Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hydrogen Production from Biomass using Nuclear Fusion Energy

Hydrogen deserves of a future energy medium in terms of global environmental issues and fossil resource constraints. This study intends to examine the feasibility of hydrogen production process by nuclear fusion heat. This process potentially provides hydrogen at significantly better efficiency than other proposed reaction such as electrolysis from renewable source with little CO2 emission, and is formulated as (C6H10O5)n+mH2Orarr6nH 2+6nCO-n814 kJ. The experimental result at 1273 K showed complete gasification of cellulose, and hydrogen was obtained at the conversion efficiency of respectively 40 percent of material and 50% of heat. A concept of a reactor and fusion-hydrogen plant is presented
Three Infectious Viral Species Lying in Wait in the Banana Genome

ABSTRACT Plant pararetroviruses integrate serendipitously into their host genomes. The banana genome harbors integrated copies of banana streak virus (BSV) named endogenous BSV (eBSV) that are able to release infectious pararetrovirus. In this investigation, we characterized integrants of three BSV species—Goldfinger (eBSGFV), Imove (eBSImV), and Obino l'Ewai (eBSOLV)—in the seedy Musa balbisiana Pisang klutuk wulung (PKW) by studying their molecular structure, genomic organization, genomic landscape, and infectious capacity. All eBSVs exhibit extensive viral genome duplications and rearrangements. eBSV segregation analysis on an F1 population of PKW combined with fluorescent in situ hybridization analysis showed that eBSImV, eBSOLV, and eBSGFV are each present at a single locus. eBSOLV and eBSGFV contain two distinct alleles, whereas eBSImV has two structurally identical alleles. Genotyping of both eBSV and viral particles expressed in the progeny demonstrated that only one allele for each species is infectious. The infectious allele of eBSImV could not be identified since the two alleles are identical. Finally, we demonstrate that eBSGFV and eBSOLV are located on chromosome 1 and eBSImV is located on chromosome 2 of the reference Musa genome published recently. The structure and evolution of eBSVs suggest sequential integration into the plant genome, and haplotype divergence analysis confirms that the three loci display differential evolution. Based on our data, we propose a model for BSV integration and eBSV evolution in the Musa balbisiana genome. The mutual benefits of this unique host-pathogen association are also discussed.
Quantitative description on structure–property relationships of Li-ion battery materials for high-throughput computations

Abstract Li-ion batteries are a key technology for addressing the global challenge of clean renewable energy and environment pollution. Their contemporary applications, for portable electronic devices, electric vehicles, and large-scale power grids, stimulate the development of high-performance battery materials with high energy density, high power, good safety, and long lifetime. High-throughput calculations provide a practical strategy to discover new battery materials and optimize currently known material performances. Most cathode materials screened by the previous high-throughput calculations cannot meet the requirement of practical applications because only capacity, voltage and volume change of bulk were considered. It is important to include more structure–property relationships, such as point defects, surface and interface, doping and metal-mixture and nanosize effects, in high-throughput calculations. In this review, we established quantitative description of structure–property relationships in Li-ion battery materials by the intrinsic bulk parameters, which can be applied in future high-throughput calculations to screen Li-ion battery materials. Based on these parameterized structure–property relationships, a possible high-throughput computational screening flow path is proposed to obtain high-performance battery materials. Graphical abstract In this review, we discuss some quantitative descriptions of structure–property relationships by the intrinsic bulk parameters, which can be applied in the future high-throughput computational screening to obtain high-performance Li-ion battery materials.
Immigration Gridlock: Assessing Whether Canada's Express Entry Is an Effective Immigration System for International Students' Transition into Permanent Residency?

This research critically analyzes the introduction of the Express Entry system in Canada, requiring foreign nationals to submit an Expression of Interest (EOI) and wait for an invitation before being allowed to apply for permanent residence. Drawing on available empirical data, I argue that this reform jeopardized international students’ chance to become permanent residents. Despite recent modifications that intended to improve their situation, the pathways to permanent residence of international students are still restricted. Particularly, international PhD students are negatively impacted as the previously existing PhD stream under the Federal Skilled Worker Program covertly disappeared from the current regime. This research concludes with suggestions on how to further modify the current immigration system to facilitate international students’ transitions into Canada.
Copula model dependency between oil prices and stock markets: evidence from Tunisia and Egypt

In this work, our objective is to study in a first step the relationships between oil price and stock market indices in Tunisia and Egypt using copulas, and then in a second step to analyse the optimal weights and hedge ratio for building optimal portfolios to minimise the exposure to risk from oil price changes. The model is implemented with an ARMA-GARCH-GPD using daily observations for the 2 January 1998 to 31 December 2013 period for the marginal distribution and the extreme value copula for the joint distribution, which allows taking into account non-linear dependence, tails behaviour and their development over time. Various copula functions are used to model the dependence structure between oil prices and stock markets of Tunisia and Egypt. Empirical results provide evidence of significant and symmetric tail dependence for international oil prices and stock markets. On the other hand, volatility for this stock markets registered record levels due to the increase of the degree of oil prices. However, dependence structure changed over time, indicating that hedging effectiveness and hedge ratio for the oil asset in the hedged portfolios varied over time.
Maternal epigenetics and methyl supplements affect agouti gene expression in Avy/a mice

‘Viable yellow’ (Avy/a) mice are larger, obese, hyperinsulinemic, more susceptible to cancer, and, on average, shorter lived than their non‐yellow siblings. They are epigenetic mosaics ranging from a yellow phenotype with maximum ectopic agouti overexpression, through a continuum of mottled agouti/yellow phenotypes with partial agouti overexpression, to a pseudoagouti phenotype with minimal ectopic expression. Pseudoagouti Avy/a mice are lean, healthy, and longer lived than their yellow siblings. Here we report that feeding pregnant black a/a dams methyl‐supplemented diets alters epigenetic regulation of agouti expression in their offspring, as indicated by increased agouti/black mottling in the direction of the pseudoagouti phenotype. We also present confirmatory evidence that epigenetic phenotypes are maternally heritable. Thus Avy expression, already known to be modulated by imprinting, strain‐specific modification, and maternal epigenetic inheritance, is also modulated by maternal diet. These observations suggest, at least in this special case, that maternal dietary supplementation may positively affect health and longevity of the offspring. Therefore, this experimental system should be useful for identifying maternal factors that modulate epigenetic mechanisms, especially DNA methylation, in developing embryos. —Wolff, G. L. , Kodell, R. L. , Moore, S. R. , Cooney, C. A. Maternal epigenetics and methyl supplements affect agouti gene expression in Avy/a mice. FASEB J. 12, 949–957 (1998)
Image Reshaping for Efficient Compression of Plenoptic Content

With insertion of an additional microlens array in front of the imaging sensor, plenoptic camera, which acquires light field by a single exposure, attracts great interests both from academy and industry. A plenoptic image records both spatial and angular light radiance in a super high definition with macropixel structures, which results in a distinct intensity distribution. Several compression techniques have been proposed, however, most of them are suffered from the standard incompatibility and high compression complexity. In this paper, a novel and standard compatible plenoptic data reshaping algorithm is proposed to align the macropixel structures in the lenslet image with the coding unit grids of block-based image/video coding standards before compression. After encoding and decoding the reshaped lenslet image using the existing block-based image/video coding standards, the inverse image reshaping is used to convert the reconstructed image back to the original light-field data format for further applications. The experimental results reveal that the proposed method introduces 10.47% and 27.64% bitrate reduction to HEVC/H.265 format range extension profile and AVC/H.264 high 4:4:4 profile, respectively, by compressing the reshaped lenslet images. Also, it brings additional compression efficiency improvements to intraprediction tools, such as intrablock copy and locally linear embedding based coding method, by an average of 11.62% and 9.81% bitrate reduction as they compress the reshaped plenoptic images.
Continuing teachers education and social learning in the promotion of geoconservation: the case of the gold cycle geopark project, Guarulhos, São Paulo, Brazil

This article aims to present possibilities of the use of participatory methodologies, such as Social Learning tools, in the promotion of geoconservation. The reflections presented here were built upon "Module III - Social Learning" of the continuing education course for teachers "Education, Environment and Social Learning: socio-educational practices for sustainability and geoconservation", developed in the city of Guarulhos, São Paulo, Brazil. The course was promoted within the scope of the Gold Cycle Geopark Project and its results subsidized a postdoctoral research, a master's research, specialized publications in the area, and contributions to Education for Geoconservation. The methodological proposal was based on five public schools in Guarulhos and involved teachers from different areas of knowledge. In addition to the pedagogical and management teams of the schools, different social actors took part in the initiative, such as: representatives of the community, partner universities and municipal secretariats of the city. The main objective of the course was to develop collaborative socio-environmental proposals for the promotion of citizenship, sustainability and protection of local geoheritage by the school.
Resource demand aware scheduling for workflows in clouds

A major challenge of running applications in clouds is to determine the right number of resources (virtual machines or VMs) to rent in terms of both performance and cost. Such a challenge becomes greater if the application requires to run across multiple resources. In this paper, we address the problem of scheduling scientific workflow applications. The structure of workflows, dictated by precedence/data dependencies, and the diversity of resources in clouds both at large scale make the resource provisioning and task scheduling very complex. To this end, we design the Resource Demand Aware Scheduling (RDAS) algorithm that schedules workflows based on their resource demands and priorities considering workflow structure. RDAS partitions workflows and allocates resources of possibly different capacities/types to the partitions in a “fair” manner such that their execution times do not vary significantly. RDAS turns resource and application heterogeneity (a major hindering factor in clouds) into an opportunity for optimizing resource provisioning for scientific workflows. Based on our experimental results, RDAS demonstrates its capacity of minimizing the overall workflow completion time (makespan) and in turn minimizing costs of the execution. In particular, RDAS outperforms three existing algorithms by 22%, 13% and 33%, on average, in terms of makespan, cost and the number of resources used, respectively.
Functional and Mutational Analysis of Conjugative Transfer Region 2 (Tra2) from the IncHI1 Plasmid R27

ABSTRACT The transfer 2 region (Tra2) of the conjugative plasmid drR27 (derepressed R27) was analyzed by PSI-BLAST, insertional mutagenesis, genetic complementation, and an H-pilus assay. Tra2 contains 11 mating-pair formation (Mpf) genes that are essential for conjugative transfer, 9 of which are essential for H-pilus production (trhA, -L, -E, -K, -B, -V, -C, -P, and -W). TrhK has similarity to secretin proteins, suggesting a mechanism by which DNA could traverse the outer membrane of donors. The remaining two Mpf genes, trhU and trhN, play an auxiliary role in H-pilus synthesis and are proposed to be involved in DNA transfer and mating-pair stabilization, respectively. Conjugative transfer abilities were restored for each mutant when complemented with the corresponding transfer gene. In addition to the essential Mpf genes, three genes, trhO, trhZ, and htdA, modulate R27 transfer frequency. Disruption of trhO and trhZ severely reduced the transfer frequencies of drR27, whereas disruption of htdA greatly increased the transfer frequency of wild-type R27 to drR27 levels. A comparison of the essential transfer genes encoded by the Tra2 and Tra1 (T. D. Lawley, M. W. Gilmour, J. E. Gunton, L. J. Standeven, and D. E. Taylor, J. Bacteriol. 184:2173-2183, 2002) of R27 to other transfer systems illustrates that the R27 conjugative transfer system is a chimera composed of IncF-like and IncP-like transfer systems. Furthermore, the Mpf/type IV secretion systems encoded by IncH and IncF transfer systems are distinct from that of the IncP transfer system. The phenotypic and ecological significance of these observations is discussed.
Detection of biofilm formation among the clinical isolates of Staphylococci: an evaluation of three different screening methods.

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to evaluate three methods for detection of biofilm formation in staphylococci. METHODS For detection of biofilm formation, 152 clinical isolates of Staphylococcus spp. were screened by tissue culture plate (TCP), Tube method (TM) and Congo red agar (CRA) method. RESULTS Of the 152 Staphylococcus spp. 88(57.8%) displayed a biofilm-positive phenotype under the optimized conditions in the TCP method and strains were further classified as high 22 (14.47 %) and moderate 60 (39.4 %) while in 70 (46.0 %) isolates weak or no biofilm was detected. Though TM correlated well with the TCP test for 18 (11.8 %) strongly biofilm producing strains, weak producers were difficult to discriminate from biofilm negative isolates. Screening on CRA does not correlate well with either of the two methods for detecting biofilm formation in staphylococci. CONCLUSION The TCP method was found to be most sensitive, accurate and reproducible screening method for detection of biofilm formation by staphylococci and has the advantage of being a quantitative model to study the adherence of staphylococci on biomedical devices.
Production lost due to cervical cancer in Poland in 2012.

BACKGROUND Poland has one of the highest cervical cancer mortality rates in Europe. It is related to the problem of late diagnosis and low attendance rate in screening programs. The objective of the study has been to assess the annual production loss due to the cervical cancer morbidity and mortality in Poland in 2012. The outcomes have been to provide comprehensive information on cervical cancer's influence on population's ability to work and its overall economic burden for the society. The study has also provided the methodological framework for disease-related production losses in Polish settings. MATERIAL AND METHODS The human capital method was used. The production losses were calculated in both monetary and quantitative terms (working days lost) due to 4 following reasons: 1) temporary disability to work, 2) permanent disability, 3) informal care, and 4) mortality. RESULTS Cervical cancer resulted in approx. 702 964 working days lost in 2012 due to absence at work for both patients and care givers and a total number of 957 678 working days lost due to patients' mortality. The total value of production lost was assessed at 111.4 million euros. More than 66% of this value was attributed to women's mortality. CONCLUSIONS The calculation of production lost due to cervical cancer burden provides strong evidence to support adequate health promotion and disease prevention actions. Actions promoting cervical cancer screening should be intensified including workplace health promotion activities. Med Pr 2016;67(3):289-299.
Acute Stress Induces Proinflammatory Signaling at Chronic Inflammation Sites

Objectives: To analyze in a randomized controlled study whether acute psychological stress alters local proinflammatory signals in a human model of chronic inflammation, i.e., gingivitis. Chronic inflammation represents a crucial factor in a variety of diseases and factors that contribute to the onset and progression of disease. Psychological stress is assumed to represent such a factor. However, experimental human research in this area is rare. Methods: A total of 25 students (n = 11 females, 14 males) suffering from gingivitis were subjected to a stress (public-speaking task) and to a control condition in randomized order. Local concentrations of interleukin (IL)-8 were quantified as an indicator of proinflammatory activity at sites of inflammation. IL-8 is a strong proinflammatory mediator and involved in a variety of disease processes. Samples were taken at sites of inflammation before stress versus control condition and 0, 45, and 90 minutes afterward. Results: A significant main effect (p = .03) of acute stress on local IL-8 was found. Stress induced an increase of IL-8-concentrations; univariate effect sizes varied between d = 0.23 and d = 0.36. Conclusion: This is the first human experimental in vivo study demonstrating that psychological stress alters the local concentrations of IL-8 under conditions of chronic inflammation. It provides direct evidence acute stress is involved in the regulation of local proinflammatory responses in chronic inflammation. Future studies should now explore the effects of more enduring stress conditions and the factors mediating stress effects on inflammatory signals. IL = interleukin; GCF = gingival crevicular fluid; CRH = corticotrophin-releasing hormone; SP = substance P.
Postdisaster stress in the United States and Mexico: a cross-cultural test of the multicriterion conceptual model of posttraumatic stress disorder.

Data on symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were collected 6 months after Hurricanes Paulina (N = 200; Mexico) and Andrew (non-Hispanic n = 270; United States) using the Revised Civilian Mississippi Scale. A 4-factor measurement model that represented the accepted multicriterion conceptualization of PTSD fit the data of the U.S. and Mexican samples equally well. The 4 factors of Intrusion, Avoidance, Numbing, and Arousal correlated significantly and equivalently with severity of trauma in each sample. A single construct explained much of the covariance of the symptom factors in each sample. However, modeling PTSD as a unidimensional construct masked differences between samples in symptom severity. With severity of trauma controlled, the Mexican sample was higher in Intrusion and Avoidance, whereas the U.S. sample was higher in Arousal. The results suggest that PTSD is a meaningful construct to study in Latin American societies.
Cytochrome c Oxidase Deficiency

Cytochrome c oxidase (COX) is a complex enzyme composed of 13 subunits, three of which are encoded by the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). The other 10 subunits are encoded by the nuclear DNA, synthesized in the cytoplasm, and transported into the mitochondria. The complexity of the enzyme and its dual genetic control explain the heterogeneity of clinical phenotypes associated with COX deficiency. There are two major syndrom es, one characterized by muscle involvement (fatal infantile or benign infantile myopathy), the other dominated by brain disease (Leigh syndrome, myoclonic epilepsy with ragged red fibers, Menkes' disease). Partial defects of COX have been shown in muscle of patients with progressive external ophthalmoplegia, either alone (ocular myopathy) or as part of Kearns-Sayre syndrome. Biochemical studies have documented either muscle-specific or generalized defects of COX; COX deficiency is reversible in the benign infantile myopathy. Immunologically detectable protein may be normal (benign myopath y) or variabl y decreased (fatal myopathy, Leigh syndrome). The subunit pattern of CO X is normal by immunoblot in patients with fatal myopathy and Leigh syndrome; a disproportionate decrea se of subunit II was seen in a patient with myoclonic epilepsy with ragged red fibers. Availability of the three mtDNA genes and of complementary DNA probes for eight of the 10 nuclear DNA-encoded subunits makes it possible to investigate the different diseases at the molecular level. Large deletions of mtDNA have been found in patients with ocular myopathy and Kearns -Sayre syndrome: the deleted mtDNA appear to be transcribed but not translated, thus explaining the partial CO X deficiency. (Pediatr Res 28: 536-541, 1990)
Cross talk between Ca2+ and redox signalling cascades in muscle and neurons through the combined activation of ryanodine receptors/Ca2+ release channels

Calcium release mediated by the ryanodine receptors (RyR) Ca2+ release channels is required for muscle contraction and contributes to neuronal plasticity. In particular, Ca2+ activation of RyR-mediated Ca2+ release can amplify and propagate Ca2+ signals initially generated by Ca2+ entry into cells. Redox modulation of RyR function by a variety of non-physiological or endogenous redox molecules has been reported. The effects of RyR redox modification on Ca2+ release in skeletal muscle as well as the activation of signalling cascades and transcription factors in neurons will be reviewed here. Specifically, the different effects of S-nitrosylation or S-glutathionylation of RyR cysteines by endogenous redox-active agents on the properties of skeletal muscle RyRs will be discussed. Results will be presented indicating that these cysteine modifications change the activity of skeletal muscle RyRs, modify their behaviour towards both activators and inhibitors and affect their interactions with FKBP12 and calmodulin. In the hippocampus, sequential activation of ERK1/2 and CREB is a requisite for Ca2+-dependent gene expression associated with long-lasting synaptic plasticity. The effects of reactive oxygen/nitrogen species on RyR channels from neurons and RyR-mediated sequential activation of neuronal ERK1/2 and CREB produced by hydrogen peroxide and other stimuli will be discussed as well.