Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Molecular Mechanism of Targeting the NF-κB Signaling Pathway to Modulate Mycoplasma Ovipneumoniae Infection in Sheep Based on Transcriptome Sequencing

Background: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play a key role in Mannan-binding lectin (MBL)-mediated resistance to Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae (MO) pneumonia (MP), by regulating the translation of mRNAs of target genes, thereby regulating the immune response. Sheep with different MBL genotypes have different plasma MBL levels, and show varied resistance to MP. Results: Using previously constructed high-throughput sequencing and transcriptome databases, miRNA-mRNA joint analysis showed that miR-509-5p is differentially expressed. miR-509-5p target genes were predicted using bioinformatic analysis, among which TRAF6 was selected. A TRAF6 dual luciferase reporter vector was co-transfected into 293T cells and sheep respiratory mucosal epithelial cells to detect and analyze changes in luciferase activity. qRT-PCR was used to analyze the effect of miR-509-5p on the expression and regulation of TRAF6 and other genes related to the NF-κB signaling pathway. miR-509-5p mimic and miR-509-5p mimic NC were transfected into susceptible sheep respiratory mucosal epithelial cells, for MO challenge infection experiments. The expression levels of cytokines, TRAF6 and other related genes in the NF-κB pathway were analyzed by ELISA and qRT-PCR. Conclusion: The results proved that miR-509-5p targets TRAF6 to affect the expression of downstream genes and cytokines, which negatively regulates the NF-κB pathway, thereby affecting the inflammatory response.
Brand-Trust Enhancing Sales Promotion through Online Shopping

How to cite: Imawan, A. , Ekasari, A. (2020). Brand-Trust Enhancing Sales Promotion through Online Shopping. International Journal of Digital Entrepreneurship and Business (IDEB), 1(1), 23 – 29. The research aims to determine the effects of sales promotion on online shopping moderated by brand trust. Meanwhile, data was directly collected through the distribution of questionnaires to 210 respondents. The sample was obtain using a purposive sampling technique. Furthermore, the hypotheses were tested using SEM analysis (Structural Equation Model). The results confirmed that the influence of sales promotion on shopping is moderated by brand trust. It also confirmed that the brand trust is a variable model that moderates the effect of sales promotion. Therefore, this study has implications for online retail managers in creating trust among consumers.
Simulation of Carbon Capture from Flue Gas of a Coal-fired Power Plant by a Three-bed Pressure Swing Adsorption Process

In order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, pressure swing adsorption (PSA) process was studied to capture carbon dioxide from flue gas in a coal-fired power plant. Pressure swing adsorption features its low energy consumption, low investment, and simple operation. This study aims to capture carbon dioxide from flue gas by PSA process for at least 85 % CO2 purity and with the other stream of more than 90 % N2 purity. To validate the accuracy of the PSA simulation program, the extended Langmuir-Freundlich equation was adopted to fit measured equilibrium data to describe the adsorption equilibrium of adsorbent zeolite 13X. Next, the simulation study used the linear driving force model and compared the results of breakthrough curves and desorption curves between experiments and simulation to verify the accuracy of the mass transfer coefficient kLDF value in linear driving force model. The agreement between experimental data and the simulation results is good. Further, the simulation was verified with the 100-hour cyclic-steady-state experiment of the 3-bed 9-step PSA process studied. Flue gas after desulphurisation and water removal (13.5 % CO2, 86.5 % N2) of subcritical 1 kW coal-fired power plant was taken as feed to the designed 3-bed 9-step PSA process. To find the optimal operating conditions, the central composite design (CCD) was used. After analysis, optimal operating conditions were obtained to produce a bottom product at 89.20 % CO2 purity with 88.20 % recovery, and a top product at 98.49 % N2 purity with 93.56 % recovery. The mechanical energy consumption was estimated to be 1.17 – 1.41 GJ/t-CO2.
The pedagogy of stylistics: Enhancing practice by flipping the classroom, using whiteboards and action research

This article describes how teaching in a second-year undergraduate stylistics workshop was transformed in my attempt to increase student attendance and engagement, and the strategies that were put in place to achieve this outcome. The personal account describes how I changed my teaching pedagogy to facilitate learning through collaborative strategies and how I evaluated the impact this had on student learning using action research (Bradbury, 2015 (ed) The SAGE Handbook of Action Research. London: SAGE) as the investigative approach. Using the model of Plan-Act-Observe-Reflect process (Kemmis and McTaggart, 1988 The Action Research Planner. 3rd edn. Geelong: Deakin University Press) and with data from a short questionnaire given to students, I was able to gain a deeper understanding of the value of the activities as perceived by students. The flipped classroom, where materials were given to students in advance to prepare, became critical for participation in the workshop and allowed for classroom time to be optimised for discussion and feedback. This article also presents photographs of the stylistic analysis produced on whiteboards as part of the collaborative activities with a summary of responses by students to the questionnaire which evaluated the impact that this approach to teaching had on their learning, confidence and preparation for the assessment.
Crack Detection from a Concrete Surface Image Based on Semantic Segmentation Using Deep Learning

Due to their wide applicability in inspection of concrete structures, there is considerable interest in the development of automated crack detection method by image processing. However, the accuracy of existing methods tends to be influenced by the existence of traces of tie-rod holes and formworks. In order to reduce these influences, this paper proposes a crack detection method based on semantic segmentation by deep learning. The accuracy of developed method is investigated by the photos of concrete structures with lots of adverse conditions including shadow and dirt, and it is found that not only the crack region could be detected but also the trace of tie-rod holes and formworks could be removed from the detection result with high accuracy. This paper is the English translation from the authors’ previous work [Yamane, T. and Chun, P., (2019). “Crack detection from an image of concrete surface based on semantic segmentation by deep learning. ” Journal of Structural Engineering , 65A, 130-138. (in Japanese)].
Tissue Clearing for the Visualization of Microplastics Ingested by Sea Urchins

Microplastics can be ingested by a broad range of organisms. Currently, most of the methods to detect ingested microplastics are labor-intensive or results in the loss of localization information. The recent advances in tissue clearing techniques have revolutionized visualization strategies for internal structures of biological specimens. In the present study, the observation of microplastic ingestion by sea urchins led us to develop a tissue clearing protocol for the highly calcified organism to visualize internal microplastics. To clear decalcified, fragile sea urchins, we combining hydrogel-embedding of CLARITY and delipidation/RI-matching of CUBIC. This hybrid approach allowed whole-mount tissue clearing of sea urchins and ingested colored microplastics were visualized. We also tested the possible application of Nile red staining for plastics in the combination of tissue clearing. Those data suggest that tissue clearing is a promising approach not only in anatomical but also in environmental sciences.
What is the Advantage for Bacteria to Use Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons as Carbon Source under Aerobic Condition?

The environment varies hugely and widely in terms of merely carbon source so there is the environment that possesses a mixture of carbon sources or the environment that possesses a single type of carbon source. Some bacteria have choices to use some kind of carbon for their growth. This mechanism is the carbon catabolite repression (CCR), and the preference order for utilization of carbon sources is usually organic acids, glucose, and aromatic substrates in bacteria with diauxic growth although not all bacteria in an environmental setting experience the diauxic growth. For some bacteria in the second case, they use polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) as their sole carbon and energy source, and these specially PAH-degrading bacteria do not utilize sugars. Therefore, an interesting question is what advantage for bacteria to use PAHs as sole carbon and energy source? This question is relatively easy to answer for the bacteria that have choices to decide their preference order on carbon sources because we can compare their metabolic pathways to find the advantage, but is not easy to answer for the bacteria that are specialized to utilize PAHs because we have yet to know why the other metabolic pathways do not function in these bacteria. In this review, we attempt to answer this question by reviewing literature in terms of oxygen consumption, number of reactions to generate pyruvate and ATP consumption with reference to glycolysis of glucose. Our analyses demonstrate the advantage of utilization of typical PAHs over glucose under aerobic condition. Received: August 31, 2020
OrtSuite – a flexible pipeline for annotation of ecosystem processes and prediction of putative microbial interactions

Background: The exponential increase in high-throughput sequencing data and the development of computational sciences and bioinformatics pipelines has advanced our understanding of microbial community composition and distribution in complex ecosystems. Despite these advances, the identification of microbial interactions from genomic data remains a major bottleneck. To address this challenge, we present OrtSuite, a flexible workflow to predict putative microbial interactions based on genomic content. Results: OrtSuite combines ortholog clustering strategies with genome annotation based on a user-defined set of functions allowing for hypothesis-driven data analysis. OrtSuit allows users to install and run all workflow components and analyze the generated outputs using a simple pipeline consisting of 23 bash commands and one R command. Annotation is based on a two-stage process. First, only a subset of sequences from each ortholog cluster are aligned to all sequences in the Ortholog-Reaction Association database (ORAdb). Next, all sequences from clusters that meet a user-defined identity threshold are aligned to all sequence sets in ORAdb to which they had a hit. This approach results in a decrease in time needed for functional annotation. Further, OrtSuit identifies putative interspecies interactions based on their individual genomic content based on constrains given by the users. Additional control is afforded to the user at several stages of the workflow: 1) The construction of ORAdb only needs to be performed once for each specific process also allowing manual curation; 2) The identity and sequence similarity thresholds used during the annotation stage can be adjusted; and 3) Constraints related to pathway reaction composition and known species contributions to ecosystem processes can be defined. Conclusions: OrtSuit is an easy to use workflow that allows for rapid functional annotation based on a user curated database. Further, this novel workflow allows the identification of interspecies interactions through user-defined constrains. Due to its low computational demands, for small datasets (e.g. maximum 100 genomes) OrtSuit can run on a personal computer. For larger datasets (> 100 genomes), we suggest the use of computer clusters. OrtSuit is an open-source software available at https://github.com/mdsufz/OrtSuit .
Growth and Characterization of Silicon-Based Dielectrics using Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition

CARBAUGH, DANIEL J., M.S., August 2014, Electrical Engineering Growth and Characterization of Silicon-Based Dielectrics using Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition Director of Thesis: Savas Kaya Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) is widely used in industry for its low temperature growth capability, excellent conformity (step coverage) and higher deposition rates. Silicon dioxide (SiO2), silicon nitride (Si3N4) and silicon oxynitride (SiOxNy) are common dielectrics deposited using PECVD and they will be the main focus of this thesis. These common dielectrics are used in a range of different applications, from optical waveguides to photovoltaic passivation layers and from transistor fabrication to micro electromechanical systems (MEMS) devices. PECVD system parameters (temperature, pressure, power, and gas ratio) are methodically varied and the resulting thin films are characterized. This requires many different metrology techniques such as: atomic force microscopy (AFM), ellipsometry, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). Optical and structural properties of the resulting thin films are analyzed via a careful design of experiments to determine which system parameter has the most significant effect and to which extent
Application of 1H Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy as Spirits Screener for Quality and Authenticity Control

Due to legal regulations, the rise of globalised (online) commerce and the need for public health protection, the analysis of spirits (alcoholic beverages > 15 % vol) is a task with growing importance for governmental and commercial laboratories. In this article a newly developed method using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy for the simultaneous determination of 15 substances relevant for the quality and authenticity assessment of spirits is described. The new method starts with a simple and rapid sample preparation and does not need an internal standard. For each sample a group of 1H-NMR spectra is recorded, among them a 2D spectrum for analyte identification and 1D spectra with suppression of solvent signals for quantification. Using the Pulse Length Based Concentration Determination (PULCON) method, concentrations are calculated from curve fits of the characteristic signals for each analyte. The optimisation of the spectra, their evaluation and the transfer of the results are done fully automatically. Glucose, fructose, sucrose, acetic acid, citric acid, formic acid, ethyl acetate, ethyl lactate, acetaldehyde, ethanol, methanol, n-propanol, isobutanol, isopentanol, 2-phenylethanol and 5-(hydroxymethyl)furfural (HMF) can be quantified with an overall accuracy better than 8 %. This new NMR-based targeted quantification method enables the simultaneous and efficient quantification of relevant spirits ingredients in their typical concentration ranges in one process with good accuracy. It has proven to be a reliable method for all kinds of spirits in routine food control.
Design of active ankle foot orthotics for gait assistance and fall prevention

Certain groups of people are more susceptible to experience fall than others, one of which being stroke survivors. Although the risk of stroke increases with age, a stroke can occur at any age, and the most common type of stroke inhibits blood flow to the brain.2 The brain is responsible for sending motor signals to muscles through the nervous system required for muscle movement. After a stroke, these signals get affected and can delay muscle, both kinetic and kinematic responses to perturbation.1 Partial or complete loss of muscle activity (paresis) in the lower limb or limbs can result in some cases. This loss of muscle activity leads to motor-issues such as Drop foot (i.e. inability to lift the impaired foot during swing phase of gait) or Spasticity (i.e. stiffness and tightening of muscles) of lower limb muscles. These issues lead to the loss of postural control3 increasing fall risk among those affected. Stroke is not uncommon either, with around 795,000 people in the United States suffering from stroke annually according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Falls are the common complaints that individuals with such impairment have during or after their rehabilitation phase. Statistics on after stroke falls4 reveal that 14%-65% patients fall during hospitalization and between 37%-73% fall during the first 6 months of discharge from hospital. The most commonly prescribed clinical remedy provided to tackle drop foot issue and improper gait is passive thermoplastic Ankle Foot Orthosis (AFO) that is designed to lock the paretic ankle joint at a certain angle, facilitate foot clearance during swing phase, ankle stability during stance phase and heel strike. While there are reported improvements of gait velocity, stride length and cadence(steps/min) shown after the use of such AFOs, studies5 show that continual constraints in the ankle joint adversely affects the compensatory stepping response, forward propulsion and proprioceptive sensory information. The primary contributor to the kinetic energy and the speed of the stepping leg is forward propulsion force which is generated by the plantar flexor muscles. Locking the ankle joint using rigid AFOs lead to impeded forward propulsion due to restricted plantar flexion and that can cause inhibited compensatory stepping response, inadequate foot clearance and improper gait. Therefore, there is a need for an Active Ankle Foot Orthotics (AAFO) which can deliver powered push off for a stronger plantar flexion, locking of the ankle joint during swing phase to prevent dragging of the paretic foot and a stable heel strike.
Observation of high Tc one dimensional superconductivity in 4 angstrom carbon nanotube arrays

The only known approach to fabricate large, uniform arrays of 4-A single wall carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) is by using zeolite crystals as the template, in which the nanotubes are formed by chemical vapor deposition inside the linear channels of the AlPO4-5 (AFI for short) zeolite. However, up to now the pore filling factor has been very low, as evidenced by the weight percentage of carbon in thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA) measurements. In this work, we show that by using a new, micro-platelet AFI crystals as the template, combined with the use of a new CVD process, we can increase the TGA result to 22.5wt%, which translates to a pore filling factor of 91%. We have observed one dimensional (1D) superconductivity in such samples. The temperature dependence of resistance shows a smooth decreasing trend below 60 K, and the differential resistance displays a gap that disappears above the 1D superconducting initiation temperature. The observed behaviour is shown to agree very well with the theoretical predicti.
The Effect of Aerobic Exercise on Pulmonary Function and Aerobic Capacity in Sedentary Men

Aim: The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of an 8-week aerobic exercise program on the respiratory function and aerobic capacity of sedentary men. Methods: A total of 24 male sedentary individuals between 18-23 years who were living in the Gaziantep, participated in the present study voluntarily. Participants were randomly divided into two groups as experimental group (n=12, age: 21.86±2.78 years) and control group (n=12, age: 22.51±2.32 years). The experimental group participated in the aerobic exercise program for three days per week for eight weeks. No exercise program was administered to the control group. Before and after the exercise program, body weight (BW), body mass index (BMI), body fat percentage (BFP), resting heart rate (RHR), maximal oxygen consumption (VO2max), vital capacity (VC), forced vital capacity (FVC), forced expiratory volume (FEV1), forced expiratory rate (FEV1/FVC %) and maximal voluntary ventilation (MVV) measurements were performed. Respiratory parameters were measured with the M.E. C. The Pocket Spiro USB-100 device. The VO2max was measured with the MEC PFT ergo-spirometer system. Body weight and height were measured using the N.A. N. device. Paired Sample t test was used for intra-group comparison and Independent Sample t test was used for inter-group comparison for statistical analysis of the data. The level of significance was determined as p<0.05. Results: There were statistically significant improvements (p<0.05) in the BW, BMI, BFP, RHR, VO2max, VC, FVC, FEV1, FEV1/FVC % and MVV values of the experimental group. The weight and BMI values of the control group were found significant (p<0.05). There was no significance in the other data. There were statistically significant differences between the groups in favor of the experimental group, in the assessments of BMI, BFP, RHR, VO2max, VC, FVC, FEV1, FEV1/FVC % and MVV values (p<0.05). Conclusion: As a result, it is considered that the aerobic exercise program which was applied to the sedentary individuals has a positive effect on the respiratory functions and aerobic capacity values. It can be said that regular and planned aerobic exercises will affect respiratory functions and aerobic capacity positively.
(Mis)Recognizing Undocumented Students & Families in a Rural School

ABSTRACT School and educator responses to the immigration policy environment may depend on what educators know about who is in their school community. This paper examines whether and how educators in a rural Midwestern community recognize undocumented and mixed-legal status students in their school community. We utilize concepts from recognition theory to understand the mechanisms that may have facilitated or hindered an elementary school principal and two teams of 3rd and 4th grade teachers’ recognition. The findings present a picture of a school in the nascent stages of recognizing how the sociopolitical climate and enforcement of immigration law powerfully impact children and families.
Economic Uncertainty: Mispricing and Ambiguity Premium

We study the effect of economic uncertainty exposure (EUE) on cross-sectional return differentiating the mispricing from ambiguity-premium effects. Conditional on a common mispricing index, we find that EUE induces disagreement which amplifies mispricing. The highest EUE quintile produces an annualized mispricing alpha of 9%, more than double the unconditional mispricing effect. An ambiguity premium of 4.2% alpha is documented in the “non-mispricing” quintile. The EUE induced mispricing effect is different from existing limits of arbitrage explanations, such as idiosyncratic risk. The ambiguity premium is a new source of the risk premium that is robust to the latest risk models.
Power Inequality in Inter-municipal Structures: The Simulated Impact of a Reform in the Case of the Municipalities in Western France

This paper deals with an important issue concerning democratic government: how delegates are to be allocated among jurisdictions in a federal system. More precisely, we analyze the effect of the 2010 inter-municipal reform in France, which changed the allocation of delegates between municipalities within their inter-communal structures. Using the theory of power indices and a unique set of data gathering 377 inter-municipal structures for three French regions, we compare the fairness of the distribution of municipal delegates prior to the 2010 reform to that of the new distribution, by simulating the impact of the 2010 reform. We show that this inter-communal reform may have increased power inequalities among municipalities belonging to the same inter-communal structure.