Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Immunomodulating Activity of Pleurotus eryngii Mushrooms Following Their In Vitro Fermentation by Human Fecal Microbiota

Recent studies have revealed the crucial role of several edible mushrooms and fungal compounds, mainly polysaccharides, in human health and disease. The investigation of the immunomodulating effects of mushroom polysaccharides, especially β-glucans, and the link between their anticancer and immunomodulatory properties with their possible prebiotic activity on gut micro-organisms has been the subject of intense research over the last decade. We investigated the immunomodulating effects of Pleurotus eryngii mushrooms, selected due to their high β-glucan content, strong lactogenic effect, and potent geno-protective properties, following in vitro fermentation by fecal inocula from healthy elderly volunteers (>60 years old). The immunomodulating properties of the fermentation supernatants (FSs) were initially investigated in U937-derived human macrophages. Gene expression as well as pro- (TNF-α, IL-1β) and anti-inflammatory cytokines (IL-10, IL-1Rα) were assessed and correlated with the fermentation process. The presence of P. eryngii in the fermentation process led to modifications in immune response, as indicated by the altered gene expression and levels of the cytokines examined, a finding consistent for all volunteers. The FSs immunomodulating effect on the volunteers’ peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) was verified through the use of cytometry by time of flight (CyTOF) analysis.
Bringing the Manager Back Into Management Scholarship

The manager is often neglected in management scholarship. Although we are not the first to call for renewed attention to managers, given the rapidly evolving state of the environment in which firms operate, it seems an apropos moment to reflect on the importance of managers and remind ourselves to incorporate them into our ideas, relationships, and theories. We provide reasons for the current state of affairs and offer four actionable recommendations for making the manager a more central character in our research planning, execution, and dissemination: (1) listen to managers, (2) develop and test theories that include the manager explicitly, (3) conduct research at multiple levels of analysis and using multiple methods, and (4) find synergies across seemingly competing academic engagements.
The limits of convergence in the collective behavior of competing marine taxa

Abstract Collective behaviors in biological systems such as coordinated movements have important ecological and evolutionary consequences. While many studies examine within‐species variation in collective behavior, explicit comparisons between functionally similar species from different taxonomic groups are rare. Therefore, a fundamental question remains: how do collective behaviors compare between taxa with morphological and physiological convergence, and how might this relate to functional ecology and niche partitioning? We examined the collective motion of two ecologically similar species from unrelated clades that have competed for pelagic predatory niches for over 500 million years—California market squid, Doryteuthis opalescens (Mollusca) and Pacific sardine, Sardinops sagax (Chordata). We (1) found similarities in how groups of individuals from each species collectively aligned, measured by angular deviation, the difference between individual orientation and average group heading. We also (2) show that conspecific attraction, which we approximated using nearest neighbor distance, was greater in sardine than squid. Finally, we (3) found that individuals of each species explicitly matched the orientation of groupmates, but that these matching responses were less rapid in squid than sardine. Based on these results, we hypothesize that information sharing is a comparably important function of social grouping for both taxa. On the other hand, some capabilities, including hydrodynamically conferred energy savings and defense against predators, could stem from taxon‐specific biology.
Placement of DG in Distribution System using TLBO Algorithm

Theaim of this proposed work is to minimize the real power loss and improve the voltage profile of a radial distribution network using distributed generation (DG). The site and size of DG have been determined with the help of teaching learning based optimization (TLBO) algorithm. Here, three different cases have been examined the first case is without DG consideration, the second case is with one DG and the third case is with two DG placement under different power factor. The presented approach has been validated on a 33-bus network.
The influence of interaction, learner characteristics, perceived usefulness, and perceived satisfaction on continuance intention in e-learning system

Communication and information technology have encouraged the use of e-learning systems in the education world. Even the application of the system has become a must in this COVID-19 pandemic health protocol. Nevertheless, it still needs to be observed, whether the consumers would keep using the e-learning system in the future. This study aims to see the effect of interaction variables and learner characteristic toward perceived usefulness and perceived satisfaction on e-learning system that has been used, with the effect of continuance intention toward the system in the future. To answer the purpose of this study, there is a research model has been developed which includes seven hypotheses. For the research object, the researcher chose non-government-owned colleges in Jakarta with the students as the sample chosen by purposive sampling technique. The result of this research shows those seven hypotheses accepted with the significant level at 1%, as well as 5%. It means each of the interaction variables and learning characteristics significantly direct and indirect influence the perceived satisfaction variable as well as the perceived usefulness variable. Moreover, it is proven that perceived usefulness is a significant determinant toward perceived satisfaction, even both of them significantly direct influence continuance intention at e-learning system that has been used.
Prevalence of Bovine Viral Diarrhea Virus Infections in Pigs on Jeju Island, South Korea, from 2009–2019 and Experimental Infection of Pigs with BVDV Strains Isolated from Cattle

On Jeju Island, South Korea, pigs have not been vaccinated against classical swine fever (CSF) since 1999. Analysis of bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) isolated from pigs on Jeju Island between 2009 and 2019 identified five BVDV-1a strains and one BVDV-1b strain. These BVDV types were shown to be the same types as BVDV strains isolated from neighboring cow farms. BVDV antibody-positive pigs (both BVDV-1 and -2) were also detected at 54 of 168 pig farms during this period. In pig infection experiments using BVDV-1a and -2a strains isolated from neighboring cow farms, BVDV-1a was detected in the blood of one of four pigs infected at both 6 and 35 days post-infection (dpi) and in the blood of two of the four pigs at 28 dpi. Pigs showed higher anti-BVDV-1 titers (5.5 ± 1.5 log2) at 35 dpi. BVDV-2a was detected in the blood of one of four pigs infected with this virus at 28 dpi only, and lower antibody titers (2.75 ± 0.75 log2) were seen in these pigs at 35 dpi. While BVDV infection is not particularly pathogenic in pigs, it is still important to monitor porcine BVDV infections due to a differential diagnosis of CSFV.
Large‐scale semi‐automated migration of legacy C/C++ test code

This is an industrial experience report on a large semi‐automated migration of legacy test code in C and C++. The particular migration was enabled by automating most of the maintenance steps. Without automation this particular large‐scale migration would not have been conducted, due to the risks involved in manual maintenance (risk of introducing errors, risk of unexpected rework, and loss of productivity). We describe and evaluate the method of automation we used on this real‐world case. The benefits were that by automating analysis, we could make sure that we understand all the relevant details for the envisioned maintenance, without having to manually read and check our theories. Furthermore, by automating transformations we could reiterate and improve over complex and large scale source code updates, until they were “just right. ” The drawbacks were that, first, we have had to learn new metaprogramming skills. Second, our automation scripts are not readily reusable for other contexts; they were necessarily developed for this ad‐hoc maintenance task. Our analysis shows that automated software maintenance as compared to the (hypothetical) manual alternative method seems to be better both in terms of avoiding mistakes and avoiding rework because of such mistakes. It seems that necessary and beneficial source code maintenance need not to be avoided, if software engineers are enabled to create bespoke (and ad‐hoc) analysis and transformation tools to support it.
Effect of land use on microplastic pollution in a major boundary waterway: The Arvand River.

The occurrence of microplastics (MPs) was investigated in the Arvand River (Iran). The Arvand River (200 Km) is a major water body that flows through land with diverse use and it meets the Persian Gulf. This study constitutes the first assessment of MP pollution in the Arvand river. MP monitoring has been carried out in 24 stations located along the river. The MP pollution found ranged between 1 and 291 items·L-1 and 70 to 15,620 items·Kg-1 (dw), in water and sediment, respectively. The majority of MPs were fibers, black/Gy and yellow/orange in color, and mainly 250-500 μm and >1000 μm in size. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polypropylene (PP), nylon (NYL), high-density polyethylene (HDPE), and polystyrene (PS) were found in sediment samples. All these polymers, except HDPE, were also identified in the water samples. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polypropylene (PP) were dominant in the water samples; whereas PET and polystyrene (PS) were the most abundant in the sediments. The vicinity of urban wastewater effluents could be behind MP pollution in both water and sediments. Significant differences (p < 0.05) of MP concentrations were affected by different land uses when comparing MP levels in undisturbed natural area with urban areas. A strong correlation between MP fibers and fragments found with PCA biplots revealed their similar distribution in water. In the sediment samples, fiber and fragment MP particles were significantly correlated with colloidal particles (e.g., clay and organic matter) suggesting a relevant role of colloidal particles in the aquatic ecosystem of the Arvand River in transporting MPs. This study contributes to the better understanding of the presence of MP in major rivers, which are systems that have been scarcely investigated for this type of pollution, and it can inform interventions to reduce MP inputs to the river and sea.
ANDROID PACKERS: FACING THE CHALLENGES, BUILDING SOLUTIONS

Recently, SophosLabs has noticed an increase in the use of Android packers on APK fi les. Android packers are able to encrypt an original classes.dex fi le, use an ELF binary to decrypt the dex fi le to memory at runtime, and then execute via DexclassLoader. In other words, Android packers have the ability to change the overall structure and fl ow of an Android APK fi le ‐ which is more complicated than obfuscation techniques such as the use of ProGuard, DexGuard and junk byte injection. Android packers were originally created to prevent the intellectual property of applications being copied or altered by others for profi t. ApkProtect.com and Bangcle.com are the fi rst two legitimate providers of online packing services. Bangcle.com even employs virus-scanning engines in an attempt to prevent malicious applications being packed. However, the developers’ centralized measuring systems and scanning engines have not been able to prevent malware authors from using their services. A growing percentage of malware, including Zeus, SMSSend, and re-packaged applications, are packed by their services. SophosLabs has also found malware packed with a customized packer. As a result, security researchers are facing a great challenge in overcoming these packers’ complex anti-decompiler and anti-debugging strategies. Existing reverse engineering (RE) tools are not able to unpack and inspect hidden payloads within packed applications. Android sandboxes have trouble offering dynamic analysis information, as packed applications on Android Emulator keep crashing. Therefore, distinguishing Android malware from a group of packed applications is much harder than it is from a number of obfuscated applications. This paper attempts to address the anti-decompiler and anti-debugging techniques of the above packers, reveal the latest statistics on Android packed malware, use static RE utilities to analyse their logic fl ow and data structures, and demonstrate runtime behaviours via dynamic tools. Furthermore, we are building solutions to investigate hidden payloads via restoration of the original Android dex fi les from memory dump. Finally, the paper will present a generic method to detect packed Android malware.
Robotic Manipulation of Sperm as a Deformable Linear Object

The robotic manipulation of deformable linear objects is a classic and challenging topic. Apart from synthetic objects, such as wires and cables, linear objects are also commonly found in biological cells and organisms. Biomanipulation of such objects is hampered by difficulties, such as limited degrees of freedom of micromanipulators and varied mechanical properties of the biological entities to manipulate. This article presents a robotic manipulation of human sperm, which are deformable cells with a linear shape. The shape and movement of the cell are recapitulated by our developed geometric and kinematic models. Under unfixed constraints between the end-effector and the cell, path planning is designed to update the manipulation point to control cell deformation. A state transition function is formulated in path planning to handle the stiffness variations of sperm without force sensing. A model-predictive controller is designed to minimize the orientation error and manipulation path length. To detect sperm tail for visual feedback, an accuracy of 98% was achieved via deep neural networks. The robotic manipulation of human sperm was performed using a standard clinical setup of a glass micropipette to rotate a sperm to the target orientation. Experimental results showed that robotic sperm rotation achieved an orientation error of 0.8<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{\circ }$</tex-math></inline-formula>, a tail curvedness of 0.14 <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu$</tex-math></inline-formula>m<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{-1}$</tex-math></inline-formula>, and an operation time of 5.6 s, all significantly less than those of the manual approach. The less orientation error and tail curvedness after robotic rotation led to a significantly lower speed of sperm entering the micropipette during sperm aspiration, resulting in a higher success rate of 97% (versus 76% after manual rotation) for aspiration control.
Verification and Validation of a Four-Gene Panel as a Prognostic Indicator in Triple Negative Breast Cancer

Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a highly aggressive subtype with a high rate of metastasis, early distant recurrence and resistance to therapy leading to worse survival than other breast cancer subtypes. There are no well-established biomarkers that can determine women who will do better and those who are likely to have poorer outcomes with TNBC, nor are there targeted therapies. Thus, the identification of prognostic and/or predictive biomarkers will enable tailored therapies based on their likelihood of disease outcomes and may prevent over- and under-diagnosis. Previous studies from our laboratory have identified four genes (ANP32E, DSC2, ANKRD30A and IL6ST/gp130) that are specific to TNBC and were associated with lymph node metastasis (LNmets), the earliest indicator of tumor progression via distal spread. This study aimed to validate these findings using absolute quantitation by digital droplet PCR (ddPCR) and to determine relationships with clinicopathological features and survival. Our analysis confirmed all four genes displayed significant expression differences between TNBC cases and non-TNBC cases. Moreover, low IL6ST expression was significantly associated with grade 3 disease, hormone receptor negativity and earlier age at diagnosis; low ANKRD30A expression was associated with tumor size; and high ANP32E expression was significantly associated with grade and the number of positive lymph nodes. Individually, three of the four genes were associated with relapse-free survival in TNBC and in combination, all four genes were significantly associated with TNBC survival, but not in hormone receptor-positive cases. Collectively our results suggest that the four genes may have utility in TNBC prognostication.
An In-Vehicle Warning Information Provision Strategy for V2V-Based Proactive Traffic Safety Management

The availability of vehicle interaction data, which is obtained by an in-vehicle forward collision warning system, including spacing between the leading and the following vehicle and time-to-collision, provides a valuable opportunity to predict crash risks in real time. When this opportunity is combined with connected vehicle technologies including vehicle-to-vehicle wireless communications, it is expected that more effective crash prevention would be achievable by providing predictive warning information as a part of proactive traffic safety management (PTSM). The purpose of this study is to develop a more reliable in-vehicle warning information provision strategy based on the prediction of crash risks using vehicle interaction data. A crash risk prediction model based on a long short-term memory was able to predict the crash risk after 3 seconds with a mean absolute percentage error of 8% using the data for the past 5 seconds. The predicted crash risk data were applied to derive the optimal threshold for triggering in-vehicle warning information, which is the essence of the proposed warning provision strategy. This study defined three indicators to evaluate the reliability of warning information: correct detection rate (CDR), detection failure rate (DFR), and information provision rate (IPR). An exemplar analysis result showed that the optimal threshold to minimize IPR in a situation where CDR and DFR are 100% and 0%, respectively, was identified as 0.69. The proposed methodology that predicts crash risks in real time and provides V2V-based warning information in a more proactive manner is expected to mitigate the crash risk significantly.
Patterns and causes of winter wheat and summer maize rotation area change over the North China Plain

Cropland area and cropping frequency play very crucial roles in determining regional food production. However, rapid urbanization accompanied by declining surplus-agricultural labor force has greatly altered patterns of agriculture land use and cropping frequency. Due to lack of continuous cropland and cropland-use intensity maps, our knowledge is still limited to understand whether the urbanization process must have a negative effect for changes in cropland-use intensity. Herein, we took the North China Plain (NCP), both the largest winter wheat and summer maize rotation area and rapidly urbanized area in China, as the study area, and used 250 m moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer NDVI anomaly data, the correlation of NDVI time series in two neighboring years and machine learning algorithms to investigate spatiotemporal patterns and trends of cropland area and cropping frequency change over the NCP from 2000 to 2019. Results showed a significantly decreased cropland area observed since 2004 (slope = 783.8 km2 a−1, p < 0.01), while area of double-season cropping presented a relatively steady trend (slope = 446.9 km2 a−1, p = 0.335). As expected, decreased croplands were mainly occupied by urban and built-up land expansion, however, existing cropland-use intensity was yet improved. Patterns and trends of double-season cropping types were varied spatially. Particularly, the area of winter wheat and summer maize rotation presented a significantly increasing trend (slope = 3423.3 km2 a−1, p < 0.01). Furthermore, the respective area of winter wheat and summer maize both displayed significantly increasing trends with slope of 2953.8 and 2874.9 km2 a −1(p < 0.01) in entire period. Land-use and grain subsidy policies are considered as largely responsible for this phenomenon. These satellite-observed findings highlight that positive land-use policies and managements will be helpful for profitably keeping/improving the harvest area.
An Independent Study to Compare Compliance, Attitudes, Knowledge, and Sources of Knowledge about Pneumococcal Vaccinations among an Italian Sample of Older Adults

Background: Streptococcus pneumoniae is one of the leading causes of pneumoniae deaths, especially among elderly individuals, with the vaccine being the primary prevention instrument. However, information on national vaccine coverage among the elderly population is scarce and sparse. Methods: A survey involved a representative sample of Italians older than 65 years (n = 600), who agreed to participate in the study through a phone interview. Participants’ self-reported pneumococcal vaccination status, vaccine literacy, information source, and risk perception related to the infection and to vaccines-adverse reactions were assessed. Results: The reported vaccination status is very low (11.2%), with respondents largely uninformed about vaccination opportunities. The results also show that the predominant (and most effective) source of information is healthcare providers, with vaccine hesitancy being positively linked to risk perception related to disease and negatively linked to risk perception of vaccine adverse reactions. Conclusions: This study suggests the need to collect data to systematically monitor vaccination coverage and calls for information campaigns to improve elderly literacy to increase vaccination uptake.
The Importance of Secondary Markets in the Changing Retail Landscape: A Longitudinal Study in the United States and China

Abstract:Due to shifting consumer expectations and the growth in e-commerce, companies are flush with returned product and excess inventory. Many firms have turned to secondary market channels to disposition excess goods and capture a greater percentage of their value. However, the secondary market has not gained sufficient attention from supply chain management researchers. To understand how firms are using these alternative channels of disposition, we collected and analyzed longitudinal survey data (collected in 2014 and 2017) from the United States and China. We find that US firms generally utilize secondary markets for different reasons than their Chinese counterparts and have found more success. However, while the results suggest that US secondary markets are more mature than their Chinese counterparts, the gap between the two countries appears to be narrowing.