Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Alpha-mangostin reduces cell viability in sorafenib-surviving cells by modulating multiple drug transporters in HepG2 hepatocellular carcinoma cells

A previous study showed that alpha-mangostin (AM) showed benefit when given to sorafenib (SOR)-surviving cells. However, the mechanism was not fully understood. The present study aimed to understand the effect of AM on SOR-surviving cells and its agent concerning drug transporters. SOR-surviving cells were treated with SOR 10 μM. Surviving cells were divided into four groups of treatment, namely, vehicle only dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), SOR 10 μM, AM 20 μM, or combination of SOR 10 μM-AM 20 μM. As controls, HepG2 naïve cells were treated with DMSO only or AM 20 μM. Cell viability was counted using trypan blue exclusion assay. Simultaneously, the mRNA expressions of P-glycoprotein (P-gp), ABCG2, MRP2, MRP3, OCT1, and OATP1B3 drug transporters were examined with quantitative reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction. Decreased mRNA expression of P-gp was found in SOR-surviving cells treated with SOR. In contrast, AM alone or SOR's combination caused a significant increase in both efflux and influx transporters, no difference in fold increase of all transporters evaluated in AM versus SOR-AM combinations. Generally, AM treatment increased the mRNA expression of all the drug transporters.
POSTHARVEST AMINOETHOXYVINYLGLYCINE (AVG) DIPS ON STORAGE CHARACTERISTICS OF 'GOLDEN DELICIOUS' AND 'RED DELICIOUS' APPLES

'Golden Delicious' and 'Red Delicious' apple fruits were dipped in Aminoethoxyvinylglycine (ReTain ® ) solutions at the concentrations 0, 250, 500 and 1000 mg.L -1 for one minute and stored in a cool room at 0±1°C and 85-90% relative humidity for 3 or 6 months to study the effect of treatments on fruit storage characteristics. 'Golden Delicious' and 'Red Delicious' apples dipped in 500 or 1000 mg.l -1 AVG solutions maintained firmness and acidity, and the percent of superficial scald incidence was lower than that of untreated fruits. By 6 months fruit had softened, lost acidity and superficial scald incidence had increased, but to a lesser degree than in untreated fruit. AVG, especially at 1000 mg.L -1 decreased the development of fruit peel colour (carotene and anthocyanin), as well as decreased the rate of respiration of fruits after 6 months storage.
A reliability and validity study on upper limb range of motion measurement using mobile sensor compared with goniometers

Introduction: The use of tele-rehabilitation devices to aid physiotherapy has gained popularity in recent years. In particular, measuring limb range of motion with a wearable mobile sensor can facilitate rehabilitation therapies by providing more efficient progress monitoring and reducing clinicians’ workload. This study aimed to examine the test-retest reliability and validity of using a wearable mobile sensor to measure upper limb range of motion (ROM). Materials and methods: Participants were recruited by convenient sampling. They were instructed to perform four kinds of upper limb movements including shoulder flexion, abduction, external rotation and elbow flexion, from which the ROM was measured by Mobile sensors REBEE (XCLR8 Technologies) and a standard goniometer (Model 12-1000) in each movement. Each kind of movements and the two ROM measurements were performed twice for the evaluation of test-retest reliability using Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICC). Pearson's correlations were computed between the ROM measured by the mobile sensors and the goniometer in each movement to assess construct validities of the mobile sensors. The agreement (95% mean difference) between the two sets of measurement was illustrated by Bland-Altman plots. Results: Thirty-four asymptomatic young Asian adults (15 males) participated in this study (Mage ± SD, 24.2 ± 3.82 years). The ICC for the ROM measured by the sensors were between 0.94 and 0.99, p <0.01 and for the goniometer measurements were between 0.95 and 0.98, p <0.01 in the four movements, indicating excellent reliability in both measurement methods. The Pearson's correlation between the sensor’s and goniometric ROM measurements in four kinds of movements ranged from r =0.96 to 0.99, p <0.01, indicating a very strong construct validity for using the mobile sensors to measure upper limb ROM. The mean difference between the two measurements ranged from 0.13 degrees to 7.6 degrees. Conclusions: The results demonstrated that measuring upper limb ROM using the mobile sensors by non-healthcare trained students were as reliable and valid as using the standard universal goniometers by healthcare trained students. The findings implied that the wearable mobile sensors possibly allow non-healthcare trained carers to measure clinically useful, reliable and valid upper limb ROM from patients, which may facilitate symptom monitoring and improve the efficiency of the rehabilitation process.
Journalism Research 2/2019

The study explores the work of journalists who were engaged in the Panama and Paradise Papers investigations of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which uncovered dubious financial transactions on a global scale. An online survey was conducted in March 2018 (N = 67). It comprised aspects of working routines, division of labor, personal networks, challenges, and obstacles, as well as assessments concerning journalistic methods and anonymous sources. Quantitative and qualitative answers give descriptive insights into the mechanisms of global investigative data journalism. Despite diverse backgrounds (42 countries, different types of media), the journalists have much in common when it comes to professional norms and working routines. At the same time, the strict rules of the organization and a lack of access to material and knowledge also pose challenges for members of the network. Due to far-reaching political deregulation, financial transactions now flow independently of geographical borders and nation-states. The need for journalism that acts as a global watchdog, holding the powerful accountable – not only in the political but also in the business world – therefore appears greater than ever. At the same time, technological developments support new forms of digital investigative journalism and enable journalists to process huge amounts of (leaked) data (Felle 2015). Two of the most famous and recent examples of this kind of global disclosure are the Panama and Paradise Papers by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which publicized tax avoidance strategies and criminal financial activities (Obermayer /Obermaier 2016; Bernstein 2017; Woodall 2017).
APPROACHES TO IMAGING FEEDZONE DIVERSITY WITH CASE STUDIES FROM SUMATRA, INDONESIA AND THE TAUPŌ VOLCANIC ZONE, NEW ZEALAND

There is a fast-growing inventory of studies on borehole image logs acquired in geothermal reservoirs as more operators elect to deploy this technology. Our contribution to this inventory is to illustrate how judicious use of these data may reveal the geologic controls on permeability. We also provide an open source Python library that enables others to replicate the methods described herein. Our study includes a discussion of geometric sample bias, as well as those data integrity and geological factors that influence fracture frequency. We also demonstrate slip tendency modelling as an approach to identifying fractures that may be relevant beyond the borehole wall, which is key for geothermal wells where thermal stresses have enhanced both the number and apparent aperture of fractures at the borehole wall. We illustrate these methods using seven well case studies from a wide range of lithologies, four reservoirs, and two tectonic settings—one dominated by a volcano-tectonic rift and the other a mega-shear zone. The reservoirs are Muara Laboh and Rantau Dedap in Indonesia and Ngatamariki and Wairakei in New Zealand.
Kinetic study on the degradation of methyl orange by Fenton oxidation

The degradation process of artificial wastewater of methyl orange in Fenton reaction was studied.According to the UV-Vis spectrum,it is concluded that Fenton oxidation is an effective method for the degradation of methyl orange. A kinetic model was established to simulate the oxidation and degradation of methyl orange by Fenton system.It is shown that the degradation rate of the dye is affected by the initial concentration of hydrogen peroxide and methyl orange.The relationships between the degradation rate constant(kRH) and the initial concentration of hydrogen peroxide and the methyl orange were summarized as kRH=0.05c(H2O2)1.4 and kRH=0.023c(RH)-1.3.
Hemostatic activities of methanol leaf extracts of Croton megalocarpus Hutch and Lantana camara Linn

The effects of Croton megalocarpus Hutch and Lantana camara Linn plants leave on blood coagulation has not been scientifically tested despite their common use in bleeding control. The current study investigates the effects of the plants’ leaves extracts on mice plasma coagulation time. Leaves of C. megalocarpus (H.) and L. camara (L.) were harvested, washed, air dried, crushed, extracted in absolute methanol and concentrated to dry powders. Preliminary qualitative phytochemical screen of both extracts was done. A total of 55 mice plasma samples were mixed with solutions of leaves extracts of both plants, before prothrombin time (PT) and activated partial thromboplastin time (aPTT) were determined. Data was analyzed using one – way ANOVA. Phytochemical screen on separate extracts of C. megalocarpus (H.) and L. camara (L.) revealed the presence of tannins, phenols, cardiac glycosides, and terpenoids. Moreover, C. megalocarpus (H.) extract contained steroids and flavonoids while that of L. camara (L.) had saponins. Solutions of the various concentrations of methanol leave extracts of C. megalocarpus (H.). L. camara (L.) and leaves blend extracts from both plants reduced aPTT and PT significantly (p<0.05) when mixed with normal mice plasma. Significant reduction of aPTT and PT of normal treated plasma was associated with the activity of tannins, phenols, flavonoids and saponins detected in the plant extracts.
Turbulent Flow in an Annular Channel of Variable Cross-Section

The flow in an annular channel of variable cross-section is studied numerically. The flow is assumed to be continuous, so only small angles of inclination of the channel walls are considered. For the Reynolds numbers in the range 3000-10000, the velocity profiles, turbulence energies, and Reynolds stresses and the characteristics of turbulent heat transfer determined by them are calculated. Calculations show a strong influence of the opening angle of the annular channel on the turbulent flow characteristics. An increase in the intensity of turbulence in the case of heat supply to the wall leads to an increase in the heat transfer characteristics. When using such a channel in a heat exchanger, it is possible to increase the Nusselt number and the Reynolds analogy factor without using artificial flow turbulization in comparison with a channel of constant cross-section at the same Reynolds numbers, that is, to increase the heat exchange without significantly increasing the channel resistance. The calculations are carried out using a three-parameter differential turbulence model supplemented with equations for turbulent heat transfer.
Optimization Landscape of Neural Networks

: Many tasks in machine learning involve solving a convex optimization problem, which signiﬁcantly facilitates the analysis of properties of the resulting algorithms such as optimality, robustness and generalization. An important challenge in training neural networks is that the associated optimization problem is non-convex, which complicates the analysis because global optima can be diﬃcult to characterize and the optimization landscape can also include spurious local minima and saddle points. As a consequence, diﬀerent algorithms might ﬁnd diﬀerent weights depending on initialization, parameter tuning, etc. Despite this challenge, existing algorithms routinely converge to good solutions in practice, which suggests that the landscape might be simpler than expected, at least for certain classes of networks. This chapter summarizes recent advances on the analysis of the optimization landscape of neural network training. We ﬁrst review classical results for linear networks trained with the squared loss and without regularization. Such results show that under certain conditions on the input-output data spurious local minima are guaranteed not to exist, i.e. critical points are either saddle points or global minima. Moreover, the globally optimal weights can be found by factorizing certain matrices obtained from the input-output covariance matrices. We then review recent results for deep networks with parallel structure, positively homogeneous network mapping and regularization, and trained with a convex loss. Such results show that the non-convex objective on the weights can be lower-bounded by a convex objective on the network mapping. Moreover, when the network is suﬃciently wide, local minima of the non-convex objective that satisfy a certain condition yield global minima of both the non-convex and convex objectives, and that there is always a non-increasing path to a global minimizer from any initialization.
A COMPARISON OF PRE-COLLEGE ENRICHMENT PROGRAM PARTICIPANTS AND NON-PARTICIPANTS: COLLEGE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE MEASURES

This paper analyzes College Grade Point Averages (CGPAs), American College Testing Composite (ACTC) scores and Scholastic Assessment Test Total (SATT) scores of over 1,300 undergraduates at West Virginia University (WVU) who participated in the Health Sciences and Technology Academy (HSTA) to those students who did not (Non-HSTA). Traditionally, pre-college enrichment programs provide academic enrichment to underrepresented youth with the intent of increasing their chances for post-secondary entry and success. Factorial design determined if HSTA participants were better prepared to pursue postsecondary study. Overall, the results reveal that HSTA students outperformed their Non-HSTA counterparts in that there were significant differences in the overall CGPA, ACTC and SATT scores.
Fast and Separable Estimation in High-Dimensional Tensor Gaussian Graphical Models

Abstract In the tensor data analysis, the Kronecker covariance structure plays a vital role in unsupervised learning and regression. Under the Kronecker covariance model assumption, the covariance of an M-way tensor is parameterized as the Kronecker product of M individual covariance matrices. With normally distributed tensors, the key to high-dimensional tensor graphical models becomes the sparse estimation of the M inverse covariance matrices. Unable to maximize the tensor normal likelihood analytically, existing approaches often require cyclic updates of the M sparse matrices. For the high-dimensional tensor graphical models, each update step solves a regularized inverse covariance estimation problem that is computationally nontrivial. This computational challenge motivates our study of whether a noncyclic approach can be as good as the cyclic algorithms in theory and practice. To handle the potentially very high-dimensional and high-order tensors, we propose a separable and parallel estimation scheme. We show that the new estimator achieves the same minimax optimal convergence rate as the cyclic estimation approaches. Numerically, the new estimator is much faster and often more accurate than the cyclic approach. Moreover, another advantage of the separable estimation scheme is its flexibility in modeling, where we can easily incorporate user-specified or specially structured covariances on any modes of the tensor. We demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method through both simulations and a neuroimaging application. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.
Genetic studies on yield and some related characters in two bread wheat crosses using five population model

This study were implemented within four growing seasons from 2017/2018 to 2020/2021. The five populations (P1, P2, F1, F2 and F3) of two crosses of bread wheat (Misr 3 x Shandaweel-1 and Giza 168 x Sakha 94) were evaluated in two locations during 2020/2021 growing season, at West West El-Minia and Sids Agricultural Research Station, Agricultural Research Center, Egypt, In order to determine the mode of gene action and the inheritance pattern of plant height, no. of spikes plant-1, no. of kernels spike-1, 100-kernel weight and grain yield plant-1. The t-test showed significant differences among parental genotypes of each cross for all studied characters. The mean effects (m) were highly significant for all characters under the study in the two crosses and locations, indicating the ability to enhance the performance of these characters by pedigree selection. Scaling test revealed the presence of nonallelic interactions (epistasis) in the most studied characters. Dominance gene effects were generally greater than additive ones in most characters. Gene effects varied among characters, whereas the dominance and duplicate dominance beside additive gene effects were found to play important role in the inheritance of most studied characters. The desired significant and highly significant positive heterotic effects to mid-parents for two crosses were detected in the two locations. Broad sense heritability estimates displayed moderate values in most characters. The highest expected genetic gain was found to be correlated with high heritability in narrow sense estimated in all studied characters.
Health Risk Assessment of Exposure to Heavy Metals in Rice Grown in Nigeria

Rice is a staple food in Nigeria and can be a source of exposure to heavy metals for the Nigeria people. Samples of Nigerian grown, processed and packaged rice commonly sold in Nigeria were collected from markets within the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, Nigeria, prepared according to standard methods, and analyzed for heavy metals using inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES). From the results of the study, the mean concentration of heavy metals; Cd, As, Ni, Pb, Cu, Co and Hg in the rice samples ranged from 0.0017 to 0.4099 mg/kg with the exception of Co which was below detectable limit. The mean concentrations of the heavy metals were below maximum permissible limit of the metals in rice by FAO/WHO. The estimated daily intake (EDI) of each heavy metal through ingestion of rice samples ranged from 0.000011 to 0.0024 mg/kg/day and are within international acceptable limit of their daily intake (ADI) for both adult and children population. Hazard quotient (HQ) ranged from 0.04 to 1.83 (for adult population) and 0.05 to 3.20 (for children population), HQ was less than one for most of the metals. The hazard index (HI) ranged from 1.3 to 3.0 and 2.17 to 4.90 for adult and children population respectively, HI of the heavy metals was greater than one in all the rice samples. Incremental lifetime cancer risk (ILCR) value for carcinogenic heavy metals (Cd, Cr, As, Ni and Pb) ranged from 4E -7 to 1E -3 and these values were greater than safe limit for cancer risk. Rice samples may not present adverse health effect in adult population, except from those rice samples with high cadmium content, possibility exist of adverse health effect in children population due to high cadmium intake. There may be probability of potential health risk through consumption of some of the rice samples for both adult and children population due mainly to arsenic. Consumption of the heavy metals combined in the rice samples may lead to chronic health effects and probability of cancer risk exist from carcinogenic heavy metals except Pb. (
Liana abundance and colonization in a tropical moist secondary lowland rainforest in Nigeria

Studies on the influence of host tree successional status on liana infestation are few or lacking in regenerating forests in Africa. This study examined some likely predictors of the abundance of dominant lianas in a regenerating lowland rainforest in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. Six sample plots (0.25 ha each) were sampled in the secondary forest in the Biological Gardens of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. All trees and shrubs (≥ 2 m in height) and lianas attached to the trees and shrubs, were enumerated and their girth sizes were measured. The successional status of the host and lianas was determined. A chi-square analysis was carried out to determine the preferential liana infestation on host species in the forest while logistic binary regression analysis was used to determine the probability of infestation of the host species by each liana species. Liana colonization was species-specific with Chasmanthera dependens, Combretum sp. and Motandra guineensis being the only lianas that preferentially infested specific host species. Senegalia ataxacantha and Combretum sp. were the only lianas that preferred both lateand early-successional host species while Motandra guineensis was the only liana species that preferred both small and large host species. Since latesuccessional host species are gradually replacing the early-successional hosts in the forest, this makes it more necessary to monitor the tree regeneration process in the forest closely especially because most of the dominant lianas are early-successional species that would impede the regeneration of the trees and shrubs in the forest.
Isolation, Enrichment and characterisation of Caprine bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells

Mesenchymal stem cells are nowa-days treated as the cornerstone of the cellular therapy and tissue engineering arena. These omnipresent cells can be isolated from a wide range of sources and can be differentiated and trans-differentiated into many cell types based on specific cellular command. In this study, we had isolated bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells from 1-2 years old apparently healthy goats. The heterologous cell population then subjected to magnetic activated cell sorting against CD73, CD90, CD105, CD271 and CD34 to exclude mesenchymal stem cells from haematopoietic stem cells. The cells were then cultured and incubated at 37 °C in humidified atmosphere with 5% CO2. After 3 passages the cells were tested for alkaline phosphatase activity. Furthermore, the cells were also evaluated based on their morphometric analysis.
Tokamak elongation – how much is too much? Part 2. Numerical results

The analytic theory presented in Paper I is converted into a form convenient for numerical analysis. A fast and accurate code has been written using this numerical formulation. The results are presented by first defining a reference set of physical parameters based on experimental data from high performance discharges. Scaling relations of maximum achievable elongation (κmax) versus inverse aspect ratio (ε) are obtained numerically for various values of poloidal beta (βp), wall radius (b/a) and feedback capability parameter (γ τw) in ranges near the reference values. It is also shown that each value of κmax occurs at a corresponding value of optimized triangularity (δ), whose scaling is also determined as a function of ε. The results show that the theoretical predictions of κmax are slightly higher than experimental observations for high performance discharges, as measured by high average pressure. The theoretical δ values are noticeably lower. We suggest that the explanation is associated with the observation that high performance involves not only n= 0 MHD stability, but also n > 1 MHD modes described by βN in the Troyon limit and transport as characterized by τE. Operation away from the n= 0 MHD optimum may still lead to higher performance if there are more than compensatory gains in βN and τE. Unfortunately, while the empirical scaling of βN and τE with the elongation (κ) has been determined, the dependence on δ has still not been quantified. This information is needed in order to perform more accurate overall optimizations in future experimental designs.