Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
In vitro characterization of chemokine-loaded liposomes

Abstract The recent emergence of immunotherapies is transforming cancer treatments. Although many cancer immunotherapies are finding enormous success for treating hematologic tumors, a major obstacle for the treatment of solid tumors is localizing immune cells to the tumor site. Therefore, we have developed a technology that is capable of directing immune cell migration. Specifically, we have packaged chemokines, signaling molecules that promote immune cell migration, inside polyethylene glycol decorated-liposomes. The release profiles of chemokines and other large molecules from the liposomes have been examined in serum-containing media. We have demonstrated that the liposomes are able to release chemokines to induce immune cell migration. Additionally, these liposomes have been shown in vitro to limit cancer cell growth through increased immune cell recruitment. This strategy of encapsulating chemokines within liposomes paves the way for additional cancer immunotherapies and chemokine-based therapies.
Folate and Folic Acid Supplement Use and Breast Cancer Risk in BRCA1/2 Mutation Carriers

The relationship between folate (a B vitamin important in DNA synthesis and methylation reactions) and cancer risk among BRCA1/2 mutation carriers with a genetic predisposition for developing breast cancer is unclear. Therefore this study investigated the association between plasma folate and folic acid supplement use, along with other B vitamins, and breast cancer risk in BRCA1/2 mutation carriers. Women with high plasma folate concentrations had significantly increased risks for breast cancer, compared with women with low plasma folate concentrations. However, women who never used folic acid-containing supplements had significantly increased risks for breast cancer. Similarly, never use of vitamin B6or vitamin B12-containing supplements tended to be associated with increased breast cancer risk. These findings support a “U”-shaped association of folate and breast cancer risk and suggests that moderate B vitamin supplement use may be protective for BRCA1/2-associated breast cancer, however BRCA1/2 mutation carriers should be cautious of over-supplementation.
MOLECULAR BIOMARKERS OF WELFARE IN POULTRY

Andreia Tomás Marques, Cristina Lecchi, Laura Nordio, Chiara Giudice, Guido Grilli, Helena Ariño-Bassols, Fabrizio Ceciliani, 2016. Widespread extrahepatic expression of acutephase proteins in chicken (Gallus gallus) tissues. Proceeding of Veterinary and Animal Science Days, Vol 3, No 1s. doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.13130/2283-3927/7060. 180 Andreia Tomás Marques, Fabrizio Ceciliani, Miriam Redegalli, Michela Carisetti, Sarah Meani, Leonardo James Vinco, Valerio Bronzo, Cristina Lecchi, 2015. Serum miRNA disregulation during transport-related stress in turkey (Meleagris gallopavo). Proceeding of Veterinary and Animal Science Days, Vol 2, No 1s. doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.13130/22833927/5126.
Review: Rainwater harvesting technology practices and implication of climate change characteristics in Eastern Ethiopia

Abstract Rainwater harvesting has been known and widely practiced for many centuries, especially during the dry season for a different purpose. The increase of agricultural economy of the country is extremely exposed to weather and climate effects. Decrease of crop production in dry areas is linked to the water (runoff, evaporation and overindulgence use). The objective of this manuscript is to review the status of rainwater harvesting (RWH) technology and practices in sustaining agricultural production in Ethiopia. The in-situ and ex-situ RWH techniques have shown a significant impact on improved soil moisture, runoff and ground water recharge and increased agricultural production, which, in turn, reduce risks and deliver positive impacts on other ecosystems. The implementation of thousands of indicated above structures has been also confined with a range of problems and challenges. In the eastern part of Ethiopia, water shortage and lack of improved technology were the main problems, therefore practicing water harvesting and supplying improved water harvesting technologies providing extended service regularly for farmers should be practiced in the future. Therefore, from the point of view of water conservation, both internal and external catchment-based RWH had the eminent potential of mitigating rainfall-related crop production risks.
The Effect of Oral Damask Rose Extract on Anxiety of Patients Undergoing Coronary Angiography

Background & objectives: Invasive diagnostic procedures such as angiography have a lot of stress and anxiety for patients. Anxiety influences the patient’s physiological responses and increases the risks of angiography. The aim of this study was to examine the effect of damask rose extract as a complementary medicine on anxiety of patients undergoing coronary angiography. Methods: This double blind clinical trial was conducted with participation of 90 patients. With block randomization they assigned into intervention (n=45) and control (n=45). The intervention group received the rose extract in oral form, 15 drops every 8 hours and the control group received the placebo in the similar form and shape, 15 drops every 8 hours. Demographic data sheet, Spielberger questionnaire and hemodynamic index form were used to collect data. Aanxiety questionnaire and hemodynamic index were completed before and after intervention in both groups. Data were analyzed using the Mann-Whitney test, chisquare, Wilcoxon test in SPSS 16 software. Results: According to the findings of this study, most of the patients were male, married, and under diploma. According to Wilcoxon test, a statistically significant difference was found in anxiety of intervention group before and after the intervention (p<0.001). Also, significant effect was found on systolic blood pressure and mean arterial pressure in the intervention group (p<0.003). Conclusion: According to the effect of rose extract on anxiety and systolic blood pressure and mean arterial pressure in the group treated with the rose extract, it can be used as complementary medicine alongside other therapy in patients with cardiovascular disease and patients undergoing angiography.
Robust Video Feature Using Persistent Homology With Resistance to Various Modification

With the spread of network services, video distribution services have been expanding remarkably. On the other hand, the act of uploading other people’s works without their permission has become a problem. Unauthorized reproduction of digital contents is an extremely malicious act that damages the interests of authors, and it is desirable to be able to detect it promptly. For this purpose, it is necessary to distinguish whether video images are visually equal or not. Therefore, we proposed a robust video hash based on persistent homology. Experimental results show that the features used in this study are robust to various modification operations and can be used for video identification.
OBSERVE-5, an Observational Post-Marketing Safety Surveillance Registry of Etanercept for the Treatment of Psoriasis: A Model for Studying New Psoriasis Therapies

Background OBSERVE-5 is collecting safety data from real-world use of etanercept in the treatment of psoriasis per a post-marketing commitment of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Methods This phase IV prospective, multicenter, 5-year observational registry was designed to enroll patients with plaque psoriasis for whom etanercept is indicated. Patients receive etanercept per standard medical care and can discontinue etanercept therapy at any time following receipt of the baseline dose. Visits occur at least twice yearly; follow-up will be up to 5 years. Conclusions Data from the OBSERVE-5 registry will complement safety data from clinical trials of etanercept.
Relationship Between Candidate Teacher's Attitude Towards Teaching Profession and Their Life Satisfaction Levels

Abstract As part of the process of educating teachers, candidate teachers’ attitude towards the occupation itself is an important step to ensure that candidate teachers carry out their duties in the future effectively. The purpose of this study is to determine the attitude of the candidate teachers currently pursuing their degrees in Northern Cyprus towards the occupation of school teaching and their life satisfaction levels and to analyze the relationship between these variables. The results of the study indicate that the candidate teachers have a positive attitude towards the occupation for which they’re getting ready and that their life satisfaction levels are high.
Multiplication-Free Biometric Recognition for Faster Processing under Encryption

The cutting-edge biometric recognition systems extract distinctive feature vectors of biometric samples using deep neural networks to measure the amount of (dis-)similarity between two biometric samples. Studies have shown that personal information (e.g., health condition, ethnicity, etc.) can be inferred, and biometric samples can be reconstructed from those feature vectors, making their protection an urgent necessity. State-of-the-art biometrics protection solutions are based on homomorphic encryption (HE) to perform recognition over encrypted feature vectors, hiding the features and their processing while releasing the outcome only. However, this comes at the cost of those solutions' efficiency due to the inefficiency of HE-based solutions with a large number of multiplications; for (dis-)similarity measures, this number is proportional to the vector's dimension. In this paper, we tackle the HE performance bottleneck by freeing the two common (dis-)similarity measures, the cosine similarity and the squared Euclidean distance, from multiplications. Assuming normalized feature vectors, our approach pre-computes and organizes those (dis-)similarity measures into lookup tables. This transforms their computation into simple table-lookups and summation only. We study quantization parameters for the values in the lookup tables and evaluate performances on both synthetic and facial feature vectors for which we achieve a recognition performance identical to the non-tabularized baseline systems. We then assess their efficiency under HE and record runtimes between 28.95ms and 59.35ms for the three security levels, demonstrating their enhanced speed.
Identification of vocal tract state before and after swallowing using acoustic features

Residual food in the pharynx after swallowing is one of the causes of aspiration. To detect residual food in the pharynx, we investigate a noninvasive method that estimates the condition of the vocal tract, which includes the pharynx, only from voice. In this study, we examined the identification of four vocal tract states: before swallowing, after dry swallowing (swallowing saliva), after water swallowing, and after drinkable yogurt swallowing. To identify the four vocal tract states, we employed a log-power spectral envelope and a support vector machine (SVM). In addition to the usual four-class identification corresponding to the four vocal tract states, two methods were considered to improve robustness against variation among speakers: 1) a method that simultaneously determines the vocal tract state and the speaker (4-class $\times$ number of speakers) and 2) a method of speaker normalization. Experimental results indicated that the proposed method (4 states $\times$ 16 speakers) without speaker normalization had the highest identification rate under the speaker-closed condition. On the other hand, under the speaker-open condition, the accuracy was still low, although normalization improved the identification rate.
Preparation of active antimicrobial and antifungal alginate-montmorillonite/lemon essential oil nanocomposite films

ABSTRACT The inclusion of antimicrobial and antifungal agents such as essential oils directly into a food packaging material is a form of active packaging elaboration. In this work, alginate-based films activated with lemon essential oil (LEO) at increasing concentration levels [0.5%, 1% and 1.5% (v/v)] were prepared, and their antibacterial and antifungal activities were investigated. The microstructure characterisation of alginate-montmorillonite/LEO (alg-MMT/LEO) nanocomposites was performed using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and the surface morphology of the films was examined using light microscopy. The XRD and FTIR results confirmed MMT exfoliation and revealed the presence of strong interaction between alginate and MMT in the presence of LEO. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) indicated that LEO-containing films exhibited a higher degradation temperature in comparison with pure alginate films. Powerful antimicrobial and antifungal properties of the films were also highlighted at 1.5% LEO concentration, suggesting that the formulated nanocomposites might be considered as promising active packaging materials.
Intergenerational Relationships across Cultures

Ethnic background and cultural roots affect how individuals think, feel, and behave. These factors have only recently begun to be considered in family therapy training and practice. Differences among groups need to be valued and integrated into family therapy practice. The authors provide an overview of ethnic and cultural issues in clinical work with African American, Hispanic, Irish, Asian Indian, and Jewish clients.
Regenerative endodontics: An overview

The advancement of science and technology has huge positive impacts on the present day world. It has contributed immensely to every aspect of our lives, including the medical and dental care. The treatment concepts that were once perceived to be imaginative are today considered achievable. Even though millions of teeth are saved by root canal therapy every year, still, a significant number is rendered unrestorable and doomed to extraction. Thus, an alternative restorative therapy, which may substitute natural teeth, other than root canal therapy is needed. One biological approach to restore tooth structure is a regenerative endodontic procedure, where tissue engineering principles are applied. The field of tissue engineering has literally exploded during the past decade. The first is revascularization, where a new pulp tissue is expected to grow into the root canals from the remaining tissues exist apically in the root canal. The second includes tissue engineering where the replacement of the diseased pulp with a healthy tissue that is able to revitalize the tooth and restore dentin formation process.
Protocol for the impact of paramedics in NHS primary care: application of realist approaches to improve understanding and support intelligent policy and future workforce planning

Introduction: In the United Kingdom, changing demands on ambulance services has caused a change in what is expected of a paramedic. As well as advanced life support, paramedics now need to be skilled in managing a range of urgent case presentations, with emphasis on treat-at-scene. The change in the scope of work paramedics can undertake has established their role within primary care. However, as paramedics transition to roles within primary care, their knowledge and skillset will undoubtedly need to change. The current opportunities for paramedics’ employment in primary care require careful evaluation. In order to contribute to patients’ and the NHS’ primary care agenda, evidence must be generated to show how and why these changes would work, for whom, in what context and to what extent. Methods and analysis: The purpose of this research is to produce findings that will improve our understanding of the ways in which (i.e. how, why and in what contexts) paramedics impact on the primary care workforce. A theory-driven approach to evidence-synthesis will be conducted in a realist review, to produce a programme theory. This programme theory will be tested using empirical data collected through a realist evaluation. Survey and interview data will be collected from paramedics working in primary care, general practitioners and patients to assess under which contexts, and by which mechanisms, paramedics are working in primary care, and thus test the programme theory. Based on the findings, we will be able to highlight the role of paramedics in primary care, as well as how they operate and under what conditions. Ethics and dissemination: Formal ethics review is not required for the review, as it is secondary research, but will be sought for the evaluation. Findings will be disseminated in a peer-reviewed journal, at national and international conferences and to relevant professional associations.
SCENARIO ASSESSMENTS OF CLIMATIC WARMING AND POPULATION MORTALITY IN RUSSIAN CITIES LOCATED IN THE SUB-ARCTIC REGIONS IN XXI CENTURY

Climatic changes are the most apparent in the Arctic. Climatic forecasts indicate that warming is continuing on circumpolar territories. There is a vital task to determine attributive fraction of mortality caused by exposure to non-optimal temperatures within the given scenarios. We obtained a dependence of daily mortality on average daily temperatures within a non-linear model with a distributed lag. Daily temperature anomalies that were expected to occur by the middle and the end of the XXI century were calculated as per ensemble calculations of a regional climatic model by Voyekov’s Chief Geophysical Observatory; the calculations were made with applying representative trajectories for greenhouse gases concentrations built by the Intergovernmental Expert group on Climatic Change: RCP4.5 that led to moderate warming, and RCP8.5 that led to the maximum warming. Warming in Russian cities located in the sub-Arctic regions would be accompanied with a general decrease in temperature-dependent mortality. A decrease in cold-induced mortality was more than enough to compensate for an increase in heat-induced mortality for all the examined sub-Arctic territories and warming scenarios. Therefore, the ultimate effect turned out to be quite favorable as mortality caused by all the natural reasons among people older than 30 would decrease by 4.5 % in Murmansk (95 % CI 1.1 – 7.9 %; by 3.1 %, in Arkhangelsk (1.1–5.1 %); and in Yakutsk, by 3.6 % (0.3–7.0 %) by 2090–2099 against 1990–1999 within RCP8.5 scenario that involved strong radiation impacts on the climatic system. Expected relative decrease in mortality in Russian Arctic regions could be by several times higher than in the Northern Europe with confidence intervals of obtained assessments being rather similar to each other. These research works complement each other thus indicating that benefits and risks caused by global warming are going to be distributed unevenly.
A Novel Logical Band Approach for BLDC Motor Speed Control

Brushless DC (BLDC) motors find vast applications in industries, particularly the automobile sector. The performance of a BLDC motor, like other electrical machines apart from the machine design, is largely determined by the control technique used. This paper presents a comparative study of BLDC motor speed control using a PI controller and a novel Logical Band (LB) approach. LB control is derived from the Hill-Climb mathematical optimization technique, but the bottom of an error valley is to be found instead of a hilltop. LB control is simpler and needs no parameter derivation, unlike the Proportional Integral (PI) controller. The control algorithm is implemented on hardware using the STM32F407VG microcontroller unit programmed through Waijung Blockset in MATLAB/Simulink. Results show that LB control is fast but has more oscillations as compared to PI control. The oscillations decrease with a decrease in speed sampling time.
Phonic Instruction with Storytelling and Non-Storytelling toward Learning to Read and Oral Language Development

The aim of this research is to find the influence of phonics instruction with storytelling and non-story telling toward first-grade students' learning to read and oral language development. The method of this research was a quasi-experiment with control group pretest-posttest design and purposive sample technique. The total sample was 60 students. The data were collected through a test. The result of research pointed out that phonics instruction with storytelling was better than non-storytelling toward first-grade students' learning to oral language development. On the other hand, phonics instruction with storytelling was same as result with phonics instruction non-storytelling toward learning to read.
An Unexpected Nidus of a Bladder Stone: Latex Fragment of a Blasted Retained Urethral Foley Balloon

OZ Mesane tasi olusumunda bircok etiyolojik sebep yer alabilir. Mesane icerisinde yabanci cisim varligi bu nedenlerden biridir. Bu yazida, daha once cikartilamayan bir uretral foley kateterin, balonunun patlatilarak cikartilmasi neticesinde mesanede kalan artik bir lateks fragman uzerinde meydana gelmis mesane tasli bir olguyu sunuyoruz.
Automatic Vehicle License Plate Recognition Based on YOLO v4 for Smart Parking Management System

The application of image recognition has been making electronic systems more and more intelligent. Among others, for instance, factory automation and autonomous driving have been receiving extreme attention. The fee collection of the parking system and the issuance of road speed detection are all identified by the vehicle license plate. In addition to the traditional image recognition technology, the topic of license plate recognition is also focused on in many related studies, along with the development of artificial intelligence (AI). The You Only Look Once v 4(Yolo v4) algorithm is used to implement a smart license plate recognition system in this paper. This algorithm is a convolutional neural network (CNN), a machine learning based on deep learning. In this paper, an intelligent parking management system is completed by the combination of automatic license plate recognition and Line functions. There is mainly composed of three parts for this system. Firstly, the position of the license plate is determined from the image. Then, the characters are identified from the license plate. Finally, the recognition result is provided to LINE Bot and Line Notify for pushing parking fee messages. The experiment shows a 100% recognition rate for 100 photos taken on campus.
Microwave dielectric relaxation dynamics of aqueous Nicotinamide (vitamin B3): a dielectric and thermodynamic approach using time domain technique

ABSTRACT The aqueous solutions of Nicotinamide (NIA, vitamin B3), with various concentrations, are investigated at different temperatures applying Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR) technique. The complex dielectric spectra of NIA-water solutions are fitted with the Debye relaxation model and the dielectric relaxation parameters like static dielectric constant, relaxation time have been determined by non-linear least square fit method. The Excess dielectric parameters and Kirkwood correlation factors show a significant change in dipole orientation also indicates the formation of cluster structures within the mixture. The thermodynamic parameters, Arrhenius characteristics and viscosity effects are reported. The FTIR spectroscopy confirms the heteromolecular hydrogen bond formation, through functional group interaction in the mixture systems; moreover, the NIA-Water clusters are optimized and the hydrogen bond interactions are discussed. The resulting theoretical vibrational frequency of C = O and C-N bond of NIA is found to be consistent with experimental frequencies.