Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Role of Calcium Ions to Improve Activity of Chitinase Isolated from Vibrio sp

Chitinase (EC 3.2.1.14) plays a crucial role in chitin degradation, specifically breaking down the 1→4 β-glycosidic bonds of N-acetyl-D-glucosamine (GlcNAc) to produce its monoor oligomers. This study aims to study the characteristics of chitinase from Vibrio sp. (isolated from tiger shrimp in Indonesia) and explore the role of calcium ions (Ca) in increasing chitinase activity. The optimum condition for chitinase activities is pH 7.5, 45 C of temperature, and 120 min of incubation time. The enzyme activity parameters such as Km and Vmax values were calculated by varying the concentration of Ca, namely: 0 % ; 0.2 % ; 0.4 %; 0.6% ; 0.8 %. The final product of the chitinase reaction, the GlcNAc, is then used to measure the enzyme activity based on the Somogyi-Nelson method. The results showed that chitinase isolated from Vibrio sp. has increasing activity with the addition of Ca. Without the addition of Ca, the Km and Vmax of chitinase were 7.781 μmol mL and 0.066 μmol min, respectively. The treatment of 0.4 % Ca shows optimum activity with the Km and Vmax at 6.723 μmol mL and 0.079 μmol min, respectively. The results showed the potential use of Ca as a chitinase activator to fulfill demands for energy-efficient and economically profitable chitinase usage.
EQUIVARIANT GEOMETRY OF ODD-DIMENSIONAL COMPLETE INTERSECTIONS OF TWO QUADRICS

Fix a ﬁnite group G . We seek to classify varieties with G -action equivariantly birational to a representation of G on aﬃne or projective space. Our focus is odd-dimensional smooth complete intersections of two quadrics, relating the equivariant rationality problem with analogous Diophantine ques- tions over nonclosed ﬁelds. We explore how invariants – both classical cohomological invariants and recent symbol constructions – control rationality in some cases.
Analysis of Factors Determining Global Payment Imbalances

Purpose: The aim of the paper is to identify and assess the impact of the determinants of global payment imbalances in 2000-2019. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study used the desk research method, including critical analysis of the recent literature and econometric methods of data analysis. The assessment of the evolution of global payment imbalances was carried out using the index of global payment imbalances (GI), while regression analysis based on panel data was used to assess the impact of factors influencing payment imbalances. Findings: The research proves that the factors significantly influenced the current account balances (CAB) in the analyzed countries were, real effective exchange rate, GDP growth, household consumption and government consumption, investment, government budget balance, terms of trade, and crude oil trade balance. Practical Implications: The conducted analyses allowed to formulate several recommendations for economic policy. China's exchange rate policy ceased to be the key factor generating global payment imbalances. Moreover, the change in China's economic model of reducing the role of external drivers of economic growth (export demand) and increasing the role of internal drivers (domestic demand) contributes to reducing China's external imbalances. Whereas, the sources of the U.S. current account deficit are particularly internal factors (domestic absorption). The government budget balance is one of the most important factors determining the CAB. Reducing government spending, can become an effective instrument to improve the current account balance. In addition, the balance of crude oil trade is a factor that has a large impact on the CAB. The energy transition of countries towards renewable sources can reduce global payment imbalances. Originality/value: The results contribute to the discussion on the determinants of the global payment imbalances. In this approach, a comprehensive assessment for all countries and by group is possible.
THE METHOD OF FUEL REARRANGEMENT CONTROL CONSIDERING FUEL ELEMENT CLADDING DAMAGE AND BURNUP

The method of LWR fuel element (FE) cladding damage calculation which allows us to reduce the safety factor five times, when estimating cladding durability according to the strength criteria, has been described. The criterion model of FE properties control efficiency and the probabilistic model of FE operating calculated parameters, have been developed. The method of VVER-1000 fuel rearrangement control which allows us to find rearrangement algorithms having the minimum values of maximum and average cladding damage, as well as the maximum uniformity of damage and burnup among all the FAs for the rearrangement algorithm, has been proposed.
Urbanizing food systems: exploring opportunities for rural transformation

The IFAD Research Series has been initiated by the Strategy and Knowledge Department in order to bring together cutting-edge thinking and research on smallholder agriculture, rural development and related themes. As a global organization with an exclusive mandate to promote rural smallholder development, IFAD seeks to present diverse viewpoints from across the development arena in order to stimulate knowledge exchange, innovation, and commitment to investing in rural people. Abstract Urbanization is transforming food systems across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia in conjunction with other dynamics such as rising average welfare. Where overall food demand is projected to increase approximately 2.5-fold in sub-Saharan Africa and 1.7-fold in South Asia, urban demand will rise two to four times more. In particular, the demand for high-value products such as dairy and processed foods will multiply. A further increase in economic inequality, in combination with the growing urban populations, is expected to pose a risk to future food security. Uncertainties in projections are large, however, because of interacting and unpredictable socio-economic and environmental developments and events, as well as the future implementation and operation of policies and investments. This paper shows that, potentially, the anticipated rise in food demand by 2050 can largely be met regionally, especially in most parts of India and sub-Saharan Africa, specifically southern Africa. Water-saving measures and improved agricultural practices must be implemented to meet this scenario, although the impacts of climate change can decrease yield by up to 15 per cent. However, the potential yield increases or diversification will not contribute automatically to inclusive rural transformation. Conversely, urbanization may potentially increase rural inequality and poverty. Smallholder farmers located close to expanding cities are at risk of losing their land to urbanization processes. Also, people living in isolated areas far away from growing urban food markets or rural people who lack access to inputs, information and markets are at risk of losing out. To allow all rural food system actors to profit from the changing and growing urban markets, the spatial patterns of urbanization, the quality of rural-urban linkages and the functionality of secondary towns are of pivotal importance. Physical and communicative proximity and access to urban markets for all can provide better access to finance, inputs, information and services. Furthermore, off-farm employment opportunities can arise in the developing value chains. To realise the opportunities, this paper identifies a range of social, physical, spatial, economic and institutional conditions that enable inclusive rural transformation.
Evaluation of Hepatoprotective Activity of Ethanol Extract of Ricinus communis on Emamectin Benzoate-Induced Hepatotoxicity in Male Guinea Pigs

The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of emamectin benzoate (EB) an organophosphorus pesticide on biochemical parameters and enzyme activities in the liver of adult male guinea pigs as well as the possible role of R. communis extract in the attenuation of EB-induced change. The animals were divided randomly into seven groups of five guinea pigs in each group. Group I: served as the control group and were received oral administered distilled water, Group II: were orally administrated with EB (2mg/kg), Group III: were orally given EB (2mg/kg) + silymarin (100mg/kg), Group IV: were given the ethanol leaves extracts of R. communis (100 mg/kg) orally, Group V: was given the ethanol leaves extracts of R. communis (200 mg/kg) orally, Group VI: were orally given EB (2mg/kg) + ethanol leaves extracts of R. communis (100mg/kg) and Group VII: were orally given EB (2mg/kg) + ethanol leaves extracts of R. communis (200 mg/kg)daily for 10 days. On day 11, all animals were anesthetized with chloroform and blood was collected for biochemical analysis and they were dissected liver for histopathological examination, they were kept in fixative. EB increased the level of serum AST, ALT, ALP, and total bilirubin. EB also, caused many histopathological changes such as cytoplasmic vacuolization, dilated and congested blood vessels with hemorrhage, ballooning hepatocyte, infiltration with inflammatory cells, nuclear pyknosis, karyorrhexis and karyolysis, congestion of portal vein, hyperplasia of lining epithelium of bile duct indicated liver damage. While the ethanolic extract of R. communis (100 mg/kg and 200 mg/kg) protected the liver from intoxication induced by EB in guinea pigs through normalization of liver indicators and decreases the level of histopathological lesions. Warda M. A. Kaidama*1, Hussein A. Mahdi2, Nabil A. AL-Yafrsi2, Safwan A. AL-Baz2, Mohammed A. Alshami2, Shaaib Y. AL-Gumaei2, Maged A. ALGumaei2, Samam H. AL-Gumaei2, Ali A.Badr2 1Biology Department, Science Collage, Ibb University, Ibb, Yemen-70270. 2Department of Pharmacy, Faculty of Allied Medical Sciences, Aljazeera University, Ibb, Yemen-70270. Submitted: 25 November 2021 Accepted: 30 November 2021 Published: 30 December 2021 www.ijppr. humanjournals.com Citation: Warda M. A. Kaidama et al. Ijppr.Human, 2021; Vol. 23 (1): 200-212. 20
Demographics and antimicrobial susceptibility patterns of lower respiratory tract infections in intensive care unit of a teaching hospital in South India

Aim: We aimed to study the distribution and antimicrobial susceptibility patterns of lower respiratory tract infections over a six– month period in the medical and surgical intensive care units at NRI Academy of Medical Sciences, in the Southern Region of India. Methodology: This was a retrospective study conducted from June 2019 to December 2019. The study included all patients of either gender, aged above 18 y, admitted in the medical and surgical intensive care units for whom specimens for culture were positive for lower respiratory tract infections. The data was compared for the location, type, number of isolates and their antibiotic susceptibility. The data was analyzed using the
Role of Ultrasound in Diagnosis and Follow Up of an Unusual Case of Giant Cell Arteritis: Case Report and Review of Literature

Background: Giant Cell Arteritis (GCA) is a systemic granulomatous arteritis affecting prevalently elderly patients, also called “temporal arteritis” for its predominant vascular distribution. However other large/medium-size-arteries can be involved. Common manifestations of the disease are headache, fever, visual loss, jaw claudication. Stroke is an infrequent consequence of the arterial damage. Temporal artery biopsy (TAB) has long been considered the golden standard in GCA diagnosis, despite its low sensitivity. According to new European League against Rheumatism (EULAR) recommendations (2017), superficial temporal artery (STA) or axillary artery color Doppler ultrasound (CDUS) is recommended as the first imaging modality in patients with suspected predominantly cranial GCA. Clinical report: We describe a case of dizziness and gait instability associated with cerebellar stroke and neurosonological evidence of ‘’halo sign’’ (the most relevant CDUS finding compatible with GCA) in right extracranial vertebral artery (VA) and STAs. A stenotic flow in left VA and a demodulated flow in basilar artery (BA) were also detected. The patient immediately started steroids, before performing computed tomography angiography (CTA) of supra aortic trunks (SAT) and positron emission tomography (PET). Discussion and Conclusion: in this case of atypical presentation/vascular distribution of GCA, CDUS allowed early diagnosis and therapy. According to 2017 EULAR recommendations TAB was avoided, given the results of CDUS and PET. CDUS is a useful diagnostic tool both in ictal presentation of GCA involving cerebro-afferent arteries, and in classical GCA, as “halo sign” of STAs is highly specific for this condition. To date CDUS have relevance in GCA diagnosis and in perspective it could have a future application also in follow-up. At present, anyway, the role of CDUS in monitoring GCA exacerbation is still a speculative hypothesis. Citation: De Boni A, Delsere M, Menegazzo E, Cepparulo S, Laterza D, et al. (2022) Role of Ultrasound in Diagnosis and Follow Up of an Unusual Case of Giant Cell Arteritis: Case Report and Review of Literature. Ann Case Report 7: 740. DOI: 10.29011/2574-7754.100740 2 Volume 07; Issue 01 Ann Case Rep, an open access journal ISSN: 2574-7754
Running involvement , loyalty to running , and subjective well-being : A cluster analysis

One of the main policy objectives of many Sports and Health Government Departments is to increase sports participation to promote citizens health and well-being. The present study uses cluster analysis with the aim of identifying segments of runners based upon running involvement, loyalty to running and subjective wellbeing. A sample of 736 runners from one of Portugal's most popular athletics races completed a questionnaire. The number of clusters was determined using the BIC. Four significant clusters were identified. The main result showed that the cluster with the highest level of subjective well-being was not the group of runners with the highest level of loyalty to the race. The results show the need to design strategies focused on the clusters identified to promote sports participation through running, aiming to increase running involvement and subjective well-being.
BIS Working Papers No 995 When uncertainty decouples expected and unexpected losses

A parsimonious extension of a well-known portfolio credit-risk model allows us to study a salient stylized fact – abrupt switches between highand low-loss phases – from a risk-management perspective. As uncertainty about phase switches increases, expected losses decouple from unexpected losses, which reflect a high percentile of the loss distribution. Banks that ignore this decoupling have shortfalls of loss-absorbing resources, which is more detrimental if the portfolio is more diversified within a phase. Likewise, the risk-management benefits of improving phase-switch forecasts increase with diversification. The analysis of these findings leads us to an empirical method for comparing the degree of within-phase default clustering across portfolios. JEL Codes: G21; G28; G32
Is digit ratio (2D:4D) different between sexual and non-sexual offenders, and non-offending men? Study of a Colombian sample

One research line in criminal behavior studies 2D:4D ratio as predictor of aggression and violent behavior has been established, given that there are sexually dimorphic behaviors associated with the influence of testosterone on brain organization. However, results have been mixed. The aim of this study was to explore the differences in the 2D:4D ratio among offending and non-offending Colombian men in four groups (N = 139). A comparative study was conducted with three groups of offenders sentenced in a Colombian penitentiary: (1) sexual offenders against children (n = 34), (2) sexual offenders against adult women (n = 31), and (3) non-sexual violent offenders (n=26); as well as one group (4) men with no criminal record (n = 48). The 2D:4D ratio was measured using the hand scanning technique and three digital measurements were analyzed with the Autometric software: right hand ratio, left hand ratio, and difference between the right and left hand ratios (Dr Iz). Although, in all groups, right-digit ratio was lower that left-digit ratio (negative Dr–l Vásquez-Amézquita, Salvador & Leongómez Digit ratio (2D:4D) in sexual and non-sexual offenders. INTERDISCIPLINARIA, 2022, 39(1), 126-141 128 ratio) and, in non-offending men this difference was not significant, no strong significant differences were found between groups in any measure of 2D:4D ratio used (right hand, left hand or Dr−l). The results support the idea that these associations are too weak to consider them predictors of sexual or non-sexual criminal behavior. The risk factors determining sexual or non-sexual criminal behavior, seems to go beyond intra-uterine effects and involve complex interactions between heritability, epigenetics, and pre-natal and post-natal life events.
Technological Factors Influencing Videoconferencing and Zoom Fatigue

The paper presents a conceptual, multidimensional approach to understand the technological factors that are assumed to or even have been proven to contribute to what has been coined as Zoom Fatigue (ZF) or more generally Videoconferencing Fatigue (VCF). With the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, the usage of VC services has drastically increased, leading to more and more reports about the ZF or VCF phenomenon. The paper is motivated by the fact that some of the media outlets initially starting the debate on what Zoom fatigue is and how it can be avoided, as well as some of the scientific papers addressing the topic, contain assumptions that are rather hypothetical and insufficiently underpinned by scientific evidence. Most of these works are acknowledge the lacking evidence and partly suggest directions for future research. This paper intends to deepen the survey of VC-technology-related literature and to provide more existing evidence, where possible, while reviewing some of the already provided support or evidence for certain causal hypotheses. The technological factors dimension and its identified sub-dimensions presented in this paper are embedded within a more holistic four-dimensional conceptual factors model describing the causes for ZF or VCF. The paper describing this overall conceptual model is written by the same group of authors and currently under revision for an Open Access Journal publication. The present paper expands on the technological factors dimension descriptions provided in the overall model paper and provides more detailed analyzes and concepts associated with how VC technology may affect users' perception, cognitive load, interaction and communication, possibly leading to stress, exhaustion and fatigue. The paper currently is a living document which will be expanded further with regard to the evidence for or against the impact of certain technological factors.
Channel State Acquisition in FDD Massive MIMO: Rate-Distortion Bound and Effectiveness of "Analog" Feedback

We consider the problem of estimating the fading coefficients of a frequency-selective, spatially correlated channel via Downlink (DL) training and Uplink (UL) feedback in frequency division duplexing (FDD) massive MIMO systems. Using ratedistortion theory, we derive optimal bounds on the achievable channel state estimation error in terms of the number of training pilots in DL (βtr) and feedback dimension in UL (βfb), with random, spatially isotropic pilots. It is shown that when the number of training pilots exceeds the channel covariance rank (r), the optimal rate-distortion feedback strategy achieves an estimation error decay of ΘpSNR−αq in estimating the channel state, where α = minpβfb{r,1q is the so-called quality scaling exponent (QSE). We then discuss an "analog" feedback strategy, showing that it achieves the optimal QSE for a wide range of training and feedback dimensions with no channel covariance knowledge and simple signal processing at the user side. Our findings are supported by numerical simulations comparing these strategies in terms of channel state mean squared error and achievable ergodic sum-rate in DL with zero-forcing precoding.
Detecting beyond the standard model interactions of solar neutrinos in low-threshold dark matter detectors

As low-threshold dark matter detectors advance in development, they will become sensitive to recoils from solar neutrinos which opens up the possibility to explore neutrino properties. We predict the enhancement of the event rate of solar neutrino scattering from Beyond the Standard Model interactions in low-threshold DM detectors, with a focus on silicon, germanium, gallium arsenide, xenon, and argon-based detectors. We consider a set of general neutrino interactions, which fall into five categories: the neutrino magnetic moment as well as interactions mediated by four types of mediators (scalar, pseudoscalar, vector, and axial vector), and consider coupling these mediators to either quarks or electrons. Using these predictions, we place constraints on the mass and couplings of each mediator and the neutrino magnetic moment from current low-threshold detectors like SENSEI, Edelweiss, and SuperCDMS, as well as projections relevant for future experiments such as DAMIC-M, Oscura, Darwin, and ARGO. We find that such low-threshold detectors can improve current constraints by up to two orders of magnitude for vector mediators and one order of magnitude for scalar mediators.
Robust Estimation for Non-parametric Families via Generative Adversarial Networks

We provide a general framework for designing Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) to solve high-dimensional robust statistics problems, which aim at estimating unknown parameter of the true distribution given adversarially corrupted samples. Prior work [1], [2] focus on the problem of robust mean and covariance estimation when the true distribution lies in the family of Gaussian distributions or elliptical distributions, and analyze depth or scoring rule based GAN losses for the problem. Our work extend these to robust mean estimation, second-moment estimation, and robust linear regression when the true distribution only has bounded Orlicz norms, which includes the broad family of sub-Gaussian, sub-exponential and bounded moment distributions. We also provide a different set of sufficient conditions for the GAN loss to work: we only require its induced distance function to be a cumulative density function of some light-tailed distribution, which is easily satisfied by neural networks with sigmoid activation. In terms of techniques, our proposed GAN losses can be viewed as a smoothed and generalized Kolmogorov-Smirnov distance, which overcomes the computational intractability of the original Kolmogorov-Smirnov distance used in the weaken the distance approach in [3].
mSLAM: Massively multilingual joint pre-training for speech and text

We present mSLAM, a multilingual Speech and LAnguage Model that learns cross-lingual cross-modal representations of speech and text by pre-training jointly on large amounts of unlabeled speech and text in multiple languages. mSLAM combines w2v-BERT pre-training on speech with SpanBERT pre-training on character-level text, along with Connectionist Temporal Classification (CTC) losses on paired speech and transcript data, to learn a single model capable of learning from and representing both speech and text signals in a shared representation space. We evaluate mSLAM on several downstream speech understanding tasks and find that joint pre-training with text improves quality on speech translation, speech intent classification and speech language-ID while being competitive on multilingual ASR, when compared against speech-only pre-training. Our speech translation model demonstrates zero-shot text translation without seeing any text translation data, providing evidence for cross-modal alignment of representations. mSLAM also benefits from multi-modal fine-tuning, further improving the quality of speech translation by directly leveraging text translation data during the fine-tuning process. Our empirical analysis highlights several opportunities and challenges arising from large-scale multimodal pre-training, suggesting directions for future research.