Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Partial replacement of fetal bovine serum during in vitro culture decreases phospholipid content in in vitro produced bovine embryos

Fetal bovine serum (FBS) and bovine serum albumin (BSA) are important components during bovine embryo in vitro culture (IVC), but they are associated with excess of embryonic lipid, which might impair embryo development. This study aimed to partially replace FBS by BSA V FAF during bovine IVC, evaluate embryo production and quantify the phospholipid content in produced embryos, SFB and IVC medium. The embryos were in vitro cultured in medium supplied with 10% of FBS (FBS10%) or with 5% of FBS plus 0.03 g BSA V FAF (FBS5%/BSA). The lipid content was evaluated using UHPLC-MS/MS and statistical analysis was performed using t-test and ANOVA. The partial replacement of FBS by BSA V FAF did not alter embryo production. Ten phospholipids were identified in both groups and three of them, DOPC (p=0.037), POPG (p=0.046) and C24: 1-SM (p=0.009) presented lower concentration in FBS5%/BSA culture medium. The phospholipids identified on embryos matches with those found on SFB and culture medium and four of them DOPC (p=0.013), DPPC (p=0.004), POPG (p=0.05) and C24:1SM (p=0.003) reduced its concentration when FBS was reduced. Theses founds shown that the FBS partial replacement reduces phospholipids content in embryos but do not decrease embryo production, suggesting a technical improvement.
Highly Selective Fluorescence Detection for Mercury (II) Ions in Aqueous Solution Using Water Soluble Conjugated Polyelectrolytes

A highly selective assay method has been developed to detect mercury (II) (Hg 2+ ) ions using cationic conjugated polymer (CCP). The transduction mechanism is based on a Hg 2+ promoted reaction. In the absence of Hg 2+ ions, the CCP can form the complex with an anionic l,3-dithiole-2-thione derivative through electrostatic interactions. The fluorescence of CCP is efficiently quenched by 1,3-dithiole-2-thione derivative via an electron transfer process. Upon adding Hg 2+ ions, the transformation of 1,3-dithiole-2-thione into 1,3-dithiole-2-one inhibits the quenching, and the fluorescence of CCP is recovered. Distinguishing aspects of this assay include the signal amplification of CCPs and a specific Hg 2+ promoted reaction. By triggering the change in the emission intensity of CCP, it is possible to detect Hg 2+ ions in aqueous solution.
LO And: an A-subtype contact binary with a very cool third component

Despite the intensive investigations since the discovery of LO And approximately 60 yr ago, its evolutionary status and subtype are still a matter of controversy. By simultaneously modeling the radial-velocity curves and new light curves with the Wilson-Devinney code, we present new geometric, photometric and absolute parameters for this system. The simultaneous solution suggests that LO And is an A-subtype contact binary with a contact degree of 32.4%. The absolute parameters are modified to become M 1 = 1.409 M ⊙, M 2 = 0.449 M ⊙, R 1 = 1.36 R ⊙ and R 2 = 0.83 R ⊙. From our observations and data from surveys, we determined 334 eclipse timings. The O – C diagram, constructed from the new eclipse timings and those reported in the literature, reveals a secular increase and a cyclic variation in its orbital period. The former is caused by conservative mass transfer from the secondary component with less mass to the primary one with more mass. The latter may be explained by either the cyclic magnetic activity on the two components or the light-time effect due to a third body. With the absolute physical parameters, we investigated its evolutionary status, and find that LO And is an unevolved contact binary undergoing thermal relaxation oscillation, which will eventually coalesce into a single star with rapid rotation.
Antioxidant, antibacterial and cytotoxic activity of Caulerpa racemosa (Forsskål) J. Agardh and Ulva (Enteromorpha) intestinalis L.

Seaweeds are fresh sources of phytochemical compounds with immense medicinal potential, which have attracted the attention of agriculture, aquaculture and the pharmaceutical industry. The aim of this study was to test the antioxidant, antibacterial and cytotoxic activity and screening the phytochemical properties of methanol crude extract from two green seaweeds Caulerpa racemosa (Forsskål) J.Agardh and Ulva (Enteromorpha) intestinalis L. The antioxidant and cytotoxic activity of these seaweeds were assessed by 2,2diphenyl, 1-picryl hydrazyl (DPPH) free radical scavenging technique and brine shrimp lethality bioassay method, respectively. The antibacterial activities against Vibrio fluvialis was determined using the standard disc diffusion method. The U. intestinalis showed higher total phenolic content with the value of 149.87 ± 18.17 mg of GAE/g than 73.95 ± 16.09 mg of GAE/g of C. racemosa. However, the recorded inhibition concentration (IC50) to corresponding standards ascorbic acid of C. racemosa and U. intestinalis were 119.62 and 34.274 μg/mL, respectively. The values were statistically significant (p <0.05) compared to the reference antioxidative agent ascorbic acid. In antibacterial assay, C. racemosa extract showed higher inhibition zone (22.65 ± 0.58 mm) than U. intestinalis (17± 0.28 mm). Moreover, U. intestinalis exhibited a lower LC50 value than C. racemosa in cytotoxic activity. Phytochemical analysis revealed that these two seaweeds have alkaloids, flavonoids, glycosides, phenols, saponins, steroids and tannins. Bangladesh J. Sci. Ind. Res.55(4), 237-244, 2020
Calibration and Expert Testing, prepared for the Handbook of Game Theory, Volume IV

Probabilistic estimates of future events have long been playing a significant role in human activity. Probabilistic models are common in science, and are often used in weather forecasting. Many economic markets also rely on probabilistic forecasts, including the forecasts of financial analysts, safety assessors, earthquake locators, traffic flow managers, and sports forecasters. Probability forecasts can be judged by several criteria (see Murphy and Epstein (1967) for an early study on the topic). Among of most reasonable and objective ones is the criterion of calibration. This criterion has some similarity with the frequency definition of probability, but does not require a background of repeated trials under constant conditions. Dawid (1982) is one of the first theoretical studies of calibration. It shows that if data are generated by a probabilistic model, then forecasts generated by that model are (almost surely) calibrated. Murphy and Winkler (1977) argue that experienced weather forecasters are calibrated. However, Foster and Vohra (1998) show that one need not know anything about the data-generating process, or be an experienced weather forecaster, in order to be able to produce calibrated forecasts. This is a surprising result. Foster recalls that “this paper took the longest to get published of any I have worked on. I think our first submission was about 1991. Referees simply did not believe the theorem — so they looked for amazingly tiny holes in the proof. When the proof had been compressed from its original 15-20 pages down to about 1, it was finally believed. ” The follow-up literature shows that the feature of calibration observed by Foster and Vohra generalizes to a large number of other objective criteria for judging probabilistic models or forecasting. Indeed, suppose that a criterion for judging probabilistic forecasts (which I will call a test) has the property that if data
Study of the Influence of the Banking Sector Development on the Inflows of Foreign Investment in Nigeria and Ghana

The level of bank development has a determinant effect on the growth potentials of a developing economy. In response, this study examined the impact of banking sector development on foreign investment inflows in the West African countries of Nigeria and Ghana. The study relied on secondary data for analysis and made use of multiple regression technique. However, to ensure the authenticity of our result, Augmented Dickey-Fuller unit root test and Johansen Cointegration techniques were respectively employed to test for the presence unit root and long-run equilibrium relationship in the exogenous variables. Additionally, causal relationships were tested with Granger Causality. It was revealed that banking sector development has a significant influence on foreign investment inflows in the two West African countries. Specifically, domestic credit to private sector and bank deposit rate has significant influence on foreign investment inflows in both countries. Whereas domestic credit to private sector is directly related to the dependent variable in Ghana, it is related inversely in Nigeria. It was also discovered that bank lending rate is significantly and positively related to foreign investment in Ghana. Intermediation efficiency and profitability of banks should be improved by enhancing the capital structure and adopting the appropriate lending rate especially in Nigeria as measures to attract more inflows of foreign investment in both countries.
Reliability-Aware Resource Management in Multi-/Many-Core Systems: A Perspective Paper

With the advancement of technology scaling, multi/many-core platforms are getting more attention in embedded systems due to the ever-increasing performance requirements and power efficiency. This feature size scaling, along with architectural innovations, has dramatically exacerbated the rate of manufacturing defects and physical fault-rates. As a result, in addition to providing high parallelism, such hardware platforms have introduced increasing unreliability into the system. Such systems need to be well designed to ensure long-term and application-specific reliability, especially in mixed-criticality systems, where incorrect execution of applications may cause catastrophic consequences. However, the optimal allocation of applications/tasks on multi/many-core platforms is an increasingly complex problem. Therefore, reliability-aware resource management is crucial while ensuring the application-specific Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements and optimizing other system-level performance goals. This article presents a survey of recent works that focus on reliability-aware resource management in multi-/many-core systems. We first present an overview of reliability in electronic systems, associated fault models and the various system models used in related research. Then, we present recent published articles primarily focusing on aspects such as application-specific reliability optimization, mixed-criticality awareness, and hardware resource heterogeneity. To underscore the techniques’ differences, we classify them based on the design space exploration. In the end, we briefly discuss the upcoming trends and open challenges within the domain of reliability-aware resource management for future research.
Observation of the ponderomotive effect in an inductive plasma

A modification of the plasma density and the dc ambipolar potential profile by the ponderomotive force has been observed, for the first time, in an inductively coupled plasma (ICP) at low gas pressure. This ponderomotive effect was observed only at a low excitation frequency where the rf Lorentz force acting on electrons in the skin layer prevails over the rf electric field force. It is shown that this ponderomotive effect in an ICP is possible only at a condition of an anomalous skin effect when the classical formula for the ponderomotive force is no longer valid.
mmWave Frequency Reconfigurable Low Noise Amplifiers for 5G

In this brief, designs of two millimeter wave (mmWave) reconfigurable multi band low noise amplifiers (LNA) are presented targeted for fifth generation (5G) communications. A reconfigurable tunable load based on electrical and magnetic tuning is proposed to cover three mmWave frequency bands for 5G, i.e. 24 GHz, 28 GHz and 39 GHz. Two LNA structures are designed and fabricated using 45nm CMOS SOI technology. The first toplogy (LNA1) is composed of a single input wideband matching circuit to cover frequency operations from 24 GHz to 40 GHz. On the other hand, second topology (LNA2) uses three separate narrowband match inputs, one for each frequency band, with combined output. Design methodology of passive and active devices is presented towards compact integration of LNAs for systems such as, phased arrays. Ground plane and its impact on the performance parameters is also discussed in this work. Measurement results show a wideband noise figure (NF) ranging from 3.8 dB to 4.9 dB and gain of 8.5 dB to 12.5 dB for LNA1 at different bands. Similarly, LNA2 exhibits NF of 4.5 dB to 5.5 dB and gain of 9.5 dB to 15.5 dB across all bands. Total area (including pads) of LNA1 and LNA2 are 0.316 mm and 0.695 mm, respectively.
(Re) -creating the commons: the social construction of new commons

There is currently an increasing interest to recover community management of resources, or even to (re-)create them as “new commons” (Ruiz-Ballesteros and Gual, 2012). The purpose of this communication is to explore, through the case-study of water management in the city of Naples (Italy), how new commons emerge. This purpose is composed on two sub questions: how does the commons concept perform? What are the actors and the processes that make the emergence of a new common effective? The story of the institutionalisation of water as a Common in the city of Naples started with citizen movements. These movements blossomed after a general trend of privatisation during the 90s: this allowed a private agency to get the management of the integrated water services of Naples. After a series of political struggles lasting more than 10 years, a great numbers of stakeholders involved and a tremendously successful referendum, the movements succeeded in transforming the private water agency, S.p.A. , into a special company, ABC (which stands for “Acqua Bene Comune”, in English “Water as a Common Good”). This was done in order to eliminate the incentives to the pursuit of economic short-term profit, and in order to guarantee water as a human right. Naples is the first city in Italy to have re-municipalized its water service and this case study is not only the story of an organisational innovation, but also the story of a larger scale legal tools innovation (Lucarelli, 2010; Bailey and Mattei, 2013). This study contributes to the overcoming of the apparent dichotomy between material and immaterial commons by focusing on the social construction of the commons. By examining this social construction phenomenon, this paper underlines the struggles around the commons and pinpoints some pathways and recipes that can foster the setting up and the resilience of commons management systems. 1 UMR SADAPT, INRA, France 2 UMR I3, CRG, Ecole Polytechnique, France
INNOVATIVE TEACHING TECHNOLOGIES AT UNIVERSITIES

The proposed article introduces critical approaches to the process of introducing innovative teaching technologies at the university, taking into account the accumulated experience of teaching and modern information and communication technologies. The technology of improving the educational process based on a modern approach to the teaching method based on practical cases is considered. A description is given of the procedure for implementing this learning scheme for students of a higher educational institution, taking into account already existing experience The article also outlines the basic principles of the formation of a training case, as well as gives a description and considers vital aspects of the structure of a typical
Journey Towards Tiny Perceptual Super-Resolution: Supplementary Material

Neural Architecture Search: Similar to previous approaches, we use a single LSTM layer with 100 hidden units as the trainable policy, πθ. It takes an empty embedding as input and generates a sequence of l outputs, where l is the number of decisions to make in order to decide about a generator’s structure. Each element of the sequence at position i is then passed through the following composition of functions, including a tanh constant of 2.5 and a sampling logit temperature of 5.0, in order to reduce its dimensionality and produce a probability distribution:
Isolation and Characterization of Motile Escherichia coli

Four mutants of Escherichia coli that are resistant to the flagellotropic phage X, but are motile, were isolated. When they were observed in liquid culture by light microscopy, one mutant exhibited circular movement and another tumbled at high frequency on the surface of a glass slide. The remaining two mutants moved normally. None of these mutants adsorbed the wild-type strain of X. P1 transduction revealed that the mutation sites of these four mutants were more than 97% cotransducible with a site in hag, the structural gene for flagellin. When flagellins of these mutants were chromatographed on a diethylaminoethyl-cellulose column, two eluted slower and one eluted slightly faster than the flagellin of the parental strain. The other flagellin eluted at the same position as that of the parent. Host range mutants ofphage X, which could infect these bacterial mutants, were isolated.
An Approach to Establishing Simultaneous Server-Side Connections for NFC/Bluetooth enabled Quiz Management Systems

Near Field Communication is a set of communication protocols for communication between two electronic devices over a distance of 4cm or less and Bluetooth is a wireless technology standard used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances using UHF radio waves in the industrial, scientific and medical radio bands, from 2.402 GHz to 2.480GHz, and building personal area networks(PANs). Both these protocols facilitate wireless/ internet less communication between devices that have the capabilities. This paper seeks to further expand the concept and usage of these protocols via the examination of modifications made to a Quiz Management System. The Quiz Management System, which is a solution to further advance the notion of a smart classroom setup within the context of short-range wireless technologies has already seen iterations developed on both the NFC and Bluetooth side of things.
CO-PYROLYSIS OF CORN STOVER WITH LOW-DENSITY POLYETHYLENE (LDPE), AND POLYPROPYLENE (PP): OPTIMIZATION BASED ON SYNERGY

The co-pyrolysis of lignocellulosic wastes with plastic has been found to improve the both the yield and quality of pyrolysis oil and gas products. In this study, the co-pyrolysis of corn stover (CS) with plastic (low-density polyethylene, and polypropylene) were studied through thermogravimetric analysis. The parameter “change in weight loss rate” denoted by ΔW was used to quantify the synergistic effects on the yield during co-pyrolysis. The ΔW values were fitted using a combined mixture design to generate an RSM model relating the factors mixture component proportions, plastic type, and temperature to the response ΔW. From numerical optimization, the obtained optimum co-pyrolysis conditions are: (a) 0.60 CS proportion, 0.40 LDPE proportion, and 481.73 °C temperature for CS-LDPE, (b) 0.68 CS proportion, 0.32 PP proportion, and 492.15 °C temperature for CS-PP. The activation energy, and preexponential factor of the reactions in the co-pyrolysis process were also obtained using direct solution method. The activation energy of the thermal decomposition of plastic was found to be lower in the co-pyrolysis of corn stover and plastic than in the pyrolysis of pure plastic.
Highly cis-1,4-selective coordination polymerization of polar 2-(4-methoxyphenyl)-1,3-butadiene and copolymerization with isoprene using a β-diketiminato yttrium bis(alkyl) complex

The unprecedented highly cis-1,4 selective (>99%) coordination–insertion polymerization of the polar monomer 2-(4-methoxyphenyl)-1,3-butadiene (2-MOPB) has been achieved using a β-diketiminato yttrium bis(alkyl) complex to afford a hydrophilic plastic polymer P(2-MOPB) with a water contact angle of 87.7° and glass transition temperature of 34.2 °C. The copolymerization of polar 2-MOPB and non-polar isoprene has also been successfully realized for the first time to produce a type of highly modified cis-1,4 polyisoprene with a wide range of 2-MOPB content (8.2%–88.5%). The composition was adjusted by regulating the monomer feed ratio according to the copolymerization kinetics. Hydrogenation of P(2-MOPB) provided an unusual alternating copolymer, poly(4-methoxystyrene-alt-ethylene) that could not be obtained via any other methods.
Redefining Cybersecurity with AI and Machine Learning

— In the age of digital transformation with adoption of Cloud and mobile computing and ever-increasing Internet of Things(IoT) devices, the cybersecurity risks and threat levels are increasing at a rapid pace. The data is spread across systems, devices and cloud leading to growing attack surface and increased frequency of the security attacks. IoT is extended to drones, driver-less cars, industrial equipment, smart buildings, consumer goods, home appliances leaving us with more vulnerable attack points. Organizations needs to have effective information security management system (ISMS) in place to proactively detect, react to security threats with reduced time to discover any potential breach. This paper highlights how Artificial Intelligence(AI) and Machine Learning(ML) can redefine cybersecurity to detect, prevent organizations from security threats and data breaches.
Location Privacy Preservation of Vehicle Data In Internet of Vehicles

: Internet of Things (IoT) has attracted a recent spark in research on Internet of Vehicles (IoV). In this paper, we focus on one research area in IoV: preserving location privacy of vehicle data. We discuss existing location privacy preserving techniques and provide a scheme for evaluating these techniques under IoV traffic condition. We propose a different strategy in applying Differential Privacy using k-d tree data structure to preserve location privacy and experiment on real world Gowalla data set. We show that our strategy produces differentially private data, good preservation of utility by achieving similar regression accuracy to the original dataset on an LSTM (Long Term Short Term Memory) neural network traffic predictor.
Effects of Microcystis aeruginosa on New Jersey Aquatic Benthic Macroinvertebrates

As increases in anthropogenic eutrophication and climate change contribute to more severe and frequent cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms in freshwater ecosystems worldwide, understanding the effects and consequences cyanobacterial blooms have on aquatic organisms is crucial. Microcystis aeruginosa is one of the most common cyanobacteria taxa found in cyanobacterial blooms, producing a number of toxins including Microcystins. This study examined the effects of Microcystis aeruginosa on aquatic benthic macroinvertebrates, specifically the pollution intolerant taxa Ephemeroptera, the pollution moderately intolerant taxa Zygoptera, and the pollution tolerant taxa Chironomidae. In a controlled lab environment, macroinvertebrates were exposed to approximately 100,000 cells/ml of Microcystis aeruginosa. The survival percentage was lower for macroinvertebrates exposed to Microcystis aeruginosa in all three tolerance groups (p < 0.001) while corresponding with the pollution tolerance levels of the species. Mayflies had a survival percentage of 38% in the treatment groups compared to a 98% survival percentage for control groups. Damselflies had a 43% survival percentage in the treatment groups compared to a 98% survival percentage in the control groups. Midges had a 72% survival percentage in the treatment groups compared to a 100% survival percentage in the control groups. These findings support the notion that cyanobacterial blooms have deleterious effects on freshwater ecosystems and can affect aquatic food webs.