Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of oestradiol and progesterone on secretion of gonadotrophins and health of first wave follicles during the oestrous cycle of beef heifers.

Antral follicle development in cattle is initially FSH dependent and then LH dependent. The aim of the present study was to determine the effects of oestradiol- and progesterone-induced suppression of FSH and LH on growth and differentiation of first wave follicles. Cyclic heifers (n = 45, n = 6-10 per group) received the following i.m. injections or treatments beginning 30 h after oestrus: (i) saline (controls); (ii) 0.75 mg oestradiol benzoate (ODB); (iii) insertion of a progesterone-releasing intravaginal device (PRID) for 42 h (progesterone); (iv) 0.75 mg oestradiol benzoate plus PRID (ODB plus progesterone); (v) 0.75 mg ODB plus injection of 1 mg Ovagen(TM) at 33, 39 and 45 h after onset of oestrus (ODB plus FSH). In Expt 1, follicle development was monitored by ovarian ultrasonography once a day. In Expt 2, heifers were ovariectomized. Emergence of the first follicle wave and dominant follicle selection were delayed in ODB plus progesterone-treated heifers compared with controls. Interval to nadir FSH concentration was shorter in ODB-, progesterone- and ODB plus progesterone-treated heifers compared with controls. Frequency of LH pulses was unaffected in ODB- or ODB plus FSH-treated heifers, decreased in progesterone-treated heifers and further decreased in ODB plus progesterone-treated heifers. Intrafollicular oestradiol concentrations were lower in the largest follicle from ODB plus progesterone-treated heifers compared with control (66 h) heifers, but follicle diameter and concentrations of insulin-like growth factor binding proteins (IGFBPs) and inhibin forms were unaffected. Treatment with ODB decreased follicular oestradiol concentration in smaller follicles in the cohort. It is concluded that growing cohort follicles are uniformly responsive to increased FSH concentration but differentially responsive to suppressed FSH and LH release, which is consistent with an LH-mediated survival advantage of the largest follicle in the cohort before cessation of the growth of remaining follicles in the cohort occurs.
Detection performance of moving target with compressive sensing via dual-channel spaceborne SAR

Based on the fact that the moving targets are sparse in spatial domain after clutter suppression, we present a novel approach for the indication of moving targets with compressive sensing from dual-channel spaceborne SAR sparse raw data. Moreover, the detection performance measures in terms of GMTI are different from the existing ones for CS. In this paper, the probability of detection (PD)-curves are presented to analyze the detection performance of different CS reconstruction approaches. Not only the experiments with the dual-channel spaceborne SAR simulated and real data but also the detection performance of the proposed method is analyzed in this paper. The result shows that this method is more effective.
Genetic variation in bitter taste and plasma markers of anti-oxidant status in college women

Genetic taste sensitivity to the bitterness of 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP) is a potential marker for food selection. Compared with non-tasters, PROP tasters, especially super-tasters, are less accepting of cruciferous and other green vegetables, bitter citrus, added fats and chili pepper. If super-tasters avoid these foods, it may be hypothesized that they would have lower plasma antioxidant concentrations. Ninety-three healthy, non-smoking college women who did not use vitamins/supplements were classified by PROP-taster status using the paper disk method. Each participant provided a fasting blood sample that was assayed for vitamin C, β-carotene, α-tocopherol, lycopene, uric acid and total peroxyl-trapping antioxidant capacity. Plasma α-tocopherol was lower in super-tasters than in non-tasters (P<0.05), but no other indices differed among the groups. These findings suggest that PROP status does not associate with overall antioxidant status, but may be related to α-tocopherol intake derived principally from vegetable oils and green vegetables.
Social Capital Theory in Social Media Research

Social media usage has increased significantly over the last decade with software such as Facebook gaining widespread popularity. It is common practice to evaluate the performance of software by using direct means such as transaction time. However it less common but equally important to consider the performance of software in terms of the value that it provides for users. Social capital theory provides a means to examine the idea of social value in communication networks. Therefore this paper contains a review of the literature on social capital theory as it has been used in social media research. It was found social capital theory provides concepts useful for analysis of online social interactions. In particular it was found that that Putnam (1995, 2000) is the most cited source in the literature largely due to the prevalence in the use of the concepts of bonding and bridging social capital. Another significant source is Bourdieu (1985) who provides a frequently cited definition of social capital which is clear and comprehensive. Overall it was found that there are a number of studies which have advanced the understanding of how computers can support the communication structure underpinning social capital. The paper concludes by explaining that the literature on social capital theory in social media contains a number of significant findings which are at times contradictory.
Nonlinear Analysis of a DC-DC Boost Converter Working as a Maximum Power Point Tracker using Analog-Mixed-Signal Circuit Simulation

In this paper, a study of the nonlinear dynamics of a boost converter performing maximum power point tracking from a PV source and charging a battery is presented. Numerical simulations shows that the system can exhibit subharmonic oscillations under the variation of suitable parameters such as those related to weather conditions (irradiance) and those related to the controller and the pulse width modulator. A state space switched model was developed for simulating the dynamic behavior and validating the desired working regime of the system in terms of the different parameters taking into account the nonlinearity of the PV source and the inductor. Analog-mixed-signal circuit simulation performed by the MATLAB-PAN (MP) simulation environment is used to explore the dynamical behavior that the system can exhibit. Stability boundaries are determined revealing the effect of the parameters on the system behavior by doing harmonic analysis of the circuit through simulations.
Enhanced immunostimulatory activity of oligodeoxynucleotides by Y‐shape formation

DNA containing unmethylated CpG dinucleotides (CpG DNA) is a potent activator of innate and acquired immune responses. Although the sequence‐specific immunostimulatory activity of CpG DNA has been extensively explored, little information is available about the importance of the stereochemical properties of CpG DNA. In this study, Y‐shaped oligodeoxynucleotides (Y‐ODNs) were prepared using three ODNs with the halves of each ODN being partially complementary to a half of the other two ODNs. Y‐ODN induced greater amounts of tumour necrosis factor‐α and interleukin‐6 from RAW264.7 macrophage‐like cells than did conventional single‐stranded ODN (ssODN) or double‐stranded ODN (dsODN). The Y‐ODN was less stable in serum than dsODN, but greater amounts of Y‐ODN were taken up by macrophage‐like cells compared with dsODN. A newly designed Y‐ODN containing three potent CpG motifs generated significantly higher levels of cytokines compared with dsODN containing the identical sequences. These results indicate that the Y‐shaped form of ODN is a novel, reproducible and reliable approach to enhancing the immunostimulatory activity of ODNs.
In the presence of ferritin, visible light induces lipid peroxidation of the porcine photoreceptor outer segment

We studied the synergistic effect of visible light and ferritin on the lipid peroxidation on a fraction of porcine photoreceptor outer segment (POS). Reaction mixtures containing the POS fraction and horse spleen ferritin were irradiated under white fluorescent light mainly at 17,000 lx or incubated under dark conditions at 37°C. The lipid peroxidation was evaluated by both the thiobarbituric acid method and the ferrous oxidation/xylenol orange method. The irradiation-induced lipid peroxidation was affected by some experimental factors such as the irradiation dose and acidity of the material. When the irradiation was stopped, the lipid peroxidation was also stopped; thereafter, the re-irradiation induced lipid peroxidation. Moreover, this lipid peroxidation was inhibited by desferrioxamine, an iron chelator, or by dimethylthiourea, a hydroxyl radical scavenger, suggesting that the lipid peroxidation involves hydroxyl radicals generated via the Fenton reaction by iron ion released from ferritin. The lipid peroxidation did not take place under dark conditions or in the absence of ferritin. This study suggested the possibility that the visible light-induced lipid peroxidation of the POS fraction in the presence of ferritin may participate in the etiology of human retinal degenerative diseases as the human retina is exposed to light for life.
Measuring Social Media: Benchmarking an individual twitter timeline

Dr Stephen Dann is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Management, Marketing and International Business, College of Business and Economics at the Australian National University. He has been recognized as one of world’s senior social marketing researchers by the National Centre for Social Marketing (UK). His research has been published in Social Marketing Quarterly, Monash Business Review, Quality Assurance in Education, Journal of Public Affairs, Marketing Theory and Journal of Business Research. He has published a range of marketing text books including eMarketing, Competitive Marketing Strategy and is a regular contributor to the Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy Conference. His research interests include social marketing, consumer behaviour, internet marketing, marketing strategy, and innovation adoption.
Offering strategy of a Plug-in Electric Vehicle parking lot in renewable-based distribution networks

In this paper, the impacts of type, size and placement of renewable energy resources (RERs) on the offering strategy of Plug-in Electric Vehicle (PEV) parking lots is investigated. To this end, a stochastic programming model is proposed to optimize the behavior of a PEV parking lot in energy and reserve markets, considering the interaction with RESs. On this basis, the PEV parking lot is modeled in a distribution system consisting of wind and photovoltaic power producers. Moreover, the stochastic model consists of uncertainty characteristics of PEV owners' behavior, wind and photovoltaic power generation. Several numerical studies are analyzed to indicate how the factors of the RESs affect the optimal offering strategy of the parking lots.
Time series classification using MACD-Histogram-based SAX and its performance evaluation

Time series classification is one of the most well-known grand challenges in many different application domains. Time series classification is the task of assigning a discrete class label to an unclassified time series. Three important key points should be considered in the design of time series classifiers: the feature expression for the time series, the definition of the distance function, and the classification strategy. Many researchers of time series have been focusing on Symbolic Aggregate approXimation (SAX), which is a state-of-the-art feature expression for time series. SAX is a high-level symbolic representation for time series that allows for dimensionality reduction. SAX allows symbol-based approaches, which have been studied in depth to be applied in time series classifiers. In this paper, we propose a novel method for time series classification using a SAX-based symbolic representation. The proposed method includes: Moving average convergence divergence (MACD)-Histogram-based SAX and Nearest Neighbor (1-NN) utilizing the extended Levenshtein distance. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, we implemented it and conducted experiments using the UCR time series classification archive. The experimental results showed that the proposed method outperforms not only other distance-based 1-NNs, but also other state-of-the-art methods.
Convergence in Bangladesh Agriculture

We address the issue of convergence in agricultural productivity among districts in Bangladesh. We employed cross-section convergence test, and convergence, and panel unit root convergence test. The coefficient of the initial productivity level is negative and significant in convergence test indicating convergence in agricultural productivity. The result of convergence test shows that there has been a decrease in the cross-districts dispersion of productivity in agriculture over the entire time period. The panel unit root test supports the conventional test, and therefore, we may conclude that dispersion of productivity is stationary providing strong evidence that the districts do exhibit long run convergence.
Fuzzy clustering of multi-view relational data with pairwise constraints

Thvs paper presents SS-MVFCVSMdd, a semi-supervised multiview fuzzy clustering algorithm for relational data described by multiple dissimilarity matrices. SS-MVFCVSMdd provides a fuzzy partition in a predetermined number of fuzzy clusters, a representative for each fuzzy cluster, learns a relevance weight for each dissimilarity matrix, and takes into account pairwise constraints must-link and cannot-link, by optimizing a suitable objective function. Experiments with multiview real-valued data sets described by multiple dissimilarity matrices show the usefulness of the proposed algorithm.
Multi-ReRAM Synapses for Artificial Neural Network Training

Metal-oxide-based resistive memory devices (ReRAM) are being actively researched as synaptic elements of neuromorphic co-processors for training deep neural networks (DNNs). However, device-level non-idealities are posing significant challenges. In this work we present a multi-ReRAM-based synaptic architecture with a counter-based arbitration scheme that shows significant promise. We present a 32×2 crossbar array comprising Pt/HfO2/Ti/TiN-based ReRAM devices with multi-level storage capability and bidirectional conductance response. We study the device characteristics in detail and model the conductance response. We show through simulations that an in-situ trained DNN with a multi-ReRAM synaptic architecture can perform handwritten digit classification task with high accuracies, only 2% lower than software simulations using floating point precision, despite the stochasticity, nonlinearity and large conductance change granularity associated with the devices. Moreover, we show that a network can achieve accuracies > 80% even with just binary ReRAM devices with this architecture.
Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for titration of Haemophilus influenzae capsular and O antigen antibodies

The enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was elaborated for the detection of immunoglobulin M (IgM) and IgG antibodies against capsular and O antigens of Haemophilus influenzae. Purified capsular polysaccharide and lipopolysaccharide were used as antigens, with optimal coating concentrations being about 50 and 100 micrograms/ml, respectively. The antibody content was expressed as the highest serum dilution (-log10) showing an absorbance of 0.2 above the background level. The titers of hyperimmune sera (reference sera) ranged between 5 and 7 -log10. The sensitivity of the method was about 80 ng/ml with regard to anticapsular antibodies and 3 to 5 ng/ml with regard to anti-lipopolysaccharide antibodies. For detection of antibodies against capsular polysaccharide in sera obtained after primary immunization, ELISA was about 100-fold more sensitive than the indirect hemagglutination assay, whereas in hyperimmune sera, ELISA was about 10-fold more sensitive than the indirect hemagglutination assay. The sensitivity of ELISA for detecting anticapsular antibodies after primary and booster immunizations was 50-fold higher than that of the bactericidal assay using capsulated bacteria, whereas the sensitivity of the two methods was the same when hyperimmune sera were tested. ELISA performed with lipopolysaccharide as the antigen was about 50- and 150-fold more sensitive than the complement fixation and bactericidal assays tested with noncapsulated variants after primary injection and hyperimmunization, respectively.
Unsupervised confidence calibration using examples of recognized words and their contexts

This paper presents a novel unsupervised calibration framework of word conﬁdence measures for automatic speech recognition. It makes it possible to improve the quality of conﬁdence measures in situations where the training of parametric models is hindered by a lack of human-labeled in-domain data. The proposed method calibrates conﬁdence scores by utilizing recognition results stored in deployed systems rather than human-labeled data. In order to stabilize correct/incorrect decision of words, the conﬁdence score of the target word is calibrated based on the conﬁdence scores of identical words, called “ex-amples,” found in the stored recognition results. The conﬁdence scores of examples are weighted according to the importance of each example, and the calibrated conﬁdence score of the target word is calculated as the importance weighted average of the scores of the examples. The importance of each example is determined by context similarity between the target word and the example. Experiments conﬁrm that the proposed calibration method can improve the correct/incorrect decision of recognized words compared to word posterior probabilities and the conventional calibration method on the unknown domain call center task.
Vascular Alterations in a Murine Model of Acute Graft-Versus-Host Disease Are Associated With Decreased Serum Levels of Adiponectin and an Increased Activity and Vascular Expression of Indoleamine 2,3-Dioxygenase.

Graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) is the limiting complication after bone marrow transplantation (BMT), and its pathophysiology seems to be highly influenced by vascular factors. Our study aimed at elucidating possible mechanisms involved in vascular GVHD. For this purpose, we used a fully MHC-mismatched model of BALB/c mice conditioned according to two different intensity protocols with total body irradiation and transplantation of allogeneic (C57BL/6) or syngeneic bone marrow cells and splenocytes. Mesenteric resistance arteries were studied in a pressurized myograph. We also quantified the expression of indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO), endothelial (eNOS), and inducible NO synthase (iNOS), as well as several pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines. We measured the serum levels of tryptophan (trp) and kynurenine (kyn), the kyn/trp ratio (KTR) as a marker of IDO activity, and adiponectin (APN). The myographic study showed a correlation of GVHD severity after allogeneic BMT with functional vessel alterations that started with increased vessel stress and ended in eccentric vessel remodeling, increased vessel strain, and endothelial dysfunction. These alterations were accompanied by increasing IDO activity and decreasing APN levels in the serum of allogeneic animals. The mRNA expression showed significantly elevated IDO, decreased eNOS, and elevation of most studied pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines. Our study provides further data supporting the importance of vessel alterations in GVHD and is the first to show an association of vascular GVHD with hypoadiponectinemia and an increased activity and vascular expression of IDO. Whether there is also a causative involvement of these two factors in the development of GVHD needs to be further investigated.
Fatigue and Depressive Symptoms in Older People

Fatigue is considered an important indicator of aging-related declines in health and functional abilities. Previous studies have indicated strong associations between fatigue and depressive symptoms among younger populations and in patient groups with specific diseases. However, it is not known how different measures of fatigue are associated with depressive symptoms among general older populations. The purpose of this study is to describe the prevalence of depressive symptoms among community-dwelling older adults reporting mobility-related or general feelings fatigue. The study population consisted of 75-year-old community-living individuals (n = 561). Both, mobility-related and general fatigue, were associated in a stepwise relationship with depressive symptoms: a higher level of fatigue was related to higher level of depressive symptoms. Especially major general fatigue was strongly associated with high level of depressive symptoms. It is important for professionals of the field to be aware of the associations between different measures of fatigue and depressive symptoms.
Chromosome Complement: Differences between Equus caballus and Equus przewalskii, Poliakoff

The chromosome number of the domestic horse is 2n = 64; different races have the same complement. The chromosomes of two Przewalski's horses (at Catskill Game Farm, New York), presumably ancestral wild horses from Mongolia, are identical: 2n = 66, with more acrocentric and fewer metacentric elements than the chromosomes of the domestic horse. This apparent difference in karyotype may help resolve the questions of "purity" in the relatively few remaining Przewalski's horses. Moreover, these findings are of interest in relation to the apparent fertility of hybrids between these species.
Balloon Vertebroplasty in Combination With Pedicle Screw Instrumentation: A Novel Technique to Treat Thoracic and Lumbar Burst Fractures

Study Design. Clinical trial (phase II). Objectives. To assess the feasibility and safety of balloon vertebroplasty after posterior short-segment reduction and fixation for the treatment of traumatic burst fractures. Summary of Background Data. Hardware failure and loss of reduction after posterior short-segment instrumentation are complications caused by insufficiency of anterior column support. This is due to migration of disc tissue through the endplate into the fractured vertebral body that cannot be restored with posterior instrumentation. Methods. Patients with traumatic thoracolumbar burst fractures without neurologic deficits were included. After posterior reduction and fixation, bilateral transpedicular balloon reduction of the endplate was performed, and calcium phosphate cement was injected. Preoperative and postoperative Cobb angle and central and anterior height were assessed with radiographs and MRI. Results. Twenty patients underwent surgery without technical difficulties, and a substantial reduction of the endplates could be achieved with the technique. All patients recovered uneventfully, and the neurologic examination revealed no deficits. The postoperative radiographs and magnetic resonance images demonstrated a good fracture reduction and filling of the bone defect without unwarranted bone displacement. The central and anterior height of the vertebral body could be restored to 78 and 91% of the estimated intact height, respectively. Complications were cement leakage in five cases without clinical implications and one wound hematoma. Conclusions. Transpedicular balloon vertebroplasty for the direct restoration of burst fractures seems feasible in combination with posterior instrumentation. Cement leakage occurred but had no clinical consequences.