Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterization of the high molecular mass rhoptry protein , RhopH , complex , in Plasmodium yoelii

Plasmodium spp. are obligate intracellular parasites and entry into host erythrocytes is a prerequisite for asexual-stage development. Plasmodium merozoites invade erythrocytes, discharging the contents of their apical organelles, the micronemes, rhoptries, and dense granules. The molecules located in these organelles, particularly erythrocyte binding proteins, are considered to be important for erythrocyte invasion and have been studied as vaccine targets, with the aim of inducing antibodies to block invasion. For example, passive immunization with monoclonal antibodies (MAb) specific for a 235-kDa rhoptry protein (Freeman et al., 1980), or active immunization with the protein (Holder and Freeman, 1981), protect mice against blood stage challenge with P. yoelii. A number of rhoptry proteins have been identified, including a complex of high molecular mass proteins (the RhopH complex) containing three distinct polypeptides, RhopH1, RhopH2 and RhopH3 (Campbell et al., 1984; Holder et al., 1985; Lustigman et al., 1988; Hienne et al., 1998). Antibodies against the P. falciparum RhopH (PfRhopH) complex partially inhibit growth of P. falciparum in vitro and in vivo, consistent with their potential as vaccine targets (Siddiqui et al., 1987; Cooper et al., 1988; Doury et al., 1994). The PfRhopH complex is considered to have a critical role in erythrocyte invasion because the complex binds the erythrocyte and distributes into the erythrocyte and parasitophorous vacuolar membranes (Sam-Yellowe et al., 1988; Sam-Yellowe and Perskins, 1991). The gene for RhopH3 has been cloned from P. falciparum (Brown and Coppel, 1991), and the protein appears to be essential because attempts to disrupt the PfRhopH3 gene locus were unsuccessful (Cowman et al., 2000). The genes encoding RhopH1 and RhopH2 have not been
Using wavelet transform on suspended particulate matter (PM10) and meteorological time series

Malaysia has experienced several haze periods since early 1980s in which suspended particulate matter (SPM) was the major components. The temporal variations observed are the result of interactions of various meteorological variables and pollutants emissions in different time scale. In order to study the relationship between particulate matter, temperature and rainfall, non-decimated wavelet transform is applied to the time series. The low frequency components of the temperature and rainfall showed significant relationship with PM10. The finding also support the suggestion that during the dry season one of the major sources of particles are from outside the country.
Biogeochemical potential of biomass pyrolysis systems for limiting global warming to 1.5 °C

Negative emission (NE) technologies are recognized to play an increasingly relevant role in strategies limiting mean global warming to 1.5 °C as specified in the Paris Agreement. The potentially significant contribution of pyrogenic carbon capture and storage (PyCCS) is, however, highly underrepresented in the discussion. In this study, we conduct the first quantitative assessment of the global potential of PyCCS as a NE technology based on biomass plantations. Using a process-based biosphere model, we calculate the land use change required to reach specific climate mitigation goals while observing biodiversity protection guardrails. We consider NE targets of 100–300 GtC following socioeconomic pathways consistent with a mean global warming of 1.5 °C as well as the option of additional carbon balancing required in case of failure or delay of decarbonization measures. The technological opportunities of PyCCS are represented by three tracks accounting for the sequestration of different pyrolysis products: biochar (as soil amendment), bio-oil (pumped into geological storages) and permanent-pyrogas (capture and storage of CO2 from gas combustion). In addition, we analyse how the gain in land induced by biochar-mediated yield increases on tropical cropland may reduce the pressure on land. Our results show that meeting the 1.5 °C goal through mitigation strategies including large-scale NE with plantation-based PyCCS may require conversion of natural vegetation to biomass plantations in the order of 133–3280 Mha globally, depending on the applied technology and the NE demand. Advancing towards additional bio-oil sequestration reduces land demand considerably by potentially up to 60%, while the benefits from yield increases account for another 3%–38% reduction (equalling 82–362 Mha). However, when mitigation commitments are increased by high balancing claims, even the most advanced PyCCS technologies and biochar-mediated co-benefits cannot compensate for delayed action towards phasing-out fossil fuels.
Improvement of Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata Decoder Using Inverter Chain

In this paper, we propose a combinational circuit such as decoder using quantum-dot cellular automata. Our circuit reduces both a delay time and a cell space, and it has also regular clock zones. The proposed scheme uses an inverter chain instead of inverter gates in order to minimize an area and time complexity. Our architecture has easy scalability and extension of circuits.
Computational Biomechanics Of TheCardiovascular System

Due to rapid advances in invasive and non-invasive imaging technology in clinical medicine, it is now possible to obtain images of target organs for use in computational analysis modelling. Our ultimate goal is to build a system that can assist clinicians in diagnosis, treatment planning, and follow-up of patients with cardiovascular diseases, and as patients differ in terms of anatomical configuration and disease condition, a wide variety of patient data must be accumulated, not only for statistical analysis but also to improve the processing system. Therefore, a comprehensive database that includes patient data, medical images, computational models, and computed results must be constructed that is within the scope of our current projects. This is part of a long-term research program in the field of computational medicine, which will inevitably become part of mainstream medical development in the near future. The introduction of computational mechanical assistance to medical diagnosis and treatment will enhance the objectiveness of medical decisions.
Surprise and the attenuation of blocking.

Three experiments, employing conditioned suppression in rats, examined the extent to which pretraining on one element of a compound stimulus blocked conditioning to the other element when some feature of the reinforcer was changed on compound trials. In Experiment 1, both the addition of an unexpected second shock 8 sec after the end of each trial and the postponement of an expected second shock from 4 to 8 sec attenuated blocking. Experiment 2 established that this latter unblocking effect was due to the surprising postponement of the second shock on trials when the new element was added rather than to any generalization decrement from pretraining to compound training. Experiment 3 showed that blocking was attenuated not only by the addition of an unexpected second shock but also by the omission of an expected shock.
On dynamics and bifurcations of area-preserving maps with homoclinic tangencies

We study bifurcations of area-preserving maps, both orientable (symplectic) and non-orientable, with quadratic homoclinic tangencies. We consider one and two parameter general unfoldings and establish results related to the appearance of elliptic periodic orbits. In particular, we find conditions for such maps to have infinitely many generic (KAM-stable) elliptic periodic orbits of all successive periods starting at some number.
Anti-inflammatory activity of methanol extract of Hibiscus sabdariffa in comparison with Aspirin

1. Lecturer in Physiology, Department of Human Physiology, Faculty of Basic Medical Sciences, College of Medicine, Madonna University PMB 48 Elele, Rivers State, Nigeria. [Email: emmanuelagbai207@yahoo.com] 2. Senior Lecturer in Biochemistry, Department of Medical Biochemistry, Faculty of Basic Medical Sciences, College of Medicine, Madonna University Elele, Rivers State, Nigeria. 3. Professor in Physiology, Department of Human Physiology, Faculty of Basic Medical Sciences, College of Medicine, Madonna University, PMB 48 Elele, Rivers State, Nigeria.
Putting a spin on SPINN – Representations of syntactic structure in neural network sentence encoders for natural language inference

This thesis presents and investigates a dependency-based recursive neural network model applied to the task of natural language inference. The dependency-based model is a direct extension of a previous constituency-based model used for natural language inference. The dependency-based model is tested on the Stanford Natural Language Inference corpus and is compared to the previously proposed constituency-based model as well as a recurrent Long-Short Term Memory network. The experiments show that the Long-Short Term Memory outperform both the dependency-based models as well as the constituencybased model. It is also shown that what is to be explicitly represented depends on the model dimensionality that one use. With 50-dimensional models, more explicit representations of the dependency structure provides higher accuracies, and the best dependencybased model performs on par with the LSTM. Higher model dimensionalities seem to favor less explicit representations of the dependency structure. We hypothesize that a smaller dimensionality requires a more explicit representation of the relevant linguistic features of the input, while the explicit representation becomes limiting when a higher model dimen-
Endless tests: guidelines for analysing non-nested sister-group comparisons

Question: How can we best use phylogenies and sister-group comparisons to understand the impact of ecological and life-history traits on diversification rates? Analysis: Brief review of the basic structure of sister-group comparisons. Description of the sign, Slowinski-Guyer and species-diversity contrast tests. Elucidation of the potential shortcomings of these tests. Conclusions: The Slowinski-Guyer test has statistical flaws and should no longer be used to analyse hypotheses about the effects of traits on diversification rates. Species-diversity contrast tests are the most conservative, yet powerful, methods for analysing sister-group comparisons.
NOISE-ROBUST AND RESOLUTION-INVARIANT IMAGE CLASSIFICATION WITH PIXEL-LEVEL REGULARIZATION

Noise robust image classification is essential for successful deep learning deployment for the internet of things (IoTs) especially for the edge devices under stingy energy budget. Inherent image sensor noise and intentional image quality degradation for region of interest (RoI) coding reduce accuracy of image classification. In this paper, we enhance the accuracy of image classification on the perturbed images by utilizing embedding space for both image classification and additional pixel level regularization. To this end, we inject pair of clean and perturbed images during training and minimize the distance between the two resulting embeddings. We study the effects of random noise, low resolution, and mixed resolution due to RoI encoding. We experiment our algorithm for MNIST, CIFAR10 and ImageNet and show improved robustness for perturbed images compared to baseline data augmentation approach.
Genetic Diversity and Inferences on Potential Source Areas of Adventive Frankliniella occidentalis (Thysanoptera: Thripidae) in Shandong, China Based on Mitochondrial and Microsatellite Markers

ABSTRACT To reveal the genetic diversity and to infer potential source areas of adventive western flower thrips, Frankliniella occidentalis (Pergande) (Thysanoptera: Thripidae), in Shandong, China, we used mitochondrial and microsatellite markers to analyze the genetic diversity of 15 populations from Shandong, as well as 3 populations from Yunnan and 2 populations from Beijing—these latter 2 sites having the earliest populations to establish in China—and 2 populations from California, which are part of the pest's native range in North America. Data involving the mtCOI gene and microsatellite markers showed that the Chinese populations were less diverse genetically than the native USA populations. The distribution of mtCOI haplotypes and percentage of shared alleles in this study suggested that the populations from Shandong may have arrived as a secondary incursion from Yunnan. We found that the diversity of mitochondrial alleles in some populations from Shandong had declined drastically, whereas the diversity of their nuclear alleles had remained high, i.e., the drastic loss of mitochondrial haplotype diversity in some populations was not accompanied by substantial reductions in nuclear allelic diversity. Therefore, further analyses of nuclear genetic diversity may demonstrate that it provides a better indication of the adaptability of an adventive species than mitochondrial genetic diversity. Also, the FST data and genetic diversity analysis suggest that the substantial gene flow among the Shandong populations might have minimized the bottleneck effects.
Brian J. Bushee

This paper examines the relation between accounting method choice and investment by US institutional investors in non-US firms. Historically, investors have exhibited a “home bias” in that they underinvest in firms domiciled outside of their local market. Explanations for home bias focus on informational issues, such as lower visibility of foreign firms, greater difficulty in monitoring, and lower quality or credibility of financial information. As accounting is a primary source of information, we predict that foreign investors are more likely to invest in firms that choose accounting methods more familiar to such investors, which would reduce information processing costs and increase the credibility of the financial statements for such investors. We find that firms with higher degrees of conformity with US GAAP exhibit greater levels of US institutional ownership. These associations are exhibited in levels and changes, and are robust to the inclusion of a number of control variables for other determinants of institutional investment. Lead/lag regressions suggest that increases in US GAAP conformity attract a higher level of US institutional investment in future periods, but changes in US institutional holdings do not lead to changes in accounting methods. In partition analyses, we find that the positive relation between US GAAP conformity and US institutional investment holds regardless of a firm’s ADR status or other proxies for visibility (e.g., stock index listing, analyst following, and firm size). However, the relation is significantly stronger in the subsamples of ADR firms and more visible firms, suggesting that US GAAP conformity has greater impact among firms already somewhat visible to US investors.
Analytical Solution of Scattering by a 2D Dielectric Filled Crack in a Ground Plane Coated by a Dielectric Layer: TE Case

─ Analytical solution of scattering by a 2D loaded crack on a ground plane, coated by a dielectric layer for TE case is studied theoretically using Kobayashi and Nomura's (Kobayashi Potential) method. The geometry is divided into three regions whose fields are expressed in terms of Bessel eigenfunctions. The problem is reduced to a system of equations involving truncated summations with an infinite number of unknowns. Excitation coefficients are determined by applying the boundary conditions. By applying WeberSchafheitlin discontinuous integrals, the infinite summations could efficiently be truncated with high numerical accuracy. For validation, in addition to convergence analysis, near-field magnetic current densities on the crack and the radar cross section (RCS) results are compared with those of Finite Element Method (FEM). Having the analytical method, the influence of the filling and the dielectric layer is investigated. Index Terms Plane wave scattering, 2D coated crack, dielectric layer, Kobayashi and Nomura method, Weber-Schafheitlin discontinuous integrals.
Task-relevant spatialized auditory cues enhance attention orientation and peripheral target detection in natural scenes

Concurrent auditory stimuli have been shown to enhance detection of abstract visual targets in experimental setups with little ecological validity. We presented 11 participants, wearing an eye-tracking device, with a visual detection task in an immersive audiovisual environment replicating a real-world environment. The participants were to fixate on a visual target and to press a key when they were confident of having detected the target. The visual world was accompanied by a task-relevant or task-irrelevant spatialized sound scene with different onset asynchronies. Our findings indicate task-relevant auditory cues to aid in orienting to and detecting a peripheral but not central visual target. The enhancement is amplified with an increasing amount of audio lead.
Solubilization of water-insoluble β-glucan isolated from Ganoderma lucidum

The fungal β-D-glucan is a biological response modifier (BRM), but a major obstacle to the clinical utilization of β-glucan BRMs is their relative lack of solubility in aqueous media. Water insoluble fungal glucans extracted by alkali from the mycelia of Ganoderma lucidum were sulfated to yield their corresponding water-soluble derivatives. Insoluble glucan is dissolved in methyl sulfoxide and urea, and is partially sulfated with sulfuric acid. The sulfated glucan (SGL) yield prepared from insoluble glucan (IGL) was 85%, the sulfation degree of SGL was about 14.9%, and the solubility of SGL was above 95% in water. The monosugar SGL content was 34.9% α-glucose and 35.9% β-glucose. The mean molecular weight (MW) of SGL was shown as a single peak on Sepharose CL-4B column chromatography, and their MW was approximately 9.3 kDa. The C NMR spectrum analysis shows that SGL has a high similarity with the β-(1→3)-linked triple-helical control.
Topological Phases of Non-Hermitian Systems

Recent experimental advances in controlling dissipation have brought about unprecedented flexibility in engineering non-Hermitian Hamiltonians in open classical and quantum systems. A particular interest centers on the topological properties of non-Hermitian systems, which exhibit unique phases with no Hermitian counterparts. However, no systematic understanding in analogy with the periodic table of topological insulators and superconductors has been achieved. In this paper, we develop a coherent framework of topological phases of non-Hermitian systems. After elucidating the physical meaning and the mathematical definition of non-Hermitian topological phases, we start with one-dimensional lattices, which exhibit topological phases with no Hermitian counterparts and are found to be characterized by an integer topological winding number even with no symmetry constraint, reminiscent of the quantum Hall insulator in Hermitian systems. A system with a nonzero winding number, which is experimentally measurable from the wave-packet dynamics, is shown to be robust against disorder, a phenomenon observed in the Hatano-Nelson model with asymmetric hopping amplitudes. We also unveil a novel bulk-edge correspondence that features an infinite number of (quasi-)edge modes. We then apply the K-theory to systematically classify all the non-Hermitian topological phases in the Altland-Zirnbauer classes in all dimensions. The obtained periodic table unifies time-reversal and particle-hole symmetries, leading to highly nontrivial predictions such as the absence of non-Hermitian topological phases in two dimensions. We provide concrete examples for all the nontrivial non-Hermitian AZ classes in zero and one dimensions. In particular, we identify a Z2 topological index for arbitrary quantum channels. Our work lays the cornerstone for a unified understanding of the role of topology in non-Hermitian systems.
Integrated Energy Micro-Grid Planning Using Electricity, Heating and Cooling Demands

Many research works have demonstrated that taking the combined cooling, heating and power system (CCHP) as the core equipment, an integrated energy system (IES), which provides multiple energy flows by a combination of different energy production equipment can bring obvious benefit to energy efficiency, CO2 emission reduction and operational economy in urban areas. Compared with isolated IES, an integrated energy micro-grid (IEMG) which is formed by connecting multiple regions’ IES together, through a distribution and thermal network, can further improve the reliability, flexibility, cleanliness and the economy of a regional energy supply. Based on the existing IES model, this paper describes the basic structure of IEMG and built an IEMG planning model. The planning was based on the mixed integer linear programming. Economically, construction planning configuration are calculated by using known electricity, heating and cooling loads information and the given multiple equipment selection schemes. Finally, the model is validated by a case study, which includes heating, cooling, transitional and extreme load scenarios, proved the feasibility of planning model. The results show that the application of IEMG can effectively improve the economy of a regional energy supply.
A Constructivist View of Research Planning

Much is written about the need for research in the field of counseling and about concerns that counselors frequently appear hesitant to conduct original research. Identifying research interests often develops through collaboration with colleagues. This study investigates the variables that influence research interest identification and how collaboration and constructivism factor into this process. This phenomenological study identified five themes that impact the development of research interests: social justice; life experiences; professional identity development; collaboration with colleagues/opportunity; and innovation/
Serving All Who Served: Piloting an Online Tool to Support Cultural Competency with LGBT U.S. Military Veterans in Long-Term Care

ABSTRACT Objective: Given health disparities between lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) and non-LGBT older adults, ensuring that the care provided in long-term care (LTC) settings is both supportive and sensitive to their unique needs and challenges is essential. This has become a matter of increasing priority in the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), which in recent years has stated its mission to “serve all who served,” including LGBT Veterans. With this in mind, we piloted an online training tool designed to enhance the LGBT cultural competence of interdisciplinary staff working in geriatric extended care units. Method: Interdisciplinary LTC staff participated in an online training module that contained information on unique factors that affect the lives of older LGBT Veterans, and provided considerations and strategies to assist staff in working with them. Results: Following participation in the training, staff showed a significant increase in knowledge about LGBT Veterans, but not in skills or attitudes. Conclusions: Online-based LGBT cultural-competency training is useful in providing LTC staff with foundational knowledge that can help them work more competently with LGBT residents. Clinical Implications: LTC facilities can develop brief yet effective cultural competency trainings that increase the visibility of LGBT concerns in order to enhance clinical care.