Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Th e eff ects of Nigella Sativa extract on renal tissue oxidative damage during neonatal and juvenile growth in propylthiouracil-induced hypothyroid rats

Abstract Objective. We investigated the effects of hydroalcoholic extract of Nigella sativa (NS) on renal tissue oxidative damage associated with propylthiouracil (PTU)-induced hypothyroidism during neonatal and juvenile growth in rats. Methods. Pregnant rats were divided into five groups designated as: 1) control; 2) propylthiouracil (PTU); 3) PTU-NS100; 4) PTU-NS200, and 5) PTU-NS400. All mothers except the control group received 0.005% PTU in their drinking water during lactation. Besides PTU, mothers in groups 3-5 received 100, 200, and 400 mg/kg of NS extract. After lactation period, the off spring continued to receive the same experimental treatment for the first 8 weeks of their life. Ten male off springs of each group were randomly selected, blood samples collected, and the kidney tissues removed. Results. The serum thyroxin concentration in PTU group was lower than control group and improved by extract. PTU increased the renal malondialdehyde (MDA), while reduced the total thiols concentrations and catalase (CAT) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity compared to control group. Administration of 200 and 400 mg/kg of NS extract decreased MDA level, while it increased the total thiols and 400 mg/kg increased CAT and SOD activity in renal tissues compared to PTU group. Serum creatinine and blood urea nitrogen (BUN) in PTU group was higher than in comparison with the control group. 400 mg/kg decreased creatinine, but both 200 and 400 mg/kg improved BUN concentration compared to PTU group. Conclusion. The results of this study demonstrate that the hydroalcoholic extract of NS has a protective effect on the renal tissue oxidative damage associated with PTU-induced hypothyroidism during neonatal and juvenile growth in rats.
Detection Probability Analysis of Cooperative Spectrum Sensing in Rayleigh Fading Channels

In this paper, two novel cooperative spectrum sensing schemes based on the AF (Amplify and Forward) and the DF (Decode and Forward) protocols are proposed to achieve the spatial diversity gains for cognitive radio networks, which are referred to as the AF-CSS (AF-based Cooperative Spectrum Sensing) and the DF-CSS (DF-based Cooperative Spectrum Sensing), respectively. Closed-form expressions of overall detection probability for the non-cooperative spectrum sensing, the AF-CSS and the DF-CSS schemes are derived over Rayleigh fading channels to show the effect of user cooperation on the detection performance. Besides, numerical experiments are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed cooperative schemes, which shows the increase of detection probability by user cooperation for cognitive radio networks, further confirming the advantage of the AF-CSS and the DF- CSS schemes over the traditional non-cooperative spectrum sensing.
Applying Probabilistic Tagging To Russian Poetry

The poetic texts pose a challenge to full morphological tagging and lemmatization since the authors seek to extend the vocabulary, employ morphologically and semantically deficient forms, go beyond standard syntactic templates, use non-projective constructions and non-standard word order, among other techniques of the creative language game. In this paper we evaluate a number of probabilistic taggers based on decision trees, CRF and neural network algorithms as well as one state-of-the-art dictionary-based tagger. The taggers were trained on prosaic texts and tested on three poetic samples of different complexity. Firstly, we discuss the method to compile the gold standard datasets for the Russian poetry. Secondly, we focus on the taggers’ performance in the identification of the part of speech tags and lemmas. These two annotation layers are key to compiling the corpus-based dictionaries, which we consider a long-term goal of our project
Fear appeals in HIV prevention: The role of anticipated regret

The present study examined the role of a number of cognitive beliefs (i.e. attitude, subjective norm, anticipated regret, and self-efficacy) in explaining the effects of fear appeal information on behavioral motivation. A randomized experiment with a 2 (threat: low versus high) × 2 (coping: low versus high) between-subjects design was used in the study. Undergraduates were exposed to one of four scenario messages that presented high or low threat information about HIV/AIDS combined with high or low coping information with regard to condom use in HIV prevention. Explorative analyses revealed that only anticipated regret qualified as a mediator of the effect of the fear appeal message on intention. High coping information was observed to increase anticipated regret, which increased the intention to use condoms. Anticipated regret mediated the coping–intention relationship. This finding furthers our understanding of the working mechanisms of fear appeals in HIV prevention.
Stability and synthesis of the penicillin-binding proteins during sporulation

The penicillin-binding proteins (PBPs) of Bacillus subtilis were examined after incubation of vegetative and sporulating cultures with chloramphenicol, an inhibitor of protein synthesis. The results indicate that the sporulation-specific increases in vegetative PBPs 2B and 3 and the appearance of two new PBPs, 4* and 5*, depend on concurrent protein synthesis, which is most likely to be de novo synthesis of the PBPs rather than synthesis of an activator or processing enzyme. It was also learned that in vivo the PBPs differ in their individual stabilities, which helps to explain some of the quantitative changes that occur in the PBP profile during sporulation. All the membrane-bound PBPs, except possibly PBP 1, were found to be stable in the presence of crude extracts of sporulating cells that contained proteolytic activity.
Acoustics of a flanged cylindrical pipe using singular basis functions

The problem of acoustic radiation from a cylindrical pipe with an infinite flange has been discussed in a number of papers. The most common approach is to decompose the field inside the pipe over a basis of Bessel functions. A very large number of basis functions is usually required, with a large degree of ripple appearing as an artifact in the solution. In this paper it is shown that a close analysis of the velocity field near the corner yields a new family of functions, which are called "edge functions. " Using this set of functions as test functions and applying the moment method on the boundary between the waveguide and free space, a solution is obtained with greatly improved convergence properties and no ripple.
Virtual and Augmented Reality Therapy Framework for Phobia Treatment

Phobias are a common type of anxiety disorder that affects a great number of people. Treating phobias is not always straightforward and require a significant effort from both the patient and the therapist. In recent years, Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy and Augmented Reality Exposure Therapy have emerged to help in phobia treatments by using virtual content. However, most available systems are not free and require expensive hardware. In this paper, we present a free and open-source framework for phobia treatment, designed for both the therapist and the patient. A Virtual Reality scenario for acrophobia (fear of heights) and an Augmented Reality scenario for arachnophobia were developed for validation.
Overexpression of interleukin-23, but not interleukin-17, as an immunologic signature of subclinical intestinal inflammation in ankylosing spondylitis.

OBJECTIVE Subclinical gut inflammation is common in spondylarthritis, but the immunologic abnormalities underlying this process are undefined. Perturbation of the interleukin-23 (IL-23)/Th17 axis has emerged as a fundamental trigger of chronic inflammation. This study was undertaken to investigate the expression and tissue distribution of IL-23/Th17-related molecules in Crohn's disease (CD) and in subclinical gut inflammation in ankylosing spondylitis (AS). METHODS Quantitative gene expression analysis of Th1/Th2 and IL-23/Th17 responses was performed in intestinal biopsy samples obtained from 12 patients with CD, 15 patients with AS, and 13 controls. IL-23 tissue distribution and identification of IL-23-producing cells were evaluated by immunohistochemistry. RESULTS We demonstrated a strong and significant up-regulation of IL-23p19 transcripts in the terminal ileum in patients with AS and patients with CD. IL-23 was abundantly produced by infiltrating monocyte-like cells in inflamed mucosa from AS and CD patients. Notably, we also identified Paneth cells as a major source of IL-23 in patients with AS, patients with CD, and normal controls. Unlike CD, in AS patients, IL-23 was not associated with up-regulation of IL-17 and the IL-17-inducing cytokines IL-6 and IL-1beta. Finally, while the Th1-related cytokines interferon-gamma, IL-12p35, and IL-27p28 were overexpressed only in CD patients, IL-4, IL-5, and STAT-6 were also significantly increased in AS patients. CONCLUSION Our findings indicate that overexpression of IL-23, but not IL-17, is a pivotal feature of subclinical gut inflammation in AS. Identification of resident Paneth cells as a pivotal source of IL-23 in physiologic and pathologic conditions strongly suggests that IL-23 is a master regulator of gut mucosal immunity, providing a pathophysiologic significance to the reported association between IL-23 receptor polymorphisms and intestinal inflammation.
On using crowdsourcing and active learning to improve classification performance

Crowdsourcing is an emergent trend for general-purpose classification problem solving. Over the past decade, this notion has been embodied by enlisting a crowd of humans to help solve problems. There are a growing number of real-world problems that take advantage of this technique, such as Wikipedia, Linux or Amazon Mechanical Turk. In this paper, we evaluate its suitability for classification, namely if it can outperform state-of-the-art models by combining it with active learning techniques. We propose two approaches based on crowdsourcing and active learning and empirically evaluate the performance of a baseline Support Vector Machine when active learning examples are chosen and made available for classification to a crowd in a web-based scenario. The proposed crowdsourcing active learning approach was tested with Jester data set, a text humour classification benchmark, resulting in promising improvements over baseline results.
A LYRICS-MATCHING QBH SYSTEM FOR INTER- ACTIVE ENVIRONMENTS

Query-by-Humming (QBH) is an increasingly prominent technology that allows users to browse through a song database by singing/humming a part of the song they wish to retrieve. Besides these cases, QBH can also be used to track the performance of a user in applications such as Score Alignment and Real-Time Accompaniment. In this paper we present an online QBH algorithm for audio recordings of singing voice, which uses a multi-similarity measurement approach to pinpoint the location of a query within a musical piece taking into account the pitch contour, phonetic content and RMS energy envelope. Experiments show that our approach can achieve 75.4% Top-1 accuracy in locating an exact melody from the whole song, and 57.8% Top-1 accuracy in locating the phrase that contains the exact lyrics ‐ an improvement of 170% over the basic pitch contour method. Average query duration is 6 seconds while average runtime in MATLAB is 0.8 times the duration of the query.
Robot Goes Back Home Despite All the People

We have developed a navigation system for a mobile robot that enables it to autonomously return to a start point after completing a route. It works efficiently even in complex, low structured and populated indoor environments. A point-based map of the environment is built as the robot explores new areas; it is employed for localization and obstacle avoidance. Points corresponding to dynamical objects are removed from the map so that they do not affect navigation in a wrong way. The algorithms and results we deem more relevant are explained in the paper.
Evaluation of parallel text alignment systems The ARCADE project

This chapter describes the ARCADE project, concerned with the evaluation of parallel text alignment systems. The project is composed of two tracks, devoted to the evaluation of alignment at sentence and word level respectively, and is planned for a four-year period. At the time of this report, twelve systems have participated in the sentence track, and five in the word track. Substantial progress has been made on the evaluation methodology, metrics and protocols, and a large reference corpus has been produced. The results show that sentence level alignment is quite satisfactory (over 98.5% accuracy on “normal” texts), although it degrades sharply for texts that do not match perfectly at the structural level (i.e., missing fragments, order differences, etc.). State-of-the-art word alignment systems can largely improve, since they reach only ca. 75% accuracy on the “translation spotting” task on which they were evaluated.
Evaluation Of Logistic Regression In Classification Of Drug Data In Kwara State

Abstract The classification of individuals who engage in illicit drugs into drug peddlers and non-peddlers on the basis of oral evidence, type and the quantity of exhibit found with them usually pose problem for the purpose of prosecution. This paper uses logistic regression to classify offenders into the two dichotomous dependent variable (peddlers or non-peddlers) in order to ease the work of the agency, National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), responsible for illicit drugs. The data used in this study include age of offenders, type and weight of exhibit collected from the agency. The discriminant analysis was first used by Abdulkadir and Emmanuel (2010) to classify the illicit drug offenders into peddlers and non-peddlers based on the data and then used by Balogun et tal (2012) including some other variable to it. In literature the author discovered that the discriminant analysis cannot handle mixed data (discrete and continuous data) effectively instead logistic regression better fit the data. The model correctly classified 95.4% original grouped cases with positive and negative predictive values 92.44% and 97.90% respectively, which are higher than values obtained under the discriminant analysis. It was discovered that large quantity of exhibit has more effect than other variables, yet their inclusion significantly improves the outcome of the findings.
Severe to profound deafness may be associated with MYH9-related disease: report of 4 patients

SUMMARY MYH9-related disease (MYH9-RD) is a rare genetic syndromic disorder characterised by congenital thrombocytopenia and is associated with the risk of developing progressive sensorineural hearing loss, nephropathy and presenile cataracts during childhood or adult life. All consecutive patients enrolled in the Italian Registry for MYH9-RD with severe to profound deafness were included in a retrospective study. The study population involved 147 Italian patients with MYH9-RD: hearing loss was identified in 52% of cases and only 4 patients (6%) presented severe to profound deafness at a mean age of 33 years. Deafness was associated with mild spontaneous bleeding in all patients and with kidney involvement in 3 cases. Cochlear implantation was carried out in 3 cases with benefit, and no major complications were observed. Diagnosis was performed about 28 years after the first clinical manifestation of MYH9-RD, which was never suspected by an otolaryngologist. The clinical and diagnostic aspects of 4 patients with severe to profound deafness are discussed with a focus on therapeutic implications.
Investigation of spectroscopic studies and DFT calculations on glucofuranose derivatives of dithiophosphonates

Abstract 2,4-Bis(4-methoxyphenyl)-1,3,2,4-dithiadiphosphetane-2,4-disulfide (Lawesson’s reagent: LR) was reacted with 1,2:5,6-di-O-cyclohexylidene-α-D-glucofuranose and 1,2:5,6-di-O-isopropylidene-α-D-glucofuranose in toluene and gave rise to crude dithiophosphonic acids. The crude dithiophosphonic acids were treated with excess triethylamine and the triethylammonium salts of dithiophosphonic acids (1) and (2) were isolated by crystallization method. Compounds 1 and 2 were characterized by elemental analysis, IR, and NMR (1H-, 13C- and 31P-) spectroscopies and mass spectrometry. In addition, NMR spectra, the electronic properties (the electronic chemical potential, electronegativity, chemical hardness and the global electrophilicity index) and NBO analysis of compound 2 have been calculated by using the Gaussian 16 W program. The electronic properties were calculated using Highest Occupied Molecular Orbital (HOMO) and Lowest Unoccupied Molecular Orbital (LUMO) energies by density functional method (DFT/B3LYP) at 6-31G(d,p) level. The HOMO and LUMO energies are −5.9 and −0.72 eV, respectively. The HOMO–LUMO energy difference is 5.18 eV and this value shows that compound 2 has a high stability and low reactivity. Graphical Abstract
Prediction of solar conditions by emotional learning

The increased dependence of human life-world on earth upon orbiting satellites and the threat of solar events that could cause serious damage have triggered a new surge of space weather forecasting research. In this paper, we propose a physiologically motivated prediction methodology for trading off general precision with improved predictive performance in regions of higher interest. Results are compared to very accurate forecasts of ground based geomagnetic activity index (K) and sunspot number obtained by a neuro-fuzzy technique. It has been shown that we can design powerful alert system by using computationally intelligent forecasting techniques.
Pivotal Advance: Activation of cell surface Toll‐like receptors causes shedding of the hemoglobin scavenger receptor CD163

The hemoglobin scavenger receptor (HbSR) CD163 is a monocyte/macrophage‐specific glycoprotein that binds and facilitates uptake of haptoglobin‐hemoglobin (Hp‐Hb) complexes, which are rapidly formed in the circulation upon hemolysis of red blood cells. Hemolysis can be caused by a diverse range of infectious agents and provides pathogens a source of iron to enhance their survival and replication. Previous work demonstrated that lipopolysaccharide (LPS) activates monocytes to cleave cell‐bound HbSR into a soluble mediator that retains the capacity to bind Hp‐Hb complexes. We report that blocking LPS activation of Toll‐like receptor 4 prevents LPS‐mediated shedding of CD163. Furthermore, activation of two other cell surface Toll‐like receptors (TLR), TLR2 and TLR5, induces shedding of the HbSR from human monocytes. In contrast, treatment of monocytes with intracellular TLR3, TLR7, and TLR9 agonists failed to cause HbSR shedding, suggesting that this shedding event is selective to cell surface TLR activation. These data demonstrate that the soluble HbSR is released from monocytic cells in response to TLR signaling as an acute innate immune response to extracellular pathogen infections.
Comparative Analysis of Various Tools for Data Mining and Big Data Mining

—Data mining and knowledge discovery has emerged to extract useful, interesting, and unknown patterns and knowledge from huge amount of database. Big data is the term used to delineate massive amounts of information of both structured and unstructured data types. Data mining techniques can be classified as classification, association, clustering, anomaly detection, regression analysis, prediction, and tracking patterns. Data mining tools which are helpful to achieve above data mining techniques. This research analysis various data mining and big data mining tools with different perspectives. This research will help for researchers to select appropriate data mining tool or tools for their research.
Willingness to Compete: Family Matters

This paper studies the role of family background in explaining differences in the willingness to compete. By combining data from a lab experiment conducted with a representative sample of adolescents in Norway and high quality register data on family background, we show that family background is fundamental in two important ways. First, boys from low socioeconomic status families are less willing to compete than boys from better off families, even when controlling for confidence, performance, risk preferences, time preferences, social preferences, and psychological traits. Second, family background is crucial for understanding the large gender difference in the willingness to compete. Girls are much less willing to compete than boys among children from better off families, whereas we do not find any gender difference in willingness to compete among children from low socioeconomic status families. Our data suggest that the main mechanism explaining the role of family background is that the father’s socioeconomic status has a large effect on the boys’ willingness to compete, but no effect on the girls. We do not find any effect on the willingness to compete for boys or girls of the mother’s socioeconomic status or other family characteristic that may potentially shape competition preferences, including parental equality and sibling rivalry.
Heuristic scheduling for multimedia streams with firm deadlines

Multimedia streams such as audio and video require real-time manipulation. Unlike hard real-time tasks, however they have firm deadlines since the loss of a few frames does not lend to a significant degradation in quality. In this paper, we propose a simple but efficient scheduling scheme for multimedia streams using heuristic functions. The proposed heuristic function takes into account the fail ratio and the consecutive fail count in order to avoid consecutive fails of a multimedia task, and at the same time, to meet the given quality of all the accepted multimedia tasks in the system. By gracefully degrading the quality of the existing multimedia tasks, our scheme can meet the QoS of a newly arriving task accepted by the proposed admission control criteria. Extensive simulation has been performed to validate the effectiveness of the scheme under various multimedia task sets and QoS parameters.
Alitretinoin for the treatment of severe chronic hand eczema

Chronic hand eczema is a common and often debilitating condition. Alitretinoin, a 9-cis-retinoic acid and pan-retinoic acid agonist, is a new and effective systemic treatment for chronic hand eczema, which provides another treatment option. A “clear” or “almost clear” response can be achieved in up to half of patients within a 24-week course of treatment. Even higher rates of remission can be obtained with a longer duration of treatment. Alitretinoin has a favorable overall profile of adverse effects; however, female patients who are at risk of becoming pregnant should follow a strict pregnancy-prevention program due to the teratogenic effects of this drug.