Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Biocontrol Potential of Trichoderma asperellum Strain 576 against Exserohilum turcicum in Zea mays

Maize is a crucial cereal crop in China, serving both as a staple food and an essential industrial resource. Northern corn leaf blight (NCLB) is a disease of corn caused by a fungus, Exserohilum turcicum (sexual stage Setosphaeria turcica). This study aimed to assess the biocontrol potential of various Trichoderma strains against Exserohilum turcicum 101 in Jilin, China. Through dual culture tests, the Trichoderma strains were categorized into four groups based on their antagonistic abilities. Eleven Trichoderma strains exhibited strong antagonistic behavior, with comparable or faster growth rates than E. turcicum 101. Microscopic observations confirmed that T. asperellum 576 hyphae effectively encircled E. turcicum 101 hyphae, reinforcing their antagonistic behavior. The production of non-volatile and volatile substances by the Trichoderma strains was evaluated, with T. asperellum 576 showing the highest potency in producing non-volatile and volatile substances, leading to an impressive 80.81% and 65.86% inhibition of E. turcicum 101 growth. Remarkably, co-culture suspensions of T. asperellum 576 + E. turcicum 101 and T. atroviride 393 + E. turcicum 101 exhibited strong antifungal activity. Furthermore, the activities of chitinase, β-1.3-glucanase, and cellulase were evaluated using the 3, 5-dinitrosalicylic acid (DNS) method. T. asperellum 576 + E. turcicum 101 displayed stronger cell wall degradation enzyme activity compared to T. atroviride 393 + E. turcicum 101, with values of 8.34 U/mL, 3.42 U/mL, and 7.75 U/mL, respectively. In greenhouse conditions, the application of a 107 spores/mL conidia suspension of T. asperellum 576 significantly enhanced maize seed germination and plant growth while effectively suppressing E. turcicum 101 infection. Maize seedlings inoculated/treated with both E. turcicum 101 and T. asperellum 576 demonstrated substantial improvements compared to those inoculated solely with E. turcicum 101. The T. asperellum 576 treatment involved a 107 spores/mL conidia suspension applied through a combination of foliar spray and soil drench. These findings highlight T. asperellum 576 as a promising biocontrol candidate against northern leaf blight in maize. Its antagonistic behavior, production of inhibitory compounds, and promotion of plant growth all contribute to its potential as an effective biocontrol agent for disease management.
Factors Affecting Internal Party Democracy of The People’s Democratic Party’s Selection of Women Candidates in Nasarawa State, Nigeria

Internal Party Democracy (IPD) of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), since Nigeria regained political independence in 1960 from the British until the year 2015, has had a crippling effect on Nigeria's democracy. IPD was responsible as adduced by the military for seizing power from the civilian administration in 1966 and subsequently up to 1999. Following 1999, the IPD of the PDP continued to represent a significant threat to Nigeria's democracy, engaging in everything from deliberate procedural violations of electoral laws to electoral fraud and candidate imposition during the party's primary elections. This qualitative study identified the factors affecting the PDP's IPD. A purposive sampling technique was used to select 13 females and 17 males for the study, comprising officials, elites, and members from the PDP itself, and the parliament. Thematic analysis revealed three major factors affecting PDP’s IPD such as (i) the absence of a free and fair process, (ii) the lack of nomination of women's candidature, and (iii) the discrimination nature of the IPD style. The present study closed the gap in the literature by revealing the exact activities in the Nasarawa State House of Assembly in Nigeria. Hence, the study is a novelty in relation to previous research on PDP's IPD.
The Role of Trait and State Mindfulness in Cognitive Performance of Male Adolescents

Purpose The number of mindfulness intervention projects is continually increasing. Within the educational environment, mindfulness has purported links to well-being, positive behaviour, educational and cognitive performance. Trait mindfulness is related to rational thinking and better performance in cognitive tests, suggesting that innate mindfulness ability contributes to self-regulation ability and thus the efficacy of mindfulness interventions. The current study investigates whether mindfulness is a moderating factor. It examines correlations between cognitive performance and trait mindfulness. The study investigates the influence of trait mindfulness on the ability of students to enter state mindfulness in an attempt to understand the role both types of mindfulness may have on cognitive performance. Participants and Method Two-hundred and five male students aged fifteen and sixteen completed the adolescent version of the Mindfulness Awareness Scale, the Cognitive Reflection Test, and the Toronto Mindfulness Scale. Results Hierarchical regression analysis found that state mindfulness was a predictor of cognitive reflection ability. ANOVA also found that having either trait or state mindfulness predicted higher cognitive reflection scores, but only state mindfulness had a significant effect on cognitive reflection. Trait mindfulness was not a moderating factor. Conclusion Both state and trait aspects of mindfulness ability influence cognitive performance. Those with higher trait mindfulness ability are better able to enter state mindfulness and thus had better cognitive reflection scores. However, where it is possible to induce state mindfulness into those with low trait mindfulness, CRT scores were also higher although not significantly so.
Deconfounding Causal Inference for Zero-Shot Action Recognition

Zero-shot action recognition (ZSAR) aims to recognize unseen action categories in the test set without corresponding training examples. Most existing zero-shot methods follow the feature generation framework to transfer knowledge from seen action categories to model the feature distribution of unseen categories. However, due to the complexity and diversity of actions, it remains challenging to generate unseen feature distribution, especially for the cross-dataset scenario when there is a potentially larger domain shift. This article proposes a Deconfounding Ca USAl GAN (DeCalGAN) for generating unseen action video features with the following technical contributions: 1) Our model unifies compositional ZSAR with traditional visual-semantic models to incorporate local object information with global semantic information for feature generation. 2) A GAN-based architecture is proposed for causal inference and unseen distribution discovery. 3) A deconfounding module is proposed to refine representations of local objects and global semantic information confounder in the training data. Action descriptions and random object features after causal inference are then used to discover unseen distributions of novel actions in different datasets. Our extensive experiments on Cross-Dataset Zero-Shot Action Recognition (CD-ZSAR) demonstrate substantial improvement over the UCF101 and HMDB51 standard benchmarks for this problem.
On a weighted Adams type inequality and an application to a biharmonic equation

This paper deals with an improvement of a class of Adams type inequalities involving potentials V$$ V $$ and weights K$$ K $$ , which can decay to zero at infinity as (1+|x|α)−1$$ {\left(1&amp;amp;#x0002B;{\left&amp;amp;#x0007C;x\right&amp;amp;#x0007C;}&amp;amp;#x0005E;{\alpha}\right)}&amp;amp;#x0005E;{-1} $$ , α∈(0,4)$$ \alpha \in \left(0,4\right) $$ , and (1+|x|β)−1$$ {\left(1&amp;amp;#x0002B;{\left&amp;amp;#x0007C;x\right&amp;amp;#x0007C;}&amp;amp;#x0005E;{\beta}\right)}&amp;amp;#x0005E;{-1} $$ , β∈[α,+∞)$$ \beta \in \left[\alpha, &amp;amp;#x0002B;\infty \right) $$ , respectively. As an application of this result and by using minimax methods, we establish the existence of solutions for the following class of problems: Δ2u−Δu+V(x)u=K(x)f(x,u)inℝ4,$$ {\Delta}&amp;amp;#x0005E;2u-\Delta u&amp;amp;#x0002B;V(x)u&amp;amp;#x0003D;K(x)f\left(x,u\right)\kern0.30em \mathrm{in}\kern0.30em {\mathrm{\mathbb{R}}}&amp;amp;#x0005E;4, $$ where the nonlinear term f(x,u)$$ f\left(x,u\right) $$ can have critical exponential growth. Furthermore, when α∈(0,2)$$ \alpha \in \left(0,2\right) $$ we prove that the solutions belong to the Sobolev space H2ℝ4$$ {H}&amp;amp;#x0005E;2\left({\mathrm{\mathbb{R}}}&amp;amp;#x0005E;4\right) $$ (bound state solutions).
ARFI Elastography of Venous Thrombosis and Adjacent Muscles in Assisting Treatment Management and Prognostication in Tertiary Care Hospital

Introduction: Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) is a condition with potentially severe consequences, including Pulmonary Embolism (PE) and post-thrombotic complications. This study aimed to investigate the characteristics, detection, and management of DVT using Acoustic Radiation Frequency Impulse (ARFI) technology, considering factors like age, comorbidities, and thrombus stage. Materials and Methods: The study, conducted at Apollo Hospital Chennai, retrospectively analyzed data from 247 patients with DVT. High-end Sonodoppler ARFI was used. Inclusion criteria covered clinically suspected DVT cases and patients with a history of PE and elevated D-Dimer levels. Exclusion criteria applied to non-consenting or suboptimal imaging patients. Statistical analysis employed SPSS software. Results: Out of 247 patients, 124 controls had mean ARFI values of 0.96 m/sec for veins and 2.52 m/sec for muscles. DVT patients in the acute, subacute, and chronic stages showed distinct ARFI values. Age, gender, and comorbidities were associated with DVT. Thrombus characterization revealed differences in ARFI values. Moreover, the study revealed significant correlations between ARFI values and various clinical parameters. Vein and muscle ARFI values displayed progressive increments across thrombus stages, aiding in the differentiation between acute, subacute, and chronic DVT. Notably, a statistically significant correlation was observed between ARFI values and liver function tests, platelets, and D-dimer levels, further underscoring the diagnostic potential of ARFI in assessing DVT. Conclusion: ARFI technology is valuable in diagnosing and managing DVT. It aids in early detection and prognosis, especially in acute-on-chronic cases. However, larger sample sizes are needed to establish ARFI values for chronic DVT. This study highlights ARFI's potential in improving DVT management and outcomes. Key words: ARFI, Acute DVT, Chronic DVT.
Unlocking the anti‐diabetic potential of Gymnema sylvestre, Trigonella foenum‐graecum, and their combination thereof: An in‐vivo evaluation

Abstract The current study aimed to explore the anti‐diabetic effect of aqueous extracts of Gymnema sylvestre, Trigonella foenum‐graecum and mixture of both the plants in alloxan‐induced diabetic rabbits. A total of 30 rabbits were grouped into six equal groups as: normal control, diabetic control, diabetic treated with 300 mg/kg body weight (bw) G. sylvestre, diabetic treated with 300 mg/kg bw T. foenum‐graecum, diabetic treated with 300 mg/kg bw mixture of both the plants and diabetic treated with 500 mg/kg bw metformin for 4 weeks. Diabetes was induced to all the study group animals except normal control by intravenous administration of alloxan monohydrate (80 mg/kg bw). Blood glucose was measured by glucometer and other biochemical parameters were determined through various kit methods. Serum insulin was measured through ELISA kit method. Results showed that both the plants and metformin significantly (p < .05) decreased the fasting blood glucose. Hypoglycemic activity of aqueous extract of G. sylvestre and metformin was found slightly higher than aqueous extract of T. foenum‐graecum and the mixture of both the plants. However, a significant (p < .05) rise in insulin secretion was observed in studied plants extract treated rabbits. Serum urea, creatinine, and liver enzymes were found reduced significantly (p < .05) in treated rabbits whereas packed cell volume was also returned to normal in treated animals as compared to control group. The study concluded that G. sylvestre and T. foenum‐graecum extracts have comparable effects with metformin in normalizing the blood glucose level and have more pronounced effect than metformin in restoring the serum biochemical parameters to normal levels. Hence, these plants may be the good alternative medicine in managing the diabetes mellitus.
A New Dual-Input Deep Anomaly Detection Method for Early Faults Warning of Rolling Bearings

To address the problem of low fault diagnosis accuracy caused by insufficient fault samples of rolling bearings, a dual-input deep anomaly detection method with zero fault samples is proposed for early fault warning of rolling bearings. First, the main framework of dual-input feature extraction based on a convolutional neural network (CNN) is established, and the two outputs of the main frame are subjected to the autoencoder structure. Then, the secondary feature extraction is performed. At the same time, the experience pool structure is introduced to improve the feature learning ability of the network. A new objective loss function is also proposed to learn the network parameters. Then, the vibration acceleration signal is preprocessed by wavelet to obtain multiple signals in different frequency bands, and the two signals in the high-frequency band are two-dimensionally encoded and used as the network input. Finally, the unsupervised learning of the model is completed on five sets of actual full-life rolling bearing fault data sets relying only on some samples in a normal state. The verification results show that the proposed method can realize earlier than the RMS, Kurtosis, and other features. The early fault warning and the accuracy rate of more than 98% show that the method is highly capable of early fault warning and anomaly detection.
Etude des interactions entre aérosols et climat : assimilation des observations spatiales de POLDER dans LMDz-INCA

Les aerosols perturbent l'equilibre radiatif de la Terre via leurs effets directs (diffusion et absorption du rayonnement solaire) et indirects (interaction avec les nuages). La perturbation anthropique sur le climat liee aux emissions d'aerosols est du meme ordre de grandeur que celle liee aux gaz a effet de serre, mais bien moins connue. Pour ameliorer notre connaissance de cette perturbation, il est necessaire de mieux connaitre la distribution spatio-temporelle des aerosols. En effet, la description des sources et du transport dans les modeles d'aerosols reste incertaine et l'information fournie par les satellites est incomplete (pas de detection en presence de nuages, pas d'information sur la distribution verticale ou sur la nature chimique). De plus, les campagnes de mesures sont localisees dans l'espace et dans le temps. Mon travail de these vise a ameliorer la connaissance des distributions d'aerosols via l'assimilation de mesures spatiales dans un modele de transport. On combine ainsi les informations apportees par la mesure spatiale (epaisseur optique) avec celles du modele (type de particules attendues, distribution verticale). Dans cette etude, les donnees de l'instrument spatial POLDER sont assimilees dans le modele LMDz-INCA. Les resultats montrent tout l'interet d'utiliser l'ensemble de l'information disponible. Dans beaucoup de regions, cette methode a permis d'ameliorer notre connaissance des distributions (en termes de reduction des erreurs RMS). Un exemple d'application a l'etude de l'effet indirect des aerosols est montre.
Biomonitoring of exposure to air pollutants: early biomarkers of exposure and effect

Indoor microenvironments can have a relevant contribution towards the total exposure to pollutants. The biomarkers of exposure and effect were analysed in general population, to evaluate the impact of VOCs, PAHs and tobacco smoke exposure in everyday life. We designed a model for toxicological studies, as proof of concept for future studies. We analysed airborne personal exposure to air pollutants, the urinary and oxidative stress biomarkers of three exposure level groups in a non-smoking population from Birmingham, UK, a subset with high exposures to tobacco smoke, and a subset of schoolchildren in Saudi Arabia, living in high pollution areas. A significant correlation was observed between low concentration urinary cotinine and urinary VOCs. Urinary VOCs were found suitable for exposure assessment of general population, although the correlations with oxidative stress biomarkers were weak. No significant correlation between urinary PAHs and oxidative stress was observed in schoolchildren from Saudi Arabia, although certain areas showed a significant increase in urinary PAHs and oxidative stress biomarker. The cell exposure system was designed and tested so it could be applied in future toxicological studies. The observed ROS generation and DNA damage in the cells after exposure, proved the validity of the model for benzene exposure.
Reporting treatment processes and outcomes for paediatric feeding disorders: A current view of the literature

ABSTRACT Empirically supported treatment for paediatric feeding disorders is behaviour-analytic, often taking place in controlled hospital settings. We evaluated reporting of treatment processes and outcomes within behaviour-analytic studies to consider recommendations for practitioners, as well as future research. Strengths of the literature were reporting of directly observed behavioural outcome data demonstrating the effectiveness of empirically supported treatment. However, there was variability in reporting aspects of the overall treatment process. With respect to multidisciplinary involvement, gaps in reporting included the frequency of involvement in assessment and treatment, as well as the roles of each discipline involved. Further, there were gaps in reporting of treatment goal progression, such as food variety, volume, texture and independence, as well as nutritional outcomes (oral intake, growth). Our findings support recommendations to improve reporting in the literature, to increase standardisation of processes and improved dissemination to the wider research community. Further, improved research reporting will increase practitioner knowledge of empirically supported treatment for paediatric feeding disorders. To this end, we provide recommendations and resources regarding multidisciplinary involvement and systematic monitoring of treatment goal progression.
Application of Single Extracellular Vesicle Analysis Techniques

Abstract Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are lipid containers that are actively released by cells and contain complex molecular cargoes. These cargoes include abundant material such as genomes and proteins from cells of origin. They are involved in intercellular communication and various pathological processes, showing excellent potential for diagnosing and treating diseases. Given the significant heterogeneity of EVs in complex physiopathological processes, unveiling their composition is essential to understanding their function. Bulk detection methods have been previously used to analyze EVs, but they often mask their heterogeneity, leading to the loss of valuable information. To overcome this limitation, single extracellular vesicle (SEV) analysis techniques have been developed and advanced. These techniques allow for analyzing EVs’ physical information and biometric molecules at the SEV level. This paper reviews recent advances in SEV detection methods and summarizes some clinical applications for SEV detection strategies.
Spontaneous Aberrant Bodies Formation in Human Pneumocytes Infected with Estrella lausannensis

Estrella lausannensis, a Chlamydia-related bacterium isolated from a Spanish river, is considered as a possible emerging human pathogen. Indeed, it was recently demonstrated to multiply in human macrophages, resisting oxidative burst and causing a strong cytopathic effect. In addition, a preliminary study highlighted a correlation between antibody response to E. lausannensis and pneumonia in children. To clarify the pathogenic potential of these bacteria, we infected a human pneumocyte cell line with E. lausannensis and assessed its replication and cytopathic effect using quantitative real-time PCR and immunofluorescence, as well as confocal and electron microscopy. Our results demonstrated that E. lausannensis enters and replicates rapidly in human pneumocytes, and that it causes a prompt lysis of the host cells. Furthermore, we reported the spontaneous formation of aberrant bodies, a form associated with persistence in Chlamydiae, suggesting that E. lausannensis infection could cause chronic disorders in humans.
A Parametric Thoracic Spine Model Accounting for Geometric Variations
 by Age, Sex, Stature, and Body Mass Index

In this study, a parametric thoracic spine (T-spine) model was developed to account for morphological variations among the adult population. A total of 84 CT scans were collected, and the subjects were evenly distributed among age groups and both sexes. CT segmentation, landmarking, and mesh morphing were performed to map a template mesh onto the T-spine vertebrae for each sampled subject. Generalized procrustes analysis (GPA), principal component analysis (PCA), and linear regression analysis were then performed to investigate the morphological variations and develop prediction models. A total of 13 statistical models, including 12 T-spine vertebrae and a spinal curvature model, were combined to predict a full T-spine 3D geometry with any combination of age, sex, stature, and body mass index (BMI). A leave-one-out root mean square error (RMSE) analysis was conducted for each node of the mesh predicted by the statistical model for every T-spine vertebra. Most of the RMSEs were less than 2 mm across the 12 vertebral levels, indicating good accuracy. The presented parametric T-spine model can serve as a geometry basis for parametric human modeling or future crash test dummy designs to better assess T-spine injuries accounting for human diversity.