Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Supramolecular solvent-based microextraction techniques for sampling and preconcentration of heavy metals: A review

Abstract Even very low concentrations of heavy metal pollutants have adverse effects on the environment and on human health. Thus, determining even trace concentrations of heavy metals in various samples has attracted a lot of attention. The conventional analytical methods used for the sampling and analysis of heavy metals have some limitations, including the effects of the matrix and their high detection limits. Thus, various methods are used for the pretreatment and concentration of the target analytes, and these methods are time-consuming, expensive, and require the use of toxic solvents. In recent years, supramolecular solvent-based microextraction (SSME), a green analytical strategy, has been used to determine low concentrations of heavy metals in various matrices. This method has unique features such as high enrichment factor, short extraction time, and rapid analysis. In addition, it is cost effective because it consumes less chemical reagents than other methods. Also, it is ecofriendly, and it has good sensitivity and selectivity. Herein, we presented a comprehensive review of the application of the SSME technique for the analysis of heavy metals in water, food, and biological samples. Also, we have provided the distinctive properties of the SSME technique, discussed the challenges that lie ahead, and addressed the potential future trend.
Physical fitness spurts in childhood: A study in boys

This study aimed to (1) estimate age‐at‐mid‐growth spurt (age‐at‐MGS) in Portuguese boys from two different regions—the Azores islands and Viana do Castelo, and (2) identify spurts in a variety of physical fitness (PF) components aligned by age‐at‐MGS in the two samples. A total of 176 (Azores, n = 91; Viana do Castelo, n = 85) boys aged 6 years old were followed annually to 10 years of age. Age‐at‐MGS and spurts in PF components (speed, explosive muscular strength, abdominal muscular strength, agility, and flexibility) were identified for each sample. The timing and intensities of the spurts were estimated using a non‐smooth mathematical procedure. In Azorean boys, age‐at‐MGS occurred at 7.8 years (6.99 cm y−1), whereas in Viana do Castelo it occurred at 7.9 years (6.20 cm y−1). Spurt in speed was attained 12 months after the MGS in both samples (0.53 and 0.35 cm y−1 in Azores and Viana do Castelo, respectively), whereas spurts in explosive muscular strength and flexibility occurred 12 months before the MGS and at the MGS (Azores: 21.59 and 5.52 cm y−1 and Viana do Castelo: 14.12 and 2.5 cm y−1, respectively). Agility and abdominal muscular strength peaked between 0 and 12 months after the MGS (Viana do Castelo: 0.37 m s−1 y−1 and 6.71 reps y−1 and Azores: 0.28 m s−1 y−1 and 19.36 reps y−1, respectively). Results indicate that developmental spurts in explosive strength and flexibility occur before, or are coincident with, the mid‐growth spurt in height, whereas spurts in speed, agility, and abdominal muscular strength occur after, or coincident with, the mid‐growth spurt in height.
Are Social Relationships an Underestimated Resource for Mental Health in Persons Experiencing Physical Disability? Observational Evidence From 22 Countries

Objectives: As advancing evidence on modifiable resources to support mental health in persons experiencing physical disabilities is of particular importance, we investigate whether structural and functional social relationships relate to mental health in people with spinal cord injury (SCI). Methods: Data from 12,330 participants of the International SCI community survey (InSCI) from 22 countries were analyzed. Structural (partnership status, living situation) and functional aspects of social relationships (belongingness, relationship satisfaction, problems with social interactions) were regressed on the SF-36 mental health index (MHI-5), stratified by countries and for the total sample using multilevel models. Results: Functional aspects of social relationships were consistently related to clinically relevant higher MHI-5 scores and lower risk of mental health disorders (MHI-5 >56). Structural social relationships were inconsistently associated with mental health in our sample. Conclusion: This study provides evidence that functional aspects of social relationships are important resources for mental health. Interventions to establish and maintain high quality relationships should be considered in public health interventions and rehabilitation programs to reduce long-term mental health problems in persons experiencing physical disabilities.
Changes in Ground Temperature and Dynamics in Mountain Permafrost in the Swiss Alps

Rising air temperatures and increasingly intense precipitation are being observed in the Swiss Alps. These changes strongly affect the evolution of the temperature regime and the dynamics of mountain permafrost. Changes occur at different rates depending on ground ice content. Long-term monitoring reveals progressive warming and degradation of permafrost and accelerating rock glacier velocities. This study analyses changes occurring in ice-rich (excess-ice) and ice-poor mountain permafrost in Switzerland between 1997 and 2019 on the basis of ground temperature and rock glacier dynamics measurements carried out by the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF at seven sites. Long-term borehole data indicate an increase of ground temperatures at all depths, in particular at ice-poor and nearly snow-free sites. Active layers are thickening at most sites and prolonged periods of active layer thaw are observed. Long autumn zero curtains are observed in ice-rich permafrost, possibly leading to an overall acceleration of rock glaciers. All these changes point towards ongoing permafrost warming and permafrost degradation in future.
Exposure-Response Modeling to Support Dosing Selection for Phase IIb Development of Kukoamine B in Sepsis Patients

Aim: Kukoamine B, a small molecule compound, is being developed for the treatment of sepsis in a Phase II clinical trial. The objective of this study was to optimize dosing selection for a Phase IIb clinical trial using an exposure-response model. Methods: Data of 34 sepsis patients from a Phase IIa clinical trial were used in the model: 10 sepsis patients from the placebo group and a total of 24 sepsis patients from the 0.06 mg/kg, 0.12 mg/kg, and 0.24 mg/kg drug groups. Exposure-response relationship was constructed to model the impact of the standard care therapy and area under curve (AUC) of kukoamine B to the disease biomarker (SOFA score). The model was evaluated by goodness of fit and visual predictive check. The simulation was performed 1,000 times based on the built model. Results: The data of the placebo and the drug groups were pooled and modeled by a nonlinear mixed-effect modeling approach in sepsis. A latent-variable approach in conjunction with an inhibitory indirect response model was used to link the standard care therapy effect and drug exposure to SOFA score. The maximum fraction of the standard care therapy was estimated to 0.792. The eliminate rate constant of the SOFA score was 0.263/day for the standard care therapy. The production rate of SOFA score (Kin) was estimated at 0.0569/day and the AUC at half the maximal drug effect (EAUC50) was estimated at 1,320 h*ng/mL. Model evaluation showed that the built model could well describe the observed SOFA score. Model-based simulations showed that the SOFA score on day 7 decreased to a plateau when AUC increased to 1,500 h*ng/mL. Conclusion: We built an exposure-response model characterizing the pharmacological effect of kukoamine B from the standard care therapy in sepsis patients. A dose regimen of 0.24 mg/kg was finally recommended for the Phase IIb clinical trial of kukoamine B based on modeling and simulation results.
Changes over time in persistent organic pollutants (POP) concentrations in human milk in the Republic of Moldova

ABSTRACT Persistent organic pollutants (POP) in human milk originating from various sources are used as environmental exposure markers. Further, mothersmilk is a predominant pathway for human exposure for suckling infants to POP. The aim of present study was to provide baseline and time trend information on human milk POP concentrations in the Republic of Moldova. A pooled sample of breast milk was analyzed in 2009 and 2015 and health risk evaluated by comparing reference values of humans' daily intake with estimated daily intake (EDI). Results showed decreases for concentrations of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, hexachlorobenzene, dieldrin, heptachlor, α and β-hexachlorocyclohexane, polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxin-like polychlorinated biphenyls, polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans between sampling periods. Regardless of the decrease, EDI was higher than reference values for dioxins toxic equivalents, polychlorinated biphenyls and β-hexachlorocyclohexane in both phases. However, increased levels were detected for polybrominated diphenyl ethers (twofold) and hexabromocyclododecane (threefold) from 2009 to 2015, but the EDI in both phases is much lower than the reference. The decline in certain POP levels may be attributed to coordinated efforts undertaken by national and international entities to regulate these compounds. The basis for the elevated levels of polybrominated diphenyl ethers and hexabromocyclododecane remains unknown but raises concerns regarding lactational exposure.
Large areal mass, flexible and freestanding polyaniline/bacterial cellulose/graphene film for high-performance supercapacitors

Flexible supercapacitors are promising energy storage devices for wearable and portable electronics. The key challenge for practical applications is to exploit a simple, scalable and low-cost strategy for fabricating large areal mass, high areal performance and mechanically tough flexible electrodes. Here, we describe flexible and freestanding electrodes with high mass loading in the range of 7–13 mg cm−2 made of polyaniline (PANI)/bacterial cellulose (BC)/graphene (GN) conductive paper through a simple filtering method. This hierarchically flexible electrode exhibits an ultrahigh areal capacitance of 6.15 F cm−2 at a large mass of 12.9 mg cm−2, which is about two to five times higher than that of most polymer flexible electrodes. A symmetric supercapacitor using this flexible electrode is able to offer high areal capacitance (1.93 F cm−2) and energy density (0.17 mW h cm−2). Therefore, this flexible and freestanding paper electrode holds great promise for flexible energy storage devices.
Pain modulation by audiovisual distraction during cystoscopy

Introduction: Cystoscopy is one of the most common urological procedures used for either diagnostics, therapeutics, or for surveillance. It may be performed under local or general anesthesia. The procedure is associated with pain and discomfort. Aims: The aim of the study was to compare the levels of perceived pain during local cystoscopy with and without audiovisual distraction (AVD). Methodology: A randomized control study was performed at our academic hospital local cystoscopy theater of the urology division. Approximately half the patients already booked for the local rigid cystoscopy procedure were exposed to a distracting musical video during the procedure (study group), while the control group was not. Statistical Analysis: Descriptive statistics were used to determine percentage, mean, and standard deviation (SD) for categorical data. The Mann–Whitney U-test for nonparametric data was used for comparing pain levels. Results: A total of 91 patients participated in the study with 48 patients in the study group and 43 patients in the control group. The visual analog scale (VAS) ranged between 1 and 5/10 in the study group and 1–8/10 in the control group, while the mean VAS was 2.52 ± 1.2 SD in the study group and 4.97 ± 1.35 SD in the control group. The AVD intervention was statistically significant (P < 0.0001). Conclusion: AVD during local rigid cystoscopy is highly recommended, especially in patients undergoing the procedure for the first time.
Correlation between radial and femoral arterial blood pressure during reperfusion in living donor liver transplantation

Background and Aims: Accurate blood pressure measurements are the mainstay for the efficient management of abrupt cardiovascular changes during reperfusion in liver transplant. We sought to compare the femoral and radial pressures during reperfusion and at T1:baseline, T2: 1 h in dissection: T3:portosystemic shunt, T4:reperfusion, T5: at bile duct anastomosis. Methods: A retrospective study was performed amongst 102 adult patients who underwent R lobe living donor liver transplantation. Mean arterial pressure (MAP) and systolic arterial pressure (SAP) at 10 s intervals at reperfusion and at five fixed time points were compared by intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and limits of agreement by Bland–Altman statistics. Results: MAP by both routes had a good correlation at all time points during reperfusion (overall ICC: 0.946 [0.938, 0.949]) in comparison with SAP (overall ICC: 0.650 [0.6128, 0.684]). At the lowest reperfusion pressure (reperfusion point), MAP showed high levels of agreements (ICC: 0.833 [0.761, 0.885]), whereas SAP showed only a poor level of agreement (ICC 0.343 [0.153, 0.508]). The Bland–Altman analysis for MAP showed a bias of 7.18 (5.94) mmHg and limits of agreement of − 4.5 mmHg to + 18.8 mmHg and for SAP a bias of 25.2 (22.04) mmHg and limits of agreement of − 18.0 mmHg to + 68.4 mmHg at the reperfusion point. The incidence of post-reperfusion syndrome (PRS) was 52.94% by femoral and 57.84% by radial routes. Conclusions: Radial MAP correlated well with femoral MAP during reperfusion and at predefined time points and can be used interchangeably for intraoperative monitoring. A high incidence of PRS was noted by our technique of measurement.
Contingent Planning using Counter-Examples from a Conformant Planner

Decision-making for autonomous robots in real world applications has to manage uncertainties in order to efficiently accomplish a mission. Some planning methods deal with uncertainty by improving the robustness of the plan embedded in the robot. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to one of these methods, contingent planning. Most of the existing approaches are limited by the computation complexity and the quality of the solutions they return. To deal with these limitations, we propose to limit the number of observations in the plan as observations involve an important cost in computation time and energy. The originality of our approach is that our contingent planner uses an underlying conformant planner, i.e., a planner that is not allowed to make observations, to compute conformant subplans and insert observations between conformant subplans only when a conformant plan cannot be computed. We evaluate this approach by comparing its results with respect to ContingentFF (Contingent Fast-Forward), a well known contingent planner, on a set of benchmarks. This comparison reveals that, even if our approach has some limitations, as it is not complete, it works quite effectively in terms of solution quality on classic benchmarks of the planning community. Keywords–contingent planning; autonomous decision-making; uncertainty.
In-network Aggregation for Shared Machine Learning Clusters

We present P ANAMA , a novel in-network aggregation framework for distributed machine learning (ML) training on shared clusters serving a variety of jobs. P ANAMA comprises two key components: ( i ) a custom in-network hardware accelerator that can support ﬂoating-point gradient aggregation at line rate without compromising accuracy; and ( ii ) a lightweight load-balancing and congestion control protocol that exploits the unique communication patterns of ML data-parallel jobs to enable fair sharing of network resources across different jobs while ensuring high throughput for long-running jobs and low latency for short jobs and other latency-sensitive trafﬁc. We evaluate the feasibility of P ANAMA using an FPGA-based prototype with 10 Gbps transceivers and large-scale simulations. Our simulation results demonstrate that P ANAMA decreases the average training time of large jobs by up to a factor of 1.34. More importantly, by drastically decreasing the load placed on the network by large data-parallel jobs, P ANAMA provides signiﬁcant beneﬁts to non-aggregation ﬂows too, especially latency-sensitive short ﬂows, reducing their 99%-tile completion time by up to 4.5 × .
Hybrid Surface-Volume Segmentation for improved Anatomically-Constrained Tractography

The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Melbourne, Australia, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia, National Institute of Mental Health, Klecany, Czech Republic, Institute for Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Prague, Czech Republic, Department of Physiology and Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, The University of Malta, Msida, Malta, Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1), Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany, Institute for Anatomy I, Medical Faculty, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
High-frequency on-line field measurments and modelling of photosynthetic carbon isotope discrimination of Fagus sylvatica

V Zusammenfassung . VIII 1 General introduction . 1 1.1 The role of the terrestrial biosphere for global carbon cycling . 1 1.2 Measurement of plant gas exchange with chambers . 3 1.3 Stable isotopes: theory, applications and measurement . 4 1.4 Photosynthetic carbon isotope discrimination (Δ) . 8 1.5 The oxygen stable isotope ratio in CO2 . 14 1.6 Bayesian statistical thinking and modelling . 16 1.7 The Lägeren research site, the tree species European Beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) and the three study trees . 17 1.8 Thesis Objectives . 19 1.9 Thesis Outline . 20 1.10 References . 22 2 Carbon isotope discrimination during branch photosynthesis of Fagus sylvatica: Field measurements using laser spectrometry . 29 Chapter 2 was prepared to be submitted to the peer-reviewed journal Plant, Cell & Environment as first author. 2.
A Simplified Pursuit-evasion Game with Reinforcement Learning

In this paper we visit the problem of pursuit and evasion and specifically, the collision avoidance during the problem. Two distinct tasks are visited: the first is a scenario when the agents can communicate with each other online, meanwhile in the second scenario they have to only rely on the state information and the knowledge about other agents' actions. We propose a method combining the already existing Minimax-Q and Nash-Q algorithms to provide a solution that can better take the enemy as well as friendly agents' actions into consideration. This combination is a simple weighting of the two algorithms with the Minimax-Q algorithm being based on a linear programming problem.
Shell model force field for lead zirconate titanate Pb(zr1-xTix)O-3.

We have developed a shell model force field that reproduces the details of the phase diagram of the Pb(Zr1–x Tix)O3(PZT) solid solution compound, including the low- and high-temperature phases of PbZrO3 and PbTiO3. The developed force field supports the temperature-induced phase transitions from cubic to low symmetry phases over the whole composition range and additionally reproduces the composition driven phase transitions. Indeed, the increase of Ti content induces a phase change of PZT from rhombohedral to tetragonal symmetry, mediated by a monoclinic phase, all in excellent agreement with the experiments.
Antimicrobial activity and phytochemical screening of Adansonia digitata stem bark extract on some clinical isolates

Adansonia digitata is a massive and deciduous tree with a height of about 24 m and of significant economic importance. The antimicrobial and phytochemical screening of the aqueous and ethyl-acetate extract of stem bark of the plant were determined on some clinical isolates. The stem bark of the plant was collected and washed o properly before drying at 28 C. The pulverised stem bark was extracted with water and ethyl-acetate and screened for phytochemicals (qualitative and quantitative) using standard methods. The clinical isolates used were identified as Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Escherichia coli and Candida albicans. The antimicrobial activities of the crude extracts were carried out using the agar well diffusion methods. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC), minimum bactericidal and fungicidal concentrations were carried out using standard methods. The aqueous extract exhibited a higher zone of inhibition against S. aureus (14.00 ± 0.57 mm) at a concentration of 200 mg/ml while a zone of inhibition of 11.66±0.33 mm was observed for E. coli using ethylacetate extract. Candida albicans had a zone of inhibition of 11.66±0.88 mm and 11.00±0.57 mm using aqueous and ethyl-acetate extracts respectively at 200 mg/ml. The MIC was 200 mg/ml for the crude extracts against the clinical isolates. The qualitative ethyl-acetate phytochemical screening revealed the presence of phenol, flavonoids, tannins, alkaloids, saponin and terpenoids. Phenol had the highest concentration of 2.02±0.25 mg/ml while terpenoids had a value of 1.38±0.02 mg/ml. Aqueous and ethyl-acetate extract of A. digitata possess significant antimicrobial activity against E. coli, S. aureus and C. albicans. However, K. pneumoniae showed resistance to ethyl acetate extract. Key words: Adansonia digitata, Antimicrobial activity, Clinical isolates, Phytochemical screening
Title: The Importance in Phylogenetic Relationships of The Regions Belonging to Nuclear and Plastid DNA among Crocus Biflorus Subspecies Authors: Aykut YILMAZ

The genus Crocus L. (Iridaceae) composed of about 200 species is taxonomically very problematic, because of introgression and backcrossing observed among closely related species. Furthermore, determination of new taxa and variable characters observed in these new taxa are other important reasons of the taxonomic problems. Recently, many molecular based studies to understand the phylogenetic relationships of the Crocus taxa show the presence of the problems among the taxa, especially in C. biflorus subspecies. As a result of this, some researchers state that the term of subspecies must be changed in the genus and the most of subspecies must be categorized as species. For these reasons, in this study, the four regions belonging to nuclear and plastid DNA (ITS1-5.8S rRNA-ITS2, psbA-trnH IGS, rpoC1 and trnLtrnF IGS) were used to understand the identification and separation abilities of taxa studied, in addition to understanding the taxonomy of C. biflorus subspecies.