Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The use of electronic resources by undergraduate students at the University of Venda, South Africa

This paper aims to establish the level of use of the electronic resources at the University of Venda, which is one of the previously disadvantaged universities in South Africa. It identifies the different electronic resources used at the university, determines the level of awareness and training in the use of these resources and suggests ways in which electronic resources may be enhanced. The rapid changes in the information and communication technology (ICTs) have influenced service delivery in academic libraries in terms of how information is gathered, accessed, retrieved and used. Hence, electronic resources are invaluable research tools in academic libraries in the twenty-first century. ,A qualitative research methodology was adopted, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with each participant to get in-depth information. The target population was all third-year students registered with the School of Human and Social Sciences at the University of Venda. The third year undergraduate students from this particular school where chosen because statistics revealed that these students where ranked among the top in the use of computers. ,The findings revealed that the level of usage of these resources by undergraduate students is elementary and limited to SABINET and EBSCO host. Undergraduate student’s level of awareness of the different electronic resources is low. They confused electronic resources to Web-based internet sources. It also revealed that the level of awareness and training in the use of these resources is still generic, as training is mostly a once off orientation at the first year. ,This paper focuses on third year undergraduate students who were using computers because the researchers were interested in finding out whether students using computers were also using electronic resources. It excluded other profiles such as age, gender and computer usage behaviour of electronic resources. ,Adequate use and knowledge of electronic resources at universities is instrumental towards realisation of the country’s ICT Strategy and the outcome-based education (OBE) model of teaching movement. Suggestions are made to the university, the university library, university librarians and the Library Association of South Africa on how to enhance the use of electronic resources. ,It establishes the level of use of electronic resources in one of South African historically disadvantaged universities, a point of contact to other previously South African disadvantaged universities and make suggestions on how electronic resources may be enhanced. It adds to the body of knowledge on the use of electronic resources in academic libraries in South African universities.
Expression of endothelial and inducible nitric oxide synthase in benign and malignant lesions of the breast and measurement of nitric oxide using electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy

Nitric oxide (NO) is present in various human solid tumors and tumor cell lines, and it is believed that NO plays an important role in tumor growth. An increased NO concentration catalyzed by NO synthase (NOS) is cytotoxic and can promote apoptosis. The expression of endothelial NOS (e‐NOS) and induced NOS (i‐NOS) was examined in various breast tumors.
Treatment of a Depressed Breast Cancer Patient With Problem-Solving Therapy

Problem-solving therapy (PST) has emerged as a promising treatment for major depressive disorder (MDD). The treatment, which is brief and easily accessible to a variety of health practitioners, has often been implemented within primary care settings. Building on this research, this case study highlights utilization of problem-solving therapy with a breast cancer patient diagnosed with recurrent major depression, applied within the context of a medical center oncology clinic. Following an 8-session PST protocol, the patient demonstrated notable decreases in self-reported depression and anxiety symptoms and an overall increase in quality of life and medical functioning. Consistent with an accumulating literature, these data support PST as an effective and parsimonious intervention for individuals with depression and concurrent medical problems such as breast cancer.
A bibliometric analysis of the Journal of Membrane Science (1976-2010)

Purpose – This study aims to examine publication characteristics and development of a science journal Journal of Membrane Science (JMS) with 35 years’ history by bibliometric indicators. Design/methodology/approach – A bibliometric approach was used to identify its document types, impact factor, publication outputs, most cited articles and large contributing countries/territories and institutions. The main indicators included impact factor, CPP (citations per publication), TC2010 (number of citations from one paper’s publication to the end of 2010), C2010 (number of citations in the year of 2010), number of total articles, “single country articles” and “single institution articles”, “internationally collaborative articles” and “inter-institutionally collaborative articles”, “first author articles” and “corresponding author articles”. The annual citations of most cited articles were displayed in a table list. Findings – The two-year citation window used by impact factor is not fair for a journal which had its peak annual citations in the third or more years. JMS would get a better citation performance if impact factor can be calculated for three or four years. Impact factor is affected by the size of its subject categories. JMS showed higher impact factor rankings in both chemical engineering and polymer science category in the early twenty-first century. Furthermore, the G8 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK and the USA) contributed more than a half of the total, with higher CPP. National University of Singapore, University of Twente and Chinese Academy of Sciences were the main contributing institutions. The citation life cycles revealed the impact history of most cited articles. Originality/value – A bibliometric analysis has been carried out to analyze the characteristics of a journal with 35 years’ history. Some improved indicators including TC2010, C2010, TP, SP, CP, FP and RP have been used for the evaluation. This study provides an evidence from JMS to discuss the feasibility and limitations of impact factor.
Increased flexibility decreases antifreeze protein activity

Antifreeze proteins protect several cold‐blooded organisms from subzero environments by preventing death from freezing. The Type I antifreeze protein (AFP) isoform from Pseudopleuronectes americanus, named HPLC6, is a 37‐residue protein that is a single α‐helix. Mutational analysis of the protein showed that its alanine‐rich face is important for binding to and inhibiting the growth of macromolecular ice. Almost all structural studies of HPLC6 involve the use of chemically synthesized protein as it requires a native N‐terminal aspartate and an amidated C‐terminus for full activity. Here, we examine the role of C‐terminal amide and C‐terminal arginine side chain in the activity, structure, and dynamics of nonamidated Arg37 HPLC6, nonamidated HPLC6 Ala37, amidated HPLC6 Ala37, and fully native HPLC6 using a recombinant bacterial system. The thermal hysteresis (TH) activities of the nonamidated mutants are 35% lower compared with amidated proteins, but analysis of the NMR data and circular dichroism spectra shows that they are all still α‐helical. Relaxation data from the two nonamidated mutants indicate that the C‐terminal residues are considerably more flexible than the rest of the protein because of the loss of the amide group, whereas the amidated Ala37 mutant has a C‐terminus that is as rigid as the wild‐type protein and has high TH activity. We propose that an increase in flexibility of the AFP causes it to lose activity because its dynamic nature prevents it from binding strongly to the ice surface.
An algorithm for near-optimal placement of sensor elements

An important question in array design is that of where to place the elements of a sparse array for optimal performance in terms of its ability to detect and resolve a greater number of sources than conventionally possible. In particular, it has been shown that when sensor elements are arranged in the minimum redundancy fashion, by performing an augmentation technique on the covariances obtained from the array outputs, an M element array can be made to estimate the directions of arrival of as many as M(M-1)/2 uncorrelated sources unambiguously. Constructive procedures are developed to evaluate integer locations for an array of given sensors that span a prescribed distance, such that any missing integer is expressible as the difference of two sensor locations. New upper bounds for the ratio of the square of the minimum number of elements to the spanning distance are also established. >
Fourier Transform Infrared (FT-IR) Spectroscopic Imaging Analysis of Partially Miscible PMMA–PEG Blends Using Two-Dimensional Disrelation Mapping

A novel technique called disrelation spectroscopic imaging describes the process of identifying an area where a coordinated or out-of-phase change in pattern of spectral absorbance occurs. Disrelation mapping can be viewed as a spatial filter based on the well-established two-dimensional (2D) correlation function to highlight specific areas where disrelated variation occurs between ν1 and ν2. Disrelation intensity develops only if the spectral absorbance measured at ν1 and ν2 vary out of phase with each other within a specific spatial area. The disrelation mapping locates regions where absorbance varies in a dissimilar manner because of the contribution from species of different physical or chemical origins. Consequently, it becomes possible to probe onset of molecular interactions or presence of intermediate forms between components, which is not fully detected by the conventional visualizations based on a single wavenumber. Data analysis using disrelation mapping applied to Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopic images is presented in this study. Data sets of FT-IR spectroscopic images of blends of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and polyethylene glycol (PEG) were subjected to the disrelation mapping. It was found that the disrelation intensity between 1730 and 1714 cm–1 becomes especially acute around the spatial boundary between PMMA and PEG domains within the studied blend sample. Thus the band at 1730 cm–1 most likely represents the C=O stretching mode of the C=O···H–O species due to the intermolecular hydrogen bonding between PMMA and PEG. The appearance of such disrelation is more noticeable in the PEG-rich region, for the PEG with low molecular weight. Consequently, it suggests that the blends of PMMA and PEG are partially miscible at the molecular level and these intermolecular interactions are affected by the quantity of the terminal –OH groups of the PEG.
Edge-aided virtual view rendering for multiview video plus depth

Depth-Image-Based Rendering (DIBR) of virtual views is a fundamental method in three dimensional 3-D video applications to produce different perspectives from texture and depth information, in particular the multi-view-plus-depth (MVD) format. Artifacts are still present in virtual views as a consequence of imperfect rendering using existing DIBR methods. In this paper, we propose an alternative DIBR method for MVD. In the proposed method we introduce an edge pixel and interpolate pixel values in the virtual view using the actual projected coordinates from two adjacent views, by which cracks and disocclusions are automatically filled. In particular, we propose a method to merge pixel information from two adjacent views in the virtual view before the interpolation; we apply a weighted averaging of projected pixels within the range of one pixel in the virtual view. We compared virtual view images rendered by the proposed method to the corresponding view images rendered by state-of-theart methods. Objective metrics demonstrated an advantage of the proposed method for most investigated media contents. Subjective test results showed preference to different methods depending on media content, and the test could not demonstrate a significant difference between the proposed method and state-of-the-art methods.
MarR homologs with urate‐binding signature

Bacteria that associate with living hosts require intricate mechanisms to detect and respond to host defenses. Part of the early host defense against invading bacteria is the production of reactive oxygen species, and xanthine oxidase is one of the main producers of such agents. The end‐product of the enzymatic activity of xanthine oxidase, urate, was previously shown to be the natural ligand for Deinococcus radiodurans‐encoded HucR and it was shown to attenuate DNA binding by Agrobacterium tumefaciens‐encoded PecS and Burkholderia thailandensis‐encoded MftR, all members of the multiple antibiotic resistance regulator (MarR) family. We here show that residues involved in binding urate and eliciting the DNA binding antagonism are conserved in a specific subset of MarR homologs. Although HucR controls endogenous urate levels by regulating a uricase gene, almost all other homologs are predicted to respond to exogenous urate levels and to regulate a transmembrane transport protein belonging to either the drug metabolite transporter (DMT) or the major facilitator superfamily (MFS), as further evidenced by the presence of conserved binding sites for the cognate transcription factor within the respective promoter regions. These data suggest the use of orthologous genes for different regulatory purposes. We propose the designation UrtR (urate responsive transcriptional regulator) for this distinct subfamily of MarR homologs based on their common mechanism of urate‐mediated attenuation of DNA binding.
Evaluation of the Nutritional Changes Caused by Huanglongbing (HLB) to Citrus Plants Using Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy

Huanglongbing (HLB) is the most recent and destructive bacterial disease of citrus and has no cure yet. A promising alternative to conventional methods is to use laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS), a multi-elemental analytical technique, to identify the nutritional changes provoked by the disease to the citrus leaves and associate the mineral composition profile with its health status. The leaves were collected from adult citrus trees and identified by visual inspection as healthy, HLB-symptomatic, and HLB-asymptomatic. Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy measurements were done in fresh leaves without sample preparation. Nutritional variations were evaluated using statistical tools, such as Student's t-test and analysis of variance applied to LIBS spectra, and the largest were found for Ca, Mg, and K. Considering the nutritional profile changes, a classifier induced by classification via regression combined with partial least squares regression was built resulting in an accuracy of 73% for distinguishing the three categories of leaves.
Design of Deinococcus radiodurans thioredoxin reductase with altered thioredoxin specificity using computational alanine mutagenesis

In this study, the X‐ray crystal structure of the complex between Escherichia coli thioredoxin reductase (EC TrxR) and its substrate thioredoxin (Trx) was used as a guide to design a Deinococcus radiodurans TrxR (DR TrxR) mutant with altered Trx specificity. Previous studies have shown that TrxRs have higher affinity for cognate Trxs (same species) than that for Trxs from different species. Computational alanine scanning mutagenesis and visual inspection of the EC TrxR–Trx interface suggested that only four residues (F81, R130, F141, and F142) account for the majority of the EC TrxR–Trx interface stability. Individual replacement of equivalent residues in DR TrxR (M84, K137, F148, and F149) with alanine resulted in drastic changes in binding affinity, confirming that the four residues account for most of TrxR–Trx interface stability. When M84 and K137 were changed to match equivalent EC TrxR residues (K137R and M84F), the DR TrxR substrate specificity was altered from its own Trx to that of EC Trx. The results suggest that a small subset of the TrxR–Trx interface residues is responsible for the majority of Trx binding affinity and species‐specific recognition.
Fast Erasure-and-Error Decoding of Algebraic Geometry Codes up to the Feng-Rao Bound

This article gives an errata (that is erasure- and error-) decoding algorithm of one-point algebraic-geometry codes up to the Feng-Rao (1994) designed minimum distance using Sakata's (see Proc. 1995 IEEE Int. Symp. Information Theory, Whistler, BC, Canada, 1995) multidimensional generalization of the Berlekamp-Massey (1969) algorithm and the voting procedure of Feng and Rao.
Designed protein mimics of the Ebola virus glycoprotein GP2 α-helical bundle: Stability and pH effects

Ebola virus (EboV) belongs to the Filoviridae family of viruses that causes severe and fatal hemhorragic fever. Infection by EboV involves fusion between the virus and host cell membranes mediated by the envelope glycoprotein GP2 of the virus. Similar to the envelope glycoproteins of other viruses, the central feature of the GP2 ectodomain postfusion structure is a six‐helix bundle formed by the protein's N‐ and C‐heptad repeat regions (NHR and CHR, respectively). Folding of this six‐helix bundle provides the energetic driving force for membrane fusion; in other viruses, designed agents that disrupt formation of the six‐helix bundle act as potent fusion inhibitors. To interrogate determinants of EboV GP2‐mediated membrane fusion, we designed model proteins that consist of the NHR and CHR segments linked by short protein linkers. Circular dichroism and gel filtration studies indicate that these proteins adopt stable α‐helical folds consistent with design. Thermal denaturation indicated that the GP2 six‐helix bundle is highly stable at pH 5.3 (melting temperature, Tm, of 86.8 ± 2.0°C and van't Hoff enthalpy, ΔHvH, of −28.2 ± 1.0 kcal/mol) and comparable in stability to other viral membrane fusion six‐helix bundles. We found that the stability of our designed α‐helical bundle proteins was dependent on buffering conditions with increasing stability at lower pH. Small pH differences (5.3–6.1) had dramatic effects (ΔTm = 37°C) suggesting a mechanism for conformational control that is dependent on environmental pH. These results suggest a role for low pH in stabilizing six‐helix bundle formation during the process of GP2‐mediated viral membrane fusion.
Thermo-Optical Properties of Perfluorinated Sulfonic Acid Membranes: An Investigation of Hydration Based on Absorption Spectra

The Nafion membranes are widely used in electrochemical applications such as fuel cells, chlor-alkali cells, and actuators–sensors. In this work, the thermal-optical characterization of Nafion in acid form was performed by photoacoustic spectroscopy, thermogravimetry, and differential scanning calorimetry. In the experimental procedure three distinct hydration levels were considered: (1) pristine membrane (λ ≅ H2O/–SO3H ≅ 5.6); (2) swelling process (λ ≅ 17.4); and (3) drying at controlled room temperature after swelling process (λ ≅ 6.5). The discovered behaviors showed significant irreversible structural changes induced by water retention in the membrane. These structural changes depend on the water population present in the clusters and also affect the directional thermal diffusivity of the membrane irreversibly.
The experiences of being close relatives and informal carers of mentally ill Iraqi refugees: a qualitative study

In ethnic minority groups, family members often play an absolutely central role in providing care for their mentally ill relatives. The aim of the study was to explore how the relatives of mentally ill Iraqi refugees experience their role as informal caregivers. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with seven relatives of Iraqi mental health outpatients. The study indicated that Iraqi relatives felt severely burdened in their everyday life. They all had 24-hour commitments at home, being solely responsible for household tasks, childcare and all the practicalities of everyday life. Moreover, they were responsible for all aspects of caring for their mentally ill family member. The relatives suffered from ongoing socio-political strain, they had major psychological and social problems and felt isolated. Because of culture-bound obligations and stigma, the relatives felt unable to break their isolation. Finally, the relatives described their children as being severely affected by their parents' illness and the problems associated with it. It is a complex challenge for professionals in Western-oriented healthcare services to support this group of relatives. Professional support for the children of these refugee families is probably a very important aspect of intervention for this group.
Toward a Noninvasive, Label-Free Screening Method for Determining Spore Inoculum Quality of Penicillium chrysogenum Using Raman Spectroscopy

We report on a label-free, noninvasive method for determination of spore inoculum quality of Penicillium chrysogenum prior to cultivation/germination. Raman microspectroscopy providing direct, molecule-specific information was used to extract information on the viability state of spores sampled directly from the spore inoculum. Based on the recorded Raman spectra, a supervised classification method was established for classification between living and dead spores and thus determining spore inoculum quality for optimized process control. A fast and simple sample preparation method consisting of one single dilution step was employed to eliminate interfering signals from the matrix and to achieve isolation of single spores on the sample carrier (CaF2). Aiming to avoid any influence of the killing procedure in the Raman spectrum of the spore, spores were considered naturally dead after more than one year of storage time. Fluorescence staining was used as reference method. A partial least squares discriminant analysis classifier was trained with Raman spectra of 258 living and dead spores (178 spectra for calibration, 80 spectra for validation). The classifier showed good performance when being applied to a 1 µL droplet taken from a 1:1 mixture of living and dead spores. Of 135 recorded spectra, 51% were assigned to living spores while 49% were identified as dead spores by the classifier. The results obtained in this work are a fundamental step towards developing an automated, label-free, and noninvasive screening method for assessing spore inoculum quality.