Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Heavy metal tolerant Pseudomonas sp . isolates closely related to P . protegens from agricultural well water in northeastern Algeria with plant growth-promoting , insecticidal and antifungal activities

The application of plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB) with biocontrol activities as inoculants of crops plants against phytopathogenic fungi and insect pests provides a biological alternative to the use of agrochemicals. Two Pseudomonas sp. strains were isolated from agricultural well water in the area of Bejaia, northeastern Algeria, located rather closely to a lead mine deposit. The isolates S4LiBe and S5LiBe had 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities of 99.4% to 99.7% with Pseudomonas protegens CHAOT and other P. protegens strains. The phenotypic profiles tested with BIOLOG-GN2-microplates were very similar, but showed also some remarkable differences. The isolates S4LiBe and S5LiBe showed plant growthpromoting potential based on the production of the phytohormone indole acetic acid and siderophores and the solubilization of insoluble phosphate. In addition, they produced chitinase and other polymer degrading enzymes. Interestingly, while S4LiBe and S5LiBe were resistant against heavy metals (2.0 mM K2Cr2O7 and 3.0 mM CoSO4, HgSO4, CdSO4 8H2O and PbCl2), the reference strain P. protegens CHAOT was very sensitive to Hg2+ and Cd2+ and had lower tolerance towards Co2+ and Pb2+. The isolates S4LiBe and S5LiBe were very active in mycelial growth inhibition assays against Botrytis cinerea, Verticillium dahlia, Fusarium graminearum, Aspergillus niger and A. flavus (growth inhibition between 88% and 48%). Furthermore, S4LiBe and S5LiBe showed effective insecticidal activities, when tested in the Galleria injection assay and they were tested positive for the insect toxin gene fitD alike the reference strain CHA0T. Finally, inoculation of barley seeds with S5LiBe resulted in significantly stimulated germination rate and growth of seedlings, with increased shoot length, shoot and root fresh weight, shoot and root dry weight as compared to non-inoculated plants. Thus, the heavy metal tolerant isolates S4LiBe and S5LiBe harbor a diverse potential as beneficial bacteria for agricultural application. They may be very useful even in polluted soils for the stimulation of e.g. biomass crops. The demonstration of successful isolation from agricultural well water may open more ready access for a wide variety of this kind of beneficial bacteria for agricultural application.
Polyphenol Extracts from Hyptis suaveolens Leaves Inhibit Fe 2 +-induced Lipid Peroxidation in Brain

The present study seeks to compare the protective properties of free and bound polyphenols from Hyptis suaveolens leaves (a commonly used spice) on Fe-induced lipid peroxidation in rat’s brain in vitro. The free soluble polyphenols were extracted with 80% acetone, while the bound polyphenols were extracted with ethyl acetate from alkaline and acid hydrolyzed residue from free soluble extract. The inhibitory effect of the polyphenol extracts on Fe (25μM)-induced lipid peroxidation in rat’s brain was determined. The total phenol content and antioxidant properties (1,1-diphenyl -2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) free radical scavenging ability, reducing power and Fe (II) chelating ability) of the extracts were determined. The results of the study revealed that the leaf contains 3.88 mg/g total phenol [2.94 (free), 0.94 (bound)]. Incubation of the brain in the presence of Fe (II) caused a significant increase (P<0.05) in the malondialdehyde (MDA) content of the brain (256%). However, the polyphenol extracts (0.4–1.6 μg/ml) caused a dose-dependent significant decrease (P<0.05) in the MDA contents in the brain. The free soluble polyphenol extracts had a significantly higher (P<0.05) inhibitory effect on the Fe (II)-induced lipid peroxidation in brain and higher antioxidant properties. Therefore, the higher antioxidant properties of free soluble polyphenols (which are more) from H. suaveolens leaves could have been responsible for its high protection against Fe (II)induced lipid in brain – in vitro. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Integration of hybrid wireless networks in cloud services oriented enterprise information systems

This article presents a hybrid wireless network integration scheme in cloud services-based enterprise information systems (EISs). With the emerging hybrid wireless networks and cloud computing technologies, it is necessary to develop a scheme that can seamlessly integrate these new technologies into existing EISs. By combining the hybrid wireless networks and computing in EIS, a new framework is proposed, which includes frontend layer, middle layer and backend layers connected to IP EISs. Based on a collaborative architecture, cloud services management framework and process diagram are presented. As a key feature, the proposed approach integrates access control functionalities within the hybrid framework that provide users with filtered views on available cloud services based on cloud service access requirements and user security credentials. In future work, we will implement the proposed framework over SwanMesh platform by integrating the UPnP standard into an enterprise information system.
Development of a Fractional Order PID Controller for a Physical System Based on Bat Inspired Algorithm

This paper proposes the optimal design of FOPID controller by the bat inspired algorithm (BIA). The Integral square error (ISE) criterion has been invoked to tune the FOPID controller. The FOPID controller has five parameters $K_{p}, K_{d}, K_{i},\lambda$ and $\mu$. In the first approach, two identical FOPID controllers are applied. The $K_{p}, K_{d}$, and $K_{i}$ parameters of each controller have been optimized using the particle swarm optimization (PSO). The rest of parameters $\lambda$ and $\mu$ for each area have been determined using the BIA. In the second approach, two different controllers have been applied. The $K_{p}, K_{d}$, and $K_{i}$ parameters for each controller have been estimated using PSO technique. So, we aim to determine 4 parameters $\lambda_{1},\mu_{1},\lambda_{2}$ and $\mu_{2}$ using the BIA. The simulation results show that the proposed FOPID controller based on BIA using the second approach exhibits improved dynamic performance over conventional PID controller and the FOPID controller based on BIA using the first approach.
SSM PCA Constrained GVF Improved Correspondence Deformed Meshes Improved Segmentation

With the increasing amount of patient information that is being collected today, the idea of using this information to inform future patient care has gained momentum. In many cases, this information comes in the form of medical images. Several algorithms have been presented to automatically segment these images, and to extract structures relevant to different diagnostic or surgical procedures. Consequently, this allows us to obtain large data-sets of shapes, in the form of triangular meshes, segmented from these images. Given correspondences between these shapes, statistical shape models (SSMs) can be built using methods like Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Often, the initial correspondences between the shapes need to be improved, and SSMs can be used to improve these correspondences. However, just as often, initial segmentations also need to be improved. Unlike many correspondence improvement algorithms, which do not affect segmentation, many segmentation improvement algorithms negatively affect correspondences between shapes. We present a method that iteratively improves both segmentation as well as correspondence by using SSMs not only to improve correspondence, but also to constrain the movement of vertices during segmentation improvement. We show that our method is able to maintain correspondence while achieving as good or better segmentations than those produced by methods that improve segmentation without maintaining correspondence. We are additionally able to achieve segmentations with better triangle quality than segmentations produced without correspondence improvement.
Architecture Solutions for DDM Numerical Environment ?

Domain decomposition methods (DDM)for parallelized solving of large SLAEs with sparse matrices, arising from approximations of multi-dimensional boundary value problem (BVP) at quasi-structured grids, on a heterogeneous multi-processor system (MPS) with distributed and hierarchical shared memory, are proven to be a manifold actual computational area. In an algebraic sense, it includes a two-level multipreconditioned iterative process in Krylov subspaces. The efficiency of a numerical environment and the corresponding software performance are significantly defined by the quality of various parallelization techniques’ usage: Message Passing Interface (MPI) system to arrange the upper level of iterations over subdomains, multi-threaded computations in a simultaneous solution to the auxiliary subsystems by OpenMP (technologies for multi-core CPUs), vectorization of the machine’s operations by AVX instruction set, and a usage of graphic accelerators GPGPU with CUDA Nvidia architecture. This paper describes some architecture solutions used in Krylov software library of algebraic solvers.
Crescent Fracture-Dislocation of the Sacroiliac Joint : Use of Iliosacral Screws

Background: Crescent fracture dislocations are a wellrecognized subset of pelvic ring injuries which result from a lateral compression force. They are characterised by disruption of the sacroiliac joint and extend proximally as a fracture of the posterior iliac wing. They are classically fixed using open reduction and plating. We hypothesized that iliosacral screws can provide stable fixation in Day type II and III types. Methods: A clinical study was conducted with the aim of assessing the clinical results and functional scores of 64 patients 50 males and 14 females, age range 16 to 64 years who sustained 66 lateral compressions pelvic fractures operated between April 2000 and December 2015. X-rays and CT pelvis were used for all patients. We used a classification by Day et al., 2007 with three distinct types of crescent. Percutaneous Iliosacral Screws (IS) were used in 20 fractures, plates in 40 fractures, combined iliosacral screws with plates in 4 fractures and we added LCII (lateral compression screws) in 2 cases. The principal goal of surgical intervention was the accurate and stable reduction of the sacroiliac joint. Results: Follow-up ranged from 4 to 126 months with an average of 40.6 months, the clinical results were good in all cases, healing rate was 100%, 2 cases died and one case lost and the average Majeed functional score was 83.93 in 61 patients. Conclusion: Percutaneous IS screw fixation is a good option for types II and III crescent fractures, with fewer complications than the plate option. While plating should be used for type I crescent fracture. Level of Evidence : Level IV-case series.
TWO-SAMPLE GRADUAL CHANGE ANALYSIS

• We propose two-sample gradual change analysis motivated by gender differences observed in a real data set containing jumping speeds of 432 girls and 364 boys aged 6 to 19 years. Looking at this data set from the point of view of change-point analysis is more natural and it leads to more precise estimators than application of standard two-sample t-test in each age group. Apart of establishing the asymptotic distribution of the proposed two-sample change-point estimator, we also investigate its small sample properties in a simulation study.
An approach to robot SLAM based on incremental appearance learning with omnidirectional vision

Localisation and mapping with an omnidirectional camera becomes more difficult as the landmark appearances change dramatically in the omnidirectional image. With conventional techniques, it is difficult to match the features of the landmark with the template. We present a novel robot simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) algorithm with an omnidirectional camera, which uses incremental landmark appearance learning to provide posterior probability distribution for estimating the robot pose under a particle filtering framework. The major contribution of our work is to represent the posterior estimation of the robot pose by incremental probabilistic principal component analysis, which can be naturally incorporated into the particle filtering algorithm for robot SLAM. Moreover, the innovative method of this article allows the adoption of the severe distorted landmark appearances viewed with omnidirectional camera for robot SLAM. The experimental results demonstrate that the localisation error is less than 1 cm in an indoor environment using five landmarks, and the location of the landmark appearances can be estimated within 5 pixels deviation from the ground truth in the omnidirectional image at a fairly fast speed.
More Money, More Problems: Expectations, Wage Hikes, and Worker Voice∗

Hirschman’s (1970) seminal thesis that enabling worker “voice” prevents exit from the employment relationship has played a foundational role in labor economics. We provide the first experimental test of this hypothesis in a real-world setting via a randomized controlled trial in Indian garment factories. Just after what proved to be a disappointing wage hike, workers were chosen at random to participate in an anonymous survey in which they were asked for feedback on job conditions, supervisor performance, and overall job satisfaction. Enabling voice in this manner reduced turnover and absenteeism after the hike, particularly for the most disappointed workers.
Biology and clinical relevance of circulating tumour cells.

Assessment of circulating tumour cells (CTCs) provides a novel approach to interrogating cancer biology and CTCs have potential to serve as clinically useful biomarkers. The presence of CTCs and their role in metastasis has long been hypothesised but it is only in recent years that technology has allowed reliable isolation of CTCs leading to a renewed interest in this area. CTCs are commonly found in the blood of patients with cancer but are rare in the blood of healthy volunteers’ and those with benign disease (1). As technologies for CTC isolation have evolved, so too has the ability to characterise CTCs at the molecular level, paving the way to better understand metastasis biology; and CTCs could serve as a minimally invasive ‘liquid biopsy’ for longitudinal monitoring throughout the course of a patient’s treatment. This approach could be particularly useful to describe tumour evolution, assess pharmacodynamic biomarkers for drug development and reveal inherent or acquired treatment resistant mechanisms in a way that has been historically challenging due to difficulties in obtaining successive biopsies in lung cancer patients.
Enigmatic distribution patterns of the Bithyniidae in the Balkan Region ( Gastropoda : Rissooidea )

We give an overview of 21 species of the freshwater gastropod family Bithyniidae occurring in the Balkans and Asia Minor and discuss their enigmatic distribution in this region. Some large lakes are inhabited by up to three distinct species, while the famous ancient Lake Ohrid is free of bithyniid species. All species, except B. radomani, live as endemics in lakes or drainage systems. Possible reasons are on the one hand the retarded passive dispersal because of a special reproduction strategy and, on the other hand, a small niche width of the species. We also describe four new species: Pseudobithynia kirka n. sp. , P. panetolis n. sp. , P. trichonis n. sp. , and Bithynia kastorias n. sp.
Efficient Predictive Demand Response using Laguerre functions

Predictive Demand Response (DR) algorithms allow schedulable loads in power systems to be shifted to off-peak times. However, the size of the optimisation problems associated with predictive DR can grow very large and so efficient implementations of algorithms are desirable. In this paper Laguerre functions are used to significantly reduce the size of the optimisation needed to implement predictive DR, thus significantly increasing the efficiency of the implementation.
Considering the Test Performance for Three Class Data Using Linear Discriminant Analysis: A Case Study

The results of a European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods validation study on the embryonic stem (ES) cell test were used as an example for the test performance for “three-class” data using linear discriminant analysis (LDA). Applying LDA, a biostatistical prediction model was developed to assign test chemicals to three classes of embryotoxicity. Three endpoint values were identified to classify the embryotoxic potential of chemicals: a) the inhibition of differentiation of ES cells into cardiomyocytes (ID50), b) the decrease of viability of adult 3T3 cells (IC503T3), and c) the decrease of viability of ES cells (IC50D3) in an MTT cytotoxicity test. It could be demonstrated that an objective statistical method was required in order to minimise the probability of misclassification. The management team of the validation study defined performance criteria, taking into consideration the hit rate for three classes obtained just by chance. An additional purpose of the study reported here was to calculate a hypothetical prevalence and evaluate its influence on the classification results.
PoeTryMe : Towards Meaningful Poetry Generation

PoeTryMe is a poetry generation platform under development that intends to help the automatic generation of meaningful poetry according to a given semantics. It has a versatile architecture that provides a high level of customisation where the user can define features that go from the base semantics and sentence templates to the generation strategy and the poem configuration. A prototype using PoeTryMe was implemented to generate Portuguese poetry. The results are interesting but there is still a long way for improvement, so we devise ideas for future work.
Computing Slow Optical Flow By Interpolated Quadratic Surface Matching

Many approaches to estimate velocity field (optical flow) from sequential images have been proposed since the 70’s. The major previous work can typically be divided into two branches: gradient-based methods and correlation-based methods (involving frequency-domain, template matching, etc.). Here, we propose a new technique considering both of the thoughts to realize a highly accurate estimation of slow optical flow (all of velocities under 1 pixel/frame). The concept is to interpolate quadratic surfaces of brightness intensity in the vicinity of each pixel on successive frames, then under the rigidness assumption, the brightness and its gradient distribution of a local region on each frame are matched, the local velocity vector then can be calculated with an iteration algorithm. Experimental result shows the effectiveness of proposed method by using several synthetic and real images.
A comparative study on principal component analysis and factor analysis for the formation of association rule in data mining domain

Association rule plays an important role in data mining. It aims to extract interesting correlations, frequent patterns, associations or casual structures among sets of items in the transaction databases or other data warehouse. Several authors have proposed different techniques to form the associations rule in data mining. But it has been observed that the said techniques have some problem. Therefore, in this paper an effort has been made to form the association using principal component analysis and factor analysis. A comparative study on the performance of principal component analysis and factor analysis has also been made to select the preferable model for the formation of association rule in data mining. A clustering technique with distance measure function has been used to compare the result of both the techniques. A new distance measure function named as Bit equal has been proposed for clustering and result has been compared with other exiting distance measure function.
A randomised controlled trial of perineural vs intravenous dexamethasone for foot surgery

We used 20 ml ropivacaine 0.75% for ankle blocks before foot surgery in 90 participants who we allocated in equal numbers to: perineural dexamethasone 8 mg and intravenous saline 0.9%; perineural saline 0.9% and intravenous dexamethasone 8 mg; or perineural and intravenous saline 0.9%. Dexamethasone increased the median (IQR [range]) time for the return of some sensation or movement, from 14.6 (10.8–18.8 [5.5–38.0]) h with saline to 24.1 (19.3–29.3 [5.0–44.0]) h when given perineurally, p = 0.00098, and to 20.9 (18.3–27.8 [8.8–31.3]) h when given intravenously, p = 0.0067. Dexamethasone increased the median (IQR [range]) time for the return of normal neurology, from 17.6 (14.0–21.0 [9.5–40.5]) h with saline to 27.5 (22.0–36.3 [7.0–53.0]) h when given perineurally, p = 0.00016, and to 24.0 (20.5–32.3 [13.0–42.5]) h when given intravenously, p = 0.0022. Dexamethasone did not affect the rates of block success, postoperative pain scores, analgesic use, or nausea and vomiting. The route of dexamethasone administration did not alter its effects.
Running head : JUSTICE MOTIVE The Role of the Justice Motive in Economic Decision Making

In two studies, a dictator game was used to investigate the hypotheses that two types of justice motives should be differentiated, the need to belief in a just world and a self-attributed justice motive, that both justice motives could explain the decision for equal allocations, and that the explicit justice motive could explain the avoidance of an egoistic allocation. In Study 1, both justice motives predicted equally well the decision for an equal allocation, whereas the explicit justice motive predicted the avoidance of an egoistic allocation. A similar pattern of results emerged in Study 2. Additionally, the explicit but not the implicit justice motive covaried with social desirability, and social desirability explained the decision for equality and the avoidance of an egoistic allocation just as well as the explicit justice motive. Finally, allocation decisions were better explained in Study 2, where real money was at stake. The findings support the idea that allocation decisions can best be understood by taking the just world justice motive and social desirability into account.
Sulfates in the North Polar Region of Mars Detected by OMEGA/Mars Express

The Observatoire pour la Minéralogie, l'Eau, les Glaces, et l'Activité (OMEGA) imaging spectrometer observed the northern circumpolar regions of Mars at a resolution of a few kilometers. An extended region at 240°E, 85°N, with an area of 60 kilometers by 200 kilometers, exhibits absorptions at wavelengths of 1.45, 1.75, 1.94, 2.22, 2.26, and 2.48 micrometers. These signatures can be unambiguously attributed to calcium-rich sulfates, most likely gypsum. This region corresponds to the dark longitudinal dunes of Olympia Planitia. These observations reveal that water alteration played a major role in the formation of the constituting minerals of northern circumpolar terrains.
How does state ownership affect tax avoidance ? Evidence from China

We examine how the state ownership affects firms’ tax avoidance. Using a proprietary dataset of actual tax filings of firms in China, we find evidence that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) avoid tax to a less extent than non-SOEs. The negative effect of the state ownership on tax avoidance is stronger among bigger firms and is weaker among firms with concentrated non-state ownership. Overall, our results suggest that the executives at SOEs have incentives to please the government through generous tax payments, and that these incentives are curbed by the monitoring of concentrated non-state ownership.