Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of dietary dried oregano leaves on growth performance, carcase characteristics and serum cholesterol of female early maturing turkeys

1. A study was conducted with 120 female early maturing turkeys to test the effect of dietary dried oregano leaves (Origanum vulgare subsp. hirtum) on body weight (BW), feed intake (FI), feed conversion efficiency (FCE), carcase characteristics and serum cholesterol concentration. Dried oregano leaves had a content of 3·6 ml essential oils/100 g, while the carvacrol content was 855 g/kg of the total essential oils. 2. From 1 to 84 d of age, the turkeys were fed on 4 diets varying in oregano content (OR0, no oregano—control; OR45, 1·25 g oregano/kg; OR90, 2·5 g oregano/kg; OR135, 3·75 g oregano/kg). Birds were given feed and water ad libitum. 3. BW was unaffected by oregano throughout the experiment. FI and FCE were similar among all treatments until 42 d of age. From 43 to 84 d of age and for the overall experimental period, FI decreased linearly in treatment OR135 and FCE increased linearly with dietary oregano content. Body and carcase weights, carcase yield, and the relative weights of the heart and liver were not significantly affected by oregano content. The relative weights of the gizzard and small intestine decreased linearly with oregano content. Serum cholesterol content was similar among all treatments. 4. In the present study, dietary oregano (1·25, 2·5 and 3·75 g/kg) improved FCE in female early maturing turkeys between 43 and 84 d, with the lowest oregano inclusion (1·25 g/kg) giving the most cost effective diet. Thus, dried oregano leaves may be used as a natural herbal growth promoter for early maturing turkeys.
Performance model for an OBS node utilizing a shared-wavelength-converter-pool per node for contention resolution

To avoid optical buffering, wavelength conversion has been widely investigated to handle potential burst collisions in the optical domain. The objective of this study is to analyze an optical burst switched node that uses wavelength conversion for contention resolution. In an OBS node, wavelength converters may be available to each channel, may be shared per link, or shared per node, according to the node architecture. Due to the cost of wavelength converters, sharing is commonly preferred. With shared converters all except one of the contending burst switching demands are assigned to available converters from the pool to change their outgoing wavelength, solving contention. We propose a performance model for symmetric traffic case for a node employing shared converter pool per node (SPN), which is considered to be most cost saving architecture. The model is validated with simulations to prove that it effectively provides a tool for dimensioning of an OBS switch.
The readiness of higher education institutions (HEIs) towards knowledge-based economy in Malaysia

This paper presents the results of a study conducted to identify the contribution of higher education institutions towards the knowledgebased economy in Malaysia. The results reported in the paper are based on the data collected from annual reports of various respected organizations reading books, magazines, journals, surfing the Internet and interview. Evidence indicates that the graduates from HEIs can’t meet the need of the industries in the very near future. It means that Malaysia still has a long way to match with k-economy. The results also show the increase of GDP is positively related to the supply of graduates. The results suggest that the crucial role of HEIs and R&D requires firm commitments, support and direction from the government. The study also suggests opening more universities or allowing the current universities to open more branches.
Mapping the development of cerebellar Purkinje cells in zebrafish

The cells that comprise the cerebellum perform a complex integration of neural inputs to influence motor control and coordination. The functioning of this circuit depends upon Purkinje cells and other cerebellar neurons forming in the precise place and time during development. Zebrafish provide a useful platform for modeling disease and studying gene function, thus a quantitative metric of normal zebrafish cerebellar development is key for understanding how gene mutations affect the cerebellum. To begin to quantitatively measure cerebellar development in zebrafish, we have characterized the spatial and temporal patterning of Purkinje cells during the first 2 weeks of development. Differentiated Purkinje cells first emerged by 2.8 days post fertilization and were spatially patterned into separate dorsomedial and ventrolateral clusters that merged at around 4 days. Quantification of the Purkinje cell layer revealed that there was a logarithmic increase in both Purkinje cell number as well as overall volume during the first 2 weeks, while the entire region curved forward in an anterior, then ventral direction. Purkinje cell dendrites were positioned next to parallel fibers as early as 3.3 days, and Purkinje cell diameter decreased significantly from 3.3 to 14 days, possibly due to cytoplasmic reappropriation into maturing dendritic arbors. A nearest neighbor analysis showed that Purkinje cells moved slightly apart from each other from 3 to 14 days, perhaps spreading as the organized monolayer forms. This study establishes a quantitative spatiotemporal map of Purkinje cell development in zebrafish that provides an important metric for studies of cerebellar development and disease. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Develop Neurobiol 75: 1174–1188, 2015
What Do Medical Students Do for Self-Care? A Student-Centered Approach to Well-Being

ABSTRACT Phenomenon: Despite the promotion of medical student health and wellness through recent program and curricular changes, research continues to show that medical education is associated with decreased well-being in medical students. Although many institutions have sought to more effectively assess and improve self-care in medical students, no self-care initiatives have been designed using the explicit perspectives of students themselves. Approach: Using concept mapping methodology, the research team created a student-generated taxonomy of self-care behaviors taken from a national sample of medical students in response to a brainstorming prompt. The research team examined how students’ conceptualizations of self-care may be organized into a framework suitable for use in programming and curricular change in medical education. Findings: Ten clusters of self-care activities were identified: nourishment, hygiene, intellectual and creative health, physical activity, spiritual care, balance and relaxation, time for loved ones, big picture goals, pleasure and outside activities, and hobbies. Using results of the two-dimensional scaling analysis, students’ individual self-care behaviors were organized within two orthogonal dimensions of self-care activities. Insights: This concept map of student-identified self-care activities provides a starting point for better understanding and ultimately improving medical student self-care. Students’ brainstormed responses fit within a framework of varying levels of social engagement and physical-psychological health that included a wide range of solitary, social, physical, and mental health behaviors. As students’ preferred self-care practices did not often include programmatic activities, medical educators may benefit from consulting this map as they plan new approaches to student self-care and in counseling individual students searching for more effective ways to ease the burdens of medical school.
UTILIZATION OF SELENIUM NANOPARTICLES WITH SCHIFF BASE CHITOSAN AS ANTIBACTERIAL AGENTS

Bacterial infections and the increasing resistance of bacteria to antibiotics are included among the major global health problems. Therefore selenium nanoparticles in complexes with chitosan and selenium nanoparticles with Schiff base chitosan were synthesized and tested as potential antibacterial agents. Selenium nanoparticles with chitosan showed the average particle size of 29.4 nm with zeta potential of -44.3 mV. The standardized disc diffusion method has been used for susceptibility testing of selenium nanoparticles with chitosan and derivates on Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Chitosan selenium nanoparticles show inhibitory effect on gram-negative bacteria Escherichia coli only, whereas chitosan Schiff bases inhibit growth of all bacterial strains tested. The use of selenium nanoparticles in combination with chitosan Schiff bases appears to be a good way for the reduction of bacterial infection.
The Ways and Characteristics of Adults’ Religious Learning in Eastern Hungary

The purpose of this paper is to describe religious instruction for adults. This study emphasizes the central role of these groups in non-formal education, and tries to determine the main characteristics of people who are involved, besides, to describe the most common didactic models. Data were collected in an Eastern Hungarian city, where all the concerned denominations, the Roman and Greek Catholic, Reformed and Baptist churches are represented. As the former scholarly activity was quite poor in this field, and the ongoing research is still at its beginning stage, some hypotheses need further confirmation.
Ventral migration of early-born neurons requires Dcc and is essential for the projections of primary afferents in the spinal cord

Neuronal migration and lamina-specific primary afferent projections are crucial for establishing spinal cord circuits, but the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. Here, we report that in mice lacking Dcc (deleted in colorectal cancer), some early-born neurons could not migrate ventrally in the spinal cord. Conversely, forced expression of Dcc caused ventral migration and prevented dorsolateral migration of late-born spinal neurons. In the superficial layer of the spinal cord of Dcc–/– mutants, mislocalized neurons are followed by proprioceptive afferents, while their presence repels nociceptive afferents through Sema3a. Thus, our study has shown that Dcc is a key molecule required for ventral migration of early-born neurons, and that appropriate neuronal migration is a prerequisite for, and coupled to, normal projections of primary afferents in the developing spinal cord.
Long-Term Exposure to Air Pollution and Vascular Damage in Young Adults

Background: Long-term exposure to ambient air pollution has recently been linked to atherosclerosis and cardiovascular events. There are, however, very limited data in healthy young people. We examined the association between air pollutants and indicators of vascular damage in a cohort of young adults. Methods: We used data from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Young Adults study. We estimated exposure to nitrogen dioxide (NO2), particulate matter less than 2.5 &mgr;m in aerodynamic diameter (PM2.5), black smoke, sulfur dioxide (SO2), and various traffic indicators for participants' 2000 home addresses. Exposure for the year 2000 was estimated by land-use regression models incorporating regional background annual air pollution levels, land-use variables, population densities, and traffic intensities on nearby roads. Outcomes were common carotid artery intima-media thickness (n = 745), aortic pulse wave velocity (n = 524), and augmentation index (n = 729). Results: Exposure contrasts were substantial for NO2, SO2, and black smoke (5th–95th percentiles = 19.7 to 44.9, 2.5 to 5.2, and 8.6 to 19.4 &mgr;g/m3, respectively) and smaller for PM2.5 (16.5 to 19.9 &mgr;g/m3). The variability of carotid artery intima-media thickness was less than for pulse wave velocity and especially augmentation index (5–95th percentiles = 0.42 to 0.58 mm, 4.9 to 7.4 m/s and −12.3% to 27.3%, respectively). No associations were found between any of the pollutants or traffic indicators and carotid artery intima-media thickness, although PM2.5 effect estimates were in line with previous studies. We observed a 4.1% (95% confidence interval = 0.1% to 8.0%) increase in pulse wave velocity and a 37.6% (2.2% to 72.9%) increase in augmentation index associated with a 25 &mgr;g/m3 increase in NO2, and a 5.3% (0.1% to 10.4%) increase in pulse wave velocity with a 5 &mgr;g/m3 increase in SO2. PM2.5 and black smoke were not associated with either of these 2 outcomes. Conclusions: Air pollution may accelerate arterial-wall stiffening in young adults. Small outcome variability and lack of residential mobility data may have limited the power to detect an effect on intima-media thickness.
Exchange Rate Dynamics With Heterogeneous Expectations

As there is compelling empirical evidence that exchange rate expectations are persistently heterogeneous and formed mostly through boundedly rational mechanisms, we extend Dornbusch’ (1976) model by incorporating heterogeneous exchange rate expectations. As in the Dornbusch model, but regardless of how boundedly rational behavior is specified, in the short run the exchange rate adjusts to a domestic monetary expansion by overshooting its long-run response. However, the overshooting (and hence the short-run volatility of the exchange rate) depends on the frequency distribution of strategies to form exchange rate expectations. The frequency distribution of exchange rate forecasting strategies follows an evolutionary dynamics. In line with the empirical evidence, both strategies to form exchange rate expectations survive in the long run. Yet perfect foresight by all agents is neither a necessary condition for realization of the fundamental values of the exchange rate and price level, nor an inevitable consequence of the achievement of these values. An important empirical implication of the model is then that expectations heterogeneity does matter for the volatility of the exchange rate.
Power control in opportunistic and efficient resource block allocation algorithms for green LTE uplink networks

The energy efficiency in wireless networks is currently a central concern of research. We propose in this paper a new energy efficiency scheme which allocates the mobile's transmission power in function of the allocated Resource Blocks (RB) and the channel conditions of the user on the allocated RBs. We focus on the energy efficiency of the Opportunistic and Efficient Resource Block Allocation (OEA) algorithm and its variant adapted to the Quality of Service (QoS) of the traffics: the QoS based OEA for LTE uplink networks. The OEA and the QoS based OEA allocate the RBs to UEs efficiently and with respect to the SC-FDMA constraints, such that, for one user, contiguous RBs are allocated, and the same Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS) is used over the whole allocated RBs. Once RBs are allocated to UEs, power control is then applied to the mobile's transmission power considering the MCS used and the channel conditions. This energy efficiency allows users to achieve the same throughput than before the power control and does not affect the MCS selection established at the RB allocation step. This new scheme allows the transmission of a high number of bits per Joule.
Cellullar Plasticity and Dedifferentiation: A Link Between Cancer Stem Cells, Hypoxia, Cell Injury, and Inflammation

Cellular plasticity is the concept of bidirectional dynamics change cells differentiation degree which involved in the regeneration, repair and tissue turnover along the organism livespan. Cellular plasticity and dedifferentiation process are well documented in the discovery of iPCSs by introducing several transcriptional factors known as Yamanaka factor to terminally differentiated somatic cells and reverted into pluripotent state as the ESCs. iPSCs are able to exhibit ESCs differentiation potential which could produce ectodermic, mesodermic, and endodermic cell lineage. In tumour biology, the tumour plasticity also have a similar regulation and play an imporant role for maintaining tumour integrity and survival, particularly in maintaining CSCs population. Various study of cellular plasticity regulation has shown that various factors are involved, in example hypoxia, cell injury, and inflammation. Cells respond to hypoxia, cell injury, and inflammation by chemoattractant which attract repair cells to homing towards injured sites. The homing mechanism of stem cells involved EMT to facilitates migration of stem cells towards injured sites, thus leading to tissue regeneration. On the other hand, cancer metastasis also showed a connection with EMT process. EMT which showed a change in cell properties are linked to dedifferentiation and hypoxia response. Hypoxia condition has been known to preserve and both normal stem cells and CSCs stemness. HIF which protected from degradation in hypoxia condition interact with DNA by binding to HRE. HRE activation trigger transcription of numerous signalling protein which involved in stemness, cell proliferation and survival. Therefore it is concluded that cell injury, hypoxia, and inflammation could programmed cells to undergo dedifferentiation process and involved in EMT regulations. CSCs which resides insides heterogeneous tumour cells population are though to be dynamicly regulate itself in the quietscent and active state through dedifferentiation like the normal stem cells. Understanding how CSCs regulates its active an quietscent state dynamics could provide an important information for novel CSCs targeted therapy development.
Alleviating the cold-start problem of recommender systems using a new hybrid approach

Recommender systems have become significant tools in electronic commerce, proposing effectively those items that best meet the preferences of users. A variety of techniques have been proposed for the recommender systems such as, collaborative filtering and content-based filtering. This study proposes a new hybrid recommender system that focuses on improving the performance under the “new user cold-start” condition where existence of users with no ratings or with only a small number of ratings is probable. In this method, the optimistic exponential type of ordered weighted averaging (OWA) operator is applied to fuse the output of five recommender system strategies. Experiments using MovieLens dataset show the superiority of the proposed hybrid approach in the cold-start conditions.
The Association between Municipal Market Measures and Selected Financial Reporting Practices

Previous research has tried to identify the determinants of bond ratings in the corporate' and municipal2 sectors and to assess whether the use of an internal auditor rather than an external auditor has an effect on interest rates.3 The results of this research indicate that accounting measures and releases affect market measures. Presumably lenders perceive such reported numbers to be more credible when produced from a particular type of accounting system and when subjected to an audit.
Increase in toxicity of an invasive weed after reassociation with its coevolved herbivore

The ability of weeds to proliferate into nonindigenous habitats has been attributed to escape from their native natural enemies, allowing reallocation of resources from chemical defense into growth and reproduction. Many invasive weeds, however, eventually encounter their native, coevolved enemies in areas of introduction. Examination of herbarium specimens of an invasive phototoxic European weed, Pastinaca sativa, through 152 years reveals phytochemical shifts coincident in time with the accidental introduction of a major herbivore, the parsnip webworm, Depressaria pastinacella. Plants collected before the introduction of webworms in North America and during the earliest stages of establishment (1850–1889) are lower in toxic furanocoumarins than all plants subsequently collected in North America and lower than European plant samples collected before 1889. Thus, introduction of a major specialist herbivore can increase noxiousness of a species in its area of introduction, illuminating a potential consequence of classical biocontrol programs involving insect herbivores and poisonous weeds.
Mutual Inductance Calculation Between Circular Filaments Arbitrarily Positioned in Space: Alternative to Grover's Formula

In this paper, we present the full derivation of a new formula for calculating the mutual inductance between inclined circular filaments arbitrarily positioned with respect to each other. Although such a formula was already proposed by Grover more than 50 years ago, the formula presented here is slightly more general and simpler to use, i.e., it involves only a sequential evaluation of expressions and the numerical resolution of a simple numerical integration. We derived the new formula using the method of vector potential, as opposed to Grover's approach, which was based on the Neumann formula. We validated the new formula through a series of examples, which are presented here. Finally, we present the relationship between the two general formulas (i.e., Grover's and our new one) explicitly (Example 12).
Les représentations génétiques d'objets : simples analogies ou modèles pertinents ? Le point de vue de l' "évolutique". - Genetic representations of objects : simple analogies or efficient models ? The "evolutic" point of view

Depuis une trentaine d'annees, les ingenieurs utilisent couramment des analogies avec l'evolution naturelle pour optimiser des dispositifs techniques. Le plus souvent, ces methodes "genetiques" ou "evolutionnaires" sont considerees uniquement du point de vue pratique, comme des methodes d'optimisation performantes, qu'on peut utiliser a la place d'autres methodes (gradients, simplexes, .). Dans cet article, nous essayons de montrer que les sciences et les techniques, mais aussi les organisations humaines, et generalement tous les systemes complexes, obeissent a des lois d'evolution dont la genetique est un bon modele representatif, meme si genes et chromosomes sont "virtuels" : ainsi loin d'etre seulement un outil ponctuel d'aide a la synthese de solutions technologiques, la representation genetique est-elle un modele dynamique global de l'evolution du monde faconne par l'agitation humaine. ––––For thirty years, engineers commonly use analogies with natural evolution to optimize technical devices. More often that not, these "genetic" or "evolutionary" methods are only view as efficient tools, which could replace other optimization techniques (gradient methods, simplex, .). In this paper, we try to show that sciences, techniques, human organizations, and more generally all complex systems, obey to evolution rules, whose the genetic is a good representative model, even if genes and chromosomes are "virtual". Thus, the genetic representation is not only a specific tool helping for the design of technological solutions, but also a global and dynamic model for the action of the human agitation on our world.
Performance Analysis Of Rayleigh Fading Channel Over MIMO Wireless Communication System

Multiple antennas at both the transmitter and receiver are used in Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output (MIMO) system to improve the efficiency of wireless communication. MIMO technology has fascinated attention; because it can significantly improves data throughput and wireless link coverage without additional transmit power or channel bandwidth constraint. In this research paper, the performance of Rayleigh fading channel in 3x3 MIMO systems with channel capacity and probability error is studied and investigated. Space-Time Block Code (STBC), an effective and efficient transmit diversity scheme is implemented in MIMO systems to investigate and analyze the performance of fading channel. Simulation model is implemented and experiments are performed using MATLAB simulation software by varying the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR). Simulation result shows that the Rayleigh fading channel provides significantly higher channel capacity and lower probability error with a very little fluctuation with increasing SNR. The simulation result also clarify that 3x 3 MIMO systems outer perform with respect to channel capacity and probability error than 2X2 MIMO system which will be very helpful for high speed wireless communication system.