Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Water and Sediment Quality in the Coastal Zone Around the Mouth of Doce River After the Fundão Tailings Dam Failure

Fundão dam (Minas Gerais, Brazil) breached on 5 November 2015, releasing 50 million m³ of Fe ore tailings and dam materials into the upper Doce River system. The tailings travelled 670 km along the river system to the ocean. Starting on 17 November 2015, 6 days before the tailings reached the Doce River mouth, a water quality monitoring program with a daily sampling schedule was implemented by Samarco Mineração S.A. (Samarco) to assess the impacts on marine water and sediment quality. Between November 2015 and August 2017 water and sediment quality were monitored at 28 locations offshore from the Doce River mouth. The sampling areas were grouped by hydrological and metocean season (i.e., rainy and dry seasons and wave and wind climates), distance from the river mouth (<5 km, >5 km and within a Marine Protected Area), and water depth. The data were compared to the Brazilian water quality standards and prebreach conditions. Statistical tests were conducted to evaluate temporal and spatial trends and patterns. For the water quality parameters of relevance (total suspended solids, turbidity, total and dissolved Fe, Al, and Mn), pulses of concentration increases were observed right after the arrival of the plume in the coastal zone and during the subsequent rainy seasons. Exceedances of prebreach conditions were more frequent closer to the Doce River mouth. During the dry season, concentrations tended to decrease, reaching prebreach levels for a number of parameters, with small short‐term pulses associated with metocean factors. For sediment quality parameters of relevance (particle size, Fe, Al, and Mn), Fe was the only one that clearly resulted from the dam breach, which was mediated by river influence and oceanographic factors affecting particle size distribution. Results indicated that the Fundão dam failure did affect water and sediment quality in the Atlantic Ocean, with greater impacts closer to the river mouth and immediately after the arrival of the tailings plume, with concentrations gradually returning to preevent levels over time. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2020;16:643–654. © 2020 SETAC
Upper Midwest lakes are supersaturated with N2

Significance Excess nitrogen (N) in freshwaters is problematic due to its impacts on eutrophication, biodiversity losses, and harmful algal blooms. Some microbial processes such as denitrification and anammox can remove N from systems while others such as N-fixation can add a usable form of N. However, not enough is known about when and where these competing processes are occurring in lakes, and understanding this can provide insight to management. Here, we determined that nearly all of the 34 lakes that we examined in the upper Midwest had a net loss of N2 that must be compensated by watershed inputs to maintain steady state. These results suggest that N-fixation in these lakes was not enough to offset denitrification and anammox. Little is known about the exchange of gaseous nitrogen (N2) with the atmosphere in freshwater systems. Although the exchange of N2, driven by excess or deficiencies relative to saturation values, has little relevance to the atmospheric N2 pool due to its large size, it does play an important role in freshwater and marine nitrogen (N) cycling. N-fixation converts N2 to ammonia, which can be used by microbes and phytoplankton, while denitrification/anammox effectively removes it by converting oxidized, inorganic N to N2. We examined N2 saturation to infer net biological nitrogen processes in 34 lakes across 5° latitude varying in trophic status, mixing regime, and bathymetry. Here, we report that nearly all lakes examined in the upper Midwest (USA) were supersaturated with N2 (>85% of samples, n = 248), suggesting lakes are continuously releasing nitrogen to the atmosphere. The traditional paradigm is that freshwaters compensate for N-limitation through N-fixation, but these results indicate that lakes were constantly losing N to the atmosphere via denitrification and/or anammox, suggesting that terrestrial N inputs are needed to balance the internal N cycle.
Poseidon-2 Radar Altimeter Design and Results of In-Flight Performances Special Issue: Jason-1 Calibration/Validation

Poseidon-2 is the dual frequency, solid-state radar altimeter embarked on the CNES/NASA oceanographic satellite Jason-1. This article gives a brief summary of the instrument design and some in-flight performances. Flight results have confirmed the very good results of the altimeter transfer function, which is very stable, and that the range noise at instrument level is less than 2 cm for a Significant Wave Height of 2 m.
Financial crises and emerging stock markets volatility: do internal factors matter?

This paper has two central aims. The first one is to deal empirically with the effects of financial crises on emerging stock markets volatility. The second objective consists in testing if the level of stock market development affects this relationship. For this purpose, we estimate a static panel data model for a sample of nine emerging economies from January 1990 to December 2006. We consider three types of financial crises, i.e. banking, currency and twin crises. Our empirical results suggest that the onset of financial crises strongly increased stock market volatility. In addition, we find that the biggest impact is exerted by twin crises. When dealing with the second objective, our results show that the market size and the liquidity level can attenuate the effects of banking and currency crises, but not the one associated to twin crises. Nevertheless, the degree of stock market integration seems to reduce the effects of banking, currency and twin crises on stock market volatility.
Comparison of commercial manual extraction kits for RNA isolation from canine whole blood

High quantities of quality RNA are necessary for many veterinary laboratory tests. Several commercial kits are available for RNA isolation from human whole blood; their resultant RNA yield and purity have not been reported for canine whole blood, to our knowledge. We assessed the performance of 4 RNA extraction kits (RiboPure, TRIzol, RNeasy Protect animal blood, and QIAamp RNA blood mini). Whole blood from a healthy dog was stored in the manufacturer-recommended RNA stabilizing buffer as directed. RNA isolation, including DNase treatment, was performed using each kit’s manufacturer’s protocol. Resultant RNA yield and purity were evaluated using spectrophotometric absorbance, capillary electrophoresis and electropherogram analysis, and a reverse-transcription real-time PCR (RT-rtPCR) assay. The RNeasy Protect animal blood kit extracted the highest, and RiboPure the lowest, concentration of nucleic acid. RNA integrity numbers classified extracted RNA as good quality or better for all kits except RNeasy Protect. All kits had evidence of genomic DNA contamination as assessed by RT-rtPCR. Overall, QIAamp RNA blood mini kit and TRIzol optimized both RNA yield and purity from canine whole blood. These kits extracted high quantities of good quality RNA as evidenced by high RNA integrity numbers and minimal contamination with proteins and solvents.
Protective Effects of Dietary Grape on UVB-Mediated Cutaneous Damages and Skin Tumorigenesis in SKH-1 Mice

Non-melanoma skin cancers (NMSCs) are the most diagnosed cancers in the US and occur more frequently in males. We previously demonstrated chemoprotective effects of dietary grape powder (GP) against UVB-mediated skin tumorigenesis in female SKH-1 mice. To expand on this, here, we determined the effects of GP in a short-term UVB exposure protocol (0 or 5% GP, followed by UVB every other day for 2 weeks) in male and female SKH-1 mice, as well as explored any sex-related differences in UVB carcinogenesis via male SKH-1 mice (0, 3, or 5% GP; UVB twice weekly for 28 weeks). In the short-term study, we found that GP protects against early-stage epithelial hyperplasia and mast cell infiltration in both sexes. In the long term, GP markedly reduced tumor counts and malignant conversion, along with significant decreases in mast cell infiltration, serum IgE and Eotaxin. We also found inhibition of P38 phosphorylation and reduced PCNA, Ki67 and BCL2 levels, suggesting that the anti-inflammatory effects of GP inhibits P38, acting as an upstream regulator to inhibit proliferation and reduce tumor cell survival. Together, GP appears to protect against UVB-mediated skin damage and carcinogenesis in SKH-1 mice and should be explored further as a supplement for NMSC prevention.
A Big Data Platform for Real Time Analysis of Signs of Depression in Social Media

In this paper we propose a scalable platform for real-time processing of Social Media data. The platform ingests huge amounts of contents, such as Social Media posts or comments, and can support Public Health surveillance tasks. The processing and analytical needs of multiple screening tasks can easily be handled by incorporating user-defined execution graphs. The design is modular and supports different processing elements, such as crawlers to extract relevant contents or classifiers to categorise Social Media. We describe here an implementation of a use case built on the platform that monitors Social Media users and detects early signs of depression.
Chemical and Cellular Antioxidant Activities of In Vitro Digesta of Tilapia Protein and Its Hydrolysates

Production of protein hydrolysate as nutraceuticals is typically based on the activity of the hydrolysate, which might not yield the optimal activity under physiological condition due to structural modification of peptides upon gastrointestinal (GI) digestion. This study systematically compared the chemical and cellular antioxidant activities of the in vitro digesta of tilapia protein and its hydrolysates prepared with various degree of hydrolysis (DH) by Alcalase. The enzymes used in the in vitro GI digestion analysis significantly contributed to the peptide content, Trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity (TEAC), and oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC). Proteins and all hydrolysates were slightly digested by pepsin but hydrolyzed extensively by pancreatin. Both hydrolysate and digesta predominantly scavenged free radicals via hydrogen atom transfer (HAT). The antioxidant activities of the hydrolysates increased with the increasing DH up to 16 h of hydrolysis. However, the digesta of 10-h hydrolysate displayed the highest chemical and HepG2 cellular antioxidant activities, while the protein digesta displayed the lowest. Principal component analysis (PCA) showed that the TEAC of the digesta was positively correlated with the cellular antioxidant activity (CAA). Therefore, the production of protein hydrolysate should be optimized based on the activity of the hydrolysate digesta rather than that of hydrolysates.
Recent Advances and Impact of Chemotherapeutic and Antiangiogenic Nanoformulations for Combination Cancer Therapy

Traditional chemotherapy, along with antiangiogenesis drugs (combination cancer therapy), has shown reduced tumor recurrence and improved antitumor effects, as tumor growth and metastasis are often dependent on tumor vascularization. However, the effect of combination chemotherapy, including synergism and additive and even antagonism effects, depends on drug combinations in an optimized ratio. Hence, nanoformulations are ideal, demonstrating a great potential for the combination therapy of chemo-antiangiogenesis for cancer. The rationale for designing various nanocarriers for combination therapy is derived from organic (polymer, lipid), inorganic, or hybrid materials. In particular, hybrid nanocarriers that consist of more than one material construct provide flexibility for different modes of entrapment within the same carrier—e.g., physical adsorption, encapsulation, and chemical conjugation strategies. These multifunctional nanocarriers can thus be used to co-deliver chemo- and antiangiogenesis drugs with tunable drug release at target sites. Hence, this review attempts to survey the most recent advances in nanoformulations and their impact on cancer treatment in a combined regimen—i.e., conventional cytotoxic and antiangiogenesis agents. The mechanisms and site-specific co-delivery strategies are also discussed herein, along with future prospects.
Cumulative Exposure to Adverse Childhood Experience: Depressive Symptoms, Suicide Intensions and Suicide Plans among Senior High School Students in Nanchang City of China

This study tested relationships between different types of adverse childhood experiences (ACE) and depressive symptoms, suicide intensions, suicide plans and examines the cumulative effects of adverse childhood experience on depressive, suicide intentions and suicide plans among senior high school students. We conducted a survey among five senior high schools in Nanchang city, which were selected through stratified random cluster sampling. Among the 884 respondents, 409 were male (46.27%), and 475 were female (53.73%); the age ranged from 14 to 18. During the past 12 months, 199 (22.51%) students presented to depressive symptoms, 125 (14.14%) students had suicide intensions, 55 (6.22%) students had suicide plans. As ACE scores increased, there was an increase in the odds of (1) depressive symptoms—one ACE (adjusted odds ratio, AOR = 2.096, p < 0.001), two ACEs (AOR = 3.155, p < 0.001) and three to five ACEs (AOR = 9.707, p < 0.001); suicide intensions-1 ACE (AOR = 1.831, p = 0.011), two ACEs (AOR = 2.632, p = 0.002) and three to five ACEs (AOR = 10.836, p < 0.001); and (2) suicide plans—one ACE (AOR = 2.599, p < 0.001), two ACEs (AOR = 4.748, p < 0.001) and three to five ACEs (AOR = 22.660, p < 0.001). We should increase the awareness of adolescents who have had adverse childhood experience, especially those with multiple ACEs to prevent depression and suicide among senior high school students.
Comparing sleep patterns between children with autism spectrum disorder and children with typical development: A matched case–control study

Children with autism spectrum disorder are often reported to have more sleep deficits and poorer sleep quality compared with children with typical development. However, most previous studies have serious methodological limitations, such as varying sample sizes in the comparison groups, wide age range of participants, and body mass index not matched between participants. This study investigated whether sleep patterns differed between children with autism spectrum disorder and those with typical development using a carefully matched case–control design and incorporating both actigraphy and sleep log assessments. A total of 78 children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder were matched with 78 typical development controls in this study. The matched variables included age, gender, and body mass index. The results showed that children with autism spectrum disorder had shorter sleep duration, reduced sleep efficiency, longer sleep-onset latency, and longer wake after sleep onset than children with typical development (ps < 0.05). Further studies are needed to explore the mechanisms underlying these sleep deficits in children with autism spectrum disorder. Lay abstract This study compared the sleep pattern between children with autism spectrum disorders and children with typical development using a matched case–control design (matched age, gender, and body mass index). Significant differences were found in night-time sleep duration (total amount of sleep at night), sleep efficiency (percentage of time spent asleep), sleep-onset latency (length of time that it takes to transit from awake to asleep), and wake after sleep onset (total amount of time spent awake after defined sleep onset). Findings showed that children with autism spectrum disorder had poorer sleep quality than children with typical development. Mechanisms underlying the differences should be further explored in order to develop an effective treatment intervention.
Fast Mode Decision Algorithm for Coding Depth Maps in 3D High-Efficiency Video Coding

The mode decision is a computationally expensive process in the three-dimensional extension of high-eﬃciency video coding (3D-HEVC), which is particularly prominent when coding depth maps. A fast algorithm is proposed that includes three improvements to reduce its computational complexity. In the mode decision process, a coding unit (CU) can be encoded directly or split into four smaller CUs. If the rate distortion (RD) cost of this CU is less than the total RD cost of its four sub-CUs, this CU is directly encoded. Otherwise, it will be split into four smaller sub-CUs. We propose to terminate the CU partition as soon as the aggregated RD cost of the ﬁrst k (k < 4) sub-CUs exceeds that of their parent CU instead of completing the calculation of all sub-CUs. In addition, based on the fact that the newly-added depth intra skip (DIS) mode does not encode residual data, we propose two other improvements, namely the early determination of the optimal prediction unit (PU) mode by evaluating the RD cost of the DIS mode and the termination of the CU partition if the best PU mode is DIS mode and its RD cost equals 0. The experimental results showed that the proposed algorithm achieved average encoding time savings of 5.92% and 31.12% for the common test conditions and the all-intra conﬁguration, respectively, with negligible loss of coding performance.
Interleukin Gene Variability and Periodontal Bacteria in Patients with Generalized Aggressive Form of Periodontitis

Host genetic predispositions to dysregulated immune response can influence the development of the aggressive form of periodontitis (AgP) through susceptibility to oral dysbiosis and subsequent host-microbe interaction. This case-control study aimed to perform a multilocus analysis of functional variants in selected interleukin (IL) genes in patients with the generalized form of AgP in a homogenous population. Twelve polymorphisms in IL-1 gene cluster, IL-6 and its receptor, IL-10, IL-17A, and IL-18 were determined in 91 AgP patients and 210 controls. Analysis of seven selected periodontal bacteria in subgingival sulci/pockets was performed with a commercial DNA-microarray kit in a subgroup of 76 individuals. The pilot in vitro study included stimulation of peripheral blood monocytes (PBMC) from 20 individuals with periodontal bacteria and measurement of IL-10 levels using the Luminex method. Only the unctional polymorphism IL-10 −1087 A/G (rs1800896) and specific IL-10 haplotypes were associated with the development of the disease (p < 0.05, Pcorr > 0.05). Four bacterial species occurred more frequently in AgP than in controls (p < 0.01, Pcorr < 0.05). Elevated IL-10 levels were found in AgP patients, carriers of IL-10 −1087GG genotype, and PBMCs stimulated by periodontal bacteria (p < 0.05, Pcorr > 0.05). We therefore conclude that a combination of genetic predisposition to the altered expression of IL-10 and the presence of specific periodontal bacteria may contribute to Th1/Th2 balance disruption and AgP development.
Pancreatic exocrine insufficiency and pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Background Pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer mortality. Most patients are diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer, either at locally advanced or metastatic stages, and have a high rate of malnutrition and weight loss which are associated with poor outcomes. Pancreatic exocrine insufficiency is one of the causes of malnutrition and weight loss in these patients. The prevalence and clinical consequences of pancreatic exocrine insufficiency in advanced pancreatic cancer are poorly investigated with heterogeneous results. We sought to determine the prevalence and clinical consequences of pancreatic exocrine insufficiency and the effect of pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer by systematic review and meta-analysis. Methods Scopus, Medline, and Embase were searched for cohort studies or randomised clinical trials reporting pancreatic exocrine insufficiency and/or the effect of pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. We considered pancreatic exocrine insufficiency as an abnormal result on direct and/or indirect pancreatic exocrine function tests. Pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy was evaluated by its effect on survival and quality of life in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. Results A total of 11 studies were included; seven studies reported the prevalence of pancreatic exocrine insufficiency and seven the effect of pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy in advanced pancreatic cancer. The pooled prevalence of pancreatic exocrine insufficiency in advanced pancreatic cancer was 72% (95% confidence interval: 55–86%), being significantly higher when tumours were located in the pancreatic head (relative risk = 3.36, 1.07–10.54; p = 0.04) six studies investigated the impact of pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy on survival/quality of life. Pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy was associated with 3.8 months (95% confidence interval: 1.37–6.19) survival benefit. Patients receiving pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy had a trend towards a better quality of life. Conclusions The prevalence of pancreatic exocrine insufficiency in advanced pancreatic cancer is substantial and its treatment can improve the outcomes of these patients.
Environmental Stresses and Conservation of Natural Populations

Assuming that the most important environmental change likely in the near future is a global temperature increase,the important conservation issue today is adaptation to extreme environmental stresses.Tropical rain forest species of Drosophila appear vulnerable to a temperature increase as small as 2˚C,at which stage there would be extinctions an replacements by more widespread species.Since Drosophila is an important indicator of habitat change,this conclusion applies to associated and co-evolved organisms.While thermal stress is a general agent of evolutionary change,laboratory selection experiments indicate that widening temperature limits is difficult;this difficulty means that a relatively small climatic shift could lead to species extinction
Interaction between biotic and abiotic factors determines tadpole survival rate under natural conditions

ABSTRACT The estimation of survival rates and the assessment of factors influencing variation in survival are essential to understanding population dynamics. However, in amphibians that alternate between an aquatic larval stage and a dispersing terrestrial stage, such understanding is limited due to the difficulty of estimating survival under field conditions. In this study, we obtained precise estimates of daily survival rates of tadpoles under field conditions using capture-mark-recapture (CMR) methods and assessed their temporal and spatial variation. Specifically, we assessed the effect of temperature, intra-specific density, and the presence of introduced bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana) on the survival rate of Pacific treefrog (Pseudacris regilla) tadpoles in southern vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Daily survival rates of tadpoles were relatively constant within a season and were also similar between years. Survival rates in different ponds varied from 95.4 to 87.9 %·d−1. Among-pond differences in survival were best explained by the interaction of temperature and tadpole density. At low tadpole densities, survival increased with temperature, but at high densities, survival decreased with increasing temperature. It was not possible to detect the effect of introduced bullfrogs over the variation accounted for by differences in temperature and intra-specific density. As in terrestrial vertebrates, biotic and abiotic factors interacted strongly to determine survival rates in these tadpoles.