Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
COVID-19 Vaccination and Immunosuppressive Therapy in Immune-Mediated Inflammatory Diseases

The COVID-19 vaccination program has probably been the most complex and extensive project in history until now, which has been a challenge for all the people involved in the planning and management of this program. Patients with immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs) on immunosuppressive therapy have required special attention, not only because of the particular haste in carrying out the process but also because of the uncertainty regarding their response to the vaccines. We now have strong scientific evidence that supports the hypothesis that immunosuppressive therapy inhibits the humoral response to vaccines against other infectious agents, such as influenza, pneumococcus and hepatitis B. This has led to the hypothesis that the same could happen with the COVID-19 vaccine. Several studies have therefore already been carried out in this area, suggesting that temporarily discontinuing the administration of methotrexate for 2 weeks post-vaccination could improve the vaccine response, and other studies with various immunosuppressive drugs are in the same line. However, the fact of withholding or interrupting immunosuppressive therapy when dealing with COVID-19 vaccination remains unclear. On this basis, our article tries to compile the information available on the effect of immunosuppressant agents on COVID-19 vaccine responses in patients with IMIDs and proposes an algorithm for the management of these patients.
Mangroves - what are they worth

This paper is based on a study for FAO and on the management and utilization of mangroves in Asia and the Pacific. Land use options are examined in relation to the different roles which mangroves play (provision of firewood, charcoal, timber and pulp; wildlife; fisheries and aquaculture; and agriculture). Special attention is paid to mangrove management in Malaysia. (Refs 26)
Factors affecting salmonellae recovery from broiler carcasses treated with trisodium phosphate

The effectiveness of trisodium phosphate application on the recovery of native salmonellae from broiler carcasses was investigated. Experiment 1 examined the residual effects of TSP following immersion chilling on salmonellae recovery when sampled on the day of processing and after refrigerated storage for 7 days. When carcasses were treated with TSP, salmonellae recovery was significantly lower than that of the control carcasses on both sampling days demonstrating a residual effect. Salmonellae recovery was also shown to decrease after 7 days of refrigeration for control groups. Experiment 2 examined the role of enrichment pH in TSP’s effectiveness against salmonellae. However, in this experiment the alkaline TSP and the alkalized peptone enrichment carcasses (pH shock) did not have a lower incidence of salmonellae recovery than the neutralized-TSP and control carcasses. The inability of TSP to decrease salmonellae recovery in Experiment 2 was speculated to be due to lack of washing action, which would typically occur during immersion chilling. INDEX WORDS: Trisodium Phosphate, Salmonellae, Broilers, Whole Carcass Enrichment FACTORS AFFECTING SALMONELLAE RECOVERY FROM BROILER CARCASSES TREATED WITH TRISODIUM PHOSPHATE by DIANNA VIOLA BOURASSA B.S.A. , The University of Georgia, 2002 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF SCIENCE ATHENS, GEORGIA
Sequence stratigraphy of the Jurassic of the Danish Central Graben

A sequence stratigraphic framework is established for the Jurassic of the Danish Central Graben based primarily on petrophysical log data, core sedimentology and biostratigraphic data from about 50 wells. Regional seismic lines are used to assist in the correlation of some wells and in the construction of isochore maps. In the Lower Jurassic (Hettangian‐Pliensbachian) succession, five sequences have been identified. The Middle Jurassic is subdivided into four sequences that together span the uppermost Aalenian/lowermost Bajocian to the Callovian. In the Upper Jurassic, better well coverage permits greater stratigraphic resolution, and 11 sequences are identified and mapped. On the basis of the sequence stratigraphic correlation and the construction of isochore maps for individual sequences, the Jurassic basin history of the Danish Central Graben can be subdivided into seven discrete phases: (1) Shallow marine and offshore sediments deposited in a prerift basin extending from the North Sea to the Fennoscandian Border Zone (Hettangian‐Pliensbachian). (2) Uplift and erosion in association with a Toarcian‐Aalenian North Sea doming event. A major hiatus represents this phase in the study area. (3) Terrestrial and marginal marine sedimentation during initial rifting (latest Aalenian/earliest Bajocian ‐ Late Callovian). (4) Early Oxfordian ‐ Early Kimmeridgian transgression during and after a rift pulse. The sedimentary environment changed from coastal plain and marginal marine to fully marine. (5) Regression associated with a cessation or slowing of subsidence during a structural rearrangement that took place in the Late Kimmeridgian during a break in the main rift climax. Shallow to marginal marine sandstones were deposited above an erosion surface of regional extent. (6) Deep-water mudstones deposited in a composite graben with high subsidence rates related to rift pulses (latest Late Kimmeridgian ‐ middle Middle Volgian). (7) Deposition of organic-rich mudstones and turbidite sandstones during the late Middle Volgian ‐ Early Ryazanian. The main basin shallowed, became more symmetrical and experienced a decreasing rate of subsidence, recording the onset of the post-rift stage. A relative sea-level curve is constructed for the Middle‐Late Jurassic. It shows close similarity to published eustatic (global) and relative (North Atlantic area) sea-level curves in the latest Bathonian ‐ late Early Kimmeridgian, but differs in the Late Kimmeridgian ‐ Middle Volgian interval, probably due to the high rate of subsidence in the study area.
The Effects of Vitamin D Supplementation on Respiratory Infections in Children under 6 Years Old: A Systematic Review

Childhood respiratory tract infections (RTIs) pose a significant health burden, especially in children under six years old. The main objective of this systematic review was to assess the effectiveness of vitamin D supplementation in the prevention of RTI in this population while also exploring potential effect modifiers such as age, baseline vitamin D status, and type of respiratory infection. A systematic review of the literature published up to February 2023 was conducted according to PRISMA guidelines, searching PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane, and Scopus databases. Eight studies met the inclusion criteria, which investigated the association between vitamin D supplementation and respiratory infections in children between zero and five years old. The included studies were conducted between 2012 and 2021, encompassing a total of 2189 children from five randomized trials, two case-control studies, and one prospective cohort study. The relationship between vitamin D supplementation and the prevention of childhood RTI was not consistently observed across all included studies. Pooled results demonstrated varied effects of vitamin D supplementation on respiratory infection incidence, severity, and symptoms. Three studies reported statistically significant associations between low vitamin D levels and respiratory infections (OR = 4.90, OR = 6.97), while one study found that children who received vitamin D supplementation of 800 UI/day for 3 months during the cold season had fewer episodes of respiratory symptoms (RR = 0.55) and recovered more quickly from acute RTI. Lastly, according to one study, vitamin D intake < 80 IU/kg/day was significantly associated with the risk of acquiring pneumonia (OR 7.9) but not bronchiolitis. The remaining five studies found no statistically significant differences in infection rates or severity (p-value > 0.050). The available evidence on the effectiveness of vitamin D supplementation for preventing and treating respiratory infections in children under six years old is limited, with only a few favorable effects being reported. In some cases, a dose of 80 UI/kg/day was found to provide significant protection for acute respiratory infections, although in the major trials the only benefit was a quicker recovery and fewer respiratory symptoms, with no impact on incidence and severity of respiratory infections. Nevertheless, the study protocol, the supplementation dose, and duration of supplementation had significant variations between studies, leading to inconclusive findings.
Scene-independent Localization by Learning Residual Coordinate Map with Cascaded Localizers

Visual localization plays an essential role in a variety of different fields. The indirect learning based method obtains an excellent performance, but it requests a training process in the target scene before the localization. To achieve deep scene-independent localization, we start by proposing the representation called residual coordinate map between a pair of images. Based on the structure, we put forward a network called SILocNet with the proposed residual coordinate map as the output. The network consists of feature extraction, multi-level feature fusion and transformer based coordinate decoder. Moreover, considering the dynamic scene, we introduce an additional segmentation branch that distinguishes fixed and dynamic parts to promote network perception. With SILocNet in place, a cascaded localizer design is presented for reducing the accumulative error. Meanwhile, the simple mathematical analysis behind the cascaded localizers is also provided. To verify how well our algorithm could perform, we conduct experiments on static 7 Scenes, ScanNet and dynamic TUM RGB-D. In particular, we train the network on ScanNet and test it on 7 Scenes and TUM RGB-D to demonstrate the generality performance. All experiments demonstrate superior performance to other existing methods. Additionally, the effects of the cascaded localizer design, feature fusion, transformer based coordinate decoder and segmentation loss are also discussed.
Bioprocess optimization for biodiesel production from Pongamia pinnata.

In this work reaction parameters namely 1) temperature, 2) time, 3) NaOH concentration and 4) methanol/oil ratio in biodiesel production by two step acid/base catalysed trans-esterification of a non-edible vegetable oil from Pongamia pinnata has been optimized by 2 4 central composite design in order to increase diesel yield and reduce reaction time and temperature. Biodiesel yield and compostion was confirmed with HPTLC and GC-MS analysis. The optimal conditions were found to be: 1.44 hours reaction time, 65 ° C reaction temperature, 0.80 wt % NaOH and 7.4:1 methanol to oil ratio. The optimum yield was observed to be 98.84% with the optimal conditions of experiment
Warming of the Global Ocean: Spatial Structure and Water-Mass Trends

AbstractThis study investigates the multidecadal warming and interannual-to-decadal heat content changes in the upper ocean (0–700 m), focusing on vertical and horizontal patterns of variability. These results support a nearly monotonic warming over much of the World Ocean, with a shift toward Southern Hemisphere warming during the well-observed past decade. This is based on objectively analyzed gridded observational datasets and on a modeled state estimate. Besides the surface warming, a warming climate also has a subsurface effect manifesting as a strong deepening of the midthermocline isopycnals, which can be diagnosed directly from hydrographic data. This deepening appears to be a result of heat entering via subduction and spreading laterally from the high-latitude ventilation regions of subtropical mode waters. The basin-average multidecadal warming mainly expands the subtropical mode water volume, with weak changes in the temperature–salinity (θ–S) relationship (known as “spice” variability). Howeve.
Cycling and transport of phosphorus and nitrogen from harvested peatland forests and possible mitigation and methods

ii Declaration iv Acknowledgements v Abbreviations vi Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Background 1 1.2 Processes contributing to N and P release from harvested peat forests 2 1.3 Mitigation of N and P export to water bodies . 5 1.3. 1 Phased felling 5 1.3. 2 Whole tree harvesting and collection of harvest residues 5 1.3. 3 Buffer areas 6 1.4 Aims of the study 7 1.5 Structure of the thesis 8 1.6 Research output 9 References 10 Chapter 2 Decomposition of harvest residue needles on peatlands drained for forestry implications for nutrient and heavy metal dynamics 15 ABSTRACT 16 2.
Rapid identification of transience in streambed conductance by inversion of floodwave responses

Streambed conductance controls the interaction between surface and groundwater. However, the streambed conductance is often subject to transience. Directly measuring hydraulic properties in a river yields only point values, is time‐consuming and therefore not suited to detect transience of physical properties. Here, we present a method to continuously monitor transience in streambed conductance. Input data are time series of stream stage and near stream hydraulic head. The method is based on the inversion of floodwave responses. The analytical model consists of three parameters: x, the distance between streambank and an observation well, α, the aquifer diffusivity, and a the retardation coefficient that is inversely proportional to the streambed conductance. Estimation of a is carried out over successive time steps in order to identify transience in streambed conductance. The method is tested using synthetic data and is applied to field data from the Rhône River and its alluvial aquifer (Switzerland). The synthetic method demonstrated the robustness of the proposed methodology. Application of the method to the field data allowed identifying transience in streambed properties, following flood events in the Rhône. This method requires transience in the surface water, and the river should not change its width significantly with a rising water level. If these conditions are fulfilled, this method allows for a rapid and effective identification of transience in streambed conductance.
Isostatic rebound following the Alpine deglaciation: impact on the sea level variations and vertical movements in the Mediterranean region

SUMMARY The present-day sea level variations and geodetically observed ground deformations in the Mediterranean area are normally ascribed to the combined effect of tectonic or human-driven subsidence and postglacial uplift as a result of the melting of the major Pleistocene ice sheets. However, another potential cause of deformation, only marginally considered to date, is the melting of the glacier that covered the Alps during the last glacial maximum (LGM). The aim of this paper is to predict the long-term sea level variations induced by the melting of both the late-Pleistocene and Alpine ice sheets and compare our results with the relative sea level (RSL) observations available in the Mediterranean region. This task is accomplished solving the sea level equation (SLE) for a spherically symmetric viscoelastic Earth. Our analysis shows that the melting of the Alpine glacier has marginally affected the Holocene sea level variations in the near-field sites in southern France (Marseilles and Roussillon) and the central Tyrrhenian sea (Civitavecchia), and that the RSL predictions are significantly sensitive to the chronology of the remote ice aggregates. The computations, which are performed using a specific mantle viscosity profile consistent with global observations of RSL rise, show that the uplift rate driven by the Alpine isostatic readjustment may account for up to 1 of the rates observedatGPSstationsinthewesternportionofthechain.Ourresultssuggestthatathorough modelization of both near- and far-field ice sheets is necessary to gain a better insight into the present-day deformations and sea level variations in the Mediterranean region.
A randomized controlled trial on the effectiveness of Pilates training on physical components in cricketers

Introduction: Cricket is considered as one of the most intense game as it requires several hours of vigorous body movements for which quick reflexes, good strength, speed and power are the main pillars. Pilates is a series of exercises which helps in improvement of core muscle strength that further contribute in controlled movement of extremities, good posture, speed, power and balance. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of Pilates training program on physical components in aspiring state level cricket players. Material and methods: State level aspiring 39 male cricket players aging between 18–30 years were included in this study which were randomly divided into two groups. Participants in control group (n = 19) performed only conventional exercises while in experimental group (n = 20) participants performed Pilates exercises along with co nventional exercises 3 times/week for 6 weeks. The outcome measures for both groups were evaluated at baseline and at the end of 6 weeks which included upper and lower abdominal muscle strength, Speed, Hamstring muscle flexibility, Agility and Power. Results: Results of the study showed that both groups improved significantly (p < 0.05) at the end of the 6th week but experimental group showed more improvement in core muscle strength, hamstring flexibility, agility, speed and power when compared to control group (p < 0.05). Conclusions: The study concluded that Pilates training is an effective method for improvement in physical compo nents such as abdominal muscle strength, hamstring muscle flexibility, agility, speed and power in cricket players. This may further enhance the performance of cricket players.
Mathematical Prediction ofSun-Synchronous Polar LEO Satellite VisionsforEarth Stations

Scientists aregreatly interested inimages sentfrom remotesensing satellites whichareusuallylaunchedin sun-synchronous polarloworbits. Eachsatellite hasdefinite numberofdaily passes overeachgroundstation; thenumberof passes andtheduration ofthemdependonthestation location andsatellite altitude. As thenumberofpassesorthetime duration ofthemincreases, thecomplexity ofdataarchiving devices inthestation willalsoincrease. Thispaperintroduces mathematical equations whichshowtherelationship between satellite passes, station's geographical position andsatellite altitude.
Spatial and temporal variability of double diffusive structures in Powell Lake, British Columbia

The spatial and temporal properties of naturally occurring double diffusive (DD) structures present in the bottom waters of Powell Lake, British Columbia were investigated. Observations were obtained from four annual surveys consisting of vertical cm-resolution conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) profiles along the 9 km length of the lake, and from a month-long mooring consisting of thirty-eight temperature sensors and two current meters. DD layers were identified by isolating clusters on temperature-salinity (T-S) diagrams, and tracked spatially and temporally throughout each of the CTD surveys. The layers were observed to be persistent over four years, and horizontally coherent over the entire lake length at depths of 336-347 m. In this region the vertical density ratio (a non-dimensional measure of the relative strengths of vertical temperature and salinity gradients), Rρz, and buoyancy frequency, N, were near constant at Rρz = 2.2± 0.2 and N = (2.3± 0.3)× 10−3 s−1, and the Rayleigh number reached a peak at Ra≈ 107. Layers just above and below this region were less horizontally-coherent and with larger values of Rρz and N. Spatial variations in layer depth and the background temperature/salinity distribution showed persistent trends throughout the study period. These trends indicated that layer slope and horizontal property gradients are linked and that the horizontal density ratio may be an indicator of the mean layer slope. Linear fits to the layer properties indicated that a horizontal density ratio of Rρx = −0.35±0.17 was accompanied by a mean layer slope of ∆z/∆x = 0.05±0.02 m/km. An individual DD step within one of the stable and horizontally coherent DD layers was identified within the moored temperature time series and tracked over the course of a week. The convective regime within the DD step was observed to be composed of intermittent thermal plumes emitted from the bottom diffusive interface. The features appeared as a common peak in the mean DD step temperature and horizontal velocity power spectra. The plumes had a period of ∼ 22 minutes (coinciding well with the buoyancy period within the diffusive interface), a temperature scale of T ′ ≈ 0.2 m◦C, and horizontal and vertical velocity scales of u′ = w′ ≈ 0.5 mm/s.
MultiVibes: What if your VR Controller had 10 Times more Vibrotactile Actuators?

Consumer-grade virtual reality (VR) controllers are typically equipped with one vibrotactile actuator, allowing to create simple and non-spatialized tactile sensations through the vibration of the entire controller. Leveraging the funneling effect, an illusion in which multiple vibrations are perceived as a single one, we propose MultiVibes, a VR controller capable of rendering spatialized sensations at different locations on the user’s hand and fingers. The designed prototype includes ten vibrotactile actuators, directly in contact with the skin of the hand, limiting the propagation of vibrations through the controller. We evaluated MultiVibes through two controlled experiments. The first one focused on the ability of users to recognize spatio-temporal patterns, while the second one focused on the impact of MultiVibes on the users’ haptic experience when interacting with virtual objects they can feel. Taken together, the results show that MultiVibes is capable of providing accurate spatialized feedback and that users prefer MultiVibes over recent VR controllers.
SYNTHESIS AND CHARACTERIZATION OF HYPERBRANCHED POLYCARBOSILAZANES WITH CONTROLLABLE DEGRADATION BEHAVIOR

Two novel degradable hyperbranched polycarbosilazanes were synthesized via hydrosilylation reaction and well characterized by FT-IR,1H-NMR,13C-NMR,29Si-NMR and size exclusion chromatogram-multi-angle laser light scattering(SEC-MALLS) technology.First,two monomers,bis(N,N-bis(dimethylvinylsilyl)amino)-methylsilane(AB-4M) as well as(N,N-bis(dimethylvinylsilyl)amino)-dimethylsilane(AB-2M),were prepared by nucleophilic substitution of MeHSiCl-2 and Me-2HSiCl with lithium teramethyldivinyldisilazane,respectively.Then the two monomers were polymerized for obtaining hyperbranched polycarbosilazanes via hydrosilylation reaction using a Karstedt catalyst.The structure analyses indicate that α-addition mainly occurs during the polymerization,and the polymers synthesized consist of N(Si—C)-3 linkages with hyperbranched architecture and a large amount of functional vinyl bonds as end groups.The molecular weight(M-w) and its polydispersity index(M-w/M-n) were determined to be 7800 and 2.54 for PAB-4M,and 5860 and 2.31 for PAB-2M,respectively.Preliminary studies on the chemical stability of polymers shows that the hyperbranched polymer synthesized is stable to chlorosilane as well as water.However,it can be hydrolyzed with hydrochloric acid solution,and the degradation rate can be controlled by changing the concentration of HCl.The results suggest that controlled degradation of these hyperbranched polymers is attainable.