Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Treatment of Produced Water with Photocatalysis: Recent Advances, Affecting Factors and Future Research Prospects

Produced water is the largest byproduct of oil and gas production. Due to the complexity of produced water, especially dissolved petroleum hydrocarbons and high salinity, efficient water treatment technologies are required prior to beneficial use of such waste streams. Photocatalysis has been demonstrated to be effective at degrading recalcitrant organic contaminants, however, there is limited understanding about its application to treating produced water that has a complex and highly variable water composition. Therefore, the determination of the appropriate photocatalysis technique and the operating parameters are critical to achieve the maximum removal of recalcitrant compounds at the lowest cost. The objective of this review is to examine the feasibility of photocatalysis-involved treatment for the removal of contaminants in produced water. Recent studies revealed that photocatalysis was effective at decomposing recalcitrant organic compounds but not for mineralization. The factors affecting decontamination and strategies to improve photocatalysis efficiency are discussed. Further, recent developments and future research prospects on photocatalysis-derived systems for produced water treatment are addressed. Photocatalysis is proposed to be combined with other treatment processes, such as biological treatments, to partially reduce total organic carbon, break down macromolecular organic compounds, increase biodegradability, and reduce the toxicity of produced water.
Reduction of Multidrug-Resistant Salmonella enterica Serovar Heidelberg Using a Dairy-Originated Probiotic Bacterium, Propionibacterium freudenreichii freudenreichii B3523, in Growing Turkeys1

SUMMARY We investigated the antibacterial efficacy of a dairy-origin probiotic bacterium, Propionibacterium freudenreichii freudenreichii B3523 (PF), on a multidrug-resistant strain of Salmonella enterica serovar Heidelberg (SH) in growing turkeys. In 2 independent experiments, day-old poults (N = 24/experiment) were randomly assigned to 3 treatment groups (8 turkeys/group). The groups were: a negative control (NC; turkeys without PF supplementation or SH challenge), an SH control (SC; turkeys challenged with SH without PF supplementation), and a test group (PFS; turkeys supplemented with PF and challenged with SH) raised until 7 wk of age. Turkeys in the PFS group received PF once in 2 d at 1012 cfu in 5 gallon drinking water from day 0 until 6 wk of age. Turkeys in SC and PFS groups were challenged with SH as crop gavage at 6 wk of age. After SH inoculation, the PFS group received PF daily for 7 d until the end of the study. The colonization of SH and PF in turkey ceca was determined 2 and 7 d post-inoculation of the pathogen. In addition, the effect of PF supplementation on the dissemination of SH to liver and spleen was determined. Results indicated that PF was recoverable at 4 to 4.5 log10 cfu/g at the end of the study. Additionally, PF supplementation significantly reduced SH colonization in the PFS group by 1 to 1.3 log10 cfu/g in the turkey ceca 2 and 7 d after SH inoculation (P ≤ 0.05), compared to the SC group. In addition, PF supplementation reduced dissemination of SH to liver and spleen (P ≤ 0.05), compared to the SC group. Results indicate that PF could be a potential probiotic strategy in turkeys to control SH colonization at a later stage of turkey production.
Food Safety Practices of Household Food Preparers in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria.

Generally, study analysed the food safety practices of household food preparers in Akwa Ibom state. A multi-stage sampling procedure was used to collect cross-sectional data from 457 respondents. Specifically, study determined the prevalence, margin and intensity of and factors influencing food safety practices of household food preparers. Given two critical indices 0.62 and 0.42, the study showed that the prevalence of best food safety practices is 49.45% and 97.8% respectively. Results of the disaggregated mean prevalence show that households that carry out less than best food safety practices do so sometimes and not often respectively while those who carry out best practices, do so most times. The mean margins, based on the two respective critical indices 0.62 and 0.42, suggest that, minimally, policy could seek to raise the value of the food safety and dietary practices index of households with less than best practices by 0.08 and 0.04 respectively. The values of the intensity (of the mean margin)0.009, 0.002 and 0.004, 0.0003 , in pairs each representative of the two critical indices-0.62 and 0.42, show that the deviation is more severe when the mean is adopted as critical index both when only deviating and all households are considered. Results of the fractional probit regression indicated that education, household income and confidence in safety labels are statistically significant in explaining the probability of households carrying out food safety practices. The gap between households who carry out less than best and best food safety practices should be bridged.
Ingestive Behavior and Physiological Parameters of Sindhi Heifers Receiving Saline Water

The objective was to evaluate the effects of potential use of brackish water as a source for Sindhi heifers on ingestive behavior and physiological and serum parameters. Twenty-four Sindhi heifers were distributed in a completely randomized design with four treatments and six replications, with levels of total dissolved solids (TDS) of 640, 3200, 5760, and 8320 mg/L. Three 24-hour behavioral tests were performed, which were divided into four observation shifts (00:00 to 06:00; 06:00 to 12:00; 12:00 to 18:00 and 18:00 to 00:00) at the beginning, middle, and end of the experiment. The highest values of black globe temperature humidity index and air temperature were observed at 14:00 h, with values of 92.7 and 34.1 °C, respectively. The different levels of TDS did not promote significant differences (P > 0.05) in the variables feed intake, rumination, idling, feeding efficiency as a function of dry matter and neutral detergent fiber intake, rumination efficiency as a function of dry matter and neutral detergent fiber intake, heart rate, rectal and surface temperature, creatinine, and potassium. Among the assessed shifts, feed and water intake showed higher frequencies in the shifts 2 (06-12 h) and 3 (12-18 h) and rumination showed a higher frequency in the shifts 1 (00-06 h) and 4 (18-00 h). The physiological variables presented higher indices during the warmest hours of the day. A linear behavior was observed for the serum sodium level, presenting a average of 134.4 mmol/L. Water containing up to 8,326 mg/L TDS can be used in the watering of Sindhi heifers in short periods in the season of highest water shortage without affecting the ingestive behavior and physiological and serum parameters of the animal.
Milk-exosome based pH/light sensitive drug system to enhance anticancer activity against oral squamous cell carcinoma

A multimodal drug delivery system targeting the tumor microenvironment is an inspiring method for treating cancer tissues, including oral squamous cell carcinomas (OSCC). Such approaches require an efficient and safe drug carrier. Bovine milk derived exosomes are ideal because the source is adequate and have advantages of both synthetic and cell-mediated nano carriers. In the present study, we developed a pH/light sensitive drug system based on milk-exosomes for OSCC therapy. It was called exosome–doxorubicin–anthracene endoperoxide derivative (Exo@Dox–EPT1, NPs). Milk-exosomes were conjugated to doxorubicin (Dox) by a pH-cleavable bond, which can rapture under an acidic microenvironment. Besides, endoperoxides and chlorin e6 (Ce6) were also loaded and the endoperoxides undergo thermal cycloreversion and release singlet oxygen to kill cancer cells. We have also investigated the body distribution, antitumor effects, and biocompatibility of the nanoparticles. The new milk-exosome-based drug delivery system showed controlled drug-release, biocompatibility and, proved to be effective in treating OSCC.
Semi-supervised advancement of underwater visual quality

In the underwater environment, the backscattering and attenuation of wavelength-dependent light degrade the quality of underwater vision. Low-quality underwater vision will reduce the accuracy of underwater robot visual navigation and pattern recognition. A novel semi-supervised deep convolutional neural network composed of a supervised learning branch and an unsupervised learning branch is proposed herein to improve underwater visual quality with poor visibility in real time. The network is constrained by a supervised loss function consisting of mean square, underwater index, and adversarial loss. The supervised branch serves as the baseline of the image enhancement algorithm to learn the basic feature information of the images and restore the original colors. The unsupervised learning branch, which makes the generated images more realistic and reduces reliance on the quality of the simulation model of synthetic data, applies underwater dark channel prior loss and total variation loss to learn the feature domain information of real images. Experiments show that the results of the proposed method show less color shift, lower fogging and blurring, and more pleasing high-quality vision. The enhanced images can extract more useful feature information, which is promising in the online visual navigation of underwater robots.
Glyphosate‐Resistant Soybean Response to Micro‐Rates of Three Dicamba‐Based Herbicides

Received 25 Oct. 2018. Accepted 3 Dec. 2018. *Corresponding author (sknezevic2@unl.edu). ABSTRACT New dicamba-based herbicides such as Engenia (N,N-bis-(3-aminopropyl) methylamine salt) and XtendiMax (diglycolamine salt) with VaporGrip technology were developed to reduce dicamba volatility and drift; however, there are claims that these products can still volatilize or drift. Field studies were conducted to evaluate glyphosate (N-(phosphonomethyl)glycine))–resistant (GR) soybean response to micro-rates (0, 1/1000, 1/500, 1/100, 1/50, and 1/10 of the label rate, 560 g a.e. ha-1) of the two new dicamba products compared with Clarity (diglycolamine salt) applied at three growth stages. The GR soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr. ] was equally impacted by the micro-rates of all three products as measured by visual injury, height reduction, delayed physiological maturity, and yield reduction. The greatest visual injury (80%), plant height reduction (65%), maturity delay (22 d), and soybean yield loss (96%) was caused by 1/10 of the dicamba label rate when applied at V7/R1 soybean growth stage. In addition, estimation of effective dose for 5, 10, or 20% yield reduction suggested that V7/R1 was the most sensitive soybean growth stage to the three dicamba products. For example, 10% yield reduction occurred when 1.83 to 1.85 g a.e. ha-1 (~1/300 of the label rate) of Engenia was applied at V2 or R2, whereas, a lower dose of 0.32 g a.e. ha-1 (1/1750 of the label rate) of Engenia caused the same level of yield reduction when applied at V7/R1. Similar doses were estimated for Clarity and XtendiMax; therefore dicamba drift should be avoided at all costs, because GR soybean was equally sensitive to low rates of all three tested products with different formulations or technologies.
Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat : Les citoyens de la Convention comparés à des échantillons représentatifs de la population française. Note de travail

Les citoyens membres de la Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat (CCC) sont-ils representatifs des Francais ? Ces derniers approuvent-ils les politiques climatiques proposees par la Convention ? Cette note aborde ces questions en comparant les points de vue des citoyens de la Convention avec ceux d'echantillons representatifs de la population generale interroges avant que les mesures proposees par la CCC soient diffusees publiquement.
Lost in Transition? Digital trans activism on Youtube

ABSTRACT This article intends to contribute to a novel research area - the construction of critical transgender narratives on Youtube – examining how some Spanish trans youtubers shift the focus from the ‘fleshy metamorphosis’ [Barnett, J. T. (2015). Fleshy metamorphosis: Temporal pedagogies of transsexual counterpublics. In L. G. Spencer & J. C. Capuzza (Eds.), Transgender communication studies: Histories, trends, and trajectories (pp. 155–172). Lexington], to becoming trans ‘media-bodies’ [Raun,T. (2010). Screen-births: Exploring the transformative potential intrans video blogs on YouTube. Graduate Journal of Social Science, 7(2), 113–130]. We examine the channel Lost in Transition, by Spanish transgender advocate Elsa Ruiz Cómica. In contrast to other trans youtubers, who focus mostly on ‘passing’ as the ultimate trans achievement, Elsa creates alternative narratives. We will argue that her practices emerge as a new political subject, disobedient to the legal and biomedical framing of transgenderism as a disorder. Our main conclusion is that Youtube is a site of ‘digital trans activism’ [Raun, T. (2016). Out online. Trans self-representation and community building on YouTube. Routledge. ], where non-binary youtubers can perform the nonconforming subaltern body [Platero, R. L. , & Rosón, M. (2019). ‘Neithermale or female; just Falete’: Resistance and queerness on Spanish TV screens. Catalan Journal of Communication & Cultural Studies, 11(1), 135–143. doi:10.1386/cjcs.11. 1. 135_1] that would otherwise be invisible. This has implications for the public debate on transrights, as it lifts the issue of transition out of the medical sphere and puts it at the center of abroader cultural debate on gender identity.
Three suggested teaching strategies for students who are deaf or hard of hearing

This paper addresses current issues in deaf education including poor academic progress and employment outcomes of individuals who are deaf and hard of hearing (D/HH) as well as provides suggestions for improving overall academic achievement of this population. Specifically, three instructional strategies are recommended for teachers: choral responding, response cards, and peer tutoring. These three strategies have been shown to increase active student responding in classrooms for children who are typically developing and children who have disabilities. For international deaf students in countries that may rely on volunteers who lack basic requisite skills these general education teaching strategies are easy to use even by novice teachers. Recommendations are tendered for how teachers can include these simple teaching strategies in classrooms serving students who are D/HH.
The Relationship between Board Structure and Performance of Firms Listed at the Nairobi Securities Exchange

This study examines the relationship between board structure and performance of firms listed at the Nairobi Securities Exchange. The study is anchored on agency theory, resource dependency theory, transaction cost theory, political theory and a census approach. A population of the study comprising sixty five companies listed at the Nairobi Securities Exchange between 2002 and 2016 were used. Data was extracted from annual reports of listed firms. This study employed longitudinal descriptive research design to determine the relationship. Panel data regression analysis was conducted using the random effects model. The results revealed that gender diversity and occupational expertise had significant effect on Return on Assets, while board independence and board age had significant effect on Tobin’s Q of listed firms in Kenya. On the other hand, board size had an insignificant effect on both Return on Assets and Tobin’s Q. The overall effect of board structure on Returns on Assets and Tobin’s Q was significant. The study concluded that various board structure mechanisms except board size have significant effect on performance of listed firms in Kenya, and the overall board structure had significant effect on performance of listed firms. The study recommended that management should incorporate board structure mechanisms to enhance performance of firms and regulatory authorities should review the current board structure variables to make them more relevant to improve performance of listed firms in Kenya.
Assessing recovery of alpine spoil heaps by vascular plant, bryophyte, and lichen functional traits

Functional traits are linked to ecosystem processes and services and therefore relevant in recovery assessment. However, traits of bryophytes and lichens, important components of many ecosystems, have received less attention than those of vascular plants. We explored the use of functional traits of multiple important organism groups in recovery assessment. We combined data on traits and species composition for vascular plants, bryophytes, and lichens from four alpine spoil heaps and their undisturbed surroundings in western Norway, collected at three time‐points spanning more than two decades. We studied changes in community‐weighted mean (CWM) trait values and distribution of trait‐category optima over time. We analyzed temporal variation in joint functional trait composition using the ordination regression‐based approach (ORBA) to predict time to recovery. We observed functional shifts along the successional gradient for all organism groups, e.g. from wind‐dispersed propagules shortly after disturbance to vegetative reproduction at later successional stages. Over time, the similarity between dispersal‐related traits of vascular plants and bryophytes on the spoil heaps and in their surroundings increased, indicating that propagule influx is important in alpine restoration. The joint functional trait composition of all spoil heaps converged towards that of their surroundings: one spoil heap had recovered 34 years after construction, while the predicted time to recovery for the other three was 59–74 years. Our results indicate that inclusion of multiple organism groups improves trait‐based recovery assessments and time‐to‐recovery predictions. Further development of trait databases is essential for future use of joint functional trait composition in recovery assessment.
Performance evaluation of improved cook stoves

An experiment has been carried out on various types of cook stoves including traditional cook stoves, sukhad model, udairaj and improved udairaj models, with which the water-boiling test has been performed to find the thermal efficiency, specific fuel consumption and power rating. The results revealed that Udairaj cook stove and traditional cook stove was found to have the highest and lowest thermal efficiency of 23.4% and 15.4% among the cook stoves tested. Udairaj and improved udairaj cook stoves have similar power rating and lowest specific fuel consumption in the range of 0.811 kW to 0.849 kW and 1.232 kg/kWh to 1.225 kg/kWh respectively, whereas traditional cook stove was found to have the lowest power rating of 0.559 Kwh and highest specific fuel consumption of 1.799 kg/Kwh. Finally, both udairaj and improved udairaj cook stoves have a better thermal efficiency, power rating and specific fuel consumption than traditional cook stoves.
Perception and management of Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) diversity among Makushi Amerindians of Guyana

-This article presents the ways in which Makushi subsistence economy and its farming practices, food preparations, cultural knowl.edge and social processes have all played a role in bringing cassava varietal and genetic diversity into existence. After comparing cassava varietal dh'ersity among the Makushi of Guyana with thai found in the rest of Amazonia, the authors discuss the genetic implications of traditional management and show that eV'Jlution in populations of domesticated cassava results from the combined action of natural and human selection. Various socio-cultural factors exercising sel~tive pressure, in particular the exchange of planting material between f<1fmers and the conceptual opposition of seedlings and plants coming from vegetative propagMion, are examined. The approach adopted, which integrates indigenous 'botanical knowledge, elements of pl.lnt genetics and ecology, emphasises that diversity cannot be reduced to a finite stock of well defined, separate entities called varieties, but is, rather, a fluid and evolving process by which farm-grown varieties are continuously gained and lost.
Targeting the Proliferation Inhibition of Chronic Myeloid Leukemia Cells by Bone Marrow Derived-Mesenchymal Stem Cells via ERK Pathway as a Therapeutic Strategy

Bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) are of specific attention due to their potential clinical use in cell transplantation. These cells could secrete cytokines and growth factors upon stimulation or suppression in regenerative medicine. This study was to evaluate the influence of BMSCs on the proliferation of K562 cells as chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) cell lines through the ERK pathway. For this purpose, BMSCs were extracted from Rattus Norvegicus and were co-cultured with K562 cells. In the following, at the end of the 7th day, the K562 cell was collected and subjected to ERK protein expression measurement as well as ERK gene expression by flow-cytometry and real time-PCR, respectively. Also, the cell proliferation and PDT of K562 cells were measured in the control and experimental groups. The results were shown that BMSCs were positive for mesenchymal (CD44 and CD90) and negative for hematopoietic (CD34 and CD56) markers. In addition, it was shown that BMSCs mediated CML cell line proliferation arrest via a significant reduction of the ERK protein expression in the co-culture groups versus in the K562 cell line control group. Taken together, the data concluded that the co-culture of BMSCs with CML cell lines could secrete a substantial amount of cytokines and growth factors, thus inhibiting the proliferation of CML cell lines via the ERK signaling pathway. The identity of molecules, cytokines, and growth factors involved in the anti-proliferative effect of bone marrow-derived MSCs require further investigation, and this effect could important in the basic experimental study as a therapeutic strategy.
Influence of principals' self-management on the organisational commitment of teachers in secondary school in county governments in Kenya

Committed employees are likely to work harder and more efficiently, and stay in their jobs longer than less committed employees. Research indicate that the leader’s self-management may influence the organizational commitment of employees as they feel good about working with such leaders since they are more likely to react to problems in a more controlled manner and may be more accommodative to different views of the subordinates. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of principals’ (head of secondary schools) self-management on the organizational commitment (OC) of teachers as moderated by teachers’ self-efficacy. The dependent variable in this study is OC, while the independent variable is self-management (a dimension of emotional intelligence) and the moderating variable is teachers’ self-efficacy. This study hypothesized that principal’s self-management has no significant relationship on teachers’ OC. Simple random sampling was used to draw a sample of 120 principals and 480 teachers from secondary schools in Nairobi, Machakos, Kajiado, and Kiambu counties in Kenya. A survey questionnaire was used to collect data from the respondents. Collected data was analyzed through independent samples t-test, descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and multiple regression. The study established that principals’ self-management had a significant correlation with teachers’ OC. It also established that teachers’ self-efficacy moderated the relationship between principals’ self-management and teachers’ OC and that self-efficacy had positive influence on teachers OC. This study makes useful contribution in the advancement of knowledge on the influence of principals’ self-management on teachers’ OC in Kenya.