Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Investigation of Mycobacterium paratuberculosis in Arabian dromedary camels (Camelus dromedarius)

Aim: Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP) causes Johne’s disease in ruminants. This study aimed to investigate Mycobacterium paratuberculosis infection in clinically infected camels on the immunological, conventional bacteriological, and molecular biological basis. Materials and Methods: A total of 30 Arabian camels (Camelus dromedarius) were examined in this study. The camels were suffering from signs ranging from mild to severe infections (that did not respond to antibiotic treatment) to chronic or intermittent diarrhea. Camels were grouped into three groups based on their age, sex, and breed. Detection of anti-MAP antibodies in camels’ serum, Ziehl–Neelsen (ZN) staining technique on rectal scraps, direct recognition of MAP in stool and tissue specimens by IS900 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay, and finally isolation and molecular description of MAP from fecal and tissue samples were carried out. Results: Five MAP isolates were recovered from these investigated camel samples giving an isolation rate of 16.6%, while eight camels were identified by PCR (26.6%). Five camels yielded MAP in their feces by ZN fecal staining (16.6%), whereas ELISA detected anti-MAP antibodies in nine camels only (30%). Conclusion: From the obtained results, we concluded that the gold standard for the diagnosis of MAP is the culture method despite its limitations. Molecular diagnosis (PCR) could be a useful tool in the identification of truly positive and negative camels; however, great care should be given regarding the primers specificity and sensitivity.
Preparation and characterization of Chitosan/Collagen blends containing silver nanoparticles

This work consists of preparation of the Chitosan(CHI)/Collagen(COL) blends loaded with silver nanoparticles by method of evaporation of the solvent. This blends were characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The results obtained demonstrated that the mass ratio of CHI/COL was important for the maintenance of the collagen structure since in the ratio 3:1 (m/m of CHI/COL) decrease in the ratio between the peaks of 1235 cm-1 and 1450 cm-1, respectively. Moreover the silver nanoparticles added to the polymer matrix of the obtained chitosan had an average size of 25 nm confirmed by TEM for silver nanoparticle.
Avaliação da Eficácia de um Programa de Formação sobre Violência contra Crianças e Adolescentes

Abstract: Introduction: Assistance in health services is often the first possibility for the identification of cases of Violence Against Children and Teenagers (VACT). Therefore, the aim of this article was to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention program developed to enable students and health professionals to recognize and report cases of VACT. Additionally, we sought to verify at what level of training (undergraduate, postgraduate or working professional) such intervention would show the greatest effect. Method: This is a quasi-experimental study, of which design was based on the analysis of a non-equivalent Control Group (CG). The research included undergraduate medical students, postgraduate medical students attending pediatric residency and professionals working in health institutions. A total of 105 people participated, of which 89% were women. The participants were subsequently subdivided between the Experimental Group - EG (n = 60) and Control Group - CG (n = 45). A training program on the topic, consisting of 10 sessions (20h in total), was developed and applied with an EG. To assess the effectiveness of the intervention, a questionnaire was applied at previously determined periods (pre-test and post-test). The data were submitted to statistical analysis (descriptive analyses, t test and Tukey’s multiple comparison test), using the software R. Results: The post-test showed statistically significant changes in all dimensions evaluated with the EG, which proves that the intervention resulted in changes regarding the previous conceptions that the participants had about VACT. Additionally, when comparing the responses obtained in the questionnaires between the three EG groups (undergraduate, postgraduate students and working professionals), it was verified that there were no statistical differences between the groups, suggesting that educational programs have positive effects on all levels of training. Conclusions: This study showed that training programs can qualify the conception of students and health professionals, as well as help them feel more prepared to deal with the demands related to VACT. However, a collective effort is needed so that these contents are purposefully incorporated into the training process at all levels, from undergraduate school to continuing education.
A systematic review and meta-analysis of the human blood index of the major African malaria vectors

The proportion of mosquito blood-meals that are of human origin, referred to as the ‘human blood index’ or HBI, is a key determinant of malaria transmission. We conducted a systematic review of the HBI for the major African malaria vectors. Evidence is presented for higher HBI among Anopheles gambiae (M/S forms and An. coluzzii/An. gambiae s.s. are not distinguished for most studies and therefore combined) as well as An. funestus when compared with An. arabiensis (prevalence odds ratio adjusted for whether mosquitoes were caught indoors and outdoors: 1.61 95%CI 1.08-2.39; 1.84 95%CI 1.35-2.52, respectively). This finding is in keeping with the entomological literature which describes An. arabiensis to be more zoophagic than the other major African vectors. However, meta-analysis also revealed that HBI was more associated with location of mosquito captures (indoors versus outdoors, R2=0.3) than with mosquito (sibling/) species (R2=0.11), and that this difference was significant (p<0.01). Some of the more important consequences of mosquito biting behaviour are discussed in the context of new theoretical and empirical developments that may improve both HBI assessment and how this metric can inform malaria control optimisation.
A Conceptual Replication of the Unified Model of Information Security Policy Compliance

: Conceptual replications offer robust tests of theory by subjecting the relational notions of a scientific model to evaluation using alternate instruments, treatments, and subject pools. This study performs a conceptual replication of Moody, Siponen, and Pahnila’s 2018 empirical analysis that integrated elements of eleven theoretical models to produce the unified model of information security policy compliance (UMISPC). This replication employed a substantially more parsimonious instrument, using modestly revised treatment scenarios targeted toward a U.S. audience of 218 IT professionals as opposed to the Finnish graduate students used in the original study. Our results indicate that UMISPC is robust across variations in instruments and subject pools. The replicated model explained approximately two thirds of the variance in information systems security policy compliance intentions across both studies. In contrast, competing models such as the theory of planned behavior and extended protection motivation theory exhibited large changes in explanatory power when the instrument and subject pool were modified. This suggests that UMIPSC may be a superior theoretical model for consistently evaluating security policy compliance behavioral intentions among varied populations. Our results also indicate that the theoretical model is capable of detecting and integrating a wide range of behavioral antecedents that may have differing levels of influence among various populations.
Bootstrapping Web Archive Collections From Micro-Collections in Social Media

BOOTSTRAPPING WEB ARCHIVE COLLECTIONS FROM MICRO-COLLECTIONS IN SOCIAL MEDIA Alexander C. Nwala Old Dominion University, 2020 Director: Dr. Michael L. Nelson In a Web plagued by disappearing resources, Web archive collections provide a valuable means of preserving Web resources important to the study of past events. These archived collections start with seed URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers) hand-selected by curators. Curators produce high quality seeds by removing non-relevant URIs and adding URIs from credible and authoritative sources, but this ability comes at a cost: it is time consuming to collect these seeds. The result of this is a shortage of curators, a lack of Web archive collections for various important news events, and a need for an automatic system for generating seeds. We investigate the problem of generating seed URIs automatically, and explore the state of the art in collection building and seed selection. Attempts toward generating seeds automatically have mostly relied on scraping Web or social media Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). In this work, we introduce a novel source for generating seeds from URIs in the threaded conversations of social media posts created by single or multiple users. Users on social media sites routinely create and share narratives about news events consisting of hand-selected URIs of news stories, tweets, videos, etc. In this work, we call these posts Micro-collections, whether shared on Reddit or Twitter, and we consider them as an important source for seeds. This is because, the effort taken to create Micro-collections is an indication of editorial activity and a demonstration of domain expertise. Therefore, we propose a model for generating seeds from Micro-collections. We begin by introducing a simple vocabulary, called post class for describing social media posts across different platforms, and extract seeds from the Micro-collections post class. We further propose Quality Proxies for seeds by extending the idea of collection comparison to evaluation, and present our Micro-collection/Quality Proxy (MCQP) framework for bootstrapping Web archive collections from Micro-collections in social media.
Double Focusing: A New Sparse Channel Estimation Algorithm for Doubly Selective SFBC-OFDM-Based Underwater Acoustic Systems

In this letter, a new channel estimation algorithm is proposed for underwater acoustic channels undergoing Rayleigh fading with impulsive noise. For the channel estimation purpose, the algorithm utilizes the path-based channel model characterized by a path delay, a Doppler scaling factor, and an attenuation factor. Assuming antenna diversity coupled with Alamouti’s space-frequency block coding, the proposed estimator first employs matching pursuit algorithm for initialization. Then, the iterative algorithm interchangeably employs delay focusing and Doppler focusing approaches for Doppler shifts and delays estimation, respectively, with their corresponding path gains. The performance of the proposed algorithm is then presented in terms of average mean square error and symbol error rate for 16QAM signaling with different pilot spacings. The simulation results show that the proposed approach with the continuous focusing functions can outperform the compressed sensing-based matching pursuit (MP) algorithm and the projected (PMP), and the basis pursuit-based generalized approximate message passing (GAMP) algorithm.
Approximate Arithmetic Circuits: A Survey, Characterization, and Recent Applications

Approximate computing has emerged as a new paradigm for high-performance and energy-efficient design of circuits and systems. For the many approximate arithmetic circuits proposed, it has become critical to understand a design or approximation technique for a specific application to improve performance and energy efficiency with a minimal loss in accuracy. This article aims to provide a comprehensive survey and a comparative evaluation of recently developed approximate arithmetic circuits under different design constraints. Specifically, approximate adders, multipliers, and dividers are synthesized and characterized under optimizations for performance and area. The error and circuit characteristics are then generalized for different classes of designs. The applications of these circuits in image processing and deep neural networks indicate that the circuits with lower error rates or error biases perform better in simple computations, such as the sum of products, whereas more complex accumulative computations that involve multiple matrix multiplications and convolutions are vulnerable to single-sided errors that lead to a large error bias in the computed result. Such complex computations are more sensitive to errors in addition than those in multiplication, so a larger approximation can be tolerated in multipliers than in adders. The use of approximate arithmetic circuits can improve the quality of image processing and deep learning in addition to the benefits in performance and power consumption for these applications.
Hypoxia Signaling in Cardiovascular Diseases

Cardiovascular diseases such as stroke, coronary artery disease, and thrombosis remain a global health burden. Understanding the mechanism of these diseases paves the way for development of prophylactics/therapeutics. It is well known at cellular levels; the pathophysiology of most of the cardiovascular disease involves a complicated yet coordinated signaling networks triggered in response to either cellular or tissue levels of hypoxic milieu. Information related to types of hypoxia and signaling mechanism associated to such complications if complied and presented in a comprehensive manner shall prove relevant in proposing common therapeutic targets for wide array of cardiovascular complications. The relative functional roles of hypoxia-triggered signaling pathways are also an area of current research. Based upon these facts, this chapter discusses the types of hypoxia and role of hypoxia-mediated signaling pathways in various types of commonly occurring cardiovascular disorders.
Stereology of spix's yellow-toothed cavy brain (Galea spixii, WAGLER, 1831)

Article history Spix's Yellow-toothed Cavy is a histrichomorphic rodent of the Caviidae family found in South American countries such as Brazil and Bolivia. It is a widely-used species as an experimental model in research in reproductive biology due to morphological and reproductive characteristics, such as the similarity in the placental development of Galea spixii and human species. However, there are no studies on the behavior of this species or on its brain morphology. Considering the lack of information in the literature about the brain and internal structures of Galea spixii, this study aimed to stereologic evaluate the brain as well as the volumetric proportions of the hippocampus and corpus callosum. Therefore, ten healthy animals were used from the Wild Animal Multiplication Center of the Universidade Federal Rural do Semiárido. The brains were measured in terms of external length, height and width, followed by fixation in paraformaldehyde solution 4% and coronary cuts with a thickness of 4mm and the rostral face of each cut was photographed, with the images being analyzed to determine the volumetric proportions of the required areas. There was no statistically significant difference between the means of volume, length, width and height when the right and left hemispheres were compared, and there was also no statistically significant difference between the volume of the corpus callosum and hippocampus in both hemispheres. The brain of Galea spixii is larger when compared to the rodent Rattus norvegicus. Volumetric differences may be responsible for distinct behavioral aspects between these species. Received 23 March 2018 Received in revised form 26 November 2018 Accepted 10 December 2018
Phytoncide activity of woody plants under the conditions of steppe zone

Abstract The study of phytoncide activity of biogenic volatile organic compounds of woody plants is one of the most important areas of research in plant ecology in urban lands. The aim of this work is to investigate the dependence of the phytoncide activity of some woody plant species from meteorological factors in the urban environment in the steppe zone of Ukraine. The objectives of the investigation were 28 species of trees and shrubs. The air temperature is indicated to be a major factor for drought-resistant and some medium drought-resistant species (Populus simonii Carrière, Armeniaca vulgaris L., Robinia pseudoacacia L., Acer pseudoplatanus L., Malus niedzwetzkyana Dieck). The phytoncide activity of low and medium drought-resistant species (Viburnum opulus L., Acer sacharinnum L.) depends on air humidity and total monthly precipitation. The obtained results make it possible to predict changes in the phytoncide activity of woody plants, when selecting the assortment of species for phyto-optimization of technogenic environment.
Nested Fast Adaptive Cross Approximation Algorithm for Solving Electromagnetic Scattering Problems

In this article, a nested fast adaptive cross approximation (NFACA) algorithm is presented to accelerate the solution of electromagnetic scattering problems. It is based on the fast adaptive cross approximation (FACA) and the nested cross approximation (NCA). In the NFACA, the FACA is applied instead of the ACA or the Chebyshev nodes, to enhance the efficiency. It is shown to have O(N) storage and computational complexity for electrically small problems. Different from the conventional NCA or the fast NCA (FNCA), the pivot selection does not rely on a preliminary selection with Chebyshev nodes or ACA for each group. The NFACA permits the selection of the optimum pivots independently at each level to make the accuracy controllable. Numerical results of several objects are presented to demonstrate the performance of this method. Compared with the FACA and NCA in solving the electromagnetic scattering problems, the NFACA is more efficient both in computational cost and storage. Compared with the FNCA, the NFACA is both faster and more accurate.
PP4 phosphatase cooperates in recombinational DNA repair by enhancing double-strand break end resection

The role of Rad53 in response to a DNA lesion is central for the accurate orchestration of the DNA damage response. Rad53 activation relies on its phosphorylation by the Mec1 kinase and its own auto-phosphorylation in a manner dependent on the adaptor Rad9. While the mechanism behind Rad53 phosphorylation and activation has been well documented, less is known about the processes that counteract its kinase activity during the response to DNA damage. Here, we describe that PP4 phosphatase dephosphorylates Rad53 during the repair of a double-strand break, a process that impacts on the phosphorylation status of multiple factors involved in the DNA damage response. PP4-dependent Rad53 dephosphorylation stimulates DNA end resection by relieving the negative effect that Rad9 exerts over the Sgs1/Dna2 exonuclease complex. Consequently, elimination of PP4 activity affects DNA resection and repair by single-strand annealing, defects that are bypassed by reducing the hyper-phosphorylation state of Rad53 observed in the absence of the phosphatase. These results confirm that Rad53 is one of the main targets of PP4 during the repair of a DNA lesion and demonstrate that the attenuation of its kinase activity during the initial steps of the repair process is essential to efficiently enhance recombinational DNA repair pathways that depend on long-range resection.
Multidimensional analysis of Gammaherpesvirus RNA expression reveals unexpected heterogeneity of gene expression

Virus-host interactions are frequently studied in bulk cell populations, obscuring cell-to-cell variation. Here we investigate endogenous herpesvirus gene expression at the single-cell level, combining a sensitive and robust fluorescent in situ hybridization platform with multiparameter flow cytometry, to study the expression of gammaherpesvirus non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) during lytic replication, latent infection and reactivation in vitro. This method allowed robust detection of viral ncRNAs of murine gammaherpesvirus 68 (γHV68), Kaposi’s sarcoma associated herpesvirus and Epstein-Barr virus, revealing variable expression at the single-cell level. By quantifying the inter-relationship of viral ncRNA, viral mRNA, viral protein and host mRNA regulation during γHV68 infection, we find heterogeneous and asynchronous gene expression during latency and reactivation, with reactivation from latency identified by a distinct gene expression profile within rare cells. Further, during lytic replication with γHV68, we find many cells have limited viral gene expression, with only a fraction of cells showing robust gene expression, dynamic RNA localization, and progressive infection. These findings, powered by single-cell analysis integrated with automated clustering algorithms, suggest inefficient or abortive γHV infection in many cells, and identify substantial heterogeneity in viral gene expression at the single-cell level. AUTHOR SUMMARY The gammaherpesviruses are a group of DNA tumor viruses that establish lifelong infection. How these viruses infect and manipulate cells has frequently been studied in bulk populations of cells. While these studies have been incredibly insightful, there is limited understanding of how virus infection proceeds within a single cell. Here we present a new approach to quantify gammaherpesvirus gene expression at the single-cell level. This method allows us to detect cell-to-cell variation in the expression of virus non-coding RNAs, an important and understudied class of RNAs which do not encode for proteins. By examining multiple features of virus gene expression, this method further reveals significant variation in infection between cells across multiple stages of infection. These studies emphasize that gammaherpesvirus infection can be surprisingly heterogeneous when viewed at the level of the individual cell. Because this approach can be broadly applied across diverse viruses, this study affords new opportunities to understand the complexity of virus infection within single cells.
Patho-Physiological Response of LPS Defective Brucella abortus S19∆per in Experimentally Infected Mice

Brucellosis is an anthropozoonotic infectious disease in which infected animals pose a threat to humans. This disease has considerable social, economic and international trade importance. Despite past and current efforts to eradicate brucellosis, a large number of new human cases are reported annually worldwide. In this study, patho-physiological response to Brucella abortus S19Δper infection in BALB/c mice was assessed in comparison to its parent strain, B. abortus S19 and virulent strain, B. abortus 544. Immunohistochemical analysis confirmed the presence of bacteria in liver and spleen. Comparatively lower serum Aspartate aminotranferase (AST) level and observation of less number of microgranulomas in liver indicated that B. abortus S19 Δper was less infectious and failed to cause active infection unlike S19 and 544 strain. S19Δper, thus could be a safer vaccine candidate as an alternate to the S19 vaccine strain. Hematological studies indicated clinical manifestation of thrombocytopenia in different Brucella infected mice including S19Δper. Therefore, measurement of platelets count and serum AST level may offer as reliable indicators of brucellosis in clinical cases.