Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bioaccumulation of heavy metals in tissues of selected fish species from Ganga river, India, and risk assessment for human health

ABSTRACT The study measured the concentration of Cd, Cr, Pb, Cu, and Zn in various fish tissues (muscle, gills, and liver) of 18 fish species (C. gachua, C. marulius, C. punctatus, C. nama, C. ranga, H. fossilis, C. batrachus, P. ticto, P. phutunio, L. rohita, L. calbasu, L. gonius, T. putitora, T. tor, R. rita, G. chapra, H. ilisa, and N. botia) collected from Ganga river. It is the survey regarding metal concentration in fish tissues increasing day by day. The metal concentration in different fish tissues varied on the following range: Cu (0.45–8.54 µg/g wet wt), Zn (0.07–2.2 µg/g wet wt), Pb (0.20–2.62 µg/g wet wt), Cd (0.07–2.32 µg/g wet wt), and Cr (0.09–1.74 µg/g wet wt). The results show the concentration of Pb, Cd, and Cr metals to be higher than internationally recommended standard limits (as determined by the WHO and FAO) and other similar studies. Generally, higher concentrations of metals were found in liver and gills than muscles. Despite lower estimated daily intake (EDI) of fish in the area (per recommended daily allowance guidelines), values of daily average consumption were lower than the recommended values by FAO/WHO/EFSA, and in fish samples these were below the provisional permissible levels for human consumption. The continuous exposure to heavy metals has been linked to the development of mental retardation, kidney damage, various cancers, and even death in instances of very high exposure in human body.
Impact of Written Corrective Feedback on Malaysian ESL Secondary Students’ Writing Performance

The teacher plays a crucial role in providing good written corrective feedback (WCF), especially in Malaysia’s education system. Numerous studies were conducted on its effectiveness and students’ perceptions, but most were meant for tertiary education. This mixed method study identified the types of WCF provided by teachers during their English as a Second Language (ESL) writing pedagogical practices in five Malaysian secondary schools, and analysed the perceptions of 482 students and 15 teachers towards the provision of WCF. A questionnaire survey was administered to collect quantitative data from students, and focus group discussions were conducted among the teachers to collect qualitative data. Students highlighted that, teachers gave unfocused, metalinguistic WCF, and only held discussions much later. Students preferred teachers to mark all errors, and perceived WCF as important in improving their writing skills. Teachers reported, that they are in the habit of providing unfocused, indirect, and metalinguistic WCF, and held discussions with students only after marking the scripts. They perceived WCF as beneficial in enhancing students’ writing skills and teachers’ pedagogical practices. In this vein, it is construed, that the perceptions of teachers and students are mostly aligned. Teachers need to be aware of the existing types of WCF and incorporate the appropriate ones in their teaching practices . This study is significant in enriching ESL teachers’ pedagogical practices of teaching writing to secondary school students by providing the best practices of WCF, taking into account students’ interest, and ultimately create a more significant impact in the ESL writing classroom. Keywords: Written corrective feedback; pedagogical practices; secondary schools; writing skills; writing performance
Review of Unusual Presentations of COVID-19

The world has faced the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic since the H1N1 influenza pandemic in 1918. The symptoms of this disease are spreading rapidly and affect almost all systems of the body. In addition to the common symptoms of the virus, numerous reports of rare symptoms of the virus have also been published. These atypical presentations can result in difficulty in diagnosing the disease. The aim of this work is to summarize “uncommon atypical presentations”, which have not received enough attention in descriptions of the disease presentation to date and the authors specifically discuss the important uncommon atypical presentations of COVID-19.
Knowledge and awareness of Covid 19 and its impact on mental health

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic—and the social distancing measures that many countries have implemented—have caused disruptions to daily routines. Mental health support and follow-up should be provided even six months after the release from isolation for those individuals with prior vulnerable mental health status. The main aim of the study is to create awareness and knowledge about COVID – 19 and its impact on the mental health of the public. The self-administered design was designed based on awareness. The questionnaire was distributed through google docs link to 100 numbers of the study population who were in lockdown irrespective of age. Methods of representation of each output variable were represented in the pie chart form. The measure that was taken to minimize the sampling bias was that the validity that was checked both internally and externally. The result was statistically analyzed using SPSS software. The participants were explained about the purpose of the study in detail. From the above Survey conducted, 58% of the total 100 participants' mental health being affected due to lockdown imposed due to COVID -19. This COVID 19 has created stress, anxious and nervous situations for 47% of the total participants. Educated people and health professionals are aware of this infection; they take possible preventive measures. They understand the importance of social distancing. So this lockdown is not affecting their mental health.
Biological traits and field distribution of introduced Arhopalus species in Central Argentina

Abstract Arhopalus rusticus rusticus and Arhopalus syriacus (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) are exotic forestry pests that coexist in Córdoba (Argentina). To contribute to forest management strategies, we examined how their emergence, development, and abundance affect the sex ratio. We found a dispersal sex ratio of 0.5:0.5 (males:females) in both species. The birth sex ratio was 0.5:0.5 in A. syriacus and 0.6:0.4 in A. r. rusticus. In rearing experiments, A. r. rusticus had larger individuals, with several larval instars and high survival ratio, but developmental time was shorter in A. syriacus. We found an asymmetric distribution, but there are indications that the range of A. syriacus is advancing northward.
Differing Trends in United States and European Severe Thunderstorm Environments in a Warming Climate

Long-term trends in the historical frequency of environments supportive of atmospheric convection are unclear, and only partially follow the expectations of a warming climate. This uncertainty is driven by the lack of unequivocal changes in the ingredients for severe thunderstorms (i.e., conditional instability, sufficient low-level moisture, initiation mechanism, and vertical wind shear). ERA5 hybrid-sigma data allow for superior characterization of thermodynamic parameters including convective inhibition, which is very sensitive to the number of levels in the lower troposphere. Using hourly data we demonstrate that long-term decreases in instability and stronger convective inhibition cause a decline in the frequency of thunderstorm environments over the southern United States, particularly during summer. Conversely, increasingly favorable conditions for tornadoes are observed during winter across the Southeast. Over Europe, a pronounced multidecadal increase in low-level moisture has provided positive trends in thunderstorm environments over the south, central, and north, with decreases over the east due to strengthening convective inhibition. Modest increases in vertical wind shear and storm-relative helicity have been observed over northwestern Europe and the Great Plains. Both continents exhibit negative trends in the fraction of environments with likely convective initiation. This suggests that despite increasing instability, thunderstorms in a warming climate may be less likely to develop due to stronger convective inhibition and lower relative humidity. Decreases in convective initiation and resulting precipitation may have long-term implications for agriculture, water availability, and the frequency of severe weather such as large hail and tornadoes. Our results also indicate that trends observed over the United States cannot be assumed to be representative of other continents.
Revisiting Global Welfare Regime Classifications

This review article revisits the influential work of Gough (2004a, 2004b) on global welfare regimes fifteen years later. The article attempts to explore how far this literature has managed to pave a bridge between comparative social policy and development studies and explores the key contributions it offered in explaining welfare regime classification in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The article then reviews selected publications that have incorporated or applied Gough’s approach and in particular reviews how far scholars developed, complemented and questioned Gough’s approach. The review focuses on the causal properties for capturing the diversity of welfare regime classifications, empirical data, methodologies applied to classify welfare regimes, cases selected, groupings identified and finally how transitions to different welfare regime memberships are explained. In the conclusion, the article discusses findings and implications for global welfare regime classification debates.
Characterization of Coleus aromaticus essential oil and its major constituent carvacrol for in vitro antidiabetic and antiproliferative activities

ABSTRACT Coleus aromaticus leaf essential oil and its purified constituent, carvacrol, were studied for their inhibition activity of diabetic linked α-amylase and α-glucosidase, and the antiproliferative activity and cytotoxicity on human melanoma cancer (A375) cells; its effect on cell cycle arrest, DNA fragmentation and apoptosis by the cleavage of poly-(ADPribose)-polymerase (PARP) and Bcl-2 gene expression was examined. The essential oil and its constituent carvacrol exhibited inhibitory activities against α-amylase and α-glucosidase. The IC50 values for α-amylase (34.64 ± 1.09; 152.3 ± 1.21 µg mL−1) and α-glucosidase (29.29 ± 1.05; 94.02 ± 0.78 µg mL−1) were obtained for the essential oil and carvacrol respectively. Carvacrol inhibited the growth of A375 cells by inducing apoptosis as evidenced by acridine orange/ethidium bromide staining and flow cytometry analyses. The A375 cells treated with carvacrol for 24 h induced apoptosis by the cleavage of PARP and reduced Bcl-2 gene expression. Carvacrol may induce apoptosis by direct activation of the mitochondrial pathway, which plays a vital role in the anticancer effect.
Towards a Secure and Scalable IoT Infrastructure: A Pilot Deployment for a Smart Water Monitoring System

Recent growth in the Internet of Things (IoT) looks promising for realizing a smart environment of the future. However, concerns about the security of IoT devices are escalating as they are inherently constrained by limited resources, heterogeneity, and lack of standard security controls or protocols. Due to their inability to support state-of-the-art secure network protocols and defense mechanisms, standard security solutions are unsuitable for dynamic IoT environments that require large and smart IoT infrastructure deployments. At present, the IoT based smart environment deployments predominantly use cloud-centric approaches to enable continuous and on-demand data exchange that leads to further security and privacy risks. While standard security protocols, such as Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), have been explored for certain IoT environments recently, the implementation models reported have several variations and are not practically scalable for any dynamically scalable IoT deployment. This paper addresses current drawbacks in providing the required flexibility, interoperability, scalability, and low-cost practical viability of a secure IoT infrastructure. We propose an adaptive end-to-end security model that supports the defense requirements for a scalable IoT infrastructure. With low-cost embedded controllers, such as the Raspberry Pi, allowing for the convergence of more sophisticated networking protocols to be embedded at the IoT monitoring interface, we propose a scalable IoT security model integrating both the IoT devices and the controller as one embedded device. Our approach is unique, with a focus on the integration of a security protocol at the embedded interface. In addition, we demonstrate a prototype implementation of our IoT security model for a smart water monitoring system. We believe that our modest first step would instill future research interests in this direction.
Spinning Mellin Bootstrap: Conformal Partial Waves, Crossing Kernels and Applications

We study conformal partial waves (CPWs) in Mellin space with totally symmetric external operators of arbitrary integer spin. The exchanged spin is arbitrary, and includes mixed symmetry and (partially)‐conserved representations. In a basis of CPWs recently introduced in arXiv:1702.08619, we find a remarkable factorisation of the external spin dependence in their Mellin representation. This property allows a relatively straightforward study of inversion formulae to extract OPE data from the Mellin representation of spinning 4pt correlators and in particular, to extract closed‐form expressions for crossing kernels of spinning CPWs in terms of the hypergeometric function 4F3. We consider numerous examples involving both arbitrary internal and external spins, and for both leading and sub‐leading twist operators. As an application, working in general d we extract new results for O(1/N) anomalous dimensions of double‐trace operators induced by double‐trace deformations constructed from single‐trace operators of generic twist and integer spin. In particular, we extract the anomalous dimensions of double‐trace operators [OJΦ]n,l with OJ a single‐trace operator of integer spin J.
In Vitro and In Vivo Regulation of Pro-inflammatory Cytokines and Drug Efflux Transporters by Signal Transduction Pathways in Glial Cells: Implications in HIV-1 Neuropathogenesis and its Treatment

Cognitive impairment remains highly prevalent in human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) infected patients due to viral replication and associated brain inflammation. One obstacle to effective treatment is poor penetration of antiretroviral drugs across blood-brain barrier (BBB) and into HIV-1 brain cellular targets (microglia, astrocytes) due to functional expression of efflux transporters [P-glycoprotein (P-gp), Multidrug resistance-associated proteins (MRPs), breast cancer resistance protein (BCRP)]. Identifying therapeutic compounds that are not substrates of these transporters but target signaling pathways involved in inflammation may benefit treatment of HIV-associated neurological complications. The aim of this PhD project was: i) to investigate signaling pathways involved in the regulation of Mrp1 and P-gp in cultured rat/human astrocytes triggered with HIV-1 glycoprotein 120 (gp120) or cytokines, ii) to implement and characterize an in vivo model of gp120-associated brain inflammation, iii) to assess the efficacy of chloroquine, minocycline and simvastatin in reversing brain inflammation in vivo and iv) to elucidate key signaling pathways involved in gp120-associated brain inflammation in vivo. We demonstrated that gp120-associated TNF-α release resulted in increased Mrp1 functional expression in primary cultures of rat astrocytes and both c-jun Nterminal kinase (JNK) and nuclear factor-кB (NF-κB) pathways were involved. In human astrocytes, we demonstrated decreased P-gp expression following exposure to HIV1/gp120/interleukin-6 (IL-6) and involvement of NF-kB signaling in P-gp downregulation. In our in vivo model, gp120 administration resulted in a significant increase in inflammatory
Redesigning Rewards for Improved Fairness Perception and Loyalty

Human resource (HR) managers are deeply concerned with redesigning the process and changing the practices, to accommodate with the psychological changes happening in employee attitudes to tap committed contributions from them. Literature shows that employees reward fairness perception has a determinant role in shaping employee behaviour in addition to Reward satisfaction. This study has made an attempt to assess the impact of rewards and its contributing factors on improving employee loyalty directly and through the mediating variable of reward fairness perception, indirectly. The study adapted the Total Reward Model of ‘Worldat work’ to test the assumptions related with total rewards and employee loyalty. The data collected from the sample is analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM). The analysis revealed the explaining power and mediating effect of reward fairness perception in the relationship between total rewards and employee loyalty. The results show that enhancement of employee loyalty is possible by properly addressing employee’s reward fairness perception which is achieved through improved reward satisfaction. The results give clear indication to the HR managers about the need of redesigning the reward practice by incorporating employee reward fairness perception to optimize employee loyalty.
Accurate prediction of cis-regulatory modules reveals a prevalent regulatory genome of humans

Annotating all cis-regulatory modules (CRMs) and constituent transcription factor (TF) binding sites (TFBSs) in genomes is essential to understand genome functions, however, the tasks remain highly challenging. Here, we tackle the tasks using a different strategy than common practice by integrating putative TFBSs motifs found in numerous TF ChIP-seq datasets. Using available 6,092 datasets covering 77.47% of the human genome, our compactional pipeline enables us to partition the covered genome regions into a CRM candidate (CRMC) set (56.84%) and a non-CRMC set (43.16%), consisting of 44.03% and 33.44% of the genome, respectively. Intriguingly, like experimentally validated VISTA enhancers and ClinVar mutants, the predicted 1,404,973 CRMCs are under strong evolutionary constraints, suggesting that at least the vast majority of them might be functional. In stark contrast, the non-CRMCs are largely selectively neutral, suggesting that at least the vast majority of them might be non-functional. When evaluated on VISTA enhancers and ClinVar mutants, the CRMCs recall all VISTA enhancers (100.00%) and almost all ClinVar mutants (97.43%) at p-values of 5×10−5 and 0.05, respectively, substantially outperforming three state-of-the-art methods tested. Based on our predictions and evolution of the genome, we estimate that the human genome might code for about 1.5 million CRMs and 68 million TFBSs, comprising about 55% and 22% of the genome, respectively; for both of which we predicted about 80%. Therefore, the cis-regulatory genome appears to be more prevalent than originally thought.
Constitutional amendment and stock prices: evidence from China

ABSTRACT This paper examines the market response to China’s 2018 constitutional amendment, which removes presidential term limits and cements the leadership of the party. We document that stock prices rise as a result of the decrease in political uncertainty. We find that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) gain broadly, especially for centrally controlled SOEs. In particular, the results illustrate that SOEs with high R&D investment earn higher returns, whereas non-SOEs in industries with high growth potential earn relatively lower returns. We also find that stock prices increase more for firms belonging to the Belt and Road key industries and for firms located in provinces that used to be led by Xi Jinping. However, the conventional fixed investment and political connections play no role for either SOEs or non-SOEs. Moreover, the profitability (volatility) of SOEs increases (declines) after this event, when compared with the pre-amendment period. Overall, our study suggests that, as a response to global uncertainty, China’s constitutional amendment improves market certainty.
Phonon properties and photo-thermal oxidation of micromechanically exfoliated antimonene nanosheets

Two-dimensional (2D) sheets of antimonene have attracted increasing attention due to their unique physical and chemical properties prompting potential for diverse applications. We present a facile method to prepare high-quality antimonene nanosheets (ANSs) by micromechanical exfoliation on SiO2/Si substrate. The temperature- and laser power-dependent Raman studies of exfoliated ANSs are reported and analyzed. It was found that both the out-of-plane A1g and the in-plane Eg modes red-shift linearly with increase in temperature, pointing towards anharmonic vibrations of the lattice. The thermal response of the ANSs on a SiO2/Si surface is also described using numerical simulation of the heat transfer to study their laser-induced oxidation mechanisms. These results offer a deeper understanding of the phonon properties and oxidation susceptibility of 2D antimonene paving the way for the development of antimonene-based technologies, such as electronic devices or photothermal cancer therapy.
A Phenomenographic Study on Views About Entertaining and Boring Situations in Learning Process

In the learning process, it is accepted that learning with entertainment is important in participation in the process and retention of learning. Thus, the aim of the present study was to investigate the views of students and teachers on entertaining and boring settings in the learning process. Phenomenography method was used in the study. The study group included fourth grade teachers and students in public and private schools in Adiyaman province central district in Turkey. In this context, seven schools, four private and three public schools, were selected among the schools, where students of the parents with different socio-economic background attended, with purposive sampling method. A total of 10 primary school 4th grade teachers employed these schools participated in the study on a voluntary basis. The study group included 80 students. Individual and focus group interview and photointerviewing techniques were used in data collection Data were analyzed with content analysis method. In the study, it was concluded that teachers and students liked similar class settings and both teachers and students liked classrooms that were furnished with sufficient number of tools and equipment, heating and lighting, where colorful and plenty of activities could be conducted and equipped with technological tools. Furthermore, it was determined that the teachers and students criticized the photographs they disliked due to the lack of facilities in the classroom to implement different methods, similarities with their own classrooms, or for being dark and old-looking, and the unhappy demeanor of the students and teachers on the photographs. The study findings were discussed and interpreted within the framework of the literature.
Experimental strategies to evaluate the gut microbiota-host-diet interaction in the regulation of energy balance

The influence of gut microbiota on energy balance was investigated in germfree and conventional mouse models of genetically and diet-induced obesity. Microbiota effects on energy homeostasis were dependent on transfer strategy, genetic background of mouse models and composition of dietary macronutrients. The impact of gut microbiota on energy balance is thus determined by a complex interaction of genotype and dietary behavior of the host.
Claiming credit and avoiding blame: political accountability in Greek and Turkish responses to the COVID‐19 crisis

Using a framework developed by Hood and adapting it to crises, we explore the factors behind the use of three types of political accountability strategies— presentational, policy, and agency—during responses to the COVID-19 crisis in Greece and Turkey. We situate the comparison in the current political context and conclude with implications for political survival as leaders attempt to balance public accountability, political expediency, and national health.