of αβ-tubulin that play critical roles in fundamental processes like chromosome segregation and vesicular transport. Microtubules display dynamic instability, switching stochastically between growing and rapid shrinking as a consequence of GTPase activity in the lattice. The molecular mechanisms behind microtubule catastrophe, the switch from growing to rapid shrinking, remain poorly defined. Indeed, two-state stochastic models that seek to describe microtubule dynamics purely in terms of the biochemical properties of GTP- and GDP-bound αβ-tubulin incorrectly predict the concentration-dependence of microtubule catastrophe. Recent studies provided evidence for three distinct conformations of αβ-tubulin in the lattice that likely correspond to GTP, GDP.Pi, and GDP. The incommensurate lattices observed for these different conformations raises the possibility that in a mixed nucleotide state lattice, neighboring tubulin dimers might modulate each other’s conformations and hence their biochemistry. We explored whether incorporating a GDP.Pi state or the likely effects of conformational accommodation can improve predictions of catastrophe. Adding a GDP.Pi intermediate did not improve the model. In contrast, adding neighbor-dependent modulation of tubulin biochemistry improved predictions of catastrophe. Conformational accommodation should propagate beyond nearest-neighbor contacts, and consequently our modeling demonstrates that long-range, through-lattice effects are important determinants of microtubule catastrophe.
DETERMINATION EFFECTS OF PROCESS VARIABLES ON NITROGEN PRODUCTION PSA SYSTEM BY MATHEMATICAL MODELING

A dynamic model for a N2-PSA system is developed based on linearized mass transfer rate expressions and biocomponent langmuir isotherm. Constant pressure is assumed during adsorption and desorption but nonlinear relationship for pressure is considered during the pressurization and blow down steps. The mass transfer equations are considered and developed for all steps. After, the proposed model is validated using experimental data; the simulations studies are performed on investigate the effect of changing various process variables, such as duration of PSA steps, bed length and feed inlet velocity.
Intraspecific variation in photosynthetic nitrogen-use efficiency is positively related to photosynthetic rate in rice (Oryza sativa L.) plants

To explore the natural variation in leaf photosynthesis and investigate its relations with leaf nitrogen (N) status, 121 rice cultivars were pot-grown and their leaf photosynthetic rate (PN) and N content were measured on the flag leaves at heading stage before anthesis. The results showed that there were substantial natural variations in PN, leaf N content based on leaf area and leaf mass, and photosynthetic N-use efficiency (PNUE). PN ranged between 15.4 and 32.6 μmol m-2 s-1; PN and PNUE of four widely grown cultivars in China were significantly lower than PN and PNUE of the cultivar Nancay PA, which possessed the highest values for PN and PNUE. Moreover, PNUE was positively related to PN across cultivars, the high PNUE was related to high stomatal conductance, high transpiration, and low leaf mass per area. We concluded that intraspecific variation in PNUE is positively related to PN in rice plants.
Geohelminth among Public School Children in Douala Metropolis: Prevalence, Perception and Associated Risk Factors

In the current estimate, approximately two billion people are infected with soil-transmitted helminths (STHs) worldwide and more than 550 million school-age children live in areas where these parasites are extensively transmitted. Studies have indicated the prevalence of intestinal parasites in rural settings in Cameroon. However, there are paucity of information on the prevalence and risk factor associated with STHs in school going children in Douala metropolis. The objectives of the study were to determine the prevalence and assess the risk factors associated with STH infections among school children in three government primary schools in Douala. A school-based cross-sectional study was carried out from April to June 2016 to estimate the prevalence, and associated factors with regards to STH transmission using multivariate regression analysis. School children with the age range between 5 and 15 years old were randomly selected from three government primary schools from different Subdivisions in the Wouri Division. Among the 320 school children that were enrolled, the overall prevalence of STH was 41.3 % (132/320). The most dominant STH specie in the present study was A. lumbricoides (28.7%), followed by N. americanus (8.1%) and T. trichuria (6.8%). Of the total number of school children that participated in the study, 118 (36.8 %) had monoinfections, 12 (3.6 %) double infections and 2 (0.6 %) triple infections. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that nails hygiene, family of less than 3 children and children less than 9 years old were predictors of STH infection. Attending EP Newbell and being in grade 2, increased the risk of STH by 4 times. The work indicated a high prevalence of STHs among school age children. Annual mass deworming campaign might not be enough to eliminate STHs in school age children in Douala. Health education and improved sanitation and personal hygiene might hold the key for a successful control and elimination of STHs infection in this setting.
Simulated Impacts of Soy and Infrastructure Expansion in the Brazilian Amazon: A Maximum Entropy Approach

Historically, the expansion of soy plantations has been a major driver of land-use/cover change (LUCC) in Brazil. While a series of recent public actions and supply-chain commitments reportedly curbed the replacement of forests by soy, the expansion of the agricultural commodity still poses a considerable threat to the Amazonian and Cerrado biomes. Identification of areas under high risk of soy expansion is thus paramount to assist conservation efforts in the region. We mapped the areas suitable for undergoing transition to soy plantations in the Legal Amazon with a machine-learning approach adopted from the ecological modeling literature. Simulated soy expansion for the year 2014 exhibited favorable validation scores compared to other LUCC models. We then used our model to simulate how potential future infrastructure improvements would affect the 2014 probabilities of soy occurrence in the region. In addition to the 2.3 Mha of planted soy in the Legal Amazon in 2014, our model identified another 14.7 Mha with high probability of soy conversion in the region given the infrastructure conditions at that time. Out of those, pastures and forests represented 9.8 and 0.4 Mha, respectively. Under the new infrastructure scenarios simulated, the Legal Amazonian area under high risk of soy conversion increased by up to 2.1 Mha (14.6%). These changes led to up to 11.4 and 51.4% increases in the high-risk of conversion areas of pastures and forests, respectively. If conversion occurs in the identified high-risk areas, at least 4.8 Pg of CO2 could be released into the atmosphere, a value that represents 10 times the total CO2 emissions of Brazil in 2014. Our results highlight the importance of targeting conservation policies and enforcement actions, including the Soy Moratorium, to mitigate future forest cover loss associated with infrastructure improvements in the region.
Verbal suggestions about treatment effectiveness do not modulate the effectiveness of a laboratory model of EMDR therapy: Results of two preregistered studies

Background: As for many psychotherapies, there is ongoing discussion about the role of specific versus unspecific mechanisms in the effectiveness of Eye-Movement and Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder. However, research directly examining the potential role of non-specific mechanisms in EMDR is scarce. Objectives: Here, we address the role of one non-specific factor that is often put forward, namely treatment effectiveness expectations, in a laboratory model of EMDR therapy. Method: In a lab-based study (N = 96) and an online study (N = 173), we gave participants verbal instructions to manipulate their treatment expectations. Instructions emphasized EMDR’s effectiveness or infectiveness. Then, participants were asked to recollect an unpleasant autobiographical memory with or without making eye-movements. Results: In line with previous studies, we found significant reductions of reported vividness and emotionality of negative autobiographical memories. However, this effect was not modulated by manipulated treatment efficacy expectations. It must be noted that manipulation checks indicated that it was difficult to influence treatment effectiveness expectations using verbal suggestions. Conclusions: These findings corroborate the results of two earlier reports, suggesting that the role of treatment expectations in EMDR therapy may be limited.
Coding Agricultural Education for Innovative Information and Communication Technology in Colleges of Education in Benue and Nasarawa States, Nigeria

Purpose – The study investigated coding agricultural education for innovative information and communication technology in Colleges of Education in Benue and Nasarawa States Nigeria.Method – The study employed a descriptive survey design. Three research questions were formulated to guide the study. The population of the study was 51 lecturers from the Colleges of Education in the study area. There was no sampling as all the populations were used as respondents. The instrument used for data collection was a 22 items questionnaire developed from literature reviewed titled “CAEITQ” (Coding Agricultural Education for Innovative ICT questionnaire). The Cronbach Alpha method of reliability was used to determine the internal consistency of the instrument and a reliability coefficient of 0.77 was obtained.Results – Findings from the study revealed that respondents required all the items on digital design and data visualization, digital programming and coding analysis and digital product management skills in coding agricultural education for innovative ICT in Colleges of Education.Conclusion – It was concluded that coding agricultural education for innovative ICT is the most potent weapon for paradigm shift from the traditional method of teaching and learning by both lecturers and students.Recommendations – It was recommended amongst others that lecturers of Agricultural Education in the various Colleges of Education be trained in digital programming and coding analysis in agricultural education for effective teaching and learning.Research Implications – The implication of this study is that utilization of digital coding, design, visualization, and programming skills in agricultural education will enhance effective teaching by lecturers in the area of study.
A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF DETERMINANTS OF ISLAMIC AND CONVENTIONAL BANKING PERFORMANCES IN INDONESIA

This study attempts to explore comparatively the determinants of financial performances between the conventional and Islamic banks in Indonesia. The determinants investigated in the study include liquidity, non-performing financing, capital adequacy, and operational cost. The samples of this study are three state-owned conventional banks and three Islamic banks that were selected by the purposive sampling technique. Based on the panel regression analysis, the study found that, for the conventional banks, capital adequacy, liquidity, and operational cost had significant influences on banks' performances, while the non-performing loan had an insignificant effect. On the other hand, for the Islamic banks, the liquidity, non-performing financing, and operational cost had significant influences on banks’ performance, while capital adequacy had an insignificant effect. These findings provide important implications for the respective banks to design a proper financial policy to enhance their performances by focusing on the significant determinants affecting banks' performances.
Comparison of Fatty Acids in the Muscles and Liver of Pond-Cultured and Wild Perch, Perca fluviatilis (L.), in Poland

This study investigated the fatty acid composition of Eurasian perch, (Perca fluviatilis L.) from pond polyculture with (White Rawska), and populations from Lakes Mosąg and Wadąg. The eicosapentaenoic fatty acid EPA in muscles of the examined groups did not differ (P>0.05). A lower content of eicosapentaenoic fatty acid was noted in the liver of perch from Lake Mosąg than the other fish examined (P≤0.05). Docosapentaenoic fatty acid DHA content in the liver of perch from Lake Wadąg (23.03%) and the pond-cultured perch were higher than in the perch from Lake Mosąg (P≤0.05). The pond-cultured perch (P≤0.05) had significantly lower content of docosapentaenoic fatty acid in muscles. The muscles of perch from Lake Wadąg (38.61%) contained more n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid PUFA than the other studied fish (P≤0.05), whereas the liver of fish from this lake (32.32%) and pond (33.73%) had higher values of n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid PUFA than perch from Lake Mosąg (24.62%) (P≤0.05). Fish had a higher content of n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid than n-6 and low levels of fat and may be an important dietetic fish food from a consumer health point of view.
HyCAD-OCT: A Hybrid Computer-Aided Diagnosis of Retinopathy by Optical Coherence Tomography Integrating Machine Learning and Feature Maps Localization

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) imaging has major advantages in effectively identifying the presence of various ocular pathologies and detecting a wide range of macular diseases. OCT examinations can aid in the detection of many retina disorders in early stages that could not be detected in traditional retina images. In this paper, a new hybrid computer-aided OCT diagnostic system (HyCAD) is proposed for classification of Diabetic Macular Edema (DME), Choroidal Neovascularization (CNV) and drusen disorders, while separating them from Normal OCT images. The proposed HyCAD hybrid learning system integrates the segmentation of Region of Interest (RoI), based on central serious chorioretinopathy (CSC) in Spectral Domain Optical Coherence Tomography (SD-OCT) images, with deep learning architectures for effective diagnosis of retinal disorders. The proposed system assimilates a range of techniques including RoI localization and feature extraction, followed by classification and diagnosis. An efficient feature fusion phase has been introduced for combining the OCT image features, extracted by Deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), with the features extracted from the RoI segmentation phase. This fused feature set is used to predict multiclass OCT retina disorders. The proposed segmentation phase of retinal RoI regions adds substantial contribution as it draws attention to the most significant areas that are candidate for diagnosis. A new modified deep learning architecture (Norm-VGG16) is introduced integrating a kernel regularizer. Norm-VGG16 is trained from scratch on a large benchmark dataset and used in RoI localization and segmentation. Various experiments have been carried out to illustrate the performance of the proposed system. Large Dataset of Labeled Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) v3 benchmark is used to validate the efficiency of the model compared with others in literature. The experimental results show that the proposed model achieves relatively high-performance in terms of accuracy, sensitivity and specificity. An average accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of 98.8%, 99.4% and 98.2% is achieved, respectively. The remarkable performance achieved reflects that the fusion phase can effectively improve the identification ratio of the urgent patients’ diagnostic images and clinical data. In addition, an outstanding performance is achieved compared to others in literature.
Haematological Alterations among Cement Loaders in Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Background: Exposure to cement dust without necessary precautions to prevent its inhalation is found to cause respiratory, dermatological, ocular as well as hematological problems and this is a matter of great concern to the health of cement loaders. Aim of Study: This study was aimed at determining haematological alterations among cement loaders in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Study Design: Cross sectional study design. Methodology: A total of 100 apparently healthy male subject consisting of 50 cement loaders and 50 non cement loaders aged between the ages of 2045years old were recruited for the study. Four millilitres (4 mls) of blood was collected aseptically from the antecubital vein of each participant using standard venepuncture technique into ethylene diamine tetra acetic acid (EDTA) anticoagulated vacutainer bottles with proper mixing to avoid blood clotting and then analysed using Sysmex haematology autoanalyser. Graphpad prism version 6.2 was used to analyse the data obtained. Results: Results obtained showed a statistically higher value (p<0.05) in platelet count (p=0.0001), lower values (p<0.05) in haemoglobin concentration (Hb), Packed cell volume (PCV), Mean cell Original Research Article Jacob et al.; AJMAH, 18(7): 1-8, 2020; Article no.AJMAH. 58616 2 volume (MCV) and Mean cell haemoglobin (MCH) (p=0.0001). No significant difference (p>0.05) was observed in the mean red blood cell (RBC) count value (p=0.3110), white blood cell (WBC) count (p=0.8138) and mean cell haemoglobin concentration (MCHC) (p=0.0584) respectively. Conclusion and Recommendation: This study has confirmed that there are haematological alterations among cement loaders in Port Harcourt, Nigeria and these alterations are attributed to inhalation of cement dust during work. It is recommended that cement loaders should be mandated to use appropriate personal protective equipment during work hours and around areas where cement dust are generated.
Do firms lease to hedge? CEO risk‐taking and operating lease intensity

Correspondence Erik Devos, The University of Texas at El Paso, Economics and Finance, Business Room 236, 500 W University, El Paso, TX 79902. Email: hdevos@utep.edu Abstract Operating leases are used extensively for financing, but their ability to separate ownership and use also creates hedging opportunities. We investigate whether firms recognize such opportunities by examining the relation between chief executive officer (CEO) risk‐taking incentives and the use of operating leases. Consistent with firms using operating leases to hedge, we find higher CEO risk‐taking incentives lower operating lease intensity. To address endogeneity, we use the adoption of Statement of Financial Accounting Standards 123R as an exogenous shock to option compensation, dynamic panel generalized method of moments, simultaneous equations, and change regressions. Our results are robust to placebo and alternative tests.
Contrastive Analysis between Indonesian and English Declarative Sentences

The issue of English acquisition in Indonesian context where English is taught as a foreign language has been circulating for years. The presents study aims at contrasting two languages as, Indonesian language as the Source Language (SL) and English as the Target Language (TL). Participants were chosen purposively and generated 10 students of Senior High School. Data were collected through written test. The researcher provides 21 Indonesian declarative sentences as the main instrument. The result of this research was initiated qualitatively. The findings of the study indicate that the similarities of declarative sentence patterns between Indonesia and English language revealed in three categories. They are transitive, bitransitive, and intransitive. Furthermore, the differences are indicated by four categories, those are nominal, adjectival, prepositional, and numeral category. The presents study suggests to initiate the study of contrastive analysis in different languages to obtain deeper understanding and horizon about the language.