Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Complete chloroplast genome sequence of the Salix koriyanagi Kimura ex Goerz (Salicaceae)

Abstract As a Korean endemic plant, Salix koriyanagi Kimura ex Goerz belongs to the genus Salix L. which is the largest genus of Salicaceae. In this study, we presented a complete chloroplast genome of S. koriyanagi which is 155,707 bp and has four sub-regions: 84,484 bp of large single copy (LSC) and 16,125 bp of small single copy (SSC) regions are separated by 27,549 bp of inverted repeat (IR) regions including 130 genes (83 coding regions, 8 rRNAs, and 38 tRNAs). The overall GC contents of the chloroplast genome were 36.7% and in the LSC, SSC, and IR regions were 34.4%, 31.00%, and 41.8%, respectively. A phylogenetic analysis showed that S. koriyanagi is distinct from Salix purpurea, which is incongruent to relationship based on their phenotypes.
A Gridded Database for the Spatiotemporal Analysis of Rainfall in Southern Italy (Calabria Region)

In this work, a gridded database was obtained from a rainfall dataset of 129 monthly series collected for the period 1951–2016 in the Calabria region (southern Italy). The Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) interpolation method was applied to build 603 rainfall grid series with a spatial resolution of 5 km × 5 km. In order to detect possible trends, for each grid point, the seasonal and annual rainfall series were analyzed with the Mann–Kendall non-parametric test and the Theil–Sen estimator. Results showed a decreasing trend for the annual and winter–autumn rainfall and an increasing trend for the summer one.
Characterization and modification of the molecular weight distribution within dissolved organic matter using flow field‐flow fractionation

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) exists ubiquitously in the aquatic environment with varying chemical compositions and a wide molecular weight (MW) distribution, which, as a result, exhibits differing impacts on the behavior and fate of contaminants. The current methods for the MW characterization of DOM usually possess some weaknesses and therefore, some novel techniques are needed. In this study, the feasibility and sensitivity of flow field‐flow fractionation (FlFFF) system were studied for the MW characterization of DOMs from various origins. The systematic evaluation of FlFFF indicated that a mobile phase consisting of 10 mM NaCl and 5 mM H3BO3 and with a pH of 8 was optimal, and the fractionation program with a cross‐flow rate of 2 mL/min and a focusing time of 2 min resulted in the most efficient MW fractionation. Compared to natural waters, the standard DOM materials possessed a high proportion of humic‐like substances and narrow MW distribution. The quantification analysis showed that chromophoric organic ligands were mainly distributed in the high (i.e., 100 kDa–0.45 μm) and low (i.e., 0.3–1 kDa) MW fractions for natural waters, but in the medium (i.e., 1–100 kDa) and low MW fractions for the standard DOM materials. However, the fluorescent humic‐like substances were predominantly distributed within the medium and low MW fractions, irrespective of DOM types. This study showed the feasibility and sensibility of FlFFF in fractionating DOM samples, and can be used to quantify the different MW distribution of chromophoric and fluorescent components in standard and natural DOM.
Deforestation leakage undermines conservation value of tropical and subtropical forest protected areas

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2020 The Authors. Global Ecology and Biogeography published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1Section for Geography, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark 2UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre, Cambridge, UK 3International Union for Conservation of Nature, Gland, Switzerland 4Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia 5World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF), University of the Philippines Los Baños, Los Baños, Philippines 6European Environment Agency, Copenhagen, Denmark
Pin1 Regulatory miRNAs as Novel Candidates for Alzheimer’s Disease Treatment

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the sixth leading cause of death in elderly people whose pathological hallmarks include senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs). The tangles are composed of hyperphosphorylated tau, which is a microtubule-associated protein and its hyperphosphorylation would result in its aggregation and neural cell death. Recently, it has been shown that phosphorylated tau at Thr231 exists in two distinct cis & trans conformations, whose conversion is being mediated by Pin1 isomerase and that the cis, but not the trans, is extremely neurotoxic and drives tau hyperphosphorylation. It has been demonstrated that Pin1 inhibition reflects cis pT231-tau accumulation in neurons but its overactivation is observed in cancer stem cells. Hence, a precise Pin1 regulation is required to keep cells in healthy conditions. As miRNAs play a crucial role in fine-tuning of the gene-expression level, we hypothesized that they might regulate the Pin1 dosage. Nonetheless, the possible regulatory roles of miRNAs in progression of AD by regulating PIN1 is not well studied. We aimed to identify potential miRNAs that down-regulate PIN1 in AD. This can uncover new regulatory mechanisms that result in AD. Thus, we performed a comprehensive study of miRNAs, capable in regulating Pin1, through whole-genome meta-analysis by integrating miRNA expression profiles of 846 different biological samples, along with a systematic literature review and data mining of multiple experimental and predicted miRNA-target databases. We created a list of 56 candidates, which was then short-listed to 10 miRNAs with vigorous experimental evidence. We examined the expression patterns of these miRNAs in the AD and healthy controls and integrated mRNA and miRNA expression profiles to study possible interactions between miRNAs and Pin1. Moreover, we performed an in-silico functional analysis by integrating data of knock-in and knock-down experiments of the candidate miRNAs, and highlighted miR296-5p, miR200b, miR200c, miR140-5p, and miR874 as strong candidate Pin1 regulators. These findings would have profound implications in developing novel therapeutic strategies for AD by blocking expression of highlighted miRNAs using antagomirs.
Determinants Of Non-performing Loans in Pakistan

Many countries have been facing the problem of bank insolvency across the globe. Asset deterioration is one of the main reasons for insolvency of banks. The objective of the paper is to ascertain the determinants of nonperforming loans (NPLs) in the banking sector of Pakistan for the period 2006-16. Other than the bank specific and macro variables proposed by the literature, the roles of weighted maturity and output gap are for the first time examined. We find significant impact of output gap on NPLs however weighted maturity has insignificant role in shaping the future NPLs. Bank specific drivers of NPLs include bank size and capital adequacy ratio.
Supercritical Antisolvent Process for Pharmaceutical Applications: A Review

The supercritical antisolvent (SAS) technique has been widely employed in the biomedical field, including drug delivery, to obtain drug particles or polymer-based systems of nanometric or micrometric size. The primary purpose of producing SAS particles is to improve the treatment of different pathologies and to better the patient’s compliance. In this context, many active compounds have been micronized to enhance their dissolution rate and bioavailability. Aiming for more effective treatments with reduced side effects caused by drug overdose, the SAS polymer/active principle coprecipitation has mainly been proposed to offer an adequate drug release for specific therapy. The demand for new formulations with reduced side effects on the patient’s health is still growing; in this context, the SAS technique is a promising tool to solve existing issues in the biomedical field. This updated review on the use of the SAS process for clinical applications provides useful information about the achievements, the most effective polymeric carriers, and parameters, as well as future perspectives.
Human Interaction Recognition in Videos with Body Pose Traversal Analysis and Pairwise Interaction Framework

Interaction recognition in videos with body pose is gaining remarkable attention due to its speed and robustness. Recently proposed recurrent neural network (RNN) and deep ConvNets-based methods are showing good performances in learning sequential information. Despite these good performances, RNN lags behind in learning spatial relation between body parts, while deep ConvNets requires huge amount of data for training. We propose a traversal-based three-layer neural network (TNN), followed by pairwise interaction framework (PIF) for interaction recognition. We also propose a novel algorithm for tracking humans in successive frames. The proposed algorithm computes collective traversal of individual body parts across the frames and feeds to TNN to learn effective representation of complex actions. The PIF model combines confidence scores of a pair of action labels corresponding to an interaction for final interaction prediction. We evaluate the approach on two publicly available datasets i.e. UT-Interaction and SBU Kinect Interaction. Results show that our proposed approach outperforms the state-of-the-art methods.
Validity of an instrument that assesses functional abilities in people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities: Look what I can do!

ABSTRACT Background: Research about the psychometric properties of the Behavioural Appraisal Scales (BAS) in people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD) is limited. This study evaluates invariance in factor structure, item bias and convergent validity of the BAS. Methods: Data on the BAS from two studies (n = 25; n = 52) were analysed using the oblique multiple group method. The scale structure and item ordering were compared in the two groups. Convergent validity was assessed by correlating scores on the BAS with scores on two other instruments. Results: Of all items, 16–18% correlated stronger with other subscales of the BAS than the subscale they were originally assigned to. Scale structure and order of difficulty differed between groups. Correlations between the BAS and two other instruments varied from low to excellent (r = .48–.85). Conclusions: The results support the construct validity of the BAS. Removing, reassigning and adapting items may enhance construct validity.
Modulation of Frontal Oscillatory Power during Blink Suppression in Children: Effects of Premonitory Urge and Reward

Abstract There is a dearth of studies examining the underlying mechanisms of blink suppression and the effects of urge and reward, particularly those measuring subsecond electroencephalogram (EEG) brain dynamics. To address these issues, we designed an EEG study to ask 3 questions: 1) How does urge develop? 2) What are EEG-correlates of blink suppression? 3) How does reward change brain dynamics related to urge suppression? This study examined healthy children (N = 26, age 8–12 years) during blink suppression under 3 conditions: blink freely (i.e., no suppression), blink suppressed, and blink suppressed for reward. During suppression conditions, children used a joystick to indicate their subjective urge to blink. Results showed that 1) half of the trials were associated with clearly defined urge time course of ~7 s, which was accompanied by EEG delta (1–4 Hz) power reduction localized at anterior cingulate cortex (ACC); 2) the EEG correlates of blink suppression were found in left prefrontal theta (4–8 Hz) power elevation; and 3) reward improved blink suppression performance while reducing the EEG delta power observed in ACC. We concluded that the empirically supported urge time course and underlying EEG modulations provide a subsecond chronospatial model of the brain dynamics during urge- and reward-mediated blink suppression.
Critical Care Society of Southern Africa adult patient blood management guidelines: 2019 Round-table meeting, CCSSA Congress, Durban, 2018

Abstract The CCSSA PBM Guidelines have been developed to improve patient blood management in critically ill patients in southern Africa. These consensus recommendations are based on a rigorous process by experts in the field of critical care who are also practicing in South Africa (SA). The process comprised a Delphi process, a round-table meeting (at the CCSSA National Congress, Durban, 2018), and a review of the best available evidence and international guidelines. The guidelines focus on the broader principles of patient blood management and incorporate transfusion medicine (transfusion guidelines), management of anaemia, optimisation of coagulopathy, and administrative and ethical considerations. There are a mix of low-middle and high-income healthcare structures within southern Africa. Blood products are, however, provided by the same not-for-profit non-governmental organisations to both private and public sectors. There are several challenges related to patient blood management in SA due most notably to a high incidence of anaemia, a frequent shortage of blood products, a small donor population, and a healthcare system under financial strain. The rational and equitable use of blood products is important to ensure best care for as many critically ill patients as possible. The summary of the recommendations provides key practice points for the day-to-day management of critically ill patients. A more detailed description of the evidence used to make these recommendations follows in the full clinical guidelines section.
ONYX: Assisting Users in Teaching Natural Language Interfaces Through Multi-Modal Interactive Task Learning

Users are increasingly empowered to personalize natural language interfaces (NLIs) by teaching how to handle new natural language (NL) inputs. However, our formative study found that when teaching new NL inputs, users require assistance in clarifying ambiguities that arise and want insight into which parts of the input the NLI understands. In this paper we introduce ONYX, an intelligent agent that interactively learns new NL inputs by combining NL programming and programming-by-demonstration, also known as multi-modal interactive task learning. To address the aforementioned challenges, ONYX provides suggestions on how ONYX could handle new NL inputs based on previously learned concepts or user-defined procedures, and poses follow-up questions to clarify ambiguities in user demonstrations, using visual and textual aids to clarify the connections. Our evaluation shows that users provided with ONYX’s new features achieved significantly higher accuracy in teaching new NL inputs (median: 93.3%) in contrast to those without (median: 73.3%).
Localizing software performance regressions in web applications by comparing execution timelines

A performance regression in software is defined as an increase in an application step's response time as a result of code changes. Detecting such regressions can be done using profiling tools; however, investigating their root cause is a mostly‐manual and time‐consuming task. This statement holds true especially when comparing execution timelines, which are dynamic function call trees augmented with response time data; these timelines are compared to find the performance regression‐causes – the lowest‐level function calls that regressed during execution. When done manually, these comparisons often require the investigator to analyze thousands of function call nodes. Further, performing these comparisons on web applications is challenging due to JavaScript's asynchronous and event‐driven model, which introduce noise in the timelines. In response, we propose a design – Zam – that automatically compares execution timelines collected from web applications, to identify performance regression‐causes. Our approach uses a hybrid node matching algorithm that recursively attempts to find the longest common subsequence in each call tree level, then aggregates multiple comparisons' results to eliminate noise. Our evaluation of Zam on 10 web applications indicates that it can identify performance regression‐causes with a path recall of 100% and a path precision of 96%, while performing comparisons in under a minute on average. We also demonstrate the real‐world applicability of Zam, which has been used to successfully complete performance investigations by the performance and reliability team in SAP.
Calcium and magnesium rejection from sulphate solutions in lateritic nickel solvent extraction using versatic 10 acid-LIX ® 84-IC system

The world mineral industry has over the years experienced growth in the production of nickel (Ni) due to its demand in stainless steel production used in consumer goods, chemical processing and construction. More recently, the demand has been invigorated by the growth in China and the industrial growth in Europe, Japan and USA. Another particular use is in the production of hydride electrical storage cells. Figure 1 shows the world nickel production statistics since 1900, which illustrates a general increase in both production and price. Hence there is a need to produce more pure and marketable grades for Ni through the use efficient purification routes such as solvent extraction. Extraction routes for Ni can be pyrometallurgical and/or hydrometallurgical, with the former having been replaced gradually by the later method due to expected savings on capital and operating costs as well as a way of exercising more environmentally friendly metallurgical works. Various processes and methods have been developed to recover Ni from either the sulphide concentrates or its oxide ores, laterites, with oxide ores accounting for 70% of the world’s Ni resource but only contributing 30% of the world’s Ni requirements. Laterite ores are regarded as oxidized sulfides that have undergone the weathering process to form oxides because of being closer to the surface. Laterite ore processing now accounts for the growing proportion of Ni production due to the depletion of known sulphide deposits and also the abundance of known, unexploited laterite resource. Laterites are generally low grade ores containing high amounts of acid consuming gangue. Laterite ores are difficult to concentrate using the normal reduction roastleaching method but new technologies such as high pressure acid leach (HPAL) have made Ni recoveries from these ores more attractive. Thus, a growing interest in Ni extraction from laterite ores through HPAL and solvent extraction-electrowinning process has since been established. There are five well-known processes that treat laterite ores by solvent extraction as the main purification step. These include the Cawse project, Bulong, Murrin Murrin, Goro and Queensland Nickel processes. All except the Queensland process, which uses the roastleach process, use HPAL method although the down-stream processes for the separation of Ni from impurities differ for each one of them (Denegan, 2006; Sole, 2001 and 2007; Tsakiridis, 2003 and 2004). Solvent extraction (SX) plays a major part in a hydrometallurgical Ni processing. SX is a method used for the removal, separation and concentration of metallic species in an aqueous Calcium and magnesium rejection from sulphate solutions in lateritic nickel solvent extraction using Versatic 10 acid-LIX®84-IC system
Deciphering the effect of mutant STUB1 on the heat shock response in SCAR16 patient-derived cells

Article history: Received 29 January 2018 Received in revised form 27March 2018 Accepted 4 April 2018 Available online 9 April 2018 STUB1/CHIP is a central component of cellular protein homeostasis and interacts with key proteins involved in the pathogenesis of many neurodegenerative diseases. Here, we reprogrammed human skin fibroblasts from a 12-year-old male patient with recessive spinocerebellar ataxia type 16 (OMIM #615768), carrying compound heterozygousmutations (c.355CNT, c.880ANT) in STUB1.Genomic integrity of the iPSC lineHIHCNi001-Awithout transgene integration and genomic aberration but with maintained disease-relevant mutations was proven by SNP array analysis and Sanger sequencing while pluripotency was verified by the expression of important pluripotency markers and the capacity to differentiate into cells of all three germ layers. © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Resource table. Resource utility CHIP is a central component of cellular protein homeostasis and interacts with several key proteins associated with neurodegenerative diseases, with mutations in STUB1 leading to SCAR16 (Hayer et al., 2017; Synofzik et al., 2014). iPSC-derived neurons will help to further decipher the exact role of this neurodegenerative key protein, including central steps in the pathogenesis of SCAR16.
Higher-order cluster consensus of a multi-agent network with continuous-time dynamics

This paper studies the higher-order cluster agreement problem for continuous-time networks evolving over any given directed graph. Necessary and sufficient conditions are derived to reach clusters that are not pre-determined as opposed to existing literature. The analysis shows that appropriate stabilizing choices of coupling strengths do not affect the number of clusters and the final values of the clusters. The results are verified by numerical examples.
Creator-friendly Algorithms: Behaviors, Challenges, and Design Opportunities in Algorithmic Platforms

In many creator economy platforms, algorithms significantly impact creators’ practices and decisions about their creative expression and monetization. Emerging research suggests that the opacity of the algorithm and platform policies often distract creators from their creative endeavors. To study how algorithmic platforms can be more ‘creator-friendly,’ we conducted a mixed-methods study: interviews (N=14) and a participatory design workshop (N=12) with YouTube creators. Through the interviews, we found how creators’ folk theories of the curation algorithm impact their work strategies — whether they choose to work with or against the algorithm — and the associated challenges in the process. In the workshop, creators explored solution ideas to overcome the aforementioned challenges, such as fostering diverse and creative expressions, achieving success as a creator, and motivating creators to continue their job. Based on these findings, we discuss design opportunities for how algorithmic platforms can support and motivate creators to sustain their creative work.