Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
In Vitro Evaluation of the Antioxidant Capacity of 3,3-Disubstituted-3H-benzofuran-2-one Derivatives in a Cellular Model of Neurodegeneration

Oxidative stress represents a hallmark for many degenerative pathologies of the Central Nervous System. Throughout life, the constant pressure of noxious stimuli and/or episodes of traumatic events may expose the brain to a microenvironment where the non-balanced reactive oxygen species inevitably lead to neuronal loss and cognitive decline. HO-1, a 32 kDa heat-shock protein catalyzing the degradation of heme into carbon monoxide (CO), iron and biliverdin/bilirubin is considered one of the main antioxidant defense mechanisms playing pivotal roles in neuroprotection. Restoring the redox homeostasis is the goal of many natural or synthetic antioxidant molecules pursuing beneficial effects on brain functions. Here, we investigated the antioxidant capacity of four selected benzofuran-2-one derivatives in a cellular model of neurodegeneration represented by differentiated SH-SY5Y cells exposed to catechol-induced oxidative stress. Our main results highlight how all the molecules have antioxidant properties, especially compound 9, showing great abilities in reducing intracellular ROS levels and protecting differentiated SH-SY5Y cells from catechol-induced death. This compound above all seems to boost HO-1 mRNA and perinuclear HO-1 protein isoform expression when cells are exposed to the oxidative insult. Our findings open the way to consider benzofuran-2-ones as a novel and promising adjuvant antioxidant strategy for many neurodegenerative disorders.
Editorial: Special Issue — Enzyme Immobilization

Immobilization of enzymes and proteins is a requirement for many industrial enzyme applications, as this facilitates enzyme recovery and reuse. Bearing in mind this necessity, the coupling of immobilization to the improvement of other enzyme features has been pursued by many researchers, and nowadays immobilization is recognized as a tool to improve not only stability, but also enzyme selectivity, specificity, resistance to inhibition or chemical modifiers, etc. To achieve these overall improvements of enzymes’ properties via immobilization, it is necessary to both develop new immobilization systems suitable for these purposes, and to achieve a deeper knowledge of the mechanisms of interaction between enzymes and activated solids. That way, immobilization of enzymes, far being an old-fashioned methodology to just reuse these expensive biocatalysts, is a tool of continuous interest that requires a continuous effort to be exploited in all its potential. This special issue collects 23 papers reporting advances in the field of immobilization of enzymes. [. ]
Deformation‐Driven Shape Correspondence

Non‐rigid 3D shape correspondence is a fundamental and difficult problem. Most applications which require a correspondence rely on manually selected markers. Without user assistance, the performances of existing automatic correspondence methods depend strongly on a good initial shape alignment or shape prior, and they generally do not tolerate large shape variations. We present an automatic feature correspondence algorithm capable of handling large, non‐rigid shape variations, as well as partial matching. This is made possible by leveraging the power of state‐of‐the‐art mesh deformation techniques and relying on a combinatorial tree traversal for correspondence search. The search is deformation‐driven, prioritized by a self‐distortion energy measured on meshes deformed according to a given correspondence. We demonstrate the ability of our approach to naturally match shapes which differ in pose, local scale, part decomposition, and geometric detail through numerous examples.
Universal Correlations in Pion-less EFT with the Resonating Group Model: Three, Four, and Six Nucleons

A systematic connection between QCD and nuclear few- and many-body properties in the form of the Effective Field Theory "without pions" is applied to $A\le 6$ nuclei to determine its range of applicability. We present results at next-to-leading order for the Tjon correlation and for a correlation between the singlet S-wave $^3$He-neutron scattering length and the triton binding energy. In the A=6 sector we performed leading order calculations for the binding energy and the charge and matter radii of the halo nucleus $^6$He. Also at leading order, the doublet S-wave 4-He-neutron phase shifts are compared with R-matrix data. These analysis provide evidence for a sufficiently fast convergence of the effective field theory, in particular, our results in $A\le 4$ predict an expansion parameter of about 1/3, and they converge to data within the predicted uncertainty band at this order. A properly adjusted three-body contact force which we include together with the Coulomb interaction in all calculations is found to correctly renormalize the pion-less theory at leading- and next-to-leading order, i.e. the power counting does not require four-body forces at the respective order.
Efficient Approximation for Triangulation of Minimum Treewidth

We present four novel approximation algorithms for finding triangulation of minimum treewidth. Two of the algorithms improve on the running times of algorithms by Robertson and Seymour, and Becker and Geiger that approximate the optimum by factors of 4 and 32/3, respectively. A third algorithm is faster than those but gives an approximation factor of 41/2. The last algorithm is yet faster, producing factor-O(lgk) approximations in polynomial time. Finding triangulations of minimum treewidth for graphs is central to many problems in computer science. Realworld problems in artificial intelligence, VLSI design and databases are efficiently solvable if we have an efficient approximation algorithm for them. We report on experimental results confirming the effectiveness of our algorithms for large graphs associated with real-world problems.
Rapid herpes simplex virus susceptibility testing using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay performed in situ on fixed virus-infected monolayers

An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was performed directly on fixed, virus-infected cell monolayers to rapidly determine the susceptibility of herpes simplex virus to antiviral drugs. Susceptibility determinations by this method correlated well with those obtained by plaque reduction assay and avoided some of the drawbacks of other methods currently available.
SenseableRays: opto-haptic substitution for touch-enhanced interactive spaces

This paper proposes a new haptic interaction system based on optical-haptic substitution. This system combines time-modulated structured light emitted to the workspace and a mobile or finger-mounted module consisting of a photo-detector with a tactile actuator. Unlike other tactile feedback systems, it does not require any complicated mechanism for position sensing and tactile actuation. Instead, it directly converts time-modulated structured light into haptic sensations. By sensing this light with a photo detector, users can feel this time-modulated light as haptic sensations. The system can easily add haptic feedback to a wide variety of applications, including surface computing systems and 3D interactive spaces.
Multireceptor phage cocktail against Salmonella enterica to circumvent phage resistance

Abstract Non-Typhoidal Salmonella (NTS) is one of the most common food-borne pathogens worldwide, with poultry products being the major vehicle for pathogenesis in humans. The use of bacteriophage (phage) cocktails has recently emerged as a novel approach to enhancing food safety. Here, a multireceptor Salmonella phage cocktail of five phages was developed and characterized. The cocktail targets four receptors: O-antigen, BtuB, OmpC, and rough Salmonella strains. Structural analysis indicated that all five phages belong to unique families or subfamilies. Genome analysis of four of the phages showed they were devoid of known virulence or antimicrobial resistance factors, indicating enhanced safety. The phage cocktail broad antimicrobial spectrum against Salmonella, significantly inhibiting the growth of all 66 strains from 20 serovars tested in vitro. The average bacteriophage insensitive mutant (BIM) frequency against the cocktail was 6.22 × 10−6 in S. Enteritidis, significantly lower than that of each of the individual phages. The phage cocktail reduced the load of Salmonella in inoculated chicken skin by 3.5 log10 CFU/cm2 after 48 h at 25°C and 15°C, and 2.5 log10 CFU/cm2 at 4°C. A genome-wide transduction assay was used to investigate the transduction efficiency of the selected phage in the cocktail. Only one of the four phages tested could transduce the kanamycin resistance cassette at a low frequency comparable to that of phage P22. Overall, the results support the potential of cocktails of phage that each target different host receptors to achieve complementary infection and reduce the emergence of phage resistance during biocontrol applications.
Empowering Diversity: A Multicultural Approach to Inclusive Islamic Education

This study aims to analyze the learning model in multicultural-based inclusive Islamic education conducted at the State High School Education institution 1 Sumber Sumber District, Probolinggo. This research method is a qualitative research type case study. The informants in this study were three people: school principals, PAI teachers, and curriculum waka. The results of this study show that the learning model in multicultural-based inclusive Islamic education applies first the Islamic Education Curriculum with an Inclusive-Multicultural Vision to internalize the learning model in the implementation of multicultural education so that awareness is born to maintain community cohesiveness while honing self, social, and cultural wisdom, none other than the formal learning process at each level of education. Second, the Epistemological Transformation Paradigm of National Education can be applied to the principles of national education implementation. Based on the study's results, several implications can be made for improvement in education. These results and research will likely improve how learning models can be designed and implemented effectively in multicultural-based, inclusive Islamic education.
A Dependency-Constrained Hierarchical Model with Moses

This paper presents a dependencyconstrained hierarchical machine translation model that uses Moses open-source toolkit for rule extraction and decoding. Experiments are carried out for the German-English language pair in both directions for projective and non-projective dependencies. We examine effects on SCFG size and automatic evaluation results when constraints are applied with respect to projective or non-projective dependency structures and on the source or target language side.
Speech Emotion Recognition Using Both Spectral and Prosodic Features

In this paper, we propose a speech emotion recognition system using both spectral and prosodic features. Most traditional systems have focused on spectral features or prosodic features. Since both the spectral and the prosodic features contain emotion information, it is believed that the combining of spectral features and prosodic features will improve the performance of the emotion recognition system. Therefore, we propose to use both spectral and prosodic features. For spectral features, a GMM super vector based SVM is applied with them. For prosodic features, a set of prosodic features that are clearly correlated with speech emotional states and SVM is also used for emotion recognition. The combination of both spectral features and prosodic features is posed as a data fusion problem to obtain the final decision. Experimental results show that the combining of both spectral features and prosodic features yields the emotion error reduction rate of 18.0% and 52.8%, over using only spectral and prosodic features.
Student Perspectives of Global Citizenship within a Virtual Exchange

Higher education internationalization has become an increasingly challenging endeavor. The outbreak of the COVID-19 virus and the ever-changing landscape of immigration policies have called for a need to reexamine how universities internationalize. Transnational virtual classrooms or virtual exchanges have been shown to provide students with a more equal opportunity to develop their global competencies and cultural skills than study abroad. Traditional internationalization methods may no longer be as effective as they have been in the past, creating a need to reconceptualize how we educate college students for global competencies. This research in-progress summarizes a portion of a dissertation. The aim of this qualitative study is to investigate global citizenship student awareness in a virtual exchange. This study presents preliminary findings of their experiences; applied global citizenship and virtual exchange as a channel.
Modeling of the Bioactivation of an Organic Nitrate by a Thiol to Form a Thionitrate Intermediate

Thionitrates (R–SNO2) have been proposed as key intermediates in the biotransformation of organic nitrates that have been used for the clinical treatment of angina pectoris for over 100 years. It has been proposed and widely accepted that a thiol would react with an organic nitrate to afford a thionitrate intermediate. However, there has been no example of an experimental demonstration of this elementary chemical process in organic systems. Herein, we report that aryl- and primary-alkyl-substituted thionitrates were successfully synthesized by the reaction of the corresponding lithium thiolates with organic nitrates by taking advantage of cavity-shaped substituents. The structure of a primary-alkyl-substituted thionitrate was unambiguously established by X-ray crystallographic analysis.
Acharya J. C. Bose as Pioneer for Some Modern Phenomena and Devices in Electronics and Photonics

Sir J. C. Bose was the ﬁrst to demonstrate wireless transmission with his indigenous set up. His patent for galena detector and his reports for a few microwave components are well recognized. In this paper, a few of his experiments, somewhat less discussed but recognized by experts as the ﬁrst, will be listed and described. These include his detector as ﬁrst IR detector, ﬁrst experiment on light tunneling, jute polarizer as ﬁrst chiral metamaterial, hysteresis in I-V curve of coherer as ﬁrst signature of memristor action and a polarizer having alternate layers of paper and tin foil as the ﬁrst structures for both the photonic band gap and the superlattice. Relevance of his work to devices in current electronics, photonics and information technology are pointed out. Comments by experts in the areas are also included.
Benefits of fidelity: does host specialization impact nematode parasite life history and fecundity?

SUMMARY The range of hosts used by a parasite is influenced by macro-evolutionary processes (host switching, host–parasite co-evolution), as well as ‘encounter filters’ and ‘compatibility filters’ at the micro-evolutionary level driven by host/parasite ecology and physiology. Host specialization is hypothesized to result in trade-offs with aspects of parasite life history (e.g. reproductive output), but these have not been well studied. We used previously published data to create models examining general relationships among host specificity and important aspects of life history and reproduction for nematodes parasitizing animals. Our results indicate no general trade-off between host specificity and the average pre-patent period (time to first reproduction), female size, egg size, or fecundity of these nematodes. However, female size was positively related to egg size, fecundity, and pre-patent period. Host compatibility may thus not be the primary determinant of specificity in these parasitic nematodes if there are few apparent trade-offs with reproduction, but rather, the encounter opportunities for new host species at the micro-evolutionary level, and other processes at the macro-evolutionary level (i.e. phylogeny). Because host specificity is recognized as a key factor determining the spread of parasitic diseases understanding factors limiting host use are essential to predict future changes in parasite range and occurrence.
The Need for Early Referral: Characteristics of Children and Adolescents Who Are Overweight and Obese Attending a Multidisciplinary Weight Management Service

There is a need to examine the issue of childhood obesity from a systems perspective. This study aimed to describe the baseline characteristics of children attending pediatric multidisciplinary weight management services and understand how this information will inform future service delivery. A total of 51 children and adolescents who were overweight and obese (27 male) and aged between two and 16 years participated. Body size measures such as body mass index (BMI) and body fat percentage were collected. Participants and their parents/guardians also completed questionnaires on dietary intake, behaviors and habits, physical activity and health-related quality of life. A total of 72% of participants were classified as morbidly obese. Adolescents had significantly lower scores for overall diet, physical activity and particular health-related quality of life scores. No significant correlations were found between BMI z-scores and diet, physical activity and health-related quality of life. In adolescents, correlations were detected between dietary scores and health-related quality of life. Results confirm the need to critically examine the current context to adapt and tailor interventions to individual circumstances, and when combined with focused referral, triaging and screening processes, should assist in delivering the right care at the right time.
Substitutional Based Gauss-Seidel Method For Solving System of Linear Algebraic Equations

In this research paper a new modification of Gauss-Seidel method has been presented for solving the system of linear algebraic equations. The systems of linear algebraic equations have an important role in the field of science and engineering. This modification has been developed by using the procedure of Gauss-Seidel method and the concept of substitution techniques. Developed modification of Gauss-Seidel method is a fast convergent as compared to Gauss Jacobi’s method, Gauss-Seidel method and successive over-relaxation (SOR) method. It works on the diagonally dominant as well as positive definite symmetric systems of linear algebraic equations. Its solution has been compared with the Gauss Jacobi’s method, Gauss-Seidel method and Successive over-Relaxation method by taking different systems of linear algebraic equations and found that, it was reducing to the number of iterations and errors in each problem.
Clinical characteristics and outcomes in diffuse large B cell lymphoma patients aged 70 years and older: a single-center experience with a literature review

Background/Aims: Among diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL) patients, determining the appropriate dose and chemotherapy schedule to balance toxicity and efficacy is harder in elderly than in younger patients. Moreover, there are no currently available clinical factors that consistently identify patients who are unfit to receive chemotherapy. Therefore, the clinical characteristics and outcomes of elderly patients with DLBCL and the causes of treatment-related death were investigated in this study. Methods: The clinical characteristics and outcomes of 44 elderly (≥ 70 years of age) patients diagnosed with DLBCL between January 2005 and June 2013 were evaluated. Variable clinical data along with the response rate, overall survival (OS), and causes of treatment-related death or treatment interruption were investigated. Results: The median OS was 18.6 months, and 19 patients completed curative treatment. The mean average relative dose intensity of adriamycin in patients who completed chemotherapy was 0.617, and of these patients, 16 achieved complete remission. Chemotherapy incompletion, infectious complications, ex tranoda l involvement, high lactate dehydrogenase, poor performance status, and low albumin level at diagnosis were related to a shorter OS. However, multivariate analysis revealed that only infections and chemotherapy incompletion were significantly related to poor prognosis. The most common cause of treatment-related death was infection, and patients who had experienced infectious complications tended to have lower albumin levels than those of patients without such complications. Conclusions: In the treatment of elderly lymphoma patients, the dose intensity of adriamycin is not as important as it is in young patients. However, in elderly patients, infections are particularly dangerous, especially in patients with low albumin levels.
An Investigation into non-normality of stock returns

This paper proposes a new methodology to investigate the non-normality of stock returns, such as to do with what insights emerge from making use of the Mixture of Distribution Hypothesis. Typically, researchers check for non-normality using standardized residuals of GARCH, Jarque-Bera test or by making use of the built-in functions for descriptive statistics offered by various software. The major limitation of the above-mentioned methods is that those methods work under the assumption of parameters being constant over the time period under study. We propose a new method, called the K-month analysis to overcome the limitation due to this unrealistic assumption. This method is tested using data from five different stock indices. What we find is that in general, when parameters are held constant over a longer period, the kurtosis becomes increasingly significant indicating that the long term stock returns are not normally distributed but remain a mixture of normal.
Precision Instrument Targeting via Image Registration for the Mars 2020 Rover

A key component of Mars exploration is the operation of robotic instruments on the surface, such as those on board the Mars Exploration Rovers, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), and the planned Mars 2020 Rover. As the instruments carried by these rovers have become more advanced, the area targeted by some instruments becomes smaller, revealing more fine-grained details about the geology and chemistry of rocks on the surface. However, thermal fluctuations, rover settling or slipping, and inherent inaccuracies in pointing mechanisms all lead to pointing error that is on the order of the target size (several millimeters) or larger. We show that given a target located on a previously acquired image, the rover can align this with a new image to visually locate the target and refine the current pointing. Due to round-trip communication constraints, this visual targeting must be done efficiently on board the rover using relatively limited computing hardware. We employ existing ORB features for landmark-based image registration, describe and theoretically justify a novel approach to filtering false landmark matches, and employ a random forest classifier to automatically reject failed alignments. We demonstrate the efficacy of our approach using over 3,800 images acquired by Remote Micro-Imager on board the "Curiosity" rover.
Successful treatment of a noninhibitory antibody-mediated acquired factor X deficiency in a patient with marginal-zone lymphoma

Prolonged clotting times were observed in a patient with spontaneous hemorrhage. Analysis showed severe factor X deficiency due to clearance by a noninhibitory antibody. Lymphadenopathy identified on imaging led to diagnosis of marginal B‐cell lymphoma. Treatment of lymphoma with rituximab and chlorambucil resulted in complete disappearance of the bleeding disorder.