Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analogy of physicochemical attributes of two grape seeds cultivars

In this study, a range of physicochemical properties (dimensions, kernel volume, mass unit, bulk and true densities, porosity, terminal velocity, static friction coefficient against different surfaces, oil content and fatty acids composition) of the Bojnordi and Fakhri cultivars of grape seeds were studied. Fatty acid composition for both cultivars of grape seeds consisted of palmitic, stearic, oleic, linoleic and linolenic acid. The values for palmitic, stearic, oleic, linoleic and linolenic acid for the Bojnordi cultivar were 9.56, 4.37, 22.87, 62.85 and 0.33% and for the Fakhri cultivar were 9.22, 4.33, 19.75, 66.40 and 0.28%, respectively. All physical properties of the grape seed cultivars were significantly affacted by the moisture content in the studied range (11.5 to 23.9 w.b.%). For both cultivars (Bojnordi and Fakhri), the relationships between physical properties and moisture content were linear
Potential application of Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains for the fermentation of banana pulp

This paper aimed at evaluating the fermentation behavior of selected Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains in banana pulp and they were compared with commercial yeast (baker’s yeast) for subsequent production of distilled spirits. Five types of microorganisms were used: Four yeast strains obtained from accredited microbiology laboratories were isolated from domestic cachaça distilleries (UNICAMPV1, UFMG-A905, UFMG-A1007 and UFMG-A1240) and commercial pressed yeast (COMMERCIAL-yeast). The fermentation parameters of the studied S. cerevisiae strains were significantly different. COMMERCIAL-yeast and UNICAMP-V1 strain presented higher ethanol yield and better yeast efficiency in converting total reducing sugars (TRS) into alcohol, with ethanol yields of 83.07 and 94.06%, and yeast efficiency of 90.75 and 96.41%, respectively for UNICAMP V1 and COMMERCIAL-yeast. The higher alcohol contents of 82.26 and 78.05 mg/100 ml anhydrous alcohol were obtained by the UNICAMP-V1 and COMMERCIAL-yeast, respectively. No significant differences in fermentative parameters were observed between COMMERCIAL-yeast and UNICAMP-V1 strain. The UFMG-A1240 strain showed the lowest ethanol yield and therefore not suitable for the production of distilled spirits made of bananas, despite being useful for the production of cachaça. Methanol contents did not significantly vary among the five strains tested, except for UFMG-A1007, which produced significantly higher quantities of 0.19 ml/100 ml anhydrous alcohol. However, higher alcohols contents varied significantly between the five strains tests, with the UFMG-A1007 and UFMG-A1240 strains producing the lowest quantities of higher alcohols (30.04 and 48.69 mg/100 ml anhydrous alcohol, respectively). In conclusion, the S. cerevisiae strains UNICAMP-V1 and the COMMERCIAL-yeast showed better fermentation behavior, did not produce high methanol and higher alcohols amounts, and therefore were recommended for the production of distilled spirits made of banana in pilot-scale plants.
Trans reentrant loop structures in secondary transporters

Biologische membranen hebben een belangrijke rol in het beschermen van de cel tegen schadelijke condities van de omgeving en moeten tegelijkertijd de opname van verschillende stoffen, zoals voedingstoffen, alsook de uitscheiding van afvalproducten mogelijk maken. Transportfuncties worden uitgevoerd door transporteiwitten, die de verplaatsing van een substraat van de ene naar de andere kant van het membraan katalyseren. Het werk dat in dit proefschrift beschreven wordt, richt zich op structurele overeenkomst tussen families van transporteiwitten, en in het bijzonder tussen de glutamaat-transporter GltS van Escherichia coli en de citraat-transporter CitS van Klebsiella pneumoniae. Deze twee transporteiwitten, en andere leden van de families waartoe zij behoren, vertonen geen overeenkomst in aminozuurvolgorde, maar wel in hun hydropathie-profielen. Dit suggereert dat ze een overeenkomstige eiwitvouwing en mechanisme van transport hebben. Met de bioinformatische data verkregen uit het MemGen classificatie systeem en een eerder uitgevoerde topologie studie van CitS, waren we in staat om de membraantopologie van GltS te voorspellen en deze experimenteel te verifieren. Hiermee is aangetoond dat, bij afwezigheid van een kristalstructuur, analyse van hydropathie-profielen van membraaneiwitten een goede methode is om de structuur van membraaneiwitten te bestuderen. De verkregen data suggereren dat beide eiwitten opgebouwd zijn uit twee homologe domeinen die beide een zogenaamde “trans reentrant loop” hebben, en aan elkaar verbonden zijn met een lange cytoplasmatische loop. De reentrant loops zijn belangrijk voor de activiteit van de transporters: ze staan in interactie met elkaar daar waar de twee domeinen aan elkaar grenzen en vormen een translocatiekanaal voor de substraten en co-ionen. (translated by Hein Trip)
A Novel Complementary Alternative Medicine: An In-Vitro Evaluation of Efficacy of Nigella sativa Extract as an Antibacterial Agent against Porphyromonas gingivalis

Introduction: Periodontitis is an inflammatory disease which causes progressive destruction of the periodontium resulting in pocket formation, gingival recession and tooth loss. The overwhelming cost of periodontal treatment, unpleasant side effects of antibiotics, emergence of new bacterial strains and their resistance call for an alternative treatment modality which can address all these issues. Nigella sativa is an annual herbaceous plant. It is commonly known as black seed which has been used for more than 2000 years as a natural remedy. Numerous studies have confirmed the biological functions of black seed and demonstrated its anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, antifungal and anticancer activity. Objective: To determine the frequency of Porphyromonas gingivalis in chronic periodontitis patients and evaluate the efficacy of black seed extract against it. Methodology: Porphyromonas gingivalis was isolated from subgingival plaque samples and identified up to species level. Ethanolic extract of black seed was screened for antibacterial activity by agar well diffusion and agar dilution method. A reference strain of Porphyromonas gingivalis ATCC 33277 was used as quality control. Results: All the tested strains of Porphyromonas gingivalis were sensitive to ethanolic extract of black seed at concentrations 25, 50, 75 and 100%. The extract had an MIC range of 2-4mg/ml. Conclusion: These results indicate that ethanolic extract of black seed has potent antibacterial activity against Porphyromonas gingivalis. So black seed extract can be used in periodontal therapy as an adjuvant to scaling.
Generating distributed entanglement from electron currents

Several recent experiments have demonstrated the viability of a passive device that can generate spin-entangled currents in two separate leads. However, manipulation and measurement of individual flying qubits in a solid state system has yet to be achieved. This is particularly difficult when a macroscopic number of these indistinguishable qubits are present. In order to access such an entangled current resource, we therefore show how to use it to generate distributed, static entanglement. The spatial separation between the entangled static pair can be much higher than that achieved by only exploiting the tunnelling effects between quantum dots. Our device is completely passive, and requires only weak Coulomb interactions between static and flying spins. We show that the entanglement generated is robust to decoherence for large enough currents.
Soil water effects on growth and nutrition in upland pastures.

Normally the oceanic climate of Scotland maintains soils at low levels of soil water deficit. Field data for such a year are presented and compared with those for an unusually dry year, with the objective of assessing to what degree dry spells might limit herbage production in upland pastures. One meter square plots were sampled on selected dates on reseeded pastures growing on each of 3 cambisols, each derived from different parent materials. The swards were unfertilized and maintained at nominal heights of 2, 4, 7, and 10 cm by cutting every 2 or 3 weeks to manipulate growth and demand for P and N. Overall yield was 25 to 50% lower in the dry year compared with an average year. Peaks and troughs in growth rates, measured as yield at each cutting, and in P and N content, corresponded to changes in soil water deficit in the top meter of soil. The linear correlation coefficient between soil water deficit and growth rate was -0.894 (P = 0.001). Although there was some variation in volumetric water content between soils, soil water deficits were similar in all the cambisols. Yields and nutrient contents were generally similar for herbage harvested from the 2 soils having basic parent material (one a eutric and one a dystric cambisol) and lower on the dystric cambisol derived from schists. The effects of water content largely over-rode cutting treatments, demonstrating that dry spells occasionally occurring in the oceanic climate of Scotland can significantly affect grassland production.
Automatic Domain-Relevant Collocation Extraction from Arabic Corpus

An approach for automatic domain-relevant collocation extraction from Arabic text corpus is proposed. It uses naive linguistic and statistical methods to extract collocations and relate them to specific domains depending on prevalence and tendency collocation ranking mechanism. In order to realize the proposed approach we use a corpus separated into ten domains. The proposed approach starts with preprocessing this corpus, then extracting candidate collocations. After that, it ranks the candidate collocations depending on the distributional behavior of candidate collocations within the domain and across the rest of the corpus. Then we distribute the candidate collocations over the domains depending on their rank values to get domains' term matrix. Finally, we evaluate the resulting collocation matrix by using it to classify the domain of a number of documents. The results are encouraging in most domains such that the achieved rate of accuracy exceeded 90%.
Is body adiposity index a good measure of nutritional status? A study among two adult tribal populations of Paschim Medinipur, West Bengal, India

Objectives: A new index of adiposity named body adiposity index (BAI) has been very recently proposed based on an investigation on Mexican-Americans and African-Americans. However, extensive perusal of literature worldwide revealed that, till date, no study has been undertaken using this new index. Ours is the first population-based study (except the original study) using this new index. Our objective was to evaluate the nutritional status, based on both the conventional index of adiposity (Body Mass Index, BMI) as well as this new index, of adult tribal Munda and Oraons of Paschim Medinipur, West Bengal. It also attempted to determine how well the results, using these two different indices, concur. Materials and Methods: This cross sectional study was conducted among 210 (106 Munda and 104 Oraon) adult males from these tribal communities. Nutritional status was classified into four categories following standard cut-off values: underweight, normal, overweight and obese. Anthropometric variables weight, height and hip circumference were measured and BMI and BAI were computed. Results: Among Mundas, based on BMI, 35.8 % and 1.0 % had chronic energy deficiency (CED) and overweight, respectively. However, using BAI, 36.8 % of subjects were overweight. Among Oraons, based on BMI, the frequencies of CED and overweight were 37.5 % and 1.0 %, respectively. However, based on BAI, 41.3 % were overweight. The ethnic-combined rates of CED and overweight based on BMI were 36.7 % and 1.0 %, respectively. On the basis of BAI, ethnic-combined rates of overweight and obesity was 39.0 %. Discussion and Conclusion: These results clearly indicated that there were vast differences, while using these two indicators, in the classification of nutritional status. More validation studies among different ethnic groups are needed before BAI can be recommended for use in the study of nutritional status.
Electron spin resonance studies in the doped polyaniline PANI-AMPSA: Evidence for local ordering from linewidth features

X-band electron spin resonance (ESR) of polyaniline (PANI) doped with 2-acrylamido-2-methyl-1-propane sulfonic acid (AMPSA), at conductivity values of 90, 4, and 0.2 S/cm, has been investigated from 300 to 5 K.Free-standing films (30-40 mu m thick) of PANI were prepared by solution casting method. The spectra consist of two signals, one is broad (similar to 60 G) and the other is narrow (similar to 10 G), at nearly the same resonance field. The temperature variation of ESR susceptibility indicates a stronger Pauli component in the broad linesignal, as compared to the narrow signal, at all values of conductivity. Both linewidths are independent of the presence of O-2.The temperature variation of line widths is explained in terms of the quasi-two-dimensional (Q2D) model. These results suggest that in some regions the doped PANI chains have self-assembled Q2D structure, and the presence of a significant Pauli susceptibility indicates that the charge carriers are highly delocalized in these Q2D regions.
A High Resolution Study of Non-Reacting Fuel Sprays using Large-Eddy Simulations

The present study deals with Large-Eddy Simulations (LES) of non-reacting fuel sprays in internal combustion engine like conditions. The main objective is to investigate the influence of the grid size on droplet breakup and evaporation in conjunction with the implicit LES method for the well defined reference case “Spray A”. A sufficient agreement with the experimental results concerning liquid and vapor penetration was found for the two highest mesh resolutions. The coarsest mesh could not capture the turbulent transition correctly and thus overpredicted liquid and vapor penetration. Both investigated breakup models performed reasonable well, even though differences in predicted droplet size were found. The differences in droplet size affect again the global spray quantities (liquid/ vapor penetration). Hence, a further investigation and tuning of the breakup model parameter is suggested for the chosen LES approach.
Sequential arbitrage measurement in bond markets : theory and empirical applications in the Euro-zone

We develop a mathematical programing approach in order to measure the arbitrage size in bond markets. Transaction costs may be incorporated. The obtained arbitrage measures have two interesting interpretations: On the one hand they provide the highest available arbitrage profit with respect to the price of the sold (bought) securities. On the other hand they give the minimum relative (per dollar) bid (ask) price modification leading to an arbitrage free market. Moreover, some primal problems lead to optimal arbitrage strategies (if available), while their dual problems generate proxies for the Term Structure of Interest Rates. The developed methodology permits us to implement an empirical test in the Euro-zone during the Euro crisis. Classical literature justifies the relevance of empirical analyses verifying the degree of efficiency during market turmoils. Our empirical study of the German, French and Spanish sovereign bonds markets finds that the main arbitrage opportunities come from the price differences between maturity-matched strips or "On-The-Run Premium" for zero-coupon bonds. When we remove the strips and the zero-coupon bonds the arbitrage still exists in the Spanish market.
Health insurance benefit package design by the poor: can we predict their choice?

ABSTRACT Only 3-5% of the Indians are insured under some kind of health insurance. A mechanism that is developed in order to bring the poor in a community health insurance scheme is CHAT (Choosing Healthplans All Togethers). In a CHAT experiment each participant has to select a health insurance package individually and as a group with a budget of Rs. 600 (±US$13). Till now two CHAT experiments have been conducted in India. This research is based on the second CHAT experiment, which was conducted in Maharastra, Karnataka and Rajasthan. The objective of this research is to see whether the decisions made could be explained and predicted. Therefore two analyses have been conducted. First, the individual choice has been analyzed. The results show that the choice for the three major benefits is highly influenced by the state the individual lives in. A probable explanation for this is that the health care services differ between the three states. The choice for the minor benefits is highly influenced by the selection of the major benefits. This result leads to the conclusion that the choice for the minor benefits highly depends on the remaining budget. Therefore three suggestion have been proposed in order to adjust the CHAT experiment in such a manner that this effect could be narrowed down. First, the participants could be asked to prioritize their selected benefits. Second, in the post-questionnaire of the CHAT experiment participants could be asked why a certain benefit has been selected and a third suggestion is that the budget of the participants and groups should not be fixed in advance, but instead the participants and groups are free to decide their own budget. The second analysis that has been conducted, was to see whether the background characteristics of the individuals correlate with a so-called matching-score (which shows the similarity between the individual and the group choice). Unfortunately the results show that only eight variables have a correlation coefficient that is statistically significant and the correlation is extremely weak (between -0.1 and 0.1). This leads to the conclusion that in fact non of the background characteristics could explain why some individuals have a higher matching-score than other individuals. Overall, the conclusion is that the choices could not be explained and predicted accurate. This is probably because the CHAT exercise is not suitable for this kind of analyses. The main goal of the CHAT exercise is to bring the poor into a community based health insurance scheme and not to predict and explain the choices made.
An Image Sharing-based Solution for Secure Inpatient Medication Administration

Patients face risks of health damage from medication error. To prevent such errors, hospitals need a secure medication administration system. Using threshold sharing technology, a secure medication administration method is proposed here. When a patient visits the doctor and the doctor prescribes n medications, a photo of the patient is encoded into n portions. Then the prescription and these n portions are stored in the hospital information system. Any portion provides the smallest quantity of information needed to reveal the smallest part of the original photo. As more portions are received, more of the photo is revealed. Once all n portions have been received, the original photo is revealed with very little distortion, meaning that the method is highly fault-tolerant. Before dispensing medications, the dispensers at the medication counter should scan the tags of all drug packages. If the dispensers at the medication counter have the correct n medications, the computer receives the n portions, and the photos of the patients are displayed on the screen. Then the dispensers at the medication counter know that there are no drugs missing or wrong, and also which drugs belong to which patient.
The role of rainfall and predators in determining synchrony in reproduction of savanna trees in Serengeti National Park, Tanzania

1 We examined the factors determining synchrony in reproduction in nine Acacia and six other tree species in the Serengeti ecosystem. 2 We test two hypotheses: (i) an abiotic hypothesis where the primary determinant of synchrony is an adaptation to water availability; and (ii) biotic hypotheses where these adaptations to water can be further refined by additional adaptations to avoid predators, or attract seed and fruit dispersers. 3 Flowering and fruiting were recorded monthly for individually marked trees during 1997–2004. Flowering in different species occurs semi‐annually, annually or, in the case of one species, once every 2 years. For most species synchrony of flowering was correlated with seasonal rainfall, with lags related to the mean height of the species; small species flowered during the rains while larger species flowered in the dry season. Fruiting seasons occurred at the end of the rains irrespective of the flowering season. 4 Most species showed flowering synchrony greater than expected from the distribution of rainfall. This may be related to avoidance of insect seed predators through predator satiation. Two Acacias showed multi‐annual fruiting (masting), possibly as a predator avoidance mechanism. Acacia tortilis has two flowering seasons: a dry season flowering with early abortion of pods and a wet season flowering producing successful fruits. 5 Two species of Commiphora appeared to be synchronized so as to attract birds that disperse seeds. Acacia tortilis produced indehiscent pods attractive to ungulates, possibly to kill bruchid beetles during digestion and so increase seed viability. 6 Our results suggest that synchrony in these trees is caused by a strong interaction between abiotic and biotic factors. Closely related species have different reproductive patterns of synchrony that seem to be adapted to different combinations of rainfall, predators and dispersers. Rainfall is the primary determinant but the activities of predators and dispersers increase the degree of synchrony.
Pilot study of an Internet-based personalized feedback intervention for problem gamblers

This pilot study reports on the initial usage of an online personalized feedback screener for problem gamblers. The Check Your Gambling screener (CYG; www.CheckYourGambling.net) is an online version of a paper and pencil screener that had shown some promise in an initial evaluation to promote short-term reductions in gambling behaviour. The online CYG screener was linked to two existing Web pages for gambling in Ontario, Canada—the Ontario Problem Gambling Helpline (OPGH) Web page and ProblemGambling.ca. While more participants used the ProblemGambling.ca (n = 730) version than the OPGH version (n = 591), the OPGH version appeared to be more targeted, as almost all of the participants using this Web site were Canadian (and the personalized feedback of the current version of the CYG is generated using Canadian norms). More work is needed to establish whether the online CYG screener can motivate reductions in gambling among participants or motivate treatment-seeking in those requiring assistance in addressing problematic gambling behviour.