Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Predicting STEM and Non-STEM College Major Enrollment from Middle School Interaction with Mathematics Educational Software

The worldwide increase in demand for qualified workers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields has resulted in a greater focus on preparing students to enroll in postsecondary STEM programs. The processes that lead students to become interested in and equip them for STEM careers begin years earlier. Previous research indicates that family background, financial resources, and prior family academic achievement can be used to predict whether a student will enroll in a STEM major. In this paper, we consider another class of factors that may be predictive while being more actionable. In this paper, we use predictive analytics, based on previously-validated automated detectors of student learning and engagement, to predict which students will choose a STEM major. With data from 363 college students who used ASSISTments during their regular middle school math classes, we develop a model that can successfully distinguish 66% of the time if a student will choose a STEM major or a non-STEM major when they enter college. In doing so, we offer steps towards providing educators with more actionable information on the STEM trajectories of individual students.
(Po)STAC (Polycistronic SunTAg modified CRISPR) enables live-cell and fixed-cell super-resolution imaging of multiple genes

Abstract CRISPR/dCas9-based labeling has allowed direct visualization of genomic regions in living cells. However, poor labeling efficiency and signal-to-background ratio have limited its application to visualize genome organization using super-resolution microscopy. We developed (Po)STAC (Polycistronic SunTAg modified CRISPR) by combining CRISPR/dCas9 with SunTag labeling and polycistronic vectors. (Po)STAC enhances both labeling efficiency and fluorescence signal detected from labeled loci enabling live cell imaging as well as super-resolution fixed-cell imaging of multiple genes with high spatiotemporal resolution.
Clinical and Laboratory Features of CD5-Negative Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia

Background Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) usually expresses CD5 antigen. However, 7–20% of patients are CD5 negative. We report here a series of 19 CD5-negative B-CLL cases. Material/Methods We reviewed 19 consecutive CD5-negative B-CLL cases seen in our medical center from 2009 to 2015 and compared them with 105 CD5-positive B-CLL cases. The two groups were compared in terms of clinical parameters, laboratory parameters, and survival characteristics. Results Lymphadenopathy was present in 31.5% of the CD5-negative group and 51.4% of the CD5-positive group (p=0.029). Splenomegaly was present in 42.1% of the CD5-negative group and 16.1% of the CD5-positive group (p=0.029). There was no difference between the groups in terms of Binet A, B, and C stages (p=0.118, p=0.051, and p=0.882, respectively). The median thrombocyte count was 144×109/L and 160×109/L in the CD5-negative and CD5-positive groups, respectively (p=0.044). There was no difference between the two groups in terms of median neutrophil count (p=0.169). The mean lymphocyte count was 43.2±4.0×109/L and 36.7±3.2×109/L in the CD5-negative and CD5-positive groups, respectively (p=0.001). There was no difference between the groups in terms of autoimmune hemolytic anemia and autoimmune thrombocytopenia. In five-year follow-up, 84.2% of CD5-negative patients and 90.5% of CD5-positive patients were alive (p=0.393). Conclusions We found more isolated splenomegaly, less lymphadenopathy, a higher lymphocyte count, and a lower thrombocyte count in the CD5-negative group. There was no difference between the groups in terms of clinical stage, autoimmune phenomena, hemoglobin and neutrophil count, and survival.
Novel computation of pulse transit time from multi-channel PPG signals by wavelet transform

Abstract Being able to accurately monitor blood pressure in a reliable, truly non-invasive manner is a highly sought after goal within the biomedical community. In this paper we propose and assess a system, methodology and algorithm for unobtrusively obtaining true pulse transit time data from readily accessible peripheral locations, such as the hand, using a highly synchronous body-sensor-network encompassing an electrocardiogram- and dual mode photoplethysmogram sensor node. The results suggest the feasibility of acquiring such data, which strongly correlates with the recorded reference blood pressure, and can therefore be further employed to track changes thereof.
GATE, a Geant4-based simulation platform for PET integrating movement and time management

GATE, the Geant4 Application for Tomographic Emission, is a simulation platform developed for PET and SPECT. It combines a powerful simulation core (the Geant4 toolkit) and a large range of developments dedicated to nuclear medicine. In particular, it models the passing of time during real acquisitions, allowing to handle dynamic systems such as decaying source distributions or moving detectors. We present several series of results that illustrate the possibilities of this new platform. The simulation of decaying sources is illustrated on a dual-isotope acquisition with multiple time-frames. Count rate curves taking into account random coincidences and dead-time are shown for a dual-crystal set-up and for a small-animal PET scanner configuration. Simulated resolution curves and reconstructed images are shown for rotating PET scanners. Lastly, we present comparisons of simulated point-spread functions and spectra with experimental results obtained from a small-animal gamma camera prototype.
Image Denoising via Nonlocally Sparse Coding and Tensor Decomposition

The nonlocally sparse coding and collaborative filtering techniques have been proved very effective in image denoising, which yielded state-of-the-art performance at this time. In this paper, the two approaches are adaptively embedded into a Bayesian framework to perform denoising based on split Bregman iteration. In the proposed framework, a noise-free structure part of the latent image and a refined observation with less noise than the original observation are mixed as constraints to finely remove noise iteration by iteration. To reconstruct the structure part, we utilize the sparse coding method based on the proposed nonlocally orthogonal matching pursuit algorithm (NLOMP), which can improve the robustness and accuracy of sparse coding in present of noise. To get the refined observation, the collaborative filtering method are used based on Tucker tensor decomposition, which can takes full advantage of the multilinear data analysis. Experiments illustrate that the proposed denoising algorithm achieves highly competitive performance to the leading algorithms such as BM3D and NCSR.
Postharvest use of organic coating for maintaining bio-organic avocado and mango quality

Two organic coatings for post-harvest application on fruits have recently been developed in Israel and the USA. One coating is a colloidal solution based on beeswax (BeeCoat); the other is based on carnauba wax. Both organic waxes are in the product list of the Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI, 2003) as regulated processing products. The main distinguishing feature between the two wax coatings is that beeswax coated fruits had a lusterless look, whereas the carnauba wax coated ones were shiny. Coating organic avocado and mango effectively reduced the water loss, shrinkage, chlorophyll breakdown, chilling injury symptoms and decay development in the fruits, thereby extending their shelf life. In mango cv. 'Tommy Atkins', coating with the beeswax-based organic wax, 'BeeCoat' decreased the rates of weight loss, fruit softening, color development and acid breakdown, thus ensuring a longer shelf life. Moreover, after 3 wks at 12°C following 10 days at 20°C, 'Tommy Atkins' coated with BeeCoat showed only a low level of the red spots which are symptomatic of chilling injury. In addition, the coated fruits did not develop anaerobic metabolites or off-flavors, and were preferred by the taste panelists. Coating bio-organic avocado cv. 'Ettinger' prior to cold storage for 3 weeks at 5°C followed by 8 d at 20°C, retained the green peel color and reduced the chilling injury symptoms expressed as internal and external distal end browning. Ripe uncoated 'Ettinger' fruits produced significant amounts of acetaldehyde (AA) and ethanol, whereas these volatiles were not detected in coated fruits. The higher level of anaerobic volatiles was correlated with greater mesocarp discoloration.
Quality Characteristics of ‘Dongchul’ Persimmon (Diospyros kaki Thunb.) Fruit Grown in Gangwondo, Korea

Persimmon has long been established as one of the major fruits in Korea. The southern parts of Korea were traditionally the pocket areas for good persimmon production; however, rising temperatures have gradually rendered the southern regions unsuitable for successful harvest. Ecology of fruit growing areas affects the productivity of various types of crops, including fruit trees such as persimmon. The quality characteristics of the fruit of persimmon cv. Dongchul grown in Gangwondo, which lies in the northern part of South Korea, were investigated. Different physicochemical, nutritional, and antioxidant properties of fruit were evaluated to assess the locational effect on the quality of persimmon fruits grown in Gangwondo. The results of this study showed that persimmon cv. Dongchul grown in Gangwondo maintains many of the physicochemical (4.33% crude protein and 4.32% crude fiber), nutritional (total mineral content: 461.51 and vitamin C content: 15.28 ㎎/100 g), and antioxidant properties (polyphenol content: 633.1 ㎎ gallic acid equivalent/100 g) those are found in other three commercial cultivars ‘Daebong’, ‘Kyengsan Bansi’, and ‘Sangju Doongsi’ grown in Korea. Overall results of this study imply that ‘Dongchul’ cultivar of persimmon could commercially be grown in Kangwondo, Korea.
Experimental investigation of FDM process for improvement of mechanical properties and production cost

Purpose – The mechanical properties and surface finish of functional parts are important consideration in rapid prototyping, and the selection of proper parameters is essential to improve manufacturing solutions. The purpose of this paper is to describe how parts manufactured by fused deposition modelling (FDM), with different part orientations and raster angles, were examined experimentally and evaluated to achieve the desired properties of the parts while shortening the manufacturing times due to maintenance costs. Design/methodology/approach – For this purpose, five different raster angles (0°, 30°, 45°, 60° and 90°) for three part orientations (horizontal, vertical and perpendicular) have been manufactured by the FDM method and tested for surface roughness, tensile strength and flexural strength. Also, behaviour of the mechanical properties was clarified with scanning electron microscopy images of fracture surfaces. Findings – The research results suggest that the orientation has a more significant in.
Effect of containing silica fume on cytotoxicity of white mineral trioxide aggregate

Background: Mineral trioxide aggregate (MTA) has a high biocompatibility and its physical properties could be improved by adding the containing silica fume an amorphous silicon dioxide (condensed silica fume [CSF]). The aim of this study was to evaluate the cytotoxicity of MTA mixed with CSF on the viability of L929 mouse fibroblast cell using 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-Yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide reduction assay (MTT assay). Materials and Methods: In this in vitro study white MTA was mixed with distilled water according to the manufacturer's instructions. Mixtures of White MTA with 10%, 15%, and 20% CSF by weight were prepared and mixed with distilled water. Cytotoxicity of mixtures was compared with MTT assay on L929 mouse fibroblast cell line after 24, 48, and 72 h. Differences in cytotoxicity were assessed by one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Results: Mean ± SD of vital cell counts cultured in MTA, MTA + 10% CSF, MTA + 15% CSF, and MTA + 20% CSF were 98% ± 6%, 97% ± 6%, 94% ± 4%, and 98% ± 4%, respectively. One-way ANOVA did not reveal any statistically significant difference between the groups (P > 0.05). Conclusion: It may be concluded that addition of CSF to MTA may not influence its cytotoxicity.
Selection and testing of reference genes for accurate RT-qPCR in rice seedlings under iron toxicity

Reverse Transcription quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) is a technique for gene expression profiling with high sensibility and reproducibility. However, to obtain accurate results, it depends on data normalization by using endogenous reference genes whose expression is constitutive or invariable. Although the technique is widely used in plant stress analyzes, the stability of reference genes for iron toxicity in rice (Oryza sativa L.) has not been thoroughly investigated. Here, we tested a set of candidate reference genes for use in rice under this stressful condition. The test was performed using four distinct methods: NormFinder, BestKeeper, geNorm and the comparative ΔCt. To achieve reproducible and reliable results, Minimum Information for Publication of Quantitative Real-Time PCR Experiments (MIQE) guidelines were followed. Valid reference genes were found for shoot (P2, OsGAPDH and OsNABP), root (OsEF-1a, P8 and OsGAPDH) and root+shoot (OsNABP, OsGAPDH and P8) enabling us to perform further reliable studies for iron toxicity in both indica and japonica subspecies. The importance of the study of other than the traditional endogenous genes for use as normalizers is also shown here.
Cross–Cultural Research: Adaptation and Validation of Emotional Development Questionnaire for Adults (QDE_A)

All organizations target a leading position in the market they operate in. To attain this leading position, it is essential to correctly balance the associates’ rational and emotional competences. Hence the pertinence of instruments which allow the measurement of the associates’ level of emotional competences. This paper describes the process that this specific method adopted in the cross-cultural translation of QDE_A (Questionnaire: Emotional Development for Adults) – the Spanish version into Portuguese (European) language. Our results allowed us to provide a tool in Portuguese language to evaluate emotional competences useful for human resources’ managers as well as coaches Key-Words: cross-cultural research; translation; validation; emotional competences.
Antioxidant and hepatoprotective effects of Clitoria ternatea leaf extracts by using in vivo model.

Herbal medicines are in great demand because of their great efficacy and little or no side e ffects. Many plant extracts show promising antioxidant and free radical scavengi ng activity. The plant used in the present study is Clitoria ternatea (Sanskrit-Sankupushpam) belongs to the family Fabaceae . The in vivo studies were conducted using male Wistar rats. Liver cells participate in a variety of metabolic activities and co ntain a host of enzymes. CCl4 is a known hepatotoxin whose action is mediated by the cytochrome P450 (CYP), the extent of liver damage caused by ethanol -CCl4 treatment was studied by estimating the serum marker enzymes and the circulating lipid profile. The e ffect of leaf e x- tracts was significantly higher in all the antioxidants suggests Clitoria ternatea a strong protection against oxidative damage in CCl4 induced hepatotoxicity in rats. The observations made in vivo were also confirmed by histopathological studies.
Thrombin binding to GPIbα induces platelet aggregation and fibrin clot retraction supported by resting αIIbβ3 interaction with polymerized fibrin

Summary We have investigated the mechanisms leading to platelet aggregation following thrombin interaction with the glycoprotein (GP) Ib-IX-V complex. We show that platelets desensitized for the two thrombin receptors, PAR-1 and PAR-4, are still able to aggregate in response to thrombin and that this aggregation can be inhibited by a monoclonal antibody (VM16d) that blocks thrombin binding to GPIbα, or by pretreatment of platelets with Mocarhagin, a protease that specifically cleaves GPIbα. The thrombin/GPIbα-initiated signaling cascade induces platelet shape change through activation of the Rho kinase p160ROCK, independent of calcium mobilization, transient MEK-1 phosphorylation as well as the cleavage of talin through a calcium-independent mechanism. This signaling cascade does not induce the exposure of high affinity αIIbβ3 integrin receptors, nor does it lead to µ-calpain cleavage of filamin or the integrin cytoplasmic tail. In contrast, we provide evidence that binding of thrombin to GPIbα induces fibrin binding to resting αIIbβ3 leading to fibrin-dependent platelet aggregation and clot retraction, that can be selectively inhibited by αIIbβ3 antagonists such as RGDS, the dodecapeptide or lamifiban, as well as by the fibrin polymerization inhibitor GPRP-amide.
Unity in Diversity: Learning Distributed Heterogeneous Sentence Representation for Extractive Summarization

Automated multi-document extractive text summarization is a widely studied research problem in the field of natural language understanding. Such extractive mechanisms compute in some form the worthiness of a sentence to be included into the summary. While the conventional approaches rely on human crafted document-independent features to generate a summary, we develop a data-driven novel summary system called HNet, which exploits the various semantic and compositional aspects latent in a sentence to capture document independent features. The network learns sentence representation in a way that, salient sentences are closer in the vector space than non-salient sentences. This semantic and compositional feature vector is then concatenated with the document-dependent features for sentence ranking. Experiments on the DUC benchmark datasets (DUC-2001, DUC-2002 and DUC-2004) indicate that our model shows significant performance gain of around 1.5-2 points in terms of ROUGE score compared with the state-of-the-art baselines.
Mitochondrial redox signaling enables repair of injured skeletal muscle cells

Mitochondria transduce the cytosolic Ca2+ increase caused by plasma membrane injury into a ROS-dependent repair response. Mitochondria for plasma membrane repair Mechanical strain on cells can cause plasma membrane damage that must be repaired. Horn et al. found that mitochondria mediated a repair response in muscle cells (which experience mechanical strain during exercise) and nonmuscle cells. The influx of extracellular Ca2+ caused by plasma membrane injury triggered an increase in mitochondrial Ca2+ that initiated the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Mitochondrially produced ROS activated actin polymerization and wound closure at the sites of plasma membrane injury. Quenching this source of ROS in mouse muscle exercised ex vivo resulted in greater damage to injured myofibers and reduced muscle force. These findings demonstrate that rampant quenching of ROS, such as with antioxidants (which are a popular nutritional supplement), may have detrimental effects that must be balanced with their potential benefits. Strain and physical trauma to mechanically active cells, such as skeletal muscle myofibers, injures their plasma membranes, and mitochondrial function is required for their repair. We found that mitochondrial function was also needed for plasma membrane repair in myoblasts as well as nonmuscle cells, which depended on mitochondrial uptake of calcium through the mitochondrial calcium uniporter (MCU). Calcium uptake transiently increased the mitochondrial production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), which locally activated the guanosine triphosphatase (GTPase) RhoA, triggering F-actin accumulation at the site of injury and facilitating membrane repair. Blocking mitochondrial calcium uptake or ROS production prevented injury-triggered RhoA activation, actin polymerization, and plasma membrane repair. This repair mechanism was shared between myoblasts, nonmuscle cells, and mature skeletal myofibers. Quenching mitochondrial ROS in myofibers during eccentric exercise ex vivo caused increased damage to myofibers, resulting in a greater loss of muscle force. These results suggest a physiological role for mitochondria in plasma membrane repair in injured cells, a role that highlights a beneficial effect of ROS.
Landscape Genetics for the Empirical Assessment of Resistance Surfaces: The European Pine Marten (Martes martes) as a Target-Species of a Regional Ecological Network

Coherent ecological networks (EN) composed of core areas linked by ecological corridors are being developed worldwide with the goal of promoting landscape connectivity and biodiversity conservation. However, empirical assessment of the performance of EN designs is critical to evaluate the utility of these networks to mitigate effects of habitat loss and fragmentation. Landscape genetics provides a particularly valuable framework to address the question of functional connectivity by providing a direct means to investigate the effects of landscape structure on gene flow. The goals of this study are (1) to evaluate the landscape features that drive gene flow of an EN target species (European pine marten), and (2) evaluate the optimality of a regional EN design in providing connectivity for this species within the Basque Country (North Spain). Using partial Mantel tests in a reciprocal causal modeling framework we competed 59 alternative models, including isolation by distance and the regional EN. Our analysis indicated that the regional EN was among the most supported resistance models for the pine marten, but was not the best supported model. Gene flow of pine marten in northern Spain is facilitated by natural vegetation, and is resisted by anthropogenic landcover types and roads. Our results suggest that the regional EN design being implemented in the Basque Country will effectively facilitate gene flow of forest dwelling species at regional scale.
Adapting the T0‐T4 implementation science model to occupational health and safety in agriculture, forestry, and fishing: A scoping review

BACKGROUND Despite much research to develop life-saving innovations for the agriculture, forestry, and fishing workforce, these populations continue to face the highest fatal and non-fatal injury rates in the United States, as many of these solutions are not fully adopted. METHODS A scoping review was conducted to provide an overview of research to practice efforts in this field. The language used to describe these initiatives, the utility of the NIH T0-T4 model, and the progress along the research to practice continuum were examined. RESULTS Fourteen eligible references demonstrated that progress in implementation science is lacking and that there is little consistency in how researchers apply the T0-T4 model; thus, a new model is presented. CONCLUSIONS Researchers in this field face several challenges when moving from research to practice. While some challenges are addressed with the proposed model, additional resources and infrastructure to support such initiatives are necessary.