Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Enzyme activity of a Phanerochaete chrysosporium cellobiohydrolase (CBHI.1) expressed as a heterologous protein from Escherichia coli

The aim of this study was to produce a secreted, heterologously expressed Phanerochaete chrysosporium cellobiohydrolase (CBHI.1) protein that required no in vitro chemical refolding and to investigate the cellulolytic activity of the clone expressing the glutathione S-transferase (GST) fused CBHI.1 protein. Plate enzyme activity screening of E. coli cells transformed with pGEXcbhI.1 vector on carboxy-methyl-cellulose (CMC) produced several clones which produced clearing zones on CMC when induced. A randomly selected representative pGEXcbhI.1 clone produced hydrolysis on both Avicel and CMC when induced. Crude protein extracts obtained from the induced pGEXcbhI.1 clone exhibited time dependent enzymatic activity against both CMC and Avicel. Key words : Phanerochaete chrysosporium, cellobiohydrolase, cellulase activity, heterologous expression. African Journal of Biotechnology Vol.2(9) 2003: 296-300
A study of silicon ELNES in nesosilicates

Si L2,3-absorption edges have been collected using EELS from four nesosilicates; Forsterite, Fayalite, Phenacite and Willemite. Nesosilicates, also known as orthosilicates or island silicates, are the simplest materials to be found in the silicate mineral class, consisting of isolated tetrahedral SiO4 groups. While many features in energy-loss spectra are common to all of the materials, remarkable extra intensity was observed for Forsterite. This appears to arise from distortion of the SiO4 tetrahedron; a hypothesis supported by XANES calculations. The concept of a simple
Climate Change and Biofuel Wheat Production in Southern Saskatchewan: Long-Term Climate Trends Versus Climate Modeling Predictions

Climate modeling work has suggested biofuel wheat production in southern Saskatchewan, Canada, during the mid-21st century will be influenced by increasing annual precipitation, including precipitation increases in every month except July and August, increasing daily mean, minimum, and maximum air temperatures throughout the year, and substantial increases in the risk of wheat heat shock (temperatures>32.0 C). In the current study, we compare prior modeling predictions to historical trends in the number of days with maximum temperatures >32.0 C during July and August, the number of hours with maximum temperatures >32.0 C during July, as well as monthly and annual total precipitation, mean daily temperatures, and mean maximum daily temperatures for climate stations throughout southern Saskatchewan. We find no evidence of increasing trends for wheat heat shock days or hours during the mid-summer period in this region. In contrast, the majority of stations exhibit significantly declining temporal trends in wheat heat shock days and hours. Historical precipitation and temperature trends for the climate stations under consideration in southern Saskatchewan display significant inter- and intra-station heterogeneity throughout the year in terms of whether or not trends are evident, as well as their magnitude and direction. Consequently, caution must be exercised when extrapolating any case study analyses at a particular location to larger geographic areas of the province. Based on our analyses of historical climate data for southern Saskatchewan, it is unclear whether climate models are accurately predicting future climate change impacts on biofuel wheat production for this region in the mid-21st century.
Current Treatment Options and Emerging Strategies for Fibroid Management

Although hysterectomy remains the definitive treatment for symptomatic uterine fibroids, other options are needed for women who wish to preserve fertility or otherwise avoid surgery. Newer procedures such as laparoscopic myomectomy, myolysis/cryomyolysis, MRI-guided focused ultrasound surgery fulfill the needs of some women, but may cause morbidity and recurrence. Studies support the safety and effectiveness of uterine artery embolization (UAE) and laparoscopic uterine artery occlusion (LUAO), which are less invasive procedures that seek to treat fibroids by producing permanent uterine ischemia. However, these procedures might affect fertility, and LUAO poses some technical challenges. Doppler-guided Uterine Artery Occlusion is a promising investigational, minimally invasive procedure that targets the same putative mechanism of action of UAE and LUAO but causes temporary uterine ischemia. Results from future studies, with more patients and longer follow-up, should help us match the needs of each patient and their clinical presentation to the most appropriate treatment.
Incidence, Severity and Prognosis Associated with Hypernatremia in Dogs and Cats

Background Hypernatremia has been associated with substantial morbidity and death in human patients. The incidence and importance of hypernatremia in dogs and cats has not been determined. Hypothesis/Objectives To describe the incidence of and prognosis associated with hypernatremia in dogs and cats at a university teaching hospital. Animals A total of 16,691 dogs and 4,211 cats with measured blood or serum sodium concentration. Methods Retrospective study. Medical records of animals with a blood or serum sodium concentration measured during a 60‐month period were reviewed to determine the severity of hypernatremia and its associated case fatality rate. Cases with moderate (11–15 mmol/L above the reference range) or severe hypernatremia (≥16 mmol/L above the reference range) were further reviewed. Results A total of 957 dogs (5.7%) and 338 cats (8.0%) were diagnosed with hypernatremia. Case fatality rates of dogs and cats with hypernatremia was 20.6 and 28.1%, respectively compared to 4.4 and 4.5% with a normal blood or serum sodium concentration (P < .0001). The magnitude of hypernatremia was linearly associated with a higher case fatality rate (P < .0001). Hypernatremia was associated with a higher case fatality rate than hyponatremia. Among the animals with moderate or severe hypernatremia, 50% of dogs and 38.5% of cats presented with community‐acquired hypernatremia, and 50% of dogs and 61.5% of cats developed hospital‐acquired hypernatremia. Conclusions and clinical importance Hypernatremia was found infrequently in this population but was associated with increased case fatality rates in dogs and cats. Presence and severity of hypernatremia might be useful as a prognostic indicator.
A HYBRID APPROACH OF TOPSIS AND FUZZY GOAL PROGRAMMING FOR BI-LEVEL MODM PROBLEMS WITH FUZZY PARAMETERS

I n this paper, TOPSIS (technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution) approach for solving bi-level multi-objective programming problems (BL-MOPP) with fuzzy parameters is proposed. These fuzzy parameters are assumed to be characterized as fuzzy numbers, reflecting the experts' imprecise or fuzzy understanding of the nature of parameters in the problem formulation process. Using the level sets of fuzzy parameters, the corresponding non fuzzy bi-level programming problem is introduced. The proposed approach for obtaining the satisfactory solution of the BL-MOPP with fuzzy parameters includes the membership functions of the distance function from the positive ideal solution (PIS), the membership functions of the distance function from the negative ideal solution (NIS) and the membership functions of the upper level decision variables vector with possible tolerances. Also, a modified TOPSIS approach is presented in this paper. Illustrative numerical example is given to demonstrate the proposed TOPSIS and modified TOPSIS approach. Also, a comparison between the proposed TOPSIS and the modified TOPSIS approaches with existing Algorithms is given to clarify the powerful of the proposed approaches.
Identification of Biomarkers for Predicting the Overall Survival of Ovarian Cancer Patients: a Sparse Group Lasso Approach

Next-generation sequencing has been routinely applied to cancer biology, making it possible for researchers to elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying cancer initiation and progression. However, how to identify oncomarkers from massive complex genomic data poses a great challenge for both modeling and computing. In this paper, we propose a novel computational pipeline to identify genes related to the overall survival of ovarian cancer patients from the rich Cancer Genome Atlas data. Different from the existing studies, we incorporate dependence structure among genes and pathway information into the variable selection. Firstly, the dimensionality of the ovarian cancer data is reduced by a novel stepwise feature screening which mimics the hierarchy of the underlying causal network. The second step of the pipeline is to divide genes into clusters with distinct cellular functions by k-means, x-means and PAMSAM learning algorithms. In the final step, we fit a cox proportional hazard model with a sparse group lasso penalty for further variable selection. Of the 115 genes in the final list, many were reported to be associated with cancer initiation or progression in the literature. In addition, we find several gene families including the NEK family and RNF family, which are closely associated with the survival of ovarian cancer patients.
A Hyper spectral Images Classification Method Based on Maximum Scatter Discriminant Analysis

To overcome “small sample size problem” problem faced by some hyper spectral classification methods, the Maximum Scatter Discriminant criterion is used to analyzed hyperspectral data. Maximum Scatter Discriminant analysis searches for the project axes by maximizing the difference of between-class scatter and within-class scatter matrices, which avoid to calculate the inverse of matrices. Experiment results on Indian Pines HSI data set show that the proposed method outperforms the other methods in terms of recognition accuracy. The proposed method is an effective and feasible method for hyper pectral data classification.
Phylogenetic relationships of Mediterranean Mullidae species (Perciformes) inferred from genetic and morphologic data

Genetic and morphological divergence and phylogenetic relationships of four species Mullus barbatus, Mullus surmuletus, Upeneus moluccensis, Upeneus pori and one subspecies M.b. ponticus of Mullus were investigated using 12 enzymatic systems, corresponding to 17 putative loci. Eight loci (AAT-1*, AAT-2*, ADH*, GAPDH*, G6PDH*, IDHP*, PGI-2*, SOD*) were found to be polymorphic in at least one species, while the remaining nine (mAAT*, CK-1*, CK-2*, G3PDH*, MDH*, ME-1*, ME-2*, PGI-1*, PGM*) were monomorphic in all species. Several loci showed different electrophoretic patterns among species and thus can be used in species taxonomy as diagnostic markers. The PGM* and SOD* loci proved to be especially species-specific. Fisher’s exact test revealed overall highly significant allele frequency differences between M. barbatus and M. b. ponticus (P M. barbatus and M. b. ponticus , and 0.341 between M. barbatus and M. surmuletus within the genus Mullus . Relatively higher genetic differentiation (D=0.628) was observed between U. moluccensis and U. pori . For intergeneric comparisons, the highest genetic distance (1.250) was detected between M. surmuletus and U. pori, and the lowest (D=1.056) was observed between M. surmuletus and U. moluccensis. Remarkably U. pori was genetically the most distinct species from the genus Mullus . A neighbour-joining analysis of genetic data separated the two genera: M. barbatus and M. b. ponticus clustered as the closest taxonomic assemblage, which was a sister group to M. surmuletus in the first branch, while U. moluccensis and U. pori clustered more divergently in the second branch. Morphological data using meristic characters was congruent with the genetic data and revealed similar patterns of relationships among four Mullidae species.
Prediction of the distribution of Arctic‐nesting pink‐footed geese under a warmer climate scenario

Global climate change is expected to shift species ranges polewards, with a risk of range contractions and population declines of especially high‐Arctic species. We built species distribution models for Svalbard‐nesting pink‐footed geese to relate their occurrence to environmental and climatic variables, and used the models to predict their distribution under a warmer climate scenario. The most parsimonious model included mean May temperature, the number of frost‐free months and the proportion of moist and wet moss‐dominated vegetation in the area. The two climate variables are indicators for whether geese can physiologically fulfil the breeding cycle or not and the moss vegetation is an indicator of suitable feeding conditions. Projections of the distribution to warmer climate scenarios propose a large north‐ and eastward expansion of the potential breeding range on Svalbard even at modest temperature increases (1 and 2 °C increase in summer temperature, respectively). Contrary to recent suggestions regarding future distributions of Arctic wildlife, we predict that warming may lead to a further growth in population size of, at least some, Arctic breeding geese.
Words Polysemy Analysis: Implementation of the Word Sense Disambiguation Algorithm Based on Magnini Domains

This paper presents an analysis of the lexical resources used in Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) process by methods based on Magnini domains. At the same time, the characteristics of two algorithms that use Magnini domains are shown and we define the implementation of Word Domain Disambiguation (WDD) algorithm as defined in (1). Later on, we proceed designing the experiments to test the algorithm and we arrived to different conclusions.
Molecular genetic diversity of the selenium hyperaccumulator Stanleya pinnata

Stanleya pinnata is a perennial herb that can hyperaccumulate selenium. In the present study, genetic diversity of 15 accessions of S. pinnata originating from different locations in the USA was determined using sequence amplified polymorphism (SRAP) markers. A total of 506 alleles were identified among the 15 accessions and 98% of these alleles were polymorphic. Dice dissimilarity coefficient values between accessions varied from 0.14 to 0.87 with an average of 0.53 indicating that the plant material was highly diverse as expected given its self-incompatibility. A dendrogram was constructed to understand the genetic relationships among the accessions based on the molecular marker data. The dendrogram grouped the 15 S. pinnata accessions into three clusters while population structure analysis divided these accessions into five groups. Clustering was correlated with accession origin.
Prevalence of Salmonella in juvenile dogs affected with parvoviral enteritis

Salmonellosis is a disease of major zoonotic importance and canine parvovirus is a potentially fatal cause of canine enteritis with a world-wide distribution. Persistent isolation of Salmonella during routine environmental sampling surveys of a hospital ward, reserved for the treatment of dogs with canine parvovirus infection, prompted investigation into a possible source. We hypothesised that dogs affected by canine parvovirus would have a higher prevalence of faecal salmonellae compared to an apparently healthy cohort. Seventy-four client-owned dogs naturally infected with canine parvovirus and 42 apparently healthy client-owned dogs were included in the study. This prospective, longitudinal, observational study was conducted over an 18-month period. Fresh faecal samples were collected from dogs aged 6 weeks to 9 months diagnosed with canine parvovirus infection and admitted for treatment, and from apparently healthy dogs presented for vaccination or routine hospital procedures. Faeces were submitted for the isolation, antimicrobial susceptibility testing and serotyping of salmonellae. The prevalence of faecal Salmonella shedding was 22% and 31% for the affected and apparently healthy dogs, respectively, which was not statistically different. No significant associations between Salmonella status and possible risk factors or continuous variables such as age, body weight and duration of hospitalisation were identified. All the Salmonella isolates (n = 32) were resistant to penicillin G, lincomycin and tylosin. Salmonellae from nine different serotypes were identified. The prevalence of Salmonella shedding in both groups was higher than that commonly reported, yet similar to those in previous reports on young dogs, shelter dogs or dogs fed a raw meat diet.
A Year on the Frontline: Dispatches from New FE Teachers

This paper explores the experiences of new FE teachers during their first year of teaching in the post compulsory sector. The focus is on initial perceptions of the role, which are typically grounded in visions of 'making a difference to students' lives', compared with the reality of working in an environment driven by measurement, targets and the financial imperative. A number of participants in the study describe difficulties in obtaining resources and managing student behaviour, as well as a general lack of support, and liken this to working on the frontline without having the necessary armoury to combat the challenges they face. However, despite this somewhat negative portrayal of life in the sector, there is an overwhelmingly positive response to the rewards of working with such a diverse group of learners.
Roller bearing fault discrimination with harmonic wavelet package and ORO-RVM

Roller bearing is one of the widely used elements in a rotary machine. The vibration signal of roller bearing reveals the characteristics and feature of roller bearing faults. Extraction feature from vibration signal and discrimination fault condition are indirect means to ensure the safety operation of machine. This paper addresses a novel roller bearing faults discrimination method with harmonic wavelet package and OAO-RVM (One Against One-Relevance Vector Machine). First, decompose vibration signal with harmonic wavelet package and compute the vector energy from wavelet coefficients. The feature vector is prepared after the vector energy has been standardized. Second, the multi-classification model is established with the simplified OAO-RVM for the purpose of identifying good bearing, bearing with inner race fault, bearing with out race fault and bearing with roller fault. Finally, capture the vibration signal from the roller bearing stand of electric engineering lab to illustrate the proposed method. The feature extraction method with harmonic wavelet package is compared with conventional wavelet package. The accuracy and efficiency of three fault discrimination methods are compared. Experiment results show that the proposed feature extraction method is more effective than conventional method. Compared with ORA (One Against Rest)-RVM and DT (Decision Tree)-RVM, the simplified ORO (One Against One)-RVM model is the best fault discrimination method for its accuracy and efficiency.
Influence of charcoal-based soil amendments on growth and nutrient uptake of rice (Oryza sativa) in Cadmium contaminated soil

Cadmium contamination in paddy soils contributes to Cd toxicity and health risk to humans through consumption of Cd-contaminatedrice. The potential of charcoal-based soil amendment in alleviating cadmium (Cd) toxicity in rice grown in paddy soil with low nitrogenavailability was assessed in order to identify strategies to curve the problems of Cd contamination in rice. A pot culture experiment wasconducted using a Cd-spiked soil with treatment combinations involving two types of charcoal amendments: carbonized rice hull (CRH)and wood charcoal (WC); and three levels of Cd concentration (0, 10 and 20 mg kg-1). CRH and WC amendments reduced the dry matteryield, plant height, tiller number and chlorophyll-SPAD value of rice in the Cd-contaminated soil. CRH and WC amendments reduced thesoluble N but enhanced the residual N, water soluble and exchangeable K, Mg, Ca and Si in soil. The Cd2+ in soil solution was significantly(p<0.01) reduced by CRH and WC which resulted to significantly lower (p<0.01) Cd uptake by rice plants compared to soil withoutamendments. CRH was more effective than WC in lowering Cd availability and uptake by rice plants which could be attributed to thehigher surface area of CRH compared to WC. Overall, CRH and WC decreased Cd availability by increasing the pH and providing additionalsorption sites for Cd which resulted in lower Cd concentration and uptake of rice plants.
Review of Monte Carlo All-Particle Transport Codes and Overview of Recent MCNPX Features

Several Monte Carlo all-particle transport codes are under active development around the world. A high-level capability review of these transport codes is provided. Furthermore, an overview of recent features that are of interest to fast neutron detection and applications is given for one of these codes, namely MCNPX. MCNPX is the Monte Carlo N-Particle eXtended version of MCNP4C that has been under continuous development for more than a decade. In addition to all of the MCNP4C capabilities, MCNPX can transport 34 different particle types up to the teravolt energy range. In this paper we focus on a subset of the twenty-eight new features developed since the release of MCNPX 2.4. 0 and included in the release of 2.5. 0.
Cost-Effectiveness of Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell Therapy in Pediatric Relapsed/Refractory B-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.

Background Chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy is a promising new class of cancer therapy but has a high up-front cost. We evaluated the cost-effectiveness of CAR-T therapy among pediatric patients with relapsed/refractory B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL). Methods We built a microsimulation model for pediatric patients with relapsed/refractory B-ALL receiving either CAR-T therapy or standard of care. Outcomes included costs, quality of life (health utility), complications, and survival. We measured cost-effectiveness with the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER), with ICERs under $100 000 per quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) considered cost effective. One-way and probabilistic sensitivity analyses were used to test model uncertainty. Results Compared to standard of care, CAR-T therapy increased overall cost by $528 200 and improved effectiveness by 8.18 QALYs, resulting in an ICER of $64 600/QALY. The model was sensitive to assumptions about long-term CAR-T survival, the complete remission rate of CAR-T patients, and the health utility of long-term survivors. The base model assumed a 76.0% one-year survival with CAR-T, although if this decreased to 57.8%, then CAR-T was no longer cost effective. If the complete remission rate of CAR-T recipients decreased from 81% to 56.2%, or if the health utility of disease-free survivors decreased from 0.94 to 0.66, then CAR-T was no longer cost effective. Probabilistic sensitivity analysis found that CAR-T was cost effective in 94.8% of iterations at a willingness to pay of $100 000/QALY. Conclusion CAR-T therapy may represent a cost-effective option for pediatric relapsed/refractory B-ALL, although longer follow-up of CAR-T survivors is required to confirm validity of these findings.