Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Synthesis and bioactivity of a conjugate composed of green tea catechins and hyaluronic acid

(−)-Epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) is a green tea polyphenol that has several biological activities, including anti-cancer activity and anti-inflammation. Hyaluronic acid (HA) is a naturally-occurring polysaccharide that is widely used as a biomaterial for drug delivery and tissue engineering due to its viscoelastic, biocompatible and biodegradable properties. By conjugating HA with EGCG, the resulting HA–EGCG conjugate is expected to exhibit not only the inherent properties of HA but also the bioactivities of EGCG. Toward this end, we report the synthesis of an amine-functionalized EGCG as an intermediate compound for conjugation to HA. EGCG was reacted with 2,2-diethoxyethylamine (DA) under acidic conditions, forming ethylamine-bridged EGCG dimers. The EGCG dimers were composed of four isomers, which were characterized by HPLC, high-resolution mass spectrometry and NMR spectroscopy. The amine-functionalized EGCG dimers were conjugated to hyaluronic acid (HA) through the formation of amide bonds. HA–EGCG conjugates demonstrated several bioactivities which were not present in unmodified HA, including resistance to hyaluronidase-mediated degradation, inhibition of cell growth and scavenging of radicals. The potential applications of HA–EGCG conjugates are discussed.
A trickle, not a flood: environmental watering in the Murray–Darling Basin, Australia

Environmental flows are an integral component for the conservation and management of rivers, flood plains and other wetlands in the Murray–Darling Basin. Under the Basin Plan, environmental water is managed by the Commonwealth Environmental Water Office (CEWO) and the states. We assessed CEWO environmental flows (2014–15 to 2018–19), compared our findings with expected outcomes for vegetation in the Basin-wide Environmental Watering Strategy (EWS) and interviewed water managers about the efficacy of environmental watering. Some 21% of CEWO water was delivered as flood events, to 9 of 19 river valleys, inundating 7% of wetland area in those valleys annually and 0.8% of major Basin wetlands. A consistent pattern was the watering of many small wetlands on the South Australian Murray with small volumes (median area 43ha, volume 125ML). Just 12% of the area of river red gum subject to EWS expected outcomes was flooded, and half these events were likely suboptimal to achieve ecological benefits. Wetlands have not received the water they need and vegetation outcomes cannot be met by completion of the Plan in 2024. Rules that constrain flooding of private land must be relaxed if the Plan is to achieve its statutory requirement of wetland conservation.
Organisational Welfare in Italian SMEs: The Process of Valorising Human Resources

Organisational welfare is a complex private system that offers advantages to a company and its employees. However, when occupational welfare is largely implemented as an “economic” strategy, there is a high probability that it would not necessarily be capable of guaranteeing a profit. The risks and possibilities associated with the implementation of a welfare programme incur further challenges if applied to the context of SMEs. Thus, SMEs are organisational realities characterised by specific emotional and relational dynamics. As such, welfare in these realities takes on deep value and significance and so it potentially impacts processes of valorising human resources. With our study, we analysed welfare practices and representations within specific organisational realities (SMEs) in order to understand how welfare could impact organisational processes of valorising human resources. Based on our results, we realised that welfare can be seen as a sort of magnifying glass that allowed for the detection of the themes that led the organisations to reflect on their rooted values and identities. We suggest that SMEs should think about welfare as a process rather than a product, strengthening their awareness of factors, dynamics and processes that define the complexity of the quality of life in organisations.
Isolation and Purification of Jacalin from Artocarpus Heterophyllus Lam

This paper presents investigation results of saturation conditions needed for purification of jacalin lectin from the extract seeds of Artocarpus heterophyllus by ammonium precipitation and affinity chromatography on Galactose-Affi gel Hz. Three different aspects of parameters encompassing the percentage of saturation of ammonium sulfate precipitation, the presence of ammonium sulfate on Lowry method and the suitable galactose concentration for optimum elution of the protein from Galactose-Affi gel Hz were investigated. With three different sets of fractional saturation of jacalin purification using ammonium sulfate precipitation, the maximum yield of 0.463 g/g was achieved at 0-90% saturation range in the absence of dialysis. Maximum yield of 0.425 g/g was obtained at 30-60% and 0-90% saturation range in the presence of dialysis. The result from this work also indicates that excessive quantity of NH4SO4 interferes with Lowry method for protein determination substantially. The 0-90% saturation range was found to be more potentially appropriate for large scale application than 30-60% saturation, since the former involves only 1 step NH4SO4 addition. From the affinity chromatography, elution of 0.2 M galactose (in 0.15 M NaCl) from Galactose-Affi gel Hz produced the maximum peak profile and jacalin concentration. A reduction or increase in galactose concentration of more than 0.2 M did not increase concentration of purified jacalin purified using this method.
Effects of Cellobiose Dehydrogenase on Guaiacyl and Guaiacyl/Syringyl Lignins in the Presence of Iron and Hydrogen Peroxide

Fe(III) reduction by cellobiose dehydrogenase (CDH) in the presence of hydrogen peroxide and guaiacyl or syringyl lignins was investigated. These two wood lignins behaved differently and reduction of Fe(III) by CDH was markedly decreased by the presence of synthetic lignin of the guaiacyl type or by milled wood lignin from spruce. With milled wood lignin from birch (guaiacyl/syringyl lignin) no decrease but rather a weak increase in Fe(III) reduction was obtained. Since it has been proposed that Fe(II) plus hydrogen peroxide can form hydroxyl radicals and/or iron(per)oxo complexes able to degrade lignin, it was investigated whether lignin-related phenols and quinones affected Fe(III) reduction. It was found that vanillic and syringic acids, vanillin and syringaldehyde all increased Fe(III) reduction by CDH + cellobiose in the presence of hydrogen peroxide. When Fe(III) and methoxyquinone were present together, they were simultaneously reduced at a common wavelength. This reducing activity was mainly additive depending on the reduction of the separate components. Since dimethoxy-quinone was reduced more slowly it had little influence on CDH-catalyzed Fe(III) reduction. It is proposed that hydroxyl radicals and/or iron(per)oxo complexes preferentially attack hardwood lignin (guaiacyl/syringyl) thereby releasing phenols and quinones during consumption of hydrogen peroxide which may otherwise reoxidise Fe(II). With the guaiacyl lignins. hydrogen peroxide was probably not consumed and both velocity and initiation of Fe(III) reduction was strongly delayed in relation to the amount of added spruce lignin or coniferyl alcohol lignin (DHP).
Auditor Market Power and Audit Quality Revisited: Effects of Market Concentration, Market Share Distance, and Leadership

This study examines whether auditor market power is associated with audit quality. Regulators around the world have repeatedly expressed concerns about the high levels of supplier concentration, the limited number of audit suppliers in the audit market, and the potential adverse consequences of their (alleged) market power. Using U.S. data from 2009 to 2017, we examine the effect on audit quality of two competing measures of auditor market power: (a) a “traditional” market concentration measure (Herfindahl index) and (b) a competing measure derived from spatial competition theory (i.e., market share distance from the closest competitor). Following Aobdia, we infer audit quality from two measures of financial reporting quality: (a) the level of absolute abnormal accruals, and (b) the incidence of financial statement restatements. Our results indicate that industry market share distance is positively associated with audit quality, but we do not find an association between market concentration and audit quality. In addition, we find that the positive association between market share distance and audit quality only holds when the incumbent auditor is a market leader, although industry leadership itself is not significantly associated with audit quality. These findings suggest that audit quality is positively affected by a market leader’s industry market share dominance over its competitors rather than by industry specialization per se. JEL Classification: M4; L0
Traffic flow prediction on urban road network based on License Plate Recognition data: combining attention-LSTM with Genetic Algorithm

Exploring traffic flow characteristics and predicting its variation patterns are the basis of Intelligent Transportation Systems. The intermittent characteristics and intense fluctuation on short-term scales make it a significant challenge on urban roads. A hybrid model, Genetic Algorithm with Attention-based Long Short-Term Memory (GA-LSTM), combining with spatial–temporal correlation analysis, is proposed in this study to predict traffic volumes on urban roads. The spatial correlation is captured by combining the volume transition matrix estimated from vehicle trajectories and network weight matrix quantified from different detectors. The temporal dependency is explored by the attention mechanism, and we introduce the Genetic Algorithm to optimize it. In the experiment, traffic flow data collected from License Plate Recognition (LPR), is utilized to validate the effectiveness of model. The comparison is conducted with several traditional models to show the superiority of the proposed model with higher accuracy and better stability.
Hydrogeological Behaviour and Geochemical Features of Waters in Evaporite-Bearing Low-Permeability Successions: A Case Study in Southern Sicily, Italy

Knowledge about the hydrogeological behaviour of heterogeneous low-permeability media is an important tool when designing anthropogenic works (e.g., landfills) that could potentially have negative impacts on the environment and on people’s health. The knowledge about the biogeochemical processes in these media could prevent “false positives” when studying groundwater quality and possible contamination caused by anthropogenic activities. In this research, we firstly refined knowledge about the groundwater flow field at a representative site where the groundwater flows within an evaporite-bearing low-permeability succession. Hydraulic measurements and tritium analyses demonstrated the coexistence of relatively brief to very prolonged groundwater pathways. The groundwater is recharged by local precipitation, as demonstrated by stable isotopes investigations. However, relatively deep groundwater is clearly linked to very high tritium content rainwater precipitated during the 1950s and 1960s. The deuterium content of some groundwater samples showed unusual values, explained by the interactions between the groundwater and certain gases (H2S and CH4), the presences of which are linked to sulfate-reducing bacteria and methanogenic archaea detected within the saturated medium through biomolecular investigations in the shallow organic reach clayey deposits. In a wider, methodological context, the present study demonstrates that interdisciplinary approaches provide better knowledge about the behaviour of heterogeneous low-permeability media and the meaning of each data type.
Quantifying interface states and bulk defects in high‐efficiency solution‐processed small‐molecule solar cells by impedance and capacitance characteristics

The AC properties of high‐efficiency (η = 8.01% under standard 100 mW/cm2 AM1.5 illumination) small‐molecule bulk heterojunction (SM BHJ) solar cells (p‐DTS(FBTTh2)2/PC70BM) at different DC biases and frequencies of small amplitude (±10 mV) AC signal in the dark at room temperature were investigated in details. We showed the presence of interface states at the heterojunction interface and determined their parameters from the analysis of spectral distributions of real and imaginary components of the measured impedance. The dielectric constant of BHJ εBHJ = 2.9 was determined from the geometrical capacitance of totally depleted BHJ layer. We explained quantitatively the effect of interface states and series resistance on the measured C‐V characteristics of the SM BHJ solar cells at both low and high frequencies. The quantitative value of the density of defect states in the bulk N = 1.05 × 1016 cm−3 was determined from the high frequency C‐V characteristic corrected by the effect of the series resistance. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Size Tunable Synthesis of Gold Nanoplates by Gamma Irradiation in Presence of Polydiallyldimethylammonium Chloride as the Capping Agent

A simple gamma irradiation strategy was developed for the synthesis of gold nanoplates by employing polydiallyldimethylammonium chloride (PDDA) as the capping agent. The nanoplates produced had hexagonal, triangular and truncated triangular shapes and the size of the nanoplates could be varied from 500 nm to 5 μm by adjusting the concentration of Au3+ and PDDA in the solution. X-ray diffraction and selected area electron diffraction investigations proved that the nanoplates are single crystals bound by the {111} planes on the top and bottom surfaces. The nanoplates were also characterized by energy dispersive X-ray analysis and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.
A Multi-Agent Negotiation Strategy for Reducing the Flowtime

﻿﻿﻿In this paper, we study the problem of task reallocation for load-balancing in distributed data processing models that tackle vast amount of data. In this context, we propose a novel strategy based on cooperative agents used to optimise the rescheduling of tasks for multiple jobs submitted by users in order to be executed as soon as possible. It allows an agent to determine locally the next task to process and the next task to delegate according to its knowledge, its own belief base and its peer modelling. The novelty of our strategy lies in the ability of agents to identify opportunities and limiting factor agents, and afterwards to reallocate some of the tasks. Our contribution is that, thanks to concurrent bilateral negotiations, tasks are continuously reallocated according to the local perception and the peer modelling of agents. In order to evaluate the responsiveness of our approach, we implement a prototype testbed and our experimentation reveals that our strategy reaches a flowtime which is close to the one reached by the classical heuristic approach and significantly reduces the rescheduling time.
The Use of Red Shade Nets Improves Growth in Salinized Pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) Plants by Regulating Their Ion Homeostasis and Hormone Balance

The actual climate crisis scenario is aggravating the abiotic stress episodes that crop plants have to face. Salinity is one of the most important abiotic stresses directly impairing plant growth and productivity. Several strategies have been developed to minimize the negative effects of salinity in agricultural industry, mainly at the plant level, while management strategies, such us the control of microclimate conditions and light quality over plant canopy, have also been used. Indeed, shading plants with photoselective nets has been considered an efficient management strategy to modulate solar radiation to improve crop productivity. The aim of this work was to gain insights about the physiological factors underlying the salinity-alleviating effect of using red shading nets. For that, pepper plants (Capsicum annuum L.) were grown under control (0 mM NaCl) and moderate salinity (35 mM NaCl) conditions, with half of the plants covered with a red net (30% shading). The shoot growth impairment provoked by salinity was in part minimized by shading plants with red nets, which can be explained by their higher capacity to exclude Na+, control of K+ homeostasis and regulation of hormonal balance. Indeed, the concentrations of the most active cytokinin in pepper, trans-zeatin, as well as its metabolic precursor, zeatin riboside, increased in shaded plants, associated to shoot growth recovery and photosynthetic rate maintenance under salinity. Furthermore, the stress-related hormone abscisic acid (ABA) increased with salinity but in a lower extend in the plants shaded with red nets, suggesting a fine tune of stomata opening by ABA which, in crosstalk with salicylic acid increment, improved plant water relations. Likewise, the concentrations of gibberellins and the ethylene precursor, 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid, also changed during salinity stress in shaded plants but those changes were uncoupled of growth responses as indicated by the principal component analysis and thus they seem to play a minor role. Our data demonstrate that shading pepper plants with red nets is an efficient management strategy to modulate microclimate conditions at crop level thus controlling the ion homeostasis and hormonal balance of the plant to cope with salinity stress. This is especially important due to the actual and expected changes of the global climatic conditions.
CFK: a Fresnel–Köhler concentrator with an external confinement cavity

In a concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) module, the solar cell surface reflects a non‐negligible portion of the incoming light, leading to a loss in module efficiency. The Fresnel–Köhler with an external confinement cavity (CFK) is a novel optical CPV concentrator designed to recover this portion of the reflected light. The design is based on an external confinement cavity, an optical element able to redirect the light reflected by the cell surface towards its surface again. Its integration into a CPV module is possible, thanks to the recent invention of advanced Köhler concentrators by LPI. This strategy, based on light recovery, leads to a significant increase in electrical efficiency. We have tested the excellent performance of these cavities by means of integrating one of them into an FK concentrator and manufacturing a proof‐of‐concept prototype. The measured results are outstanding: a relative electrical efficiency and Isc gains of up to 6% when comparing both with and without cavity designs, and a 33.2% of CFK module electrical efficiency (@Tcell = 25 °C) using a 38.5% nominal efficiency cell (without anti‐reflection coatings on the optics). Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Nonisothermal catalytic liquefaction of corn stalk in subcritical and supercritical water

The pyrolysis of corn stalk was performed with thermogravimetry (TG), and its liquefaction was investigated in a semicontinuous apparatus with a nonisothermal fluid extraction technique, both with and without sodium carbonate (Na 2 CO 3 ) as a catalyst. The results indicated that the main pyrolysis region of corn stalk is ∼500-650 K and the maximum rate occurs at ∼600 K on the differential thermogravimetry (DTG) curve. The presence of a catalyst has an obvious effect on the pyrolysis, especially in the temperature range of 550-650 K. When more than 1.0 wt % of catalyst was added, the DTG curve is altered greatly, from two peaks to one, for the catalyst, which has a greater effect on hemicellulose than on cellulose and lignin. Kinetic analysis shows that the activation energy in the main pyrolysis range (10-70 wt %) varies with different amounts of catalyst addition. The liquefaction conversion of corn stalk with 3 mL/min of water as a solvent at a pressure of 25 MPa, with or without the addition of 1.0 wt % of Na 2 CO 3 , is up to 95.7 and 95.4 wt %, respectively. The catalyst mainly improved the yield of bio-oil, from 33.4% without a catalyst, increasing to 47.2% with 1.0 wt % of Na 2 CO 3 . The catalyst has a positive effect on the liquefaction at relatively higher temperatures and can increase the yield of liquid product, as well as improve the quality of liquid product. More bio-oil and less gas can be obtained with a catalyst than that without a catalyst. A two-stage main reaction may occur for both the pyrolysis and liquefaction of corn stalk under the experimental conditions.
IoT‐fog‐cloud based architecture for smart systems: Prototypes of autism and COVID‐19 monitoring systems

Making resources closer to the user might facilitate the integration of new technologies such as edge, fog, cloud computing, and big data. However, this brings many challenges shall be overridden when distributing a real‐time stream processing, executing multiapplication in a safe multitenant environment, and orchestrating and managing the services and resources into a hybrid fog/cloud federation. In this article, first, we propose a business process model and notation (BPMN) extension to enable the Internet of Things (IoT)‐aware business process (BP) modeling. The proposed extension takes into consideration the heterogeneous IoT and non‐IoT resources, resource capacities, quality of service constraints, and so forth. Second, we present a new IoT‐fog‐cloud based architecture, which (i) supports the distributed inter and intralayer communication as well as the real‐time stream processing in order to treat immediately IoT data and improve the entire system reliability, (ii) enables the multiapplication execution within a multitenancy architecture using the single sign‐on technique to guarantee the data integrity within a multitenancy environment, and (iii) relies on the orchestration and federation management services for deploying BP into the appropriate fog and/or cloud resources. Third, we model, by using the proposed BPMN 2.0 extension, smart autistic child and coronavirus disease 2019 monitoring systems. Then we propose the prototypes for these two smart systems in order to carry out a set of extensive experiments illustrating the efficiency and effectiveness of our work.
Computer simulations of liquid HF by a newly developed polarizable potential model

A new polarizable potential model of liquid HF is developed. The model is tested by comparing simulated thermodynamic and structural properties of liquid HF with experimental and ab initio molecular dynamics results. Properties of the isolated HF dimer obtained with this model are also compared with both ab initio and experimental data. It turns out that this model can describe the thermodynamic properties of liquid HF with a good accuracy in the entire temperature range of the liquid state at atmospheric pressure, and also give the energy and geometry of the isolated HF dimer in a good agreement with experimental and ab initio results. The obtained pair correlation functions of liquid HF agree also reasonably well with experimental and ab initio molecular dynamics findings, although the position of the peaks describing hydrogen bonding appears to be at 0.1–0.3 A higher distances. Such a deviation is opposite to what has been observed with our previous nonpolarizable model, which resulted in peak position.