Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Validation of the NAT Chagas IVD Kit for the Detection and Quantification of Trypanosoma cruzi in Blood Samples of Patients with Chagas Disease

In the absence of validated biomarkers to control the cure of Chagas disease, PCR-based diagnosis is being used as the main tool for an early indication of therapeutic failure. However, since it is considered a technique of complex reproducibility, mainly due to difficulties in establishing accurate controls to guarantee the quality of the reaction, the use of PCR for Chagas disease diagnosis is restricted to specialized centers. In an effort to disseminate the molecular diagnosis of Chagas disease and its applications, new diagnostic kits based on qPCR have been made available in the market in recent years. Here, we show the results of the validation of the NAT Chagas kit (Nucleic Acid Test for Chagas Disease) for the detection and quantification of T. cruzi in blood samples of patients suspected of Chagas disease infection. The kit, composed of a TaqMan duplex reaction targeting the T. cruzi satellite nuclear DNA and an exogenous internal amplification control, presented a reportable range from 104 to 0.5 parasite equivalents/mL and a limit of detection (LOD) of 0.16 parasite equivalents/mL of blood. In addition, the NAT Chagas kit detected T. cruzi belonging to all six discrete typing units (DTUs—TcI to TcVI), similarly to the in-house real-time PCR performed with commercial reagents, which has been selected as the best performance assay in the international consensus for the validation of qPCR for Chagas disease. In the clinical validation presented here, the kit showed 100% sensitivity and 100% specificity when compared to the consensus in-house real-time PCR assay. Thus, the NAT Chagas kit, which is produced entirely in Brazil under the international standards of good manufacturing practices (GMP), appears as an excellent alternative to enable the molecular diagnosis of Chagas disease in public and private diagnostic centers, as well as to facilitate the monitoring of patients under etiological treatment participating in clinical trials.
Factors Affecting Food Security among Households in Nigeria: The Role of Crop Diversity

Agriculture is central in order to achieve nutrition goals through the provision of food, energy and essential micronutrients for the physical and mental development of humans. Dietary diversity is a good indicator of human food security status. Using a dataset obtained from the World Bank’s Living Standards Measurement Study—Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA), this paper examines the linkages between crop diversity and food security (measured as dietary diversity) among farming households in Nigeria using ordinary least squares, Poisson regression, and instrumental variables (IV) Poisson regression to estimate the relationship. In addition, we investigate the determinants that lead to the consumption of each food groups considered for generating dietary diversity using a logit regression model. The results show that food expenditure, asset ownership and location of households are the key factors driving the types of food consumed by the households. Furthermore, increased food expenditure and access to credit were found to positively influence food security. The result established a positive and significant relationship between crop diversity and dietary diversity. Our findings call for more attention to diet diversity, as well as the need to harmonize the roles of rural income improvement, especially through non-farm livelihood diversification in tackling multiple nutritional deficiencies in Nigeria.
Early Endothelial Signaling Transduction in Developing Lung Edema

The lung promptly responds to edemagenic conditions through functional adaptations that contrast the increase in microvascular filtration. This review presents evidence for early signaling transduction by endothelial lung cells in two experimental animal models of edema, hypoxia exposure, and fluid overload (hydraulic edema). The potential role of specialized sites of the plasma membranes considered mobile signaling platforms, referred to as membrane rafts, that include caveolae and lipid rafts, is presented. The hypothesis is put forward that early changes in the lipid composition of the bilayer of the plasma membrane might trigger the signal transduction process when facing changes in the pericellular microenvironment caused by edema. Evidence is provided that for an increase in the extravascular lung water volume not exceeding 10%, changes in the composition of the plasma membrane of endothelial cells are evoked in response to mechanical stimuli from the interstitial compartment as well as chemical stimuli relating with changes in the concentration of the disassembled portions of structural macromolecules. In hypoxia, thinning of endothelial cells, a decrease in caveolae and AQP-1, and an increase in lipid rafts are observed. The interpretation of this response is that it favors oxygen diffusion and hinder trans-cellular water fluxes. In hydraulic edema, which generates greater capillary water leakages, an increase in cell volume and opposite changes in membrane rafts were observed; further, the remarkable increase in caveolae suggests a potential abluminal–luminal vesicular-dependent fluid reabsorption.
O-Polysaccharides of LPS Modulate E. coli Uptake by Acanthamoeba castellanii

Protozoan grazing is a major cause of bacterial mortality and controls bacterial population size and composition in the natural environment. To enhance their survival, bacteria evolved many defense strategies to avoid grazing by protists. Cell wall modification is one of the defense strategies that helps bacteria escape from recognition and/or internalization by its predators. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) is the major component of Gram-negative bacterial cell wall. LPS is divided into three regions: lipid A, oligosaccharide core and O-specific polysaccharide. O-polysaccharide as the outermost region of E. coli LPS provides protection against predation by Acanthamoeba castellanii; however, the characteristics of O-polysaccharide contribute to this protection remain unknown. Here, we investigate how length, structure and composition of LPS affect E. coli recognition and internalization by A. castellanii. We found that length of O-antigen does not play a significant role in regulating bacterial recognition by A. castellanii. However, the composition and structure of O-polysaccharide play important roles in providing resistance to A. castellanii predation.
Frequency and Predictors of Relapses following SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis: Interim Results from a Longitudinal Observational Study

Despite protection from severe COVID-19 courses through vaccinations, some people with multiple sclerosis (PwMS) are vaccination-hesitant due to fear of post-vaccination side effects/increased disease activity. The aim was to reveal the frequency and predictors of post-SARS-CoV-2-vaccination relapses in PwMS. This prospective, observational study was conducted as a longitudinal Germany-wide online survey (baseline survey and two follow-ups). Inclusion criteria were age ≥18 years, MS diagnosis, and ≥1 SARS-CoV-2 vaccination. Patient-reported data included socio-demographics, MS-related data, and post-vaccination phenomena. Annualized relapse rates (ARRs) of the study cohort and reference cohorts from the German MS Registry were compared pre- and post-vaccination. Post-vaccination relapses were reported by 9.3% PwMS (247/2661). The study cohort’s post-vaccination ARR was 0.189 (95% CI: 0.167–0.213). The ARR of a matched unvaccinated reference group from 2020 was 0.147 (0.129–0.167). Another reference cohort of vaccinated PwMS showed no indication of increased post-vaccination relapse activity (0.116; 0.088–0.151) compared to pre-vaccination (0.109; 0.084–0.138). Predictors of post-vaccination relapses (study cohort) were missing immunotherapy (OR = 2.09; 1.55–2.79; p < 0.001) and shorter time from the last pre-vaccination relapse to the first vaccination (OR = 0.87; 0.83–0.91; p < 0.001). Data on disease activity of the study cohort in the temporal context are expected for the third follow-up.
A method to evaluate the inductance properties of REBCO excitation process based on magnetic energy density and T–A formula

The REBCO high-temperature superconducting tape has a pronounced electromagnetic anisotropy. The critical current is strongly dependent on the value of the magnetic field, the magnetic field direction, the temperature, and the stress, and has a significant nonlinear relationship. It is also important to note that screening current effects in superconducting magnets at elevated temperatures lead to a non-uniform distribution of current densities, and thus the inductance of superconducting magnets at high-temperatures is calculated differently from that of normal magnets. This is essential for the design of superconducting energy storage magnets at high-temperatures, especially for the accurate evaluation of the inductance values. To further analyze the variation of the inductance value due to the REBCO screening current, the T–A formulation combined with the magnetic energy density is considered to evaluate the energy storage and inductance values during the excitation of the superconducting coil. The effect of excitation rate, operating temperature, and excitation current on the inductance value is analyzed based on the design of a 5 T insulating superconducting coil. The mathematical relation between excitation voltage, contact resistance, and inductance in the magnetic excitation experiment is presented, and the accuracy of the calculated method is verified by comparison with simulation results.
SOLAR WIND MAGNETIC FLUCTUATIONS AND ELECTRON NON-THERMAL TEMPERATURE ANISOTROPY: SURVEY OF WIND-SWE-VEIS OBSERVATIONS

The solar wind electron velocity distribution function (eVDF) exhibits a variety of non-thermal features that deviate from thermal equilibrium. These deviations from equilibrium provide a local source for electromagnetic fluctuation emissions, including the commonly observed electron whistler-cyclotron and firehose instabilities. We present a systematic analysis of Wind-SWE-VEIS observations of solar wind electron plasma and associated Wind-MFI observed magnetic fluctuations. For the first time using the full solar wind electron distribution and its moments, without separation of the various electron components, we show clear evidence that the temperature anisotropy threshold of the parallel electron cyclotron anisotropic instability bounds solar wind electrons during slow solar wind periods. We also demonstrate that during periods of slow solar wind, collisions—while infrequent—are the dominant mechanism by which solar wind electrons are constrained, leading to isotropization. During fast solar wind periods, magnetic fluctuations and solar wind anisotropies are enhanced above the parallel whistler anisotropic threshold boundary and collisional effects are significantly reduced. Preliminary calculations further show that the oblique electron whistler mirror anisotropic instability bounds both the slow and fast solar wind. Regardless of speed, the solar wind electron thermal anisotropy appears globally bounded by the parallel electron firehose instability for anisotropies . Our results indicate that collisions, while infrequent, play a necessary role in regulating the solar wind eVDFs. In striking contrast to solar wind ions, solar wind electron plasma, when considered globally as a single eVDF, is only marginally stable with respect to parallel propagating instabilities.
Relationship between Abnormal Placenta and Obstetric Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis

The placenta has several crucial physiological functions that help maintain a normal pregnancy. Although approximately 2–4% of pregnancies are complicated by abnormal placentas, obstetric outcomes remain understudied. This study aimed to determine the outcomes and prevalence of patients with abnormal placentas by conducting a systematic review of 48 studies published between 1974 and 2022. The cumulative prevalence of circumvallate placenta, succenturiate placenta, multilobed placenta, and placenta membranacea were 1.2%, 1.0%, 0.2%, and 0.004%, respectively. Pregnancies with a circumvallate placenta were associated with an increased rate of emergent cesarean delivery, preterm birth (PTB), and placental abruption compared to those without a circumvallate placenta. The succenturiate lobe of the placenta was associated with a higher rate of emergent cesarean delivery, whereas comparative results were observed in terms of PTB, placental abruption, and placenta previa in comparison to those without a succenturiate lobe of the placenta. A comparator study that examined the outcomes of multilobed placentas found that this data is usually unavailable. Patient-level analysis (n = 15) showed high-rates of abortion (40%), placenta accreta spectrum (40%), and a low term delivery rate (13.3%) in women with placenta membranacea. Although the current evidence is insufficient to draw a robust conclusion, abnormal placentas should be recognized as a high-risk factor for adverse outcomes during pregnancy.
Impact of Hydrothermal Pretreatment Parameters on Mesophilic and Thermophilic Fermentation and Anaerobic Digestion of Municipal Sludge

Four parameters affecting hydrothermal pretreatment (HTP) of municipal sludge prior to anaerobic digestion and fermentation were investigated. Partial factorial design including several key HTP parameters at two distinct levels, including temperature (170 and 190 °C), retention time (RT) (10 and 30 min), pH (4 and 10), and solid content (SC) (4% and 16%), were studied. Further, the impact of HTP parameters on mesophilic and thermophilic fermentation was explored and compared. Results revealed a significant effect of all HTP parameters on COD solubilization, VFA, and methane yield. There were correlations between HTP parameters and process responses such as VFA yield and methane yield. HTP was found to increase COD solubilization and VFA production between 15 and 20% during thermophilic fermentation in relation to mesophilic treatment. All parameters, including SC, temperature, pH, and RT, were important contributing factors affecting methane production during anaerobic digestion. The highest methane production yield of 269 mL CH4/g TCOD added was observed at the highest SC (16%) and pH (10) and at the lower temperature (170 °C) and RT (10). HTP is expected to be combined with other intensification routes to treat waste with high solid contents improving the fermentation and anaerobic digestion processes.
THE USE OF EXAMPLES IN A TRANSITION-TO-PROOF COURSE

This study investigates the ways that undergraduate students use examples in their transition-to-proof course, and the influence that the instructor had on the students’ decisions to use examples. Observations and interviews were conducted with the instructor and a sample of students to investigate the connections between the teaching and learning of examples in this proof writing course.
Consumer perceptions and behaviour: A study with special reference to car owners in namakkal district

In recent days India is witnessing a change in consumerism. The market is now predominantly consumer driver. The focus is shifting for product based marketing to need based marketing. Consumer is given many options to decide. Passenger car segment is no exception to this general trend. An effective market communication is imperative for reaching the target audience. So it is important that we study the consumer perceptions and behaviour of the car owners which will give us feedback on how marketing strategies can be worked. Namakkal town in Tamil Nadu State, which is in the southern part of India, has a progressive and growing market for cars. This down was selected for this study. Pre-testing was done by an Interview schedule which was developed and administered to a convenient sample of twenty five car owners. A Simple Random sampling technique was adopted in the study to select the sample respondents. As the size of the universe is restricted, the study has been conducted on the respondents who are the owners of all the segments of passenger cars. A total of 350 Interview schedules were prepared and out of this, only 327 interview schedules were filled up and collected. Data were collected through an interview schedule regarding perception of the respondents on the usage of cars. The following tools were used in testing the hypotheses and in the analysis of the data. Descriptive statistical tools such as Percentage, Mean, Median and Standard deviation have been used to describe the profiles of consumers, preferred product attributes and level of satisfaction. ANOVA, t-Test and F-Test have been used to test the significant differences between the groups of respondents in their perception and satisfaction for selected independent variables like age, sex and income. Chi-Square test has been used to test the association between the consumer demographic characteristics and preferred product attributes and satisfaction. Multiple regression analysis has been used to study the influence of income and lifestyle on overall satisfaction level of the respondents. Correlation analysis has been used to establish the relationship between ‘the factors which influenced the purchase’ and ‘the factors which favoured the level of satisfaction’. Factor analysis is employed to identify the key factors responsible for the consumers’ purchase of cars and level of satisfaction after purchase. Cluster analysis has been used to identify the consumers with similar tastes and preferences with respect to purchase of car. The study throws light on various features that the manufacturers should concentrate on to attract the prospective buyers. This study concludes that consumer behaviour plays a vital role in marketing cars and there is more scope for extensive research in this area.
Multiple Object Tracking With Appearance Feature Prediction and Similarity Fusion

Object tracking is a crucial research area within the field of intelligent transportation, providing a vital foundation for anomalous behavior analysis and traffic statistics. Although pedestrian detectors have shown impressive results, leading to the advancement of detection-based tracking methods, target association in complex scenarios remains a difficult and less efficient task due to the lack of feature robustness in the presence of partial occlusions. In the proposed tracking method, we extract convolutional features on each entire object and its local blocks, segmented by the superpixel algorithm. Aiming to emphasize the global and local information respectively, the global features for each entire object are extracted from the last layer of the backbone network, while local features are derived from a specific intermediate layer of the backbone network. The association between tracked targets and detected pedestrian candidates relies on fused similarity degrees. Furthermore, we use the transformer’s self-attention mechanism to predict features for the current frame based on the information within past frames, aiming to eliminate the effects of target appearance variations. Additionally, we remove redundant background pixels in the detected rectangles of pedestrian candidates by using a background modeling algorithm. Experimental results demonstrate that the tracker proposed in this paper outperforms other trackers across five publicly available datasets, indicating its effectiveness and potential for further development.
Existence results for steady flow of weakly compressible viscoelastic fluids with a differential constitutive law

In this paper we study flows of viscoelastic weakly compressible fluids having a differential constitutive equation. In both cases, Jeffreys and Maxwell type constitutive equations, we establish a result of existence and uniqueness of solutions. We also show that, when the compressibility goes to zero, then the weakly compressible steady solution goes to the incompressible one.
Vector Bundles as Generators on Schemes and Stacks

We investigate the resolution property of quasicompact and quasiseparated schemes, or more generally of algebraic stacks with pointwise affine stabilizer groups. Such a space has the resolution property if every quasicoherent sheaf of finite type admits a surjection from a locally free sheaf of finite rank. As our first main result we verify the resolution property for a large class of surfaces in the first part of the present work. Namely, we show that all two-dimensional schemes that are proper over a noetherian ring satisfy the resolution property. This class includes many singular, non-normal, non-reduced and non-quasiprojective surfaces. The case of normal separated algebraic surfaces was settled by Schroer and Vezzosi (Stefan Schroer and Gabriele Vezzosi, Existence of vector bundles and global resolutions for singular surfaces, Compos. Math. 140 (2004), no. 3, 717--728) and we generalize their methods of gluing local resolutions to the non-normal and non-reduced case, using the pinching techniques of Ferrand (Daniel Ferrand, Conducteur, descente et pincement, Bull. Soc. Math. France 131 (2003), no.4, 553--585. ) in combination with deformation theory of vector bundles. In the second part of the present work our main result states that for a large class of algebraic stacks the resolution property is equivalent to a stronger form: There exists a single locally free sheaf E such that the collection of sheaves, obtained by taking appropriate locally free subsheaves of direct sums, tensor products and duals of E, is sufficiently large in order to resolve arbitrary quasicoherent sheaves of finite type. Next, we interpret this geometrically: A sheaf has this property if and only if its associated frame bundle has quasiaffine total space. This yields a natural generalization of the concept of ample line bundles on separated schemes to vector bundles of higher rank on arbitrary quasicompact algebraic stacks with affine diagonal. As an immediate consequence of this result we infer a generalization of Totaro's Theorem to non-normal stacks which says that an algebraic stack with affine stabilizer groups has the resolution property if and only if it is a quotient of a quasiaffine scheme by an action of some general linear group (Burt Totaro, The resolution property for schemes and stacks, J. Reine Angew. Math. 577 (2004), 1--22. )