Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fine structure of sheet-webs of Linyphia triangularis (Clerck) and Microlinyphia pusilla (Sundevall), with remarks on the presence of viscid silk

We examined the webs of Linyphia triangularis (Clerck) and Microlinyphia pusilla (Sundevall) using light and scanning electronic microscopic techniques and compared them with the better known orb-webs. The linyphiid sheet-web consists of an unordered meshwork of fibres of different thicknesses. The sheet is connected to the scaffolding by the means of attachment discs. Thin threads with globules, which appear similar to the viscid silk droplets of orb-webs are present in most webs examined. Webs of M. pusilla had a higher density of these globules than did webs of L. triangularis. Webs of both species possess five types of thread connections and contain no aqueous glue for prey capture. Instead, unlike orb-webs, the sticky substances produced by the linyphiid aggregate glands cement the different layers and threads of the sheet by drying up after being produced. Due to the function, sheet webs may not require viscid silk, thereby leading to a more economic web. The assumption made in most previous studies, that the globules in linyphiid webs have the same properties and function as viscid silk in orb-webs, is unfounded.
Copper adsorption Behavior in some Calcareous Soils using Langmuir, Freundlich, Temkin, and Dubinin-Radushkevich Models

This study conducted to characterize copper adsorption behavior and determination sorption thermodynamic parameters in some calcareous soil from Sulaimani Governorate, Iraqi Kurdistan region. Copper adsorption studied in five calcareous soils includes (Sharazor, Qaradagh, Bazian, Mawat, and Surdash) varying in total calcium carbonate, organic matter and a cation exchange capacity of Sulaimani governorate in Iraqi Kurdistan region. The adsorption isotherms of the Copper metal by the soil carried out using a batch method. One gram of each soil sample, in duplicate, was placed in plastic bottles and equilibrated with 50 ml of solution CaCl2 (0.01M), containing a series of Cu concentrations (0, 2.5, 5, 10, 20, and 40 mg Cu L) in the form of (CuSO4). The concentration of Cu determined in a solution using Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-OES). The amount of Cu adsorbed by the sample determined by subtracting the equilibrium Cu concentration in the solution from the added Cu. The equilibrium isotherm data used to describe Cu adsorption in the five different soils using the Langmuir, Freundlich, Temkin and Dubinin-Radushkevich (D-R) isotherm model. Freundlich model compared to the various models considered as the best model for describing copper adsorption at both temperatures (298 and 318K) to describe the isotherm models in the studied soils depending on the highest value of the determination coefficient (R), and the least value of root mean square error (RMSE), and Akaike information criterion (AIC).
The Psychological Mechanism of the Influence of Social Exclusion on Risk-Taking Behavior

This study examined the mediating role of state self-esteem in the effect of social exclusion on risk-taking behavior and the moderating role of self-affirmation in the effect of social exclusion on risk-taking behavior. In experiment 1, social rejection was manipulated through the Cyberball paradigm, and risk-taking behaviors were measured using Balloon Analogue Risk Task, which confirmed the positive effect of social rejection on risk-taking behaviors. Experiment 2 measured individuals’ state self-esteem by questionnaire, and investigated the mediating effect of state self-esteem between social rejection and risk-taking behavior. Experiment 3 tested the regulating effect of self-affirmation by manipulating the subjects’ self-affirmation. The main conclusions of the study are as follows: 1) social exclusion significantly affected risk-taking behaviors, and the level of risk-taking behaviors in the social exclusion group was significantly higher than that in the social acceptance group; 2) state self-esteem plays a partial mediating role between social exclusion and risky behaviors; 3) self-affirmation moderates the mediating effect of state self-esteem and the direct effect of social exclusion on risk-taking behavior.
Antigenotoxic effects of a bark extract from Magnolia officinalis

Abstract The aim was to detect antimutagenic and DNA protective effects of a plant extract from bark of Magnolia officinalis adversing oxidative DNA damage. The ability to inhibit mutagenicity induced by tert-butyl hydroperoxide (t-BOOH) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) was determined with Ames test using Salmonella typhimurium His- TA102 bacterial strain. Inhibition values of 72.8 and 98.7 % were detected for t-BOOH and H2O2, respectively. The protective effect of the extract against DNA strand scission induced by hydroxyl radicals was studied with plasmid pBluescript II SK(-). The analysis of DNA strand breaks in the plasmid DNA proved a significant inhibition of DNA damage.
Actor-to-actor tensions influencing waste management in building refurbishment projects: a service ecosystem perspective

Abstract Waste management in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry has been a major research topic owing to the AEC industry being one of the top contributors of waste generation. However, research has primarily focused on new build and has neglected refurbishment projects which become relevant due to an aging building stock in Sweden and Europe. Various actors are involved in refurbishment projects which makes it important to study each actor as well as tensions between them. By using a service ecosystem perspective and relying on 38 interviews, this paper aims to investigate tensions and barriers between actors within the service ecosystem of CDW for refurbishment projects in Sweden. Based on the results, spatial barriers are the most mentioned barrier which also create the highest number of tensions between project and contractor mother firm, subcontractors, waste recycling firms and society/citizens. The majority of the tensions are found between projects and the contractor mother firms, followed by tensions between projects and clients and projects and subcontractors. Unlike previous studies investigating only one of the actor’s waste management practices, this paper contributes by investigating the interactions between seven different actors which is important for improving waste management practices in refurbishment projects.
Effects of carbon nanotubes distribution on the buckling of carbon nanotubes/fiber/polymer/metal hybrid laminates cylindrical shell

In this manuscript, buckling of carbon nanotubes reinforced circular cylindrical composite shell under hydrostatic presser with its ends closed by rigid disks is investigated, using Fourier decomposition and the Galerkin method. The accuracy of the utilized method is verified with previous research in buckling behavior of circular cylindrical shells. Both types of functionally graded and uniform distribution patterns of carbon nanotubes are studied. The novelty of this study is investigating the influence of carbon nanotubes distribution type and volume fraction on buckling resistance of carbon nanotubes reinforced circular cylindrical composite shell. Furthermore, the effect of material type and volume fraction of metal layers on fiber metal laminates is illustrated. The results show that buckling resistance of composite cylindrical shells increase about 10% by reinforcing with 5% carbon nanotubes. Also, it is shown that metal types Az91 and Ti6AlV have about same effect on buckling resistance of fiber metal laminates cylinders, and their effect are about 15% more than the effect of Al2024. With exploiting the executed analysis, pipes with optimum buckling resistance to weight ratio can be designed for hydrostatic loading.
Study on the Diuretic Activity of Cynodon dactylon root stalk Extract in Albino Rats

The present study was carried out to evaluate the diuretic activity of aqueous extract of Cynodon dactylon which is used as traditional folk medicine in India for treatment of various diseases and disorders. On oral administration of the aqueous extract of root stalk of Cynodon dactylon at a dose of 100mg, 250mg, 500mg, 750mg/kg body weight shows diuretic activity which can be quantified in experimental rats. Values are mean + SEM, * p<0.05, **P<0.001, when compared to control.
Decontamination and Reuse of N95 Respirators with Hydrogen Peroxide Vapor to Address Worldwide Personal Protective Equipment Shortages During the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Pandemic

The SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic has placed a tremendous amount of strain on resources in the health care setting. One of the most pressing issues is the rapid depletion of personal protective equipment (PPE) used in the care of patients. This is a significant concern for health care workers’ health and safety. Many entities have depleted or soon will exhaust their stockpile of PPE despite adopting PPE-sparing practices as the number of COVID-19 cases in the United States increases at an almost exponential rate and manufacturers struggle to keep up with the worldwide demand. This potential shortage is particularly concerning for commonly used N95 respirators and powered-air purifying respirators (PAPRs). Recently, the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) even temporarily suspended the requirement to perform annual fit testing of respirators to allow entities to conserve respirators and preserve them for patient care. These measures are unprecedented and highlight the urgent need for entities to develop solutions to proactively address what could be potentially a grave occupational health issue. At Duke University and Health System, we have evaluated and will begin using hydrogen peroxide vapor to decontaminate and reuse N95 respirators. In this communication, we briefly discuss the decontamination validation process and post-decontamination performance validation conducted at Duke. This validation, which is supported by previous laboratory testing, funded by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), demonstrated that N95 respirators still met performance requirements even after decontamination with hydrogen peroxide vapor in the laboratory setting for over 50 times. While previous studies have shown the applicability of the hydrogen peroxide vapor process, we have also confirmed that the respirator still functions as designed, using our standardized human N95 fit testing methodology. We will now use this internally validated and Duke Institutional Biosafety Review Committee (IBRC)–approved laboratory decontamination process in the clinical setting to dramatically extend the life of our N95 respirators. We hope that sharing our processes through this brief communication can help other entities with access to hydrogen peroxide vapor to evaluate the potential applicability of this technology at their facility or partner with those who may already have this capability, including other private-sector life science organizations.
Study of a Bidirectional Power Converter Integrated with Battery/Ultracapacitor Dual-Energy Storage

A patented bidirectional power converter was studied as an interface to connect the DC-bus of driving inverter, battery energy storage (BES), and ultracapacitor (UC) to solve the problem that the driving motor damages the battery life during acceleration and deceleration in electric vehicles (EVs). The proposed concept was to adopt a multiport switch to control the power flow and achieve the different operating mode transitions for the better utilization of energy. In addition, in order to improve the conversion efficiency, the proposed converter used a coupled inductor and interleaved-pulse-width-modulation (IPWM) control to achieve a high voltage conversion ratio (i.e., bidirectional high step-up/down conversion characteristics). This study discussed the steady-state operation and characteristic analysis of the proposed converter. Finally, a 500 W power converter prototype with specifications of 72 V DC-bus, 24 V BES, and 48 V UC was built, and the feasibility was verified by simulation and experiment results. The highest efficiency points of the realized prototype were 97.4%, 95.5%, 97.2%, 97.1%, and 95.3% for the UC charge, battery charge, UC discharge, the dual-energy in series discharge, and battery discharge modes, respectively.
Canadian consumer acceptance of gene‐edited versus genetically modified potatoes: A choice experiment approach

In 2016, second‐generation genetically modified (GM) potatoes were approved for production and sale in Canada. In this study, we analyze how consumer acceptance of GM potatoes may be affected by various factors, including the trait introduced (i.e., the product benefits), the type of breeding technology used, and the developer of the potato using any technology. We conduct an online survey and use a stated choice experiment to collect data on consumer acceptance of GM and other potatoes in Canada. Random utility models are used to analyze the economic value consumers place on the various attributes of the potatoes. Our results show that consumers are willing to pay more for a health attribute (reduced acrylamide produced when potatoes are fried) and an environmental attribute. Respondents in general need to face discounted prices to buy potatoes created by either gene editing or GM (either transgenic or cisgenic/intragenic) technologies. However, consumers are in general more accepting of the gene editing technology than the GM technologies. Our results also show that government is the most preferred developer of the potatoes, regardless of technology. Results from this study can help guide public and private management of the introduction of new foods when the products are developed with unpopular technologies.
The (dis)embodiment of transnational mobilities

ABSTRACT This article outlines a theoretical perspective attending to the embodiment of education-related migrants’ transnational mobilities as reflective of their embeddedness in the world. This argument is presented in two main parts.In the first part, it is argued that within a global discourse of increasing human capital for competitive advantage, skilled migration that follows international education – known as two-step migration – has been used by governments as a human capacity building strategy. In government-commissioned reports and studies, the dominant use of economic frameworks describes two-step migrants as rational choice makers. Such approaches produce the effect of disembodying transnational mobilities as homogeneous ‘brain flows’ across borders. However, migrants have their own pursuits and experience circumstances in relation to socio-economic, political, and cultural influences that affect their subjectivities in transnational mobilities. By building on extant research on transnationalism in the latter part of this article, this article acknowledges the embodiment of transnational mobilities through the relational aspects of migrants’ everyday lives, from forming decisions to migrate, to relocating to the host society and planning for the future. In this sense,the relationality of transnational mobilities can be theorised through skilled migrants’ engagement with the world across multiple spaces and temporalities.
Home range size and resource use by swift foxes in northeastern Montana

Swift foxes (Vulpes velox) are endemic to the Great Plains of North America, but were extirpated from the northern portion of their range by the mid-1900s. Despite several reintroductions to the Northern Great Plains, there remains a ∼350 km range gap between the swift fox population along the Montana and Canada border and that in northeastern Wyoming and northwestern South Dakota. A better understanding of what resources swift foxes use along the Montana and Canada border region will assist managers to facilitate connectivity among populations. From 2016 to 2018, we estimated the home range size and evaluated resource use within the home ranges of 22 swift foxes equipped with Global Positioning System tracking collars in northeastern Montana. Swift fox home ranges in our study were some of the largest ever recorded, averaging (± SE) 42.0 km2 ± 4.7. Our results indicate that both environmental and anthropogenic factors influenced resource use. At the population level, resource use increased by 3.3% for every 5.0% increase in percent grasslands. Relative probability of use decreased by 7.9% and 7.4% for every kilometer away from unpaved roads and gas well sites, respectively, and decreased by 3.0% and 11.3% for every one-unit increase in topographic roughness and every 0.05 increase in normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), respectively. Our study suggests that, to reestablish connectivity among swift fox populations in Montana, managers should aim to maintain large corridors of contiguous grasslands at a landscape scale, a process that likely will require having to work with multiple property owners.
Gastrointestinal parasites of captive and free range non-human primates in savanna zone of Nigeria

Primates being reservoirs of parasites that cause major problems to humans, livestock and under stressful conditions to themselves is a major concern to wildlife conservation, our study compared the gastrointestinal parasites of some Non-human Primates at University of Ilorin Zoological Garden (Unilorin Zoo) and Kainji Lake National Park (KLNP), Nigeria in order to determine the level of their prevalence and possibility of infection on tourists visiting the sites. Species sampled were restricted to those common to both sites; Papio anubis, Erythrocebus patas and Chlorocebus aethiops tantalus. A total of 128 faecal samples were screened from apparent healthy individuals. Samples were processed using sedimentation, sugar floatation technique, Stoll's dilution technique, cultured and infective larvae were recovered using Baermann technique.110 (85.7%) samples were positive for infestation of at least one eggs. Among the positive samples were three species of nematodes; Strongyloides spp. , Ascaris spp. , Ancyclostoma spp. Primates on free-range had higher prevalence of infection. However, under both conditions, there is no significant difference in the prevalence and intensity of parasites harboured over seasonst (4) = 1.968, p =0.120).
University of Birmingham Composition and emission factors of traffic- emitted intermediate volatility and semi-volatile hydrocarbons (C10–C36) at a street canyon and urban background sites in central London, UK

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Solow to Becker-Lucas

We provide a unified growth model to study the transition from the Solow economy which only uses labor and physical capital in production to the Becker-Lucas economy which uses an additional new accumulative factor, human capital, in production. The model starts with the Solow economy, with the Becker-Lucas technology of production available but not profitable at the beginning. Due to the diminishing returns to physical capital, the Becker-Lucas production becomes feasible and starts automatically after physical capital stock reaches a trigger point. We examine the full dynamics of main macroeconomic variables during this transformation process, including a remarkably long period when these two economies coexist. Our theory shows even if assuming a slightly lower TFP growth rate in the Becker-Lucas production than Solow, the transition could still happen due to the efficiency improvement from human capital accumulation. Model calibration shows the labor share will firstly drop during this economic transformation, therefore providing a potential new theoretical explanation for the phenomenon of labor share decline which has recently attracted broad attention. The accumulation of human capital together with the enlarging Becker-Lucas economy does have contributed to this dynamics. Moreover, our model also predicts a rebound of the labor share towards the end of the transformation from the Solow economy to the Becker-Lucas economy and provides a new explanation for skill premium change.
Biochemical and Molecular Diversity in the Chilean Strawberry and its Implications for Plant Breeding

The Chilean wild strawberry (Fragaria chiloensis L. Duch.) is distributed in a wide range of agroecological systems, and as a result, has evolved considerable diversity in morphological and molecular traits. The native and ancient land races of F. chiloensis could be used as parents in a breeding program to improve the species or as a gene pool to improve the cultivated strawberry F. ×ananassa. At the national Research Institute of Agriculture (INIA), Experimental Center in Cauquenes, a collection of wild strawberry germplasm sampled throughout the country (Cameron et al., 1993) is maintained. Over the last ten years, the morphological and molecular patterns of variability in these collections have been examined (Becerra et al., 2001, 2002; Maureira et al., 1996). Here we describe the patterns in genetic diversity of selected Chilean strawberry accessions using isozymes and amplifi ed fragment lenght polymorphism (AFLP).
Inability to predict geographic origin of Yellow-headed Blackbirds, Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus, during migration

2001. Inability to predict geographic origin of Yellow-headed Blackbirds, Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus, during migration. Canadian Field-Naturalist 1 15(4): 549-554. Yellow-headed Blackbirds (Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus) collected at different breeding locations in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and North Dakota exhibit clearly discernable morphometric differences with larger bodied birds found at more northern and western locations. We reduced eight skeletal measurements and body length from adult female and male Yellow-headed Blackbirds to their first two principal components. Principal component scores progressively increased at more northwestern locations. Principal component scores were also derived from measurements of birds col- lected in central North Dakota throughout summer and fall. We hypothesized an increase in principal component scores of Yellow-headed Blackbirds from summer through fall within central North Dakota as larger bodied migrants arrived and displaced local breeding birds. However, we were unable to detect such an increase in principal component scores from mid-June though mid-September over two years of study. Discriminant models that were developed to distinguish birds breeding in Canada from those breeding in the USA were thus poor predictors of the migratory status of Yellow-headed Blackbirds. Consequently, we were unable to exploit the morphometric differences inherent among Yellow-headed Blackbirds breeding at different geographic locations to quantify the timing or the magnitude of their migration through central North Dakota.