Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Magnetic Water on Immune Response in Rabbit against Pathogenic Bacteria

This study investigates the effect of drinking magnetically treated water (MTW) on animal's immune response against bacterial infection to see whether MTW improve the health and the immune response of the body, as MTW producers claimed. 32 female rabbits were housed for 58 days and divided into two groups (treated group and control group) where treated group drank magnetized water with 3500 Guse while control group drank tap water. In the twenty three day, they injected with Salmonella typhi somatic antigen (O-Ag) according to immunization schedule for bacteria. Coulter counter was used for measurement of innate immunity (White blood cell, lymphocyte, monocyte and granulocyte) and Architect system was used for detection of adaptive immune system (immunoglobulin M-IgM titer). No significant difference among treated group and control group was observed in innate immunity before and after vaccination with Sallmonella typhi (O-Ag). However, hemoglobin concentrations show significant decrease (p=0.027) in treated animals after vaccination with salmonella typhi O-Ag. Additionally no immunoglobulin G (IgG) was detected after 7 days from the immunization schedule, while IgM was detected and shows a significant elevation (p=0.030) in control group compared with treated group. For this reason magnetically treated water not only has no effect on hematological parameter but also has adverse effect on immune response to bacterial infection in rabbit.
The False positive problem of automatic bot detection in social science research

The identification of bots is an important and complicated task. The bot classifier "Botometer" was successfully introduced as a way to estimate the number of bots in a given list of accounts and, as a consequence, has been frequently used in academic publications. Given its relevance for academic research and our understanding of the presence of automated accounts in any given Twitter discourse, we are interested in Botometer’s diagnostic ability over time. To do so, we collected the Botometer scores for five datasets (three verified as bots, two verified as human; n = 4,134) in two languages (English/German) over three months. We show that the Botometer scores are imprecise when it comes to estimating bots; especially in a different language. We further show in an analysis of Botometer scores over time that Botometer's thresholds, even when used very conservatively, are prone to variance, which, in turn, will lead to false negatives (i.e., bots being classified as humans) and false positives (i.e., humans being classified as bots). This has immediate consequences for academic research as most studies in social science using the tool will unknowingly count a high number of human users as bots and vice versa. We conclude our study with a discussion about how computational social scientists should evaluate machine learning systems that are developed for identifying bots.
Water Conservation Through Voluntary Responsible Behaviour at Botho University in Botswana

In 2016, the Paris agreement on climate change agreed to limit the global warming well below 2°C, and ideally 1.5°C by the end of the century. Even-though the global temperature on track shows a raise towards 3.2°C by the end of the century breaking 1.5°C target by 2040, one wonders how the Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions (ASSAR) assessed the vulnerability of Botswana in reaching the limit, 2°C. Accordingly, Botswana will show a steady raise in temperature to 2.8°C, the annual rainfall will drop by 9% and increase in dry days by 17 extra days. In addition, even the Limpopo catchment in Botswana will show a decline by 36%. Given these scenarios, water as a lifelong commodity becomes highly vulnerable in Botswana. With a view to mitigate the intensity, the local, regional and international legal, policy and institutional framework legislated, agreed otherwise ratified expects a sustainable water management by voluntary, responsible behaviour from the consumers apart from other stakeholders in Botswana. For example, 2030 Agenda for 17 SDGs: the SDG 06: Clean Water and Sanitation & 12th SDG: Responsible Consumption and Production. Consequently, this study qualitatively investigated the ex-ante and ex-post behavior of a consumer manifested by the strategic management in the light of theory of planned behavior for the water conservation project implemented by installation of newer water efficient appliances at Botho University in a landlocked country, Botswana. The test of theory of planned behaviour finds that the attitudes, social norms and Perceived Behavioural Control of the strategic management made strong intention for the responsible behavioural change in implementing the project. Further, the project has been able to save the water by 80%, supply water continuously to consumers, protect the environment and further a cost saving to the university. These findings will be significant to ascertain how antecedent factors determine the decision making behaviour of a water conservation project. Such understanding acts as a catalyst for African universities to be a beacon of vision and mission in water conservation, distribution and governance in Africa in which continent 33% of people are affected by water scarcity which is getting worse with urbanization, population, industrial use and climate change.
Intracellular parasitism of macrophages by Cryptococcus.

The pathogenic fungi Cryptococcus neoformans and Cryptococcus gattii are two of the main causes of life-threatening meningoencephalitis in immunocompromised and immunocompetent individuals respectively. Following inhalation, cryptococci are engulfed by phagocytic cells in the lung and previous studies by our group and others have demonstrated that they are then able to survive inside these cells (especially macrophages), thus acting as intracellular parasites. This intracellular phase is thought to underlie the ability of the pathogens to remain latent for long periods of time within infected individuals. Here, we demonstrate that cryptococci can also manipulate host macrophages in order to mediate an exquisitely controlled ‘escape’ process. This expulsive process, which we have termed ‘vomocytosis’, can occur either into the extracellular milieu or, remarkably, into neighbouring host cells, thus resulting in direct cell-to-cell transmission (‘lateral transfer’). After vomocytosis, both the host macrophages and the expelled cryptococci appear morphologically normal and continue to proliferate. Vomocytosis therefore represents an important mechanism by which pathogens are able to escape from phagocytic cells without triggering host cell death and thus inflammation. Moreover, direct cell-to-cell spread of cryptococci allows the pathogen to remain concealed from the immune system and protected from antifungal agents, thus achieving long-term latency. This project has also provided a possible explanation for the molecular cause of a recent C. gattii outbreak on Vancouver Island, Canada. We found that isolates from the outbreak have dramatically increased their ability to replicate within macrophages in comparison with other C. gattii strains, despite the fact that they are genetically very similar to each other. We further demonstrate that such enhanced intracellular parasitism is directly linked to virulence in a murine model of cryptococcosis, suggesting that this ability might be the cause of the outbreak. Finally, application of high-density whole genome tiled arrays, confocal microscopy and mating assays reveal regulation of mitochondrial activity to be a major driver of virulence in this pathogen group. Taken together, these data indicate that a recent change in mitochondrial regulation within the C. gattii lineage has led to an increased intracellular proliferative capacity, resulting in the hypervirulent phenotype that underlies the outbreak. Such shifts in intracellular replication capacity may be a widespread phenomenon in other human pathogens and could potentially underpin disease epidemics caused by otherwise unrelated pathogens.
The relationship between polymyalgia rheumatica, giant cell artritis and varicella zoster leading to a treament for gca

Giant Cell Artritis (GCA) is an unpleasant condition that can cause serious complications. The standard treatment involves the prolonged use of steroids which in itself causes problems. Because of the published evidence of the involvement of the Herpes zoster virus with GCA, treatment with a large dose of acyclovir was tried. The treatment was successful and after a few days all symptoms of GCA had disappeared.
A Comparative Analysis of RNN and SVM

A trend in increasing electricity consumption and technological innovation has resulted in automated energy management systems. Forecasting movement of the electricity price with machine learning plays a role in the sustainability of these systems. The aim of the report is to compare two machine learning methods, namely Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) with LSTM, and Support Vector Machine (SVM). The metric to evaluate is percentage in prediction accuracy, additionally statistical analysis is applied for further evaluation. The models are built and optimized on a single historic dataset from an Australian electricity market where the major influencing attributes are price, demand and time. The training and test set are split 80/20 whereas the training is done in 10 folds for cross validation. Results of the experiment show that the SVM-model had a slightly higher accuracy and a lower standard error of the mean. Differences were seen in sensitivity and specificity when applied to a confusion matrix. The conclusion made was that in this specific case, SVM outperformed RNN in prediction accuracy, however, there
Similarity Measures for Protein Ensembles

Analyses of similarities and changes in protein conformation can provide important information regarding protein function and evolution. Many scores, including the commonly used root mean square deviation, have therefore been developed to quantify the similarities of different protein conformations. However, instead of examining individual conformations it is in many cases more relevant to analyse ensembles of conformations that have been obtained either through experiments or from methods such as molecular dynamics simulations. We here present three approaches that can be used to compare conformational ensembles in the same way as the root mean square deviation is used to compare individual pairs of structures. The methods are based on the estimation of the probability distributions underlying the ensembles and subsequent comparison of these distributions. We first validate the methods using a synthetic example from molecular dynamics simulations. We then apply the algorithms to revisit the problem of ensemble averaging during structure determination of proteins, and find that an ensemble refinement method is able to recover the correct distribution of conformations better than standard single-molecule refinement.
Constraint Branching in Workflow Satisfiability Problem

There has been a considerable interest in recent years in the problem of workflow satisfiability which seeks an allocation of authorised users to every step of the workflow, subject to workflow specification constraints. Unfortunately, the workflow satisfiability problem (WSP) where arbitrary constraints are allowed, is computationally intractable. Wang and Li (2010) were the first to study WSP in the framework of parameterized complexity (with the parameter being the number of steps). Wang and Li proved that the WSP for arbitrary constraints is intractable even in the framework of parameterized complexity, i.e., it is highly unlikely to be fixed-parameter tractable (FPT). Extending the work of Wang and Li (2013) and Crampton et al. (2013), Cohen et al. (2014) introduced the family of user-independent (UI) constraints, which are constraints whose satisfiability does not depend on the identities of the users. Cohen et al. proved that WSP with UI constraints is FPT. Karapetyan et al. (2019) employed these ideas in practically efficient solution methods for WSP with UI constraints, including methods based on SAT and CSP general purpose solvers. While the family of UI constraints includes the most common constraints used in practice, some real-world cases are outside of the family. In this paper, we generalise the concept of authorizations by making them context-dependent and show how to absorb some non-UI constraints into context-dependent authorizations. This allows us to extend algorithms and their implementations developed for WSP with UI constraints to arbitrary constraints. We carry out computational experiments with a general-purpose SAT solver, SAT4J, to test practicality of solving WSP with UI and non-UI constraints using our approach.
The Coccidian Parasites of Rodents

This important, long-needed revision of the authors' previous book discusses the 473 named species of coccidia of rodents. It. contains over twice as many as the 1965 book, The Coccidian Parasites (Protozoa, Sporozoa) of Rodents. Included is the available up-to-date information about each of these species. Data are given for the 99 forms which have insufficient information available to justify assigning them species names. This work can be used as a guide to future investigations, not only on rodent coccidia, but also on the coccidia of all other vertebrates and even some invertebrates. This book will serve as an invaluable and authoritative source for parasitologists. It is of importance to those involved in protozoology, tropical medicine, wildlife diseases and veterinary medicine.
The active form of quinol-dependent nitric oxide reductase from Neisseria meningitidis is a dimer

X-ray crystallographic and cryo-EM structural analyses have been performed on the same chromatographic fraction of quinol-dependent nitric oxide reductase from Neisseria meningitidis to high resolution. This represents one of the first examples in which the two approaches have been used to reveal a monomeric assembly in the crystal and a dimeric assembly in the frozen cryo-EM solution. A number of factors have been identified that may trigger the destabilization of the helices that are necessary to preserve the integrity of the dimer.
The β-Glucosidase of the Yeast Cell Surface

There are two distinct components of the system which limits the rate at which intact cells of S. cerevisiae C hydrolyze external β-glucosides; one component requires metabolic energy and the other is stereospecific for β-glucosides. The stereospecific component is localized at the cell membrane, as shown by its sensitivity to heavy metal inhibitors which did not penetrate the cell under the conditions used. It was shown that cellobiose-grown cells were able to remove cellobiose from the medium in which they were incubated, and that the cellobiose uptake system was identical to that which limits the patent β-glucosidase activity. In order to test the hypothesis that the system in question was a transport system, for β-glucosides the ability of cellobiose-grown cells to take up 14C-labeled methyl-β-glucoside (MBG) was studied. The induced cells were able to take up MBG-14C and the label could be partially chased out by cold MBG and cellobiose; glucose-grown cells could not incorporate label. However, induced cells could not take up label when incubated with 14C-MBG, thus excluding the hypothesis of transport of intact β-glucosides. It was concluded that the stereospecific membrane component was actually a β-glucosidase, coupled to an energy-dependent transport system for the glucose moiety; the function of the latter was rate-limiting in the over-all activity of the entire system.
Effect of Black Seed (Nigella sativa L.) on some Reproductive Traits in Ross Broiler Breeder Male Chickens

Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the effects of Nigella sativa seed and its oil added to the ration on some reproductive characteristics in broiler breeder males. In experiment I, a total of 40 male broiler breeders (45 weeks age) were divided into five equal groups each of 8 cocks. The first group served as control; groups 2 and 3 were fed on 0.5 or 1.0% oil, while groups 3 and 4 were fed on 0.5 or 1.0% N. sativa seed. The supplements were added daily to 135gm basal diet for 9 weeks. The main goal of this experiment was to evaluate the effect of N. sativa seed and its oil on some semen characteristics. Results showed that the addition of either seed or oil of N. sativa to the diet of the male broiler breeders resulted in the best characteristics of semen that studied in the traits. The treated groups showed an increase in ejaculation volume, sperm mass motility, progressive motility, viability percentage, count, and total sperm output. On the other hand, they exhibited a decrease in time of ejaculation and sperm abnormalities. In experiment II, a total of 200 hens and 20 cocks (55 weeks age) were randomly assigned into five equal experimental groups, each group having 4 replicates (10 hens and 1 cock). The hens of all five groups and cocks of first group (control) were fed on the basal ration daily for four weeks, whereas cocks of group 2, 3, 4, and 5 were fed basal ration supplemented with 0.5 or 1.0% oil or 0.5 or 1.0% seed of N. sativa, respectively. The main goal of this experiment was to investigate the effect ofN. sativa on the percentages of fertility and hatchability. Statistical analysis of the results showed significant (p<0.05) improvement on fertility and hatchability percentages using N. sativa in the feed.
Propagating Neocortical Gamma Bursts Are Coordinated by Traveling Alpha Waves

Neocortical neuronal activity is characterized by complex spatiotemporal dynamics. Although slow oscillations have been shown to travel over space in terms of consistent phase advances, it is unknown how this phenomenon relates to neuronal activity in other frequency bands. We here present electrocorticographic data from three male and one female human subject and demonstrate that gamma power is phase locked to traveling alpha waves. Given that alpha activity has been proposed to coordinate neuronal processing reflected in the gamma band, we suggest that alpha waves are involved in coordinating neuronal processing in both space and time.
MODELLING THE VARIABILITY OF ROCKS REBOUND ON COARSE SOILS

Introduction Rockfall is a major risk in mountainous zones. In t he field of falling rocks trajectory simulations, many scientific problems related to modelling the b ouncing phase remain to be solved. The large variability of slope properties and boulder removal conditions pleads for a stochastic modelling of these trajectories. In particular, the rebound of f alling rocks has to be modelled as a random process (Bourrier et al., 2009a). The aim of this study is to define a stochastic impact model that can captur e the variability of the bouncing phenomenon on coars e soils, in particular. For this purpose, a numerical approach based on the Discrete Element Method (DEM) is used to investigate the impact of a boulder on a coarse gra nular soil in 2D. This model is used to perform an intensive simulations campaign. The analysis of res ults from this campaign is carried out using advanced statistical methods leading to the definit ion of a stochastic impact model. The stochastic impact model is finally integrated in a falling roc ks trajectories simulation code and the code developed is evaluated by comparing real-scale expe rimental results to rockfall trajectory simulations .
Thermal symmetry of the upper and lower extremities in healthy subjects

Infrared thermal imaging is being increasingly utilized in the study of neurological and musculoskeletal disorders. In these conditions data on the symmetry (or the lack of it) of skin temperature provides valuable information to clinicians. A major study on thermal symmetry, however, was made in 1988, but there is an absence of studies with the current generation of higher resolution cameras. In this study skin temperature measurements have been carried out using thermograms of 39 healthy male subjects. Measurements were obtained from an infrared camera using the CTHERM application developed at the authors’ research unit. CTHERM is capable of calculating statistical data such as temperature averages and standard deviation values in corresponding areas of interest on both sides of the body. Results show that in healthy subjects the highest temperature symmetry difference was at most ​0.4oC ± 0.3oC in total body views and 0.4oC ± 0.15oC in regional views​. Total body views and regional views produced comparable results although less variation was achieved in regional views. Using a high-resolution camera the study achieved better results on thermal symmetry in normal subjects than previously reported. ​Symmetry assumptions can therefore be used with higher confidence when assessing abnormalities in specific pathologic states​.
Transcriptional Control of Steroid Biosynthesis Genes in the Drosophila Prothoracic Gland by Ventral Veins Lacking and Knirps

Specialized endocrine cells produce and release steroid hormones that govern development, metabolism and reproduction. In order to synthesize steroids, all the genes in the biosynthetic pathway must be coordinately turned on in steroidogenic cells. In Drosophila, the steroid producing endocrine cells are located in the prothoracic gland (PG) that releases the steroid hormone ecdysone. The transcriptional regulatory network that specifies the unique PG specific expression pattern of the ecdysone biosynthetic genes remains unknown. Here, we show that two transcription factors, the POU-domain Ventral veins lacking (Vvl) and the nuclear receptor Knirps (Kni), have essential roles in the PG during larval development. Vvl is highly expressed in the PG during embryogenesis and is enriched in the gland during larval development, suggesting that Vvl might function as a master transcriptional regulator in this tissue. Vvl and Kni bind to PG specific cis-regulatory elements that are required for expression of the ecdysone biosynthetic genes. Knock down of either vvl or kni in the PG results in a larval developmental arrest due to failure in ecdysone production. Furthermore, Vvl and Kni are also required for maintenance of TOR/S6K and prothoracicotropic hormone (PTTH) signaling in the PG, two major pathways that control ecdysone biosynthesis and PG cell growth. We also show that the transcriptional regulator, Molting defective (Mld), controls early biosynthetic pathway steps. Our data show that Vvl and Kni directly regulate ecdysone biosynthesis by transcriptional control of biosynthetic gene expression and indirectly by affecting PTTH and TOR/S6K signaling. This provides new insight into the regulatory network of transcription factors involved in the coordinated regulation of steroidogenic cell specific transcription, and identifies a new function of Vvl and Knirps in endocrine cells during post-embryonic development.
Appraisal of a Moose Range in Southwestern Montana.

The Gravelly-Snowcrest Mountains complex in southwestern Montana has provided approximately 18 percent of the annual moose harvest in the State since 1957. Management of moose in this area involves evaluation of range condition as well as harvest and population data. This paper reports studies of four browse species important to moose, as observed from 1959 to 1962, and discusses factors influencing utilization of these species on the summer and winter ranges. These studies were conducted in conjunction with studies of reproduction and distribution of moose, reported by Peek (1962). Unpublished Montana Fish and Game Department reports’ ’ indicated increases in moose populations in this area during the 1940’s and early 1950’s. Heavy utilization of willow (Salti spp.) by moose was noted in 1952. Knowlton (1960) counted 53 moose from the ground