Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inhibition of Gap Junction Formation Prior to Implantation of Bone Marrow-Derived Mesenchymal Cells Improves Function in the Ischemic Myocardium

Bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BM-MSC) are reported to induce beneficial effects in the heart following ischemia, but a loss of these cells within hours of implantation could significantly diminish their long-term effect. We hypothesized that early coupling between BM-MSC and ischemic cardiomyocytes through gap junctions (GJ) may play an important role in stem cell survival and retention in the acute phase of myocardial ischemia. To determine the effect of GJ inhibition on murine BM-MSC in vivo, we induced ischemia in mice using 90 min left anterior descending coronary artery (LAD) occlusion followed by BM-MSC implantation and reperfusion. The inhibition of GJ coupling prior to BM-MSC implantation led to early improvement in cardiac function compared to mice in which GJ coupling was not inhibited. Our results with in vitro studies also demonstrated increased survival in BM-MSCs subjected to hypoxia after inhibition of GJ. While functional GJ are critical for the long-term integration of stem cells within the myocardium, early GJ communication may represent a novel paradigm whereby ischemic cardiomyocytes induce a “bystander effect” when coupled to newly transplanted BM-MSC and thus impair cell retention and survival.
Direction of Arrival Estimation Based on Maximum Likelihood Criteria Using Gravitational Search Algorithm

In this paper, a new heuristic optimization algorithm called Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA) is proposed for Direction of Arrival (DOA) estimation method based on maxi- mum likelihood (ML) criteria for a Uniform Circular Array (UCA) of 12 elements. The results are compared with those obtained using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and MUSIC algorithms in terms of Root Mean Square Error (RMSE).
Prevalence of Salmonella in poultry slaughterhouses located in Tripoli, Libya

Background: Salmonella is a leading cause of severe economic losses in poultry and foodborne illness in humans worldwide. Aim: The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence and multidrug resistance of Salmonella Enteritidis (S. Enteritidis) in several chicken abattoirs in Tripoli, Libya. The study includes the South, East, and West regions of Tripoli. Methods: Each region was assigned five slaughterhouses. Each chicken slaughterhouse was visited three times to collect samples. Five samples were taken at random from the neck skin, crop, and spleen. The total number of samples collected from all regions was 675. Bacterial isolation and identification, as well as antibiotic sensitivity testing, were performed on these samples. Results: Salmonella spp. was found to be 15% prevalent, and S. Enteritidis was found to be 7% prevalent. The south region of Tripoli had the highest S. Enteritidis (9%), while the west region had the highest Salmonella spp. (22%). Salmonella prevalence increased significantly (p < 0.01) higher in the spleen (13%) as compared with the crop (5%) and neck (7%). Based on bacterial resistance pattern, Salmonella spp. isolated from the spleen had the highest multiple antibiotic resistance (MAR) index of 0.86 in the south region followed by MAR indexes of 0.8 and 0.46 in the West and East, respectively. Conclusion: Isolation of Salmonella from the spleen may indicate chickens’ systemic infection and failure to control the most important microbe for public health. Thus, the control measures have to be revised and a national Salmonella control program should be put in place urgently.
Thermogravimetric, Morphological and Infrared Analysis of Blends Involving Thermoplastic Starch and Poly(ethylene-co-methacrylic acid) and Its Ionomer Form

This study focuses on the thermal properties and structural features of blends consisting of thermoplastic starch (TPS) and poly(ethylene-co-methacrylic acid) copolymer (EMAA) or its ionomer form (EMAA-54Na). The aim is to investigate how carboxylate functional groups of the ionomer form intervene in blends compatibility at the interface of the two materials and how this impacts their properties. Two series of blends (TPS/EMAA and TPS/EMAA-54Na) were produced with an internal mixer, with TPS compositions between 5 and 90 wt%. Thermogravimetry shows two main weight losses, indicating that TPS and the two copolymers are primarily immiscible. However, a small weight loss existing at intermediate degradation temperature between those of the two pristine components reveals specific interactions at the interface. At a mesoscale level, scanning electron microscopy confirmed thermogravimetry results and showed a two-phase domain morphology, with a phase inversion at around 80 wt% TPS, but also revealed a different surface appearance evolution between the two series. Fourier-transformed infrared spectroscopy analysis also revealed discrepancies in fingerprint between the two series of blends, analysed in terms of additional interactions in TPS/EMAA-54Na coming from the supplementary sodium neutralized carboxylate functions of the ionomer.
Pedigree selection in pea (Pisum sativum L.).

Abdel-Haleem El-Shaieny. Two pea populations (Alaska X little Marvel) and (Alaska X Dwarf Gray Sugar) were used to improve green pod yield and some yield components trait by pedigree selection for several generations (F3, F4 and F5) with check cultivar (Markado), during three winter seasons. Highly significant differences between F3 families in both populations were detected, genotypic coefficient variation were detected for selection of green pod yield per plant. After two cycles of pedigree selection the criterion of selection was increased in population 1 and 2 by 4.98, 31.53, 32.72% and 6.23, 21.49, 20.36% compared with the bulk sample, check cv. , and the best parent, respectively. Heritability in broad sense in F3 populations and two pedigree selection cycles were 96.02, 95.04, 98.38 and 96.83, 88.7, 94.17 respectively, for green pod yield per plant. Families No. 1, 10, 5, 8 and 6 had a heaviest green pod weight per plant in population 1. While, families No. 1, 5 and 10 in population 2 were attained the superiority of green pod yield per plant, compared to the bulk sample, check cv. and the best parent. Therefore, these families were recommended for use as new promising lines of pea but need more field experiments to evaluating them.
Literature Review: Happy Breastfeeding With Hypno Breastfeeding

Breastfeeding is a very precious time for a mother who has just given birth to her baby. Where at this time, the mother gives breast milk which is called a golden liquid to the baby. Breast milk is the optimal nutrition for babies at the beginning of their life. However, in the process of breastfeeding, mothers often feel anxious and not confident that they can breastfeed their babies well and can provide enough breast milk for their babies' nourishment and growth. Peace of mind and feelings can affect the process of milk production. Hypnobreastfeeding is one of the techniques to help mothers to feel calm, comfortable, relaxed, and happy while breastfeeding. Giving positive affirmative sentences about Hypnobreastfeeding can help reduce anxiety and increasing the mother's sense of self-worth will help the nursing process go more easily. This study aims to explain how hypnobreastfeeding is used in nursing mothers. The method used is a literature review by utilizing Google Scholar and PubMed data. The results of a literature search found that Hypnobreastfeeding is beneficial for breastfeeding mothers. Hypnobreastffeding can overcome anxiety, increase motivation and confidence in mothers, and can increase breast milk production.
What is the “modified” CTAB protocol? Characterizing modifications to the CTAB DNA extraction protocol

Abstract Cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB)–based methods are widely used to isolate DNA from plant tissues, but the unique chemical composition of secondary metabolites among plant species has necessitated optimization. Research articles often cite a “modified” CTAB protocol without explicitly stating how the protocol had been altered, creating non‐reproducible studies. Furthermore, the various modifications that have been applied to the CTAB protocol have not been rigorously reviewed and doing so could reveal optimization strategies across study systems. We surveyed the literature for modified CTAB protocols used for the isolation of plant DNA. We found that every stage of the CTAB protocol has been modified, and we summarized those modifications to provide recommendations for extraction optimization. Future genomic studies will rely on optimized CTAB protocols. Our review of the modifications that have been used, as well as the protocols we provide here, could better standardize DNA extractions, allowing for repeatable and transparent studies.
Perioperative care practices and outcomes of intracranial neurosurgery: Experience at a dedicated neurosciences hospital in a developing country

Background and Aims: Understanding of perioperative care practices and early postoperative outcomes helps minimize potentially preventable perioperative complications while supporting systemic and neurological well-being. The objective of this prospective study was to evaluate the perioperative care practices and early postoperative outcomes of cranial neurosurgery at a high-volume tertiary care neurosciences hospital in India. We also aimed to see if the care elements differed depending on the surgical approach. We hypothesized that care elements and outcomes are likely to be different between major surgical approaches. Material and Methods: This was a prospective observational study of consecutive adult neurosurgical patients who underwent elective surgeries for intracranial pathologies over a period of six months from October 2020 to March 2021 at a tertiary care neurosciences center in India. Perioperative data about intraoperative care elements and early postoperative outcomes till the third day after surgery were collected. Results: Incidence of blood loss >1 L was significantly (P = 0.07) higher after infratentorial surgery (26%, N = 17). Incidence of intraoperative and postoperative desaturation was more after transnasal surgery (6%, N = 2, P = 0.002, and 9%, N = 3, P = 0.01, respectively). Conclusion: This study informs the early perioperative care practices of neurosurgical patients from a dedicated neurosciences hospital in a developing world. We observed that transnasal surgery was associated with more perioperative adverse events and slower convalescence compared to supra- and infratentorial surgeries despite being a considerably less invasive surgery.
Influence of Sucrose, Boric Acid and Calcium Chloride on in vitro Pollen Germination and Tube Elongation of Alfalfa

Background: In a genetic breeding program, understanding the viability of pollen germination and pollen tube growth is an essential factor for artificial hybridization. Currently, little is known about the influence of sucrose, boric acid concentrations and calcium chloride on pollen viability in alfalfa. This study is valuable for providing information about pollen germination requirements to support further improvement of artificial pollination and breeding programs in alfalfa. Methods: The single-factor experimental and an orthogonal design method (L16 [4]3) was used to compare the effectiveness of key factors (e.g., concentrations of sucrose, boric acid and calcium chloride) to determine the pollen vigor of Medicago varia Martin. ‘Caoyuan No.1’and M. ruthenica L. Trautv. ‘zhilixing’ and to optimize the culture medium for in vitro pollen germination. Four different varieties were chosen to compare the diurnal variation of pollen vigor. Result: The four factors that influenced pollen germination in Medicago varia Martin. ‘Caoyuan No.1’and M. ruthenica L. Trautv. ‘zhilixing’ in order of significance are as follows: sucrose greater than H3BO3 greater than CaCl2. These variables influenced pollen tube growth in the following order: sucrose greater than H3BO3 greater than CaCl2. The optimal culture medium for promoting pollen vigor of Medicago varia Martin. ‘Caoyuan No.1’ was 10% sucrose, 300 mon/L H3BO3 and 100 mon/L CaCl2; that of M. ruthenica L. Trautv. ‘zhilixing’ was 10% sucrose, 200 mon/L H3BO3 and 50 mon/L CaCl2. Among several species of alfalfa, ‘Caoyuan No.1’ shows the highest pollen vigor and the daily pollen activity curves of all varieties showed a single peak type.
Dry Reforming of Methane over 5%Ni/Ce1-xTixO2 Catalysts Obtained via Synthesis in Supercritical Isopropanol

A series of 5%Ni/Ce1-xTixO2 catalysts was prepared with nickel impregnation of mixed Ce–Ti oxides obtained via synthesis in supercritical isopropanol. All oxides have a cubic fluorite phase structure. Ti is incorporated into the fluorite structure. Small amounts of impurities of TiO2 or mixed Ce–Ti oxides appear with Ti introduction. Supported Ni is presented as the NiO or NiTiO3 perovskite phase. Ti introduction increases total samples reducibility and results in stronger interaction of supported Ni with the oxide support. The fraction of rapidly replaced oxygen and the average tracer diffusion coefficient also increase. The number of metallic nickel sites decreased with increasing Ti content. All catalysts except Ni-CeTi0.45 demonstrate close activity in tests of dry reforming of methane. The lower activity of Ni-CeTi0.45 can be connected to Ni decoration with species of the oxide support. The incorporation of Ti prevents detachment of Ni particles from the surface and their sintering during dry reforming of methane.
NEURAL NETWORK SMOOTHING APPROXIMATION METHOD FOR STOCHASTIC VARIATIONAL INEQUALITY PROBLEMS

This paper is concerned with solving a stochastic variational inequality problem (for short, SVIP) from a viewpoint of minimization of mixed conditional value-at-risk (CVaR). The regularized gap function for SVIP is used to define a loss function for the SVIP and mixed CVaR to measure the loss. In this setting, SVIP can be reformulated as a deterministic minimization problem. We show that the reformulation is a convex program for a huge class of SVIP under suitable conditions. Since mixed CVaR involves the plus function and mathematical expectation, the neural network smoothing function and Monte Carlo method are employed to get an approximation problem of the minimization reformulation. Finally, we consider the convergence of optimal solutions and stationary points of the approximation.
Slim and Fast: Low-Overhead Container Overlay Network With Fast Connection Setup

Large-scale cloud applications today are often deployed using multiple containers, and a container overlay network is the de facto method to provide connectivity among these containers. However, the existing tunneling-based overlay network incurs significant performance overhead due to the need of transformation for every packet. Recent work Slim, through manipulating connection-level meta-data, allows containers to use host OS sockets directly thus they can achieve good performance without extra packet tunneling. Nevertheless, the connection setup is significantly slowed down, which requires an extra round-trip communication between both sides to pass the mapping information of the host OS socket and the container socket. This greatly hurts the performance of many cloud applications that must process short connections at high speed. We propose SlimFast, a low-overhead container overlay network which provides a fast connection setup. SlimFast directly uses the host OS socket for container communication as Slim. However, SlimFast needs no extra communication during connection setup. We reserve a dedicated host port for the container network and use socket mapping table to locally find the right container socket during connection setup. We implement SlimFast which is compatible with existing container applications. Experiments show that, SlimFast can improve the connection setup time by about 2.1x compared with Slim, meanwhile maintaining low-overhead during data transmission as Slim. This brings significant performance improvement to real applications. Particularly, testbed results show that SlimFast improves the throughput of Nginx proxy and Memcached by about 0.9x and 2.2x, respectively.
Wavy Leading Edge (WLE) Influence on a Rectangular Wing Using an Unsteady Analysis Approach

A rectangular wing with Wavy Leading Edge (WLE) effect was investigated experimentally and numerically. This research was carried out with the NACA 0018 profile. The morphology of humpback whale flippers, which are blunt and rounded in a specific pattern, inspired the design of the WLE. The rectangular wing was explored in pitching motion with a reduced frequency of k = 0.25 and varied aspect ratios. Multiple aspect ratios (AR) of the rectangular wing have been evaluated to determine the best wing aspect ratio, notably 3.9, 5.1, and 7.9. Only at AR 3.9 and 5.1 does the WLE perform efficiently in both upstroke and downstroke motion. WLE has a sinusoidal function shape. The improvement of lift force was stronger during upstroke motion than during downstroke motion. The stall is minimized during the pitching motion of the WLE wing, according to the numerical simulation. This result could be applied to fin stabilizers or wind turbines.
Substantia Nigra Echogenicity Signal Correlated with Clinical Features in Patients with Parkinson's Disease in Xinjiang

Background Transcranial sonography (TCS) is a noninvasive test that can reveal structural changes in the substantia nigra (SN) in Parkinson's disease (PD). The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between SN signatures and clinical features in PD patients in a multiethnic region of China. Methods A total of 147 patients with PD were included in the study, and all of whom had underwent a TCS examination. Clinical information was collected from PD patients, and motor and nonmotor symptoms were assessed using assessment scales. Results There were differences in the substantia nigra hyperechogenicity (SNH) area between age of onset, visual hallucinations (VH), and UPDRS3.0 II scores (P < 0.05), patients with late onset PD had a greater SNH area than early onset (0.326 ± 0.352 vs. 0.171 ± 0.194), and PD patients presenting with VH had a greater SNH area than those without hallucinations (0.508 ± 0.670 vs. 0.278 ± 0.659), and further multifactorial analysis showed that a high SNH area was an independent risk factor for development of VH. The area under the ROC curve for predicting VH from the SNH area in PD patients was 0.609 (95% CI: 0.444–0.774). There was a positive correlation between the SNH area and UPDRS3.0-II scores, but further multifactorial analysis showed that SNH was not an independent predictor of the UPDRS3.0-II score. Conclusion A high SNH area is an independent risk factor for development of VH, there is a positive correlation between the SNH area and UPDRS3.0 II score, and TCS has guiding significance in predicting clinical VH symptoms and activities of daily living in PD patients.
Testing claims of a usage-based phonology with Liverpool English t-to-r1

The variable phenomenon in which /t/ can be realized as a tap or rhotic approximant in varieties of Northern British English (commonly referred to as t-to-r, Wells 1982: 370) has received some attention in English linguistics as debates have appeared over how best to model its phonology (e.g. Carr 1991; Docherty et al. 1997; Broadbent 2008). The occurrence of t-to-r seems to be constrained by the preceding and following phonological environment in a largely systematic way and so it is often accounted for within a rule-based model of grammar. Problematically, however, the rule does not apply blindly across the board to all words which fit the specified phonological pattern. Instead, t-to-r shows evidence of being lexically restricted, and this fact has recently encouraged a usage-based interpretation. Until now, there has been relatively little attempt to test the usage-based thesis directly with fully quantified data gleaned from naturally occurring conversation. This article investigates the extent to which certain usage-based predictions can account for variation attested in t-to-r in Liverpool English. Using oral history interviews with Liverpool English speakers born in the early 1900s, we examine the usage-based predictions first proposed by Broadbent (2008) that t-to-r is more likely in (a) high-frequency words and (b) high-frequency phrases. There is some support for the importance of lexical frequency as a motivating factor in the use of t-to-r, but our data do not fully support either of these claims wholesale. We suggest that t-to-r is not constrained simply by word frequency or phrase frequency alone, but by a combination of both. Finally, we explore the possibility of employing notions from Cognitive Grammar such as schema strength (e.g. Taylor 2002; Bybee 1995: 430) in our interpretation of these data.
Toeplitz operators with locally integrable symbols on Bergman spaces of bounded simply connected domains

We study the boundedness and compactness of generalized Toeplitz operators with locally integrable symbols on Bergman spaces where is a bounded simply connected domain with smooth boundary. We give sufficient conditions for boundedness and compactness of in terms of “averages” of symbol a over certain Cartesian squares. The main tool in the proof is the Whitney covering: is decomposed into union of countably many squares whose side lengths are comparable to the boundary distance. If a is nonnegative, we show that the given conditions are also necessary.
Managing fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda J.E. Smith) using leaf residue of neem (Azadirachta indica A. Juss) on maize (Zea mays L.) under natural infestation

ABSTRACT Fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda J.E. Smith) is a pest that has established across sub-Saharan Africa, capable of causing 100% yield loss in maize. Although aqueous extracts of neem (Azadirachta indica A. Juss) are being used to manage this pest, neem leaf residue may have added beneficial effects. This investigation was conducted during April–November 2020 at the Training and Research Farm, University of Benin, Nigeria, aiming to improve maize yields by using neem leaf residue for managing fall armyworm under natural infestation. The experiment was laid out in a randomised complete block design, with four replicates. The treatments comprised five rates of freshly cut neem leaves (0, 1.0, 3.0, 5.0 and 7.0 kg m−2) applied as a mulch. All neem leaf treatments reduced the severity of plant damage caused by fall armyworm. With application of neem leaf residue, maize plants had a longer production period (95 vs. 86 d), grew taller (130–145 vs. 72 cm), had heavier seeds (250–280 vs. 170 g), higher grain yield (3800–5300 vs. 760 kg ha−1) and stover yield (3200–4600 vs. 2100 kg−1), compared with the control. Grain yield was increased by 410–600% with the use of neem leaf residue, which was likely a combined effect of the control of fall armyworm and improved soil fertility. The results of this study will be of benefit to farmers, who are recommended to grow maize with an application of 3.0 kg m−2 of freshly cut neem leaves, which was considered the minimum rate to achieve good performance.