Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Two remarkable new Riccia (Marchantiales, Ricciaceae) records for the bryophyte flora of Cape Verde Islands, an important biogeographical refuge area

Recent progresses of knowledge on Riccia diversity in Cape Verde islands are briefly surveyed. The occurrence of two remarkable Riccia species in this archipelago is examined, and their overall distribution is presented. Riccia atropurpurea Sim and R. congoana Steph. are noteworthy liverwort species, here reported for the first time for Cape Verde islands, from specimens collected in Fogo island. Main diagnosing characters and those of related taxa, habitat preferences, illustrations, scanning electron micrographs and updated ranges of the species are presented.
Benefits of gum arabic supplementation to oral rehydration solution in managing acute diarrhea

Background Oral rehydration solution (ORS) has been proven successfully to overcome dehydration in diarrhea. The improvement of the effectiveness of ORS is still needed to overcome some failures. Gum Arabic (GA), an indigestable starch, can enhance ORS absorption in mice with diarrhea. It is worthy to explore its benefits in human. Since GA is non toxic to human being, it is regarded ethical to conduct effectiveness study directly in clinical setting. Objective To evaluate the effectiveness of GA supplementation to ORS in managing inpatients diarrheal cases . Methods A double blind clinical trial was conducted during March to September 2004 in the Department of Child Health of M. Hoesin Hospital, Palembang. The subjects were randomly enrolled to GA- ORS (GA) group or ORS (SO) group. Indirect measurements were conducted on ORS absorptive enhancement by evaluating the duration of diarrhea after hospitalization, frequency of defecation during hospitalization, ORS consumption during hospitalization, and time laps of stool consistency conversion. The effectiveness analysis was controlled for confounders. Results Supplementation of 0.5 gram GA to 200 ml ORS could decrease the duration of diarrhoea 15.65 hours (P=0.000) during hospitalisation, frequency of defecation during hospitalization 1.171 times/days (P=0.002), ORS consumption 38.39 ml/kg BW (P=0.029), time of stool consistency to become semisolid 15.84 hours (P=0.000), and become solid 14.45 hours (P=0.002). Vomiting during hospitalization and aged group of 6-11 months were significant confounder. However, after controlling the outcome with these confounding factors, the benefits of GA supplementation were still significant. Conclusions GA supplementation to ORS significantly shorten the duration of diarrhea, decreases the frequency of defecation, consumption of ORS, time of stool consistency to become semisolid and solid in inpatients diarrheal cases.
Effects of a short mindful-breathing intervention on the psychophysiological stress reactions of German elementary school children

This research investigates whether a short mindfulness exercise can reduce children’s psychophysiological stress reactions in the face of a performance task. To answer the question, a randomized controlled trial with 106 elementary school children, aged between 5 and 11 years, was conducted. An intervention group completed a two-minute breathing exercise, whilst a comparison group watched a short video, before both groups performed a stress-evoking Stroop test. The stress levels of both groups were measured via galvanic skin response and compared. It was hypothesized that the comparison group would show a higher stress reaction during the stress-evoking task than the intervention group. Contrary to the hypothesis, results show that the intervention group had a higher psychophysiological stress reaction during the task than the comparison group. However, the stress reaction to the announced difficulty of the task was smaller in the mindfulness group than in the comparison group. Results are discussed based on different theoretical mechanisms of mindfulness. Directions for future research include the use of different techniques and durations of mindfulness interventions, different control group activities and stress-test operationalizations, as well as the distinction between age groups.
Effects of a Low Allergenic Soybean Variety on Gut Permeability, Digestibility and Growth Performance in Pigs

EFFECTS OF A LOW ALLERGENIC SOYBEAN VARIETY ON GUT PERMEABILITY, DIGESTIBILITY AND GROWTH PERFORMANCE IN PIGS KATELYN M. ZEAMER 2019 Soybeans are the ‘gold standard’ protein source in pig diets, with lower inclusion levels in weaned pig diets due to transient inflammatory and hypersensitivity responses. This study evaluated a low allergenic (LA) soybean seed containing low Trypsin inhibitors, lectins, and P34 protein. The objective was to determine the impact of weaned pig diets containing LA soybean in both meal (LASBM) and full fat ground (LAGR) forms on the intestinal permeability and gut microbial composition, digestibility of protein and amino acids, and growth performance, in comparison to conventional (CON) soybeans and animal proteins (ANIM). In study 1, 60 weaned barrows (20.9 ± 1.0 d of age, 6.65 ± 0.3 kg, n=12/diet) were randomly assigned to one of five experimental diets containing one of 5 test proteins (CONSBM, CONGR, LASBM, LAGR and ANIM). Gut permeability measurements (Ussing Chambers and lactulose:mannitol ratio) were collected over 4d (1 pig/diet/d), beginning at d 11. No differences were detected in ileal or jejunal permeability among dietary treatments. Pigs fed ANIM had highest (P < 0.05) urine lactulose:mannitol ratio. Daily gain and feed disappearance were greatest (P < 0.05) for pigs fed ANIM-based diets. There were no differences in taxonomy or relative abundance of operational taxonomic unit’s (OTU’s) in digesta microbial content. In Exp. 1 of study 2, 10 ileal-cannulated barrows (17.63 ± 1.18 kg BW) were used in a cross-over design and randomly assigned to one of five experimental diets (FM, CONSBM1,
Wear behavior of new biomaterial composite for dental application

The current study examines the tribological performance of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) reinforced with Salvadora persica (S. persica) powder and hydroxyapatite (HAP). This composite was selected to be used in dental application. Different percentages of S. persica were employed to enhance bioactivity and antibacterial properties. However, HAP was used to improve the wear performance of the composite. Friction response was investigated through scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with energy-dispersive spectroscopy, Vickers hardness, pin-on-disc tribometer, and 2-D profilometer. Both wear volume and friction coefficient were investigated, especially when changing the percentage of S. persica and HAP fillers. Moreover, the morphologies of the wear track were examined by the SEM, the wear mechanisms are discussed, and the phenomenon of stick-slip is shown. The main results revealed that the composition (70% PMMA + 20% S. persica + 10% HAP) has the best wear resistance.
Polymorphisms and association of FAT1 gene with wool quality traits in Chinese Merino sheep

FAT atypical cadherin 1 (FAT1) is a member of the atypical cadherin superfamily and is involved in the planar cell polarity signalling pathway which regulates hair follicle morphogenesis, cycling, and orientation. The purpose of this study was to investigate the sheep FAT1 gene expression, polymorphisms and its association with wool quality traits in Chinese Merino sheep. Quantitative real-time PCR analysis showed that the FAT1 mRNA was differentially expressed in the adult skin of Chinese Merino and Kazak sheep. Seven SNPs (termed SNPs 1–7) were identified in exon 2 of sheep FAT1 gene by Sanger sequencing. SNPs 2 and 7 (novel SNPs) were significantly associated with wool crimp (P < 0.05). SNPs 4 and 5 (rs161528993 and rs161528992) were significantly associated with wool fibre length (P < 0.05). SNP 7 was highly significantly associated with average wool fibre diameter (P < 0.01). Similarly, FAT1 haplotypes were significantly associated with wool crimp (P < 0.05), and the haplotypes H1–H3 and H5 were significantly associated with higher wool crimp (P < 0.05). Bioinformatics analysis showed that the wool quality trait-associated SNPs (SNPs 2, 4, 5 and 7) might affect the pre-mRNA splicing by creating or abolishing the binding sites for serine/arginine-rich proteins, and in addition, SNPs 2 and 4 might alter the FAT1 mRNA secondary structure. Our results suggest that FAT1 influences wool quality traits and its SNPs 2, 4, 5 and 7 might be useful markers for marker-assisted selection and sheep breeding.
Improved Carrier Blocking Properties of Interface in Cryogenic Particle Detectors

ii DEDICATION . iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . v CONTRIBUTORS AND FUNDING SOURCES . vi NOMENCLATURE . vii TABLE OF CONTENTS . viii LIST OF FIGURES . x LIST OF TABLES . xiii CHAPTER
What is the BSN Student's Perception of Why a Nursing Course was Failed?

Nursing student success is important to students, faculty, institutions of higher education, and the healthcare needs in Texas. Despite recent research showing that cognitive indicators can predict student success, the use of these factors has not significantly decreased the number of courses failed in nursing school. The purpose of this study was to explore the Bachelor of Science (BSN) nursing student perception of why a nursing course was failed. Participants, (N=19), from three universities in Texas were interviewed. Narrative inquiry, specifically storytelling, was used to ascertain the individual students’ perceptions of why a nursing course was failed and to identify any environmental factors that may have contributed to failing. Intrinsic themes contributing to failing were discovered to be: student inability to connect information from prerequisites to current nursing courses; lack of balancing class time, assignments, and life issues; being unprepared to be a nursing student; and a lack of identifying and/or using resources. Extrinsic themes contributing to failing a course were described as: negative faculty impact preventing communication and helpseeking by students; and, environmental factors, specifically personal or family illness/injury occurring during a course. Findings indicated the participants were able to express their perceived reasons for failing. Their perceptions indicate a need for improving the transition
Localization of Passive 3-D Coils as an Inverse Problem: Theoretical Analysis and a Numerical Method

This article provides both a theoretical analysis and a numerical method for the inverse source problem of locating multiple passive 3-D coils based on measurements of their superposed magnetic fields. In our context, a 3-D coil consists of three concentric circular coils being mutually perpendicular, and the term “passive” means that these coils are not connected to an active power source. Instead, their current is induced externally by a low-frequency alternating magnetic field which is generated by a closed exciter wire. The underlying inductively coupled system is modeled with regard to the 3-D coils as magnetic dipoles and their localization is formulated as an inverse problem. Since its ill posedness mainly arises from strong sensitivity to observational noise, an approximate upper bound for the localization error is derived mathematically by linearization. The Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm is applied as a method for localization and modified for better performance as well as the ability to estimate the number of 3-D coils in the localization area. Our method is tested with simulated and real data in order to confirm its capability of locating up to three passive 3-D coils within the front of a wooden shelf surrounded by the exciter wire and eight rectangular loop antennas.
Developing a tool to assess trainees during crisis management training for major risks

Often based on simulation exercises, crisis management training helps prepare decision-makers to manage crises better. However, this training has definite limits in terms of trainee assessment and the feed-back given during the debriefing phase. This paper presents a method for better organising the assessment of trainees involved in a real time crisis management training exercises and for giving them feedback during the debriefing phase. The approach presented is based on creating a typology of training objectives in order to or-ganise the assessment. The assessment includes expected outcomes techniques as well as the human and or-ganisational factors that can be observed within a group. The assessment tools developed were then experi-mented within crisis management exercises completed with trainees. Beyond the basic results, these tools helped redefine the basic roles played by observers and trainers during training exercises.
Diurnal Variation of the Planetary Boundary Layer Height Observed from GNSS Radio Occultation and Radiosonde Soundings over the Southern Great Plains

The planetary boundary layer (PBL) height (PBLH) is a key physical parameter of the PBL affected by numerous physical processes within the boundary layer. Specifically, the PBLH over land exhibits large spatial and temporal variation across different geographical regions. In this study, the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate (COSMIC) radio occultation (RO) and high- resolution radiosonde profiles from 2007 to 2013 were analyzed to estimate the diurnal cycle of the PBLH over the Southern Great Plains (SGP) in the US. Large variations in PBLH derived from radiosonde temperature, moisture, and refractivity are observed on seasonal scales. COSMIC RO is capable of observing diurnal and seasonal variations in the terrestrial PBLH over the SGP region. Annual mean diurnal amplitude of approximately 250 m in the terrestrial PBLH was observed, with maxima occurring at around 15:00 (LST, Local Solar Time) in both the co-located radiosondes and COSMIC RO profiles. Seasonal changes in the PBLH diurnal cycles ranging from approximately 100 m to 400 m were also observed. Such PBL diurnal and seasonal changes can be further incorporated into PBL parameterizations to help improve weather and climate model prediction.
Slab roll-back and crustal growth in the Eastern Junggar terrane, NW China: evidence from Carboniferous A-type granitoids and adakitic rocks

ABSTRACT Revealing the formation mechanism of granitic plutons is vital for understanding crustal growth of Earth. Here, we present an integrated study of geochronological, elemental, whole rock Nd and zircon Hf isotopic data for a granitic pluton system that formed in the Eastern Junggar, NW China. Zircon U–Pb dating suggests the seven granitic plutons were emplaced at 356–312 Ma. The monzogranites have high alkaline and Zr contents, and high Ga/Al and TFe2O3/MgO ratios, which are geochemically similar to A-type granitoids. They display positive ɛNd(t) (+4.3 to +5.4) and ɛHf(t) (+7.6 to +12.4) values, and young Nd and Hf model ages, suggesting a lower arc crust source. The quartz monzodiorites have high Sr, low Y and Yb contents, yielding relatively high Sr/Y ratios that are similar to modern adakites. These rocks also have high positive ɛNd(t) (+7.6 to +8.0) and ɛHf(t) (+13.9 to +15.5) values, and young Nd and Hf model ages, indicating a subducted oceanic crustal source. In combination with data from other plutons in this area, we suggest that they were likely generated by roll-back of the subducted Junggar oceanic slab, which resulted in back-arc extension, asthenosphere upwelling, and partial melting of oceanic crust and lower arc crust.
Treatment of Industrial Textile Wastewater in Biological Aerated Filters – Microbial Diversity Analysis

Investigated herein was the biodegradation of highly contaminated textile wastewater on a laboratory scale, with biological aerobic filters as a single treatment and in combination with the coagulation/flocculation process. Among the three support materials tested (Intalox saddles, ceramsite and beach shavings), the highest organic carbon compound removals (above 60% measured as COD and TOC) and steady operation were obtained for ceramsite. Effective and stable biological treatment was possible thanks to the development of biofilm of high bacterial and fungal diversity. The biodiversity of microflora was estimated on the basis of metagenomic analysis. The coagulation process with PAX 18 was effective in total phosphorus depletion (94%), while the coagulant Epoly CRD enabled up to 99% colour removal. The best results were obtained after the combined treatment, in which biodegradation was followed by coagulation (PAX 18). Such a combination enabled the removal of 98% of BOD5, 87% of COD, 88% of TOC, 48% of the total nitrogen, 98% of the total phosphorus, 98% of toxicity (towards Vibrio fisheri) and above 81% of colour.
Spatio-temporal segmentation and characterization of active multiple sclerosis lesions in serial MRI data

Multiple sclerosis is a disease of the central neivous system. Magnetic resonance imaging is the primary paraclinical modality to evaluate the efficacy of drug treatment in placebo con¬ trolled clinical trials where patients arc examined in regular time intervals. The chronolog¬ ical course of multiple sclerosis lesions can be investigated by looking at significant changes in magnetic resonance scans at two different time points. Experts arc interested to find new/enlarging resp. disappeating/decieasing lesions to compare with the clinical course of the disease. Traditional segmentation of the incidental ID data applies individual spatial segmentation to each 3D image. However, due to the inherent heterogeneity of multiple sclerosis lesions and due to partial volume effects, tissue class disUibulions overlap and therefore voxels are misclassified. Lesion load measurements provide a more objective and sensitive measure of disease evolu¬ tion than clinical measures. However, the poor con elation between changes of lesion load and changes of disability is of concern. A possible explanation for this is the low specificity of traditional magnetic lesonance techniques to distinguish different stages of the lesion evolution. This thesis addresses the mentioned problems of lesion segmentation and characteriza¬
CGD: Multi-View Clustering via Cross-View Graph Diffusion

Graph based multi-view clustering has been paid great attention by exploring the neighborhood relationship among data points from multiple views. Though achieving great success in various applications, we observe that most of previous methods learn a consensus graph by building certain data representation models, which at least bears the following drawbacks. First, their clustering performance highly depends on the data representation capability of the model. Second, solving these resultant optimization models usually results in high computational complexity. Third, there are often some hyper-parameters in these models need to tune for obtaining the optimal results. In this work, we propose a general, effective and parameter-free method with convergence guarantee to learn a unified graph for multi-view data clustering via cross-view graph diffusion (CGD), which is the first attempt to employ diffusion process for multi-view clustering. The proposed CGD takes the traditional predefined graph matrices of different views as input, and learns an improved graph for each single view via an iterative cross diffusion process by 1) capturing the underlying manifold geometry structure of original data points, and 2) leveraging the complementary information among multiple graphs. The final unified graph used for clustering is obtained by averaging the improved view associated graphs. Extensive experiments on several benchmark datasets are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in terms of seven clustering evaluation metrics.
The effect of additional sugar palm fibres on the durability of mixed Laston AC-WC

To obtain a good quality concrete asphalt, in the process of planning a mixture must consider the characteristics of a concrete asphalt mixture including durability which is the resistance of the asphalt mixture to the effects of weather, water, temperature changes, as well as wear due to vehicle wheel friction. Sugar palm fibres are many and easy to obtain because they come from agriculture. Sugar palm fibres have durable nature and are not easy to rot either in an open state (resistant to weather) or embedded in the soil. In this study, we will examine the effect of adding sugar palm fibres to the durability of the Laston AC-WC mixture, and sugar palm fibres as an addition to the binding of asphalt to the aggregate. The method used in this study is the Marshall method. The results showed that the durability of the mixture with 2% fibres added ingredients was still stronger than those using 1.5% so that the use of sugar palm fibres added in the Laston AC-WC mixture would help the durability of the mixture because the cavities in the mixture were getting smaller, so it was more waterproof, also the bond between aggregates which is the stability of the mixture can be maintained while maintaining the flexibility of the mixture. While the Marshall Immersion test results obtained strong mixture durability if the use of sugar palm fibres as added 2% in the mixture.
Effects of exercise, dietary protein, vitamin D, and calcium on physical functioning among middle-aged and older adults

vii TABLE OF CONTENTS . ix LIST OF TABLES . xii LIST OF FIGURES . xvii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS . xx CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION . 1 1.1. General introduction . 1 1.2 Osteoporosis and sarcopenia . 2 1.3 Role of dietary protein in bone health . 3 1.4 Effect of dietary protein intake on muscle mass and physical functioning . 6 1.5 Dietary Guidelines: protein requirements . 7 1.6 Role of vitamin D and calcium on muscle and bone health . 8 1.7 Vitamin D and calcium affect muscle health and physical functioning . 10
Age and gender related variations in human EEG signals

This research is aimed at analysing EEG data streams from FP1 and F7 channels that reflect activities of the human brain with respect to age and gender. It is mainly focused on finding significant variations in brainwaves detected at frontal parietal lobes of children and adults in both genders. EEG data gathering, data extraction, data cleaning and data filtering technologies were used to observe variations in brainwave patterns among children and adults especially in regions of the brain associated with logical thinking and linguistics. We used cross correlation functionality to obtain similarity between subject datasets in the sample space. Results indicate increased active brain signal patterns near the frontal parietal lobe of young male subjects than in female subjects.
Word reordering algorithm for poetry analysis

Automatic poetry analysis is usually examined as subtask of natural language processing but approaches which are good for prose texts are ineffective for poetry due to free semantic characteristics. It allows us to use large corpus for training words order and rather small text corpus amount. In this paper we suggest the way to adapt poetry texts to prose ones by changing word order without loosing of model and also use word2vec features to improve the classifier work.
Supplementary Text: An antigenic diversification threshold for falciparum malaria transmission at high endemicity

As described in he Methods, we can derive analytically the average lifetime of a gene by assuming that the system has reached an equilibrium, including for the parasite population size N and the average proportion of hosts S̄ susceptible to an average gene. We first derive here N and S̄ based on a simplified transmission model, since these quantities will be then needed for the model of t̄. This model is an adapted diffusion equation [1] that considers frequency-dependent selection acting upon a new gene variant entering the system at equilibrium.