Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Glucosinolates, Glycosidically Bound Volatiles and Antimicrobial Activity of Brassica oleraceae Var. Botrytis, (Soultany Cultivar)

Background: Egyptian cauliflower Brassica oleracea , L. var. Botrytis L. Soultany cultivar, is an important edible plant in Mediterranean countries. Only a few researches were focused on antimicrobial activity of its volatiles and glucosinolates. Objective: To evaluate the antimicrobial activity of volatiles and glucosinolates of Egyptian Cauliflower and identify them by GC/MS and HPLC/MS designs. Materials and Methods: The semi-volatile and volatile constituents of were extracted by hydrodistillation from leaves, stems and inflorescences, using a Likens –Nickerson-type apparatus. The extracts from fresh and frozen vegetables were investigated by GC/MS and HPLC/MS. the volatile samples containing glucosinolate degradation products were evaluated for antimicrobial activity using the disc diffusion method. Results: From the fresh leaves extract, a total of 49 compounds were identified, representing 98.79% of the oil. The major constituent was found to be hex-3(Z)-enol (18.86%). From fresh disrupted inflorescence tissues of Egyptian cauliflower 45 compounds were detected, representing 93.37% of the extract. Nonacosane and 11-methoxy benz(a)anthracene-7,12-dione were identified as major constituents of the hydrodistillation products, representing, respectively, 17.7 and 8.31% of the volatiles. From frozen inflorescence tissues, dimethyl trisulfide and butylated hydroxy toluene were detected as predominant components representing 15.88 and 9.69% respectively. In the latter, hex-3(Z)-enol was not found to be the major constituent as happened in fresh leaves, but representing 3.88%. From fresh stem tissues, dimethyl trisulphide was detected as major constituent representing a percentage (24.06%) more than present in frozen inflorescence tissues. Twenty two compounds were identified by triple quad HPLC/MS. Volatile samples expressed a wide range of growth inhibition activity against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria and fungi, showing the highest inhibitory effects against E . coli and K. pneumonia strains . Conclusion: Hydrodistilled compounds present in the stems, leaves and inflorescence tissues of this cultivar has a highly promising antimicrobial activity. Keywords: Cauliflower, Brassica oleraceae , Glucosinolates, GC/MS, HPLC/MS, Antimicrobial activity.
ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT BALANCE AND THE CURRENT ACCOUNT: FISCAL CONSOLIDATION IN OPEN ECONOMIES

The relationship between fiscal policy and international trade, and their implications on economic growth, has not been widely discussed. The effects of fiscal policy on growth is a classical topic in economics, and we also can find research relating external openness and economic growth; but the extent to which fiscal policies could affect international trade policies, competitiveness and the trade balance is a question that has not yet been answered by the literature. The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between the government balance and the current account in the scenario of a monetary union where fiscal consolidation is constrained by the fiscal discipline required by supranational agreements.
Post-translational epigenetics: PRMT7 regulates RNA-binding capacity and protein stability to control Leishmania parasite virulence

RNA binding proteins (RBPs) are the primary gene regulators in kinetoplastids as transcriptional control is nearly absent, making Leishmania an exceptional model for investigating methylation of non-histone substrates. Arginine methylation is an evolutionarily conserved protein modification catalyzed by Protein aRginine MethylTransferases (PRMTs). The chromatin modifier PRMT7 is the only Type III PRMT found in higher eukaryotes and a restricted number of unicellular eukaryotes. In Leishmania major, PRMT7 is a cytoplasmic protein implicit in pathogenesis with unknown substrates. Using comparative methyl-SILAC proteomics for the first time in protozoa, we identified 40 putative targets, including 17 RBPs hypomethylated upon PRMT7 knockout. PRMT7 can modify Alba3 and RBP16 trans-regulators (mammalian RPP25 and YBX2 homologs, respectively) as direct substrates in vitro. The absence of PRMT7 levels in vivo selectively reduces Alba3 mRNA-binding capacity to specific target transcripts and can impact the relative stability of RBP16 in the cytoplasm. RNA immunoprecipitation analyses demonstrate PRMT7-dependent methylation promotes Alba3 association with select target transcripts and stability of δ-amastin surface antigen. These results highlight a novel role for PRMT7-mediated arginine methylation upon RBP substrates, suggesting a regulatory pathway controlling gene expression and virulence in Leishmania. This work introduces Leishmania PRMTs as epigenetic regulators of mRNA metabolism with mechanistic insight into the functional manipulation of RBPs by methylation.
Diagnosing the Causes of Failure in the Construction Sector Using Root Cause Analysis Technique

The aim of this study is identifying and diagnosing the causes of construction project failure by using different project management process groups. These groups were initiation process group, planning process group, design process group, contract process group, executing and monitoring process group, and close process group. Also, the relative importance of the causes of construction project failure was investigated. Three techniques were used in this study: Ishikawa diagrams, Pareto diagrams, and 5-why techniques. The results were generally identified and diagnosed thirty-five causes of the construction project failure; however, only twenty-three of the causes were the most important. The majority of causes (thirteen causes) were obtained by using executing and monitoring project management process group. Seven causes were obtained by using contract project management process group. In addition, fewer causes (only three causes) were obtained by using initiation project management process group.
Women in agricultural production and food security in rural Cameroon

*Corresponding Author Email: tambi2015@yahoo.co.uk This study attempts to investigate the effects of Women in Agricultural Production on Food Security in Rural Cameroon. Women in agriculture are principally in charge of the cultivation of basic food crops; however, the burden of this function on women is so heavy that they need to be medically and agriculturally empowered though this has not been the case in most rural Cameroon. As a step to solving this problem, we have as objectives: (a) to explore the determinants of Women in Agricultural Production, (b) examined the contribution of women working in Agriculture on food security in rural Cameroon and (c) derived policy implications on the basis of our analysis. To tackle these objectives, use is made of instrumental variable (2SLS) model. Empirical results are based on 2011 Demographic and Health survey collected by the government’s statistics office and Department of statistics of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. Results show that women in agricultural production are associated positively with food security, overall. Other variables that are associated significantly with food security in rural Cameroon are maternal participation in the labour market, mother’s education, family size and father’s presence in the household. The determinants of women in agricultural production include: mother’s age, health of status of mothers, married women place of residence and farm size respectively. In terms of policy, Women in Agricultural Production are indeed working machine in terms of crop production (food security) in Cameroon, like any other machine, they need fuel to function well. The decision makers must put at the top of their agenda women empowerment and support programs, as well as medical services at the disposal of women to permit them do their job effectively. This is a gateway towards ameliorating standards of living among women and poverty alleviation in rural households.
Satellite-Derived Ocean Thermal Structure for the North Atlantic Hurricane Season

This paper describes a new model (method) called Satellite-derived North Atlantic Profiles (SNAP) that seeks to provide a high-resolution, near-real-time ocean thermal field to aid tropical cyclone (TC) forecasting. Using about 139 000 observed temperature profiles, a spatially dependent regression model is developed for the North Atlantic Ocean during hurricane season. A new step introduced in this work is that the daily mixed layer depth is derived from the output of a one-dimensional Price–Weller–Pinkel ocean mixed layer model with time-dependent surface forcing. The accuracy of SNAP is assessed by comparison to 19 076 independent Argo profiles from the hurricane seasons of 2011 and 2013. The rms differences of the SNAP-estimated isotherm depths are found to be 10– 25m for upper thermocline isotherms (298–198C), 35–55m for middle isotherms (188–78C), and 60–100m for lower isotherms (68–48C). The primary error sources include uncertainty of sea surface height anomaly (SSHA), high-frequency fluctuations of isotherm depths, salinity effects, and the barotropic component of SSHA. These account for roughly 29%, 25%, 19%, and 10% of the estimation error, respectively. The rms differences of TC-related ocean parameters, upper-ocean heat content, and averaged temperature of the upper 100m, are ;10 kJ cm and ;0.88C, respectively, over the North Atlantic basin. These errors are typical also of the open ocean underlying the majority of TC tracks. Errors are somewhat larger over regions of greatest mesoscale variability (i.e., the Gulf Stream and the Loop Current within the Gulf of Mexico).
Approaches and Methodologies in the Social Sciences: Case studies and process tracing: theories and practices

Introduction A significant part of what we know about the social and political world comes from case studies. Case studies famously contributed, for instance, to uncovering the tendency towards oligarchy in political parties, the inner working of the exercise of power in democracies, the dynamics of international crises, the logics of authority and control in organizations, the interplay between values and institutions in the Indian caste system, the sources of success and failure of deterrence, and the causes of social revolutions (Michels 1911; Dahl 1961; Crozier 1964; Dumont 1970; Allison 1971; George and Smoke 1974; Skocpol 1979). Beyond these classical and influential works, the case study research tradition remains popular as researchers explore the political development of imperial Germany in comparative perspective, the causes and characteristics of nuclear accidents, the 1986 Challenger launch disaster, the evolution of institutions, the role of reputational claims in foreign policy decision-making or the genesis of the welfare state (Esping-Andersen 1990; Sagan 1993; Mercer 1996; Vaughan 1996; Berman 2001; Thelen 2004; for more examples, see Feagin, Orum and Sjoberg 1991; George and Bennett 2005: 287–325; Gerring 2007: 2–5). In international relations, case studies have made a central contribution to both the international security and the international political economy subfields (Snyder 1989; Kacowicz 2004; Odell 2004).
Time and Cognitive Load 1 Time and Cognitive Load in Working Memory

According to the Time-Based Resource-Sharing model (Barrouillet, Bernardin, & Camos, 2004), the cognitive load a given task involves is a function of the time during which it captures attention, thus impeding other attention demanding processes to take place. Accordingly, the present study demonstrates that the disruptive effect on concurrent maintenance of memory retrievals and response selections increases with their duration. Moreover, the effect on recall performance of concurrent activities does not go beyond their duration in so far as the processes are attention demanding. Finally, these effects are not modality specific, spatial processing disrupting verbal maintenance. These results suggest a sequential and time-based functioning of working memory in which processing and storage rely on a single and general purpose attentional resource needed to run executive processes devoted to construct, maintain and modify ephemeral representations.
Physiological and morphological characteristics of pea (Pisum sativum L.) seeds under salt stress

In the aim extend the pea culture in saline area, evaluation of the tolerance potential of pea to salt constraint was the subject raised in this study. The effect of five different levels of salt (NaCl) on pea (Pisum sativum L.) seeds germination was studied in completely randomized design experiments with three replicates in Petri dishes. Trials were carried out in order to determine the salt pea germination tolerance. The germination was studied using distilled water (control) and different levels of NaCl (25, 50, 75, 100 and 150 mM). Results indicated that germination percentage, germination index, coefficient of velocity of germination and seed vigor index varied between 58 and 100%, 5.06 and 8.85, 0.16 and 0.17, 97.71 and 656.19, respectively. Significant differences at P < 0.01 were found among all the NaCl treatments except for mean germination time. Generally, the studied parameters were decreased with increasing NaCl concentration. High positive correlations were recorded between radicle length and seed vigor index (0.862) and between coefficient of velocity of germination and plumule dry weight (0.710).
Machine learning application in growth and health prediction of broiler chickens

Artificial intelligence (AI) already represents a factor for increasing efficiency and productivity in many sectors, and there is a need for expanding its implementation in animal science. There is a growing demand for the development and use of smart devices at the farm level, which would generate enough data, which increases the potential for AI using machine learning algorithms and real-time analysis. Machine learning (ML) is a category of algorithm that allows software to become accurate in predicting outcomes without being explicitly programmed. The essential principle of machine learning is to construct algorithms that can receive input data and use statistical analysis to predict an output. Exploitation of machine learning approaches, by using different training inputs, derived the prediction accuracy of growth and body weight in broiler chickens that ranged from 98 to 99%. Furthermore, a neural network with an accuracy of 100% identified the presence or absence of ascites in broiler chickens, while the support vector machine (SVM) model obtained an accuracy rate of 99.5% in combination with machine vision for the recognition of healthy and bird flu-challenged chickens. Consequently, machine learning algorithms, besides accurate growth prediction of broiler chickens, can successfully contribute to health disorders prediction. It is obvious that machine learning has a great potential for application in the future. This paper analyses machine learning applications in broiler growth and health prediction, and its ability to cope with high inputs of data and non-linearity can successfully replace common methodology.
A SOR Acceleration of Self-Adjoint and m-Accretive Splitting Iterative Solver for 2-D Neutron Transport Equation

We present an iterative method based on an infinite dimensional adaptation of the successive overrelaxation (SOR) algorithm for solving the 2-D neutron transport equation. In a wide range of application, the neutron transport operator admits a Self-Adjoint and m-Accretive Splitting (SAS). This splitting leads to an ADI-like iterative method which converges unconditionally and is equivalent to a fixed point problem where the operator is a 2 by 2 matrix of operators. An infinite dimensional adaptation of a SOR algorithm is then applied to solve the matrix operator equation. Theoretical and numerical results of convergence are given
High Level-of-Detail BIM and Machine Learning for Automated Masonry Wall Defect Surveying

Despite the rapid development of reality capture technologies and progress in data processing techniques, current visual strategies for defect surveying are time consuming manual procedures. These methods often deliver subjective and inaccurate outcomes, leading to inconsistent conclusions for defect classification and ultimately repair needs. In this paper, a strategy for monitoring the evolution of ashlar masonry walls of historic buildings through reality capture, data processing (including machine learning), and (H)BIM models is presented. The proposed method has been tested, at different levels of granularity, in the main façade of the Chapel Royal in Stirling Castle (Scotland), demonstrating its potential.
In the Path of the Storm : Does Distress Cause Non-Financial Firms To Risk-Shift ? *

While risk-shifting is an important theoretical concept, there is so far no convincing evidence suggesting that financial distress causes non-financial firms to risk-shift. Reasons for this dearth of evidence are that risk-shifting by non-financial firms is hard to measure and likely endogenously related to financial distress. In our study, we view a non-financial firm as a portfolio of its operating segments. Accordingly, we apply modern portfolio theory to calculate firm risk, using segment data to derive the portfolio weights and equity data from single segment firm-industry portfolios to estimate the risk of the portfolio constituents. Our risk-shifting proxy is the change in firm risk induced only through changes in the segment data. To study whether financial distress causes risk-shifting, we use a triple-differences methodology. The methodology estimates the effect of hurricane-induced shocks to financial distress on the risk-shifting behavior of firms with different levels of pre-hurricane distress risk and located inside or outside of the affected regions. We find that moderately — but not highly — distressed firms located in the affected regions risk-shift. Risk-shifting leads to a pronounced increase in post-hurricane failure rates. In fact, the post-hurricane failure rates of risk-shifters surpass even those of non-risk-shifters that are initially more distressed than the risk-shifters. Analyzing why highly distressed firms do not risk-shift, we show that these firms are likely to have violated financial covenants in the past, and that it is the incidence of these violations that keeps them from risk-shifting.
Study of Specific Region of Plasmodium falciparum Nicotinamide/Nicotinate Mononucleotide Adenylyl Transferase (PfNMNAT): Characterizing a Possible Therapeutic Target

Nicotinamide mononucleotide adenylyl transferase (NMNAT) is a key enzyme in the biosynthesis of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), which is an essential molecule in cellular metabolism. Specific sequences have been described in other NMNATs, which are associated with the regulation of catalytic activity and intracellular localization. In addition, it has been observed that prokaryotic NMNATs have specific regions that could be used as possible therapeutic targets. By aligning Plasmodium falciparum (Pf) NMNAT sequences with their human orthologues (HsNMNAT), specific domains of the P. falciparum protein can be observed. PfNMNAT mutants were designed using bioinformatics software to obtain 2 mutants in order to evaluate the specific sequences of the P. falciparum enzyme. For mutant construction, t-directed mutagenesis was used to introduce changes in the wild-type maltose binding protein (MBP)-PfNMNAT clone previously obtained. The results were compared to those obtained with the wild-type protein. The experimental evidence indicates that the catalytic activity of the enzyme can be affected by transitional and transversional amino acid changes in charge and size. The study of these mutants allows an approach to studying the function and regulation of these proteins.
A literature analysis on the supply chain operational capabilities in Malaysian small and medium enterprises (SMEs)

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) significantly contribute to Malaysia’s aspiration to become a fully-developed nation as part of vision 2020, envisioned by the fourth Prime Minister, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. SMEs are the backbone of the economic prosperity in Malaysia. It is important to identify the key problems and obstacles that lead to several challenges faced by many of SMEs in Malaysia. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature to identify factors influencing supply chain operational capabilities (SCOC) of SMEs in Malaysia. This will help to expound on the various operational capabilities in an SME that can be organised, interfaced and managed. Hence, Malaysian SMEs can explore which capabilities may influence to the improvement of business performance. The review of the literature in this paper also attempts to show which capability benefits to the operation activities in Malaysian SMEs should be identified. Finally, further research directions are also be suggested.
The Resistance of Pseudomonas aeruginosa Strains Isolated from Cancer Patients to Various Groups of Antibiotics

Pseudomonas aeruginosa causes a wide variety of infections in immunocompromised hosts such as cancer chemotherapy patients. Antimicrobial resistance among clinical isolates of P. aeruginosa is of great concern in these immunocompromised patients who have been hospitalized for extended periods of time and have received broad- spectrum antimicrobial therapy or cancer chemotherapy. Antibiotic resistance may complicate the treatment of infections and can adversely affect clinical outcomes and patient treatment costs. Surveillance of antimicrobial agents with activity against P. aeruginosa is thus very important. In the present study the in vitro activity of fluoroquinolones was compared with that of cephalosporins and aminoglycosides against 50 blood culture isolates of P. aeruginosa from hospitalized cancer patients. Susceptibility testing was performed by broth dilution method according to NCCLS guidelines. The overall respective MICs at which 50% and 90% of isolates inhibited (MIC50 and MIC 90 ) were as follows: ciprofloxacin, 4 and 8 µg/mL; ofloxacin, 16 and 64 µg/mL; pefloxacin, 16 and 128 µg/mL; ceftazidime, 16 and 64 µg/mL; amikacin, 32 and 128 µg/m; and tobramycin, 4 and 64 µg/mL. For the quinolones, the order of activity against P. aeruginosa strains was ciprofloxacin > ofloxacin > pefloxacin, norfloxacin. Among cephalosporins 90% of isolates of P. aeruginosa were resistant against ceftazidime, whereas resistance to amikacin and tobramycin was 43% and 50%, respectively.
The Role of Employee Stock Option Plan to Reduce Earnings Management Actions

This research aimed to investigate the influence of earnings management to the compensation of the Employee Stock Option Plan (ESOP). Taking agency theory to explain theconflict between managers and shareholders. It was expected that ESOP would increasethe managerial responsibility to companies, but the managers have abused it to gainmore benefits for themselves. This research used simple linear regression and multiplelinear regression analysis with a sample of 120 publicly traded companies listed on theStock Exchange during 2011-2014. This study had one independent variable (ESOP) and controls four variables (managerial ownership, institutional ownership, the board of directors and audit committees). The result of this study was that earnings management had a positive impact on improving employee compensation due to the ESOP program. The existenceof managerial ownership and commissioners could reduce earnings managementactions in the implementation of the ESOP. DOI : https://doi.org/10.26905/jkdp.v21i3. 1281