Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
University of Commensal-derived OMVs elicit a mild proinflammatory response in intestinal epithelial cells

Under normal physiological conditions, the intestinal immunity remains largely 30 hyporesponsive to the commensal microbiota, yet also retains the inherent ability to rapidly 31 respond to pathogenic antigens. However, immunomodulatory activities of extracellular 32 products from commensal bacteria have been little studied, with previous investigations 33 generally utilising the live bacterium to study microbiota-epithelial interactions. In this study, 34 we demonstrate that extracellular products of a commensal bacterium, Escherichia coli C25, 35 elicit a moderate release of proinflammatory IL-8 and stimulate transcriptional up-regulation 36 of Toll-like receptors (TLRs) in intestinal epithelial cell lines, HT29-19A and Caco-2. 37 Additionally, we show that removal of outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) reduces the 38 proinflammatory effect of secreted products from E. coli C25. Furthermore, we show that 39 isolated OMVs have a dose-dependent proinflammatory effect on IECs. Interestingly, a 40 relatively high concentration (40 µg/ml protein) of OMVs had no significant regulatory 41 effects on TLR mRNA expression in both cell lines. Finally, we also demonstrate a that pre- 42 incubation with E. coli C25-derived OMVs subsequently inhibited the internalisation of the 43 bacterium itself in both cell lines. Taken together, our results suggest that commensal-derived 44 extracellular products, in particular OMVs, could significantly contribute to intestinal 45 homeostasis. We also demonstrate a unique interaction between commensal-derived OMVs 46 and host cells. Also, we show that the naturally secreted products present in cell- free supernatant from cultures of E. coli C25 can induce a modest up-regulation of the major
Carbon Nanotubes: A Review of Chemistry Principles and Reactions

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) exhibit excellent mechanical, electrical and magnetic properties as well as nanometer scale diameter and high aspect ratio, which make CNTs an ideal reinforcing agent. In this paper, discussions on structure, properties, covalent and noncovalent functionalization, and application of chemistry functionalized carbon nanotubes are included.
Aerobic Liquid‐Phase Oxidation of Ethylbenzene to Acetophenone Catalyzed by Carbon Nanotubes

It was reported for the first time that carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as metal‐free catalyst exhibited an excellent activity in the selective oxidation of ethylbenzene (EB) to acetophenone (AcPO) in the liquid‐phase with oxygen as the oxidant. The reasonable mechanism responsible for the liquid‐phase oxidation of EB on CNTs was proposed. The results demonstrated that the CNTs played an important role in the decomposition of 1‐phenylethyl hydroperoxide (PEHP) and contributed to the production of AcPO, owing to π–π interactions between the radical species and peroxides and the graphene sheets of the CNTs. Surface carboxylic groups of the CNTs were unfavorable to EB oxidation. Adsorption energies of the radical species and peroxides on pristine and modified CNTs with carboxylic groups were calculated by DFT. These theoretical calculations were well consistent with the experimental results, and also supported the presented mechanistic pathway of EB oxidation on CNTs. This study not only presents a facile and effective alternative to cobalt‐based catalysts for the selective oxidation of EB to AcPO but also gives new insight into the effect of surface structures on carbon‐catalyzed reactions, and further pushes forward the research on carbon catalysis.
Social Media and Newsroom Production Decisions

Social media affects not only the way we consume news, but also the way news is pro- duced, including by traditional media outlets. In this paper, we study the propagation of information from social media to mainstream media, and investigate whether news ed- itors are influenced in their editorial decisions by stories popularity on social media. To do so, we build a novel dataset including a representative sample of all tweets produced in French between July 2018 and July 2019 (1.8 billion tweets, around 70% of all tweets in French during the period) and the content published online by about 200 mainstream media during the same time period, and develop novel algorithms to identify and link events on social and mainstream media. To isolate the causal impact of popularity, we rely on the structure of the Twitter network and propose a new instrument based on the interaction between measures of user centrality and news pressure at the time of the event. We show that story popularity has a positive effect on media coverage, and that this effect varies depending on media outlets’ characteristics. These findings shed a new light on our understanding of how editors decide on the coverage for stories, and question the welfare effects of social media.
EffEct of Loading ratE on mEchanicaL charactEristics of whEat and ricE straw

ChAndio, F. A. , C. Yi, A. A. TAgAr, i. A. MAri, C. ArslAn, d. M. Cuong and h. FAng, 2013. Effect of loading rate on mechanical characteristics of wheat and rice straw. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 19: 1452-1458 This study was designed to evaluate mechanical characteristics of wheat and rice straw keeping in view the importance of straw application in the field. Technical data about mechanical properties of straw such as bending strength shearing energy and young's modulus still need to update. These properties were evaluated on three internodes positions (n1, n2 and n3) down from ear at average moisture content of 18.10%. Three loading rates (15, 20 and 25 mm min-1) were employed by TMSPro machine with computer program for data acquisition and a steel plate was fabricated for holding straw at different internode’s position. some other physical parameters like length, diameter and cross sectional area were also measured for the determination of mechanical properties. Results showed that when loading rate increased, bending strength of wheat and rice straw decreased from 23.93 to 7.49 and 15.99 to 7.17 MPa respectively, shearing energy increased from 124.28 to 265.44 and 111.69 to 215.44 mJ respectively, and young’s modulus varied from 1.20 to 0.22 and 0.72 to 0.20 GPa respectively. The bending strength and young’s Modulus of wheat straw were significantly higher (p<0.05) than those of rice straw whereas the shearing energy had significantly effect of loading rate on rice and wheat straw (p<0.01). It was concluded that more energy can be saved by harvesting and threshing machines with decreasing the loading rate on wheat and rice straw toward the first, second and third internode’s positions which will be helpful in designing of wheat and rice straw equipment, harvesting machines and tillage implements.
Post-Quantum Cryptography with Contemporary Co-Processors: Beyond Kronecker, Schönhage-Strassen & Nussbaumer

There are currently over 30 billion IoT (Internet of Things) devices installed worldwide. To secure these devices from various threats one often relies on public-key cryptographic primitives whose operations can be costly to compute on resource-constrained IoT devices. To support such operations these devices often include a dedicated co-processor for cryptographic procedures, typically in the form of a big integer arithmetic unit. Such existing arithmetic co-processors do not offer the functionality that is expected by upcoming post-quantum cryptographic primitives. Regardless, contemporary systems may exist in the ﬁeld for many years to come. In this paper we propose the Kronecker + algorithm for polynomial multiplication in rings of the form Z [ X ] / ( X n + 1 ) : the arithmetic foundation of many lattice-based cryptographic schemes. We discuss how Kronecker + allows for re-use of existing co-processors for post-quantum cryptography, and in particular directly applies to the various ﬁnalists in the post-quantum standardization effort led by NIST. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm in practice by in-tegrating Kronecker + into Saber: one of the ﬁnalists in the ongoing NIST standardization effort. On our target platform, a RV32IMC with access to a dedicated arithmetic co-processor designed to accelerate RSA and ECC, Kronecker + performs the matrix multiplication 2.8 times faster than regular Kronecker substitution and 1.7 times faster than Harvey’s negated-evaluation-points method.
Influencia de las competencias emprendedoras en el rendimiento de la pequeña empresa

This research studies the influence of entrepreneurial competencies on the performance of small enterprises by building a causal model using data obtained from Spanish entrepreneurs. In this model entrepreneurs’ competencies influence firm performance, competitive scope, and organisational capability in a direct or indirect way are explained. We have found support for most of our hypotheses. Results indicate that entrepreneurial competence plays an influential role in organisational capability and competitive scope, and also has a direct effect on firm performance. The use of organisational capabilities affects positively the firm performance and it partially mediates the relationship between entrepreneurial competence and firm performance. Although competitive scope is not significantly related to business growth, it is a strong predictor of other performance dimensions, such as efficiency and relative performance. Organisational capability is a strong predictor of competitive scope. The implications and future research directions are discussed.
Estimating maximum fine-fraction organic carbon in UK grasslands

Abstract. Soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration across agroecosystems worldwide can contribute to mitigate the effects of climate change by reducing levels of atmospheric CO2. Stabilisation of organic carbon (OC) in the fine soil fraction (< 20 µm) is considered an important long-term store of SOC, and the saturation deficit (difference between measured OC and estimated maximum OC in the fine fraction) is frequently used to assess SOC sequestration potential following the linear regression equation developed by Hassink (1997). However, this approach is often taken without any assessment of the fit of the equation to the soils being studied. The statistical limitations of linear regression have previously been noted, giving rise to the proposed use of boundary line (BL) analysis and quantile regression (QR) to provide more robust estimates of maximum SOC stabilisation. The objectives of this work were to assess the suitability of the Hassink (1997) equation to estimate maximum fine-fraction OC in UK grassland soils of varying sward ages and to evaluate the linear regression, boundary line and quantile regression methods to estimate maximum fine-fraction OC. A chronosequence of 10 grasslands was sampled, in order to assess the relationship between sward age (time since the last reseeding event) and the measured and predicted maximum fine-fraction OC. Significantly different regression equations show that the Hassink (1997) equation does not accurately reflect maximum fine-fraction OC in UK grasslands when determined using the proportion of the fine soil fraction (< 20 µm, %) and measured fine-fraction OC (g C per kg soil). The QR estimate of maximum SOC stabilisation was almost double that of the linear regression and BL analysis (0.89 ± 0.074, 0.43 ± 0.017 and 0.57 ± 0.052 g C per kg soil, respectively). Sward age had an inconsistent effect on the measured variables and potential maximum fine-fraction OC. Fine-fraction OC across the grasslands made up 4.5 % to 55.9 % of total SOC, implying that there may be either high potential for additional C sequestration in the fine fraction of these soils or that protection in aggregates is predominant in these grassland soils. This work highlights the need to ensure that methods used to predict maximum fine-fraction OC reflect the soil in situ, resulting in more accurate assessments of carbon sequestration potential.
Cryptanalysis of the generalised Legendre pseudorandom function

Linear Legendre pseudorandom functions were introduced in 1988 by Damgård, and higher degree gen-eralisations were introduced by Russell and Shparlinski in 2004. We present new key recovery methods that improve the state of the art for both cases. For degree r ≥ 3 we give an attack that runs in time O ( p r − 3 ) after O ( p 3 ) precomputation for the most relevant high degree case; it is based on the action of the group of Möbius transformations on degree r polynomials. For r < 3 we give an O ( p r / 2 ) attack with O ( p r / 4 ) oracle queries. In the linear case we recovered the keys for the 64, 74 and 84-bit prime Ethereum challenges, being the ﬁrst to solve the 84-bit case.
TOXICITY AND BIOCHEMICAL EFFECT OF SOME PLANT EXTRACTS AGAINST THE TWO-SPOTTED SPIDER MITE TETRANYCHUS

The two spotted spider mite Tetranychus urticae Koch is a very destructive pest causing considerable loss to crops. Adult females were treated for seven days, under laboratory conditions, with three acetone crude extracts to evaluate their acute effects (during 7days after treatment) and it –s efficacy as natural pesticides. The used plant extracts were lupine (Lupinus termis), lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus) and Chilli pepper (Capsicum baccatum). The results indicated that lupine exhibited the highest toxic action against adult females followed by lemongrass and chili pepper. Bioassay testes using leaf dipping technique indicated that LC50 of lupine, lemon grass and chili pepper was 1.44, 4.71 and 5.255 gm%, respectively. Lupine and lemongrass extracts were selected to test their acute effects against T. urticae adult females after 24, 48 and 72 hrs post treatment. Treatment of mites by LC50 of lupine, lemongrass crude extracts led proteins to be significantly reduced after 24 hrs as compared with control. The decrease was continued after 72 hrs post treatment. Carbohydrates as the main energy source were, more or less, affected by the same manner as proteins, while there was slightly reduction in lipids.
Stochastic reduced-order model for an automotive vehicle in presence of numerous local elastic modes in the low-frequency range.

This paper is devoted to the construction of a stochastic reduced-order model for dynamical structures having a high modal density in the low-frequency range, such as an automotive vehicle. This type of structure is characterized by the fact that it exhibits, in the low-frequency range, not only the classical global elastic modes but also numerous local elastic modes which cannot easily be separated from the global elastic modes. To solve this difﬁcult problem, an approach has recently been proposed for constructing a reduced-order computational dynamical model adapted to the low-frequency range. First, the domain of the structure is decomposed into subdomains. Then an adapted generalized eigenvalue problem is constructed using such a decomposition and allows an adapted vector basis of the global displacements space to be computed. This basis is then used to construct the reduced-order model. Model uncertainties induced by modeling errors in the computational model are taken into account using the nonparametric probabilistic approach. The methodology is applied on a complex computational model of an automotive vehicle.
Immunogenicity and safety levels of pandemic influenza H7N9 vaccines in healthy individuals via meta-analysis

Objective: The aim of the current study was to evaluate immunogenicity and safety levels of human H7N9 influenza vaccines via meta-analysis. Methods: Searches were conducted in PubMed, Cochrane Library, ClinicalTrials.gov, and EMBASE databases. The purpose was to collect and perform meta-analysis of related randomized clinical trial (RCT) data concerning safety and immunogenicity levels of human H7N9 vaccines, published from the establishment of the database to September 2019, according to inclusion and exclusion criteria. Results: For non-adjuvanted human H7N9 vaccines, high doses were shown to induce limited immunogenicity. For adjuvanted human H7N9 vaccines, AS03, MF59, ISCOMATRIX, and Al (OH)3 adjuvants, used in human H7N9 vaccines, can effectively increase immune response. Moreover, non-aluminum adjuvants performed better when using the same vaccine dosage. However, aluminum adjuvants demonstrated safety advantages in H7N9 adjuvants. Conclusion: Two doses of H7N9 vaccines, combined with an adjuvant, can achieve better immune effects. Adjuvanted H7N9 vaccines may ultimately be the best choice for pandemic H7N9 influenza.
Effect of scattering rods in the frequency response of photonic crystal demultiplexers

Design and simulation of a novel structure for WDM communication demultiplexerhas been done. In this work, by using X-shaped ring resonators in a 2-D photonic crystal structure, the desired wavelengths for communication systems could be selected and simulations show that its important characteristics such as crosstalk, channel spacing and quality factor are appropriate for optical communication applications. Scattering rods that used in the rings play very important role in the central wavelength of the output channels in proposed demultiplexer. Minimum crosstalk value is -16 dB and maximum of it is -11 dB. In addition, the efficiency of the designed demultiplexer is enough for communication systems.
PHOSPHORUS UPTAKE AND USE EFFICIENCY IN FIELD CROPS

Phosphorus (P) is required by crop plants for many physiological and biochemical functions. Knowledge of phosphorus uptake and its use by crop plants is essential for adequate management of this essential nutrient. A field experiment was conducted during four consecutive years to determine P uptake and use efficiency by upland rice, dry bean, corn and soybean grown in rotation on a Brazilian Oxisol. Plant samples were taken at different growth stages during the growth cycle of each crop for phosphorus analysis. Phosphorus concentration (content per unit dry matter) significantly decreased in a quadratic fashion with the advancement of plant age in four crop species. Phosphorus concentration was higher in legumes compared to cereals. Phosphorus uptake in shoot, however, significantly increased in an exponential quadratic fashion with the advancement of plant age of crop species. At harvest, P uptake was higher in grain compared to shoot, indicating importance of this element in improving crop yields. Phosphorus use efficiency (grain or straw yield per unit P uptake) was higher in cereals compared to legumes. The P use efficiency for grain production was 465 kg kg−1 for upland rice, 492 kg kg−1 for corn, 229 kg kg−1 for dry bean and 280 kg kg−1 for soybean. The higher P use efficiency in cereals was associated with higher yield of cereals compared to legume species.
Complex Flow and Gas-Phase Reactions in a Horizontal Reactor for GaN Metalorganic Vapor Phase Epitaxy

Three-dimensional fluid simulations are performed in a horizontal reactor for GaN epitaxy. Attention is paid to the effect of gas flow velocity at the inlet and gas pressure. It is found that the gas flow rate rather than the velocity or the pressure is a key parameter which controls the spatial distribution of streamlines, temperature and gas-phase species. As the gas flow rate increases, the size of return-flow or flow-separation appearing near the gas entrance of the expansion region with a tapering angle increases. This causes velocity peaking near the reactor symmetry plane and complicated transport of gas-phase species along the streamlines of the return-flow. If an optimum gas flow rate which gives minimum return-flow and uniform macroscopic spatial distribution for flow pattern and gas-phase species can be determined, then it is desirable to change the gas flow velocity and the gas pressure on the condition that the gas flow rate is maintained.
Influence of Moody’s Rating Downgrade and Upgrade on the U.S. Equity Market: A Case Study of IBM, Ford, and Boeing

The main purpose of my thesis is to determine the current influence of credit rating downgrades and upgrades made by Moody's on the U.S. equity market. Previous literature has already talked about the effect of credit ratings on stock or bond price, however, my paper is different from previous works. I will focus on a single nationally recognized credit rating organization; I will talk about the both downgrade effect and the upgrade effect; I will do a case study of the credit rating effect on Ford, IBM, and Boeing. The results indicates that overall, Moody’s rating announcements have an important effect on the stock abnormal returns as expected with more significant and sizable effect for upgrades based on the case study of three companies. In the future research it would be interesting to collect more data for companies in various industries and see if the effect is different. Influence of Moody’s Rating Downgrade and Upgrade on the U.S. Equity Market: A Case Study of IBM, Ford, and Boeing 3
Heart Diseases Diagnose via Artificial Intelligence-Powered Mobile Application

One of the oldest and common methods of diagnosing heart abnormalities is auscultation. Even for experienced medical doctors, it is not an easy task to detect abnormal patterns in the heart sounds. Most of the digital stethoscopes are now capable of recording and transferring the heart sounds. Moreover, it is proven that auscultation records can be classified as healthy or unhealthy via artificial intelligence techniques. In this work, an artificial intelligence-powered mobile application that works in a connectionless fashion is presented. According to the clinical experiments, the mobile application can detect heart abnormalities with approximately 92% accuracy which is comparable if not better than humans since only a small number of well-trained cardiologists can analyze auscultation records better than artificial intelligence. Using the diagnostic ability of artificial intelligence in a mobile application would change the classical way of auscultation for heart disease diagnosis.
Associations between DPP9 expression, survival and gene expression signature in human hepatocellular carcinoma: Comprehensive in silico analyses

Dipeptidyl peptidase (DPP) 9, DPP8, DPP4and fibroblast activation protein (FAP) are the four enzymatically active members of the S9b protease family1,21. Associations of DPP9 or DPP8 with human liver cancer have not been examined. Genome‐wide association studies have found that intronic single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in DPP9 are associated with severe COVID‐19 and lung fibrosis3. However, exonic SNPs in DPP9 and DPP9 loss of function (LoF) variants have not been explored.