Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Brassica oleracea Var italica by-Products Prevent Lipid Accumulation and Cell Death in a Liver Cell Model of Lipid Toxicity

Obesity, a rising concern in the Eastern world, encompasses several co-morbidities, namely non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Potential natural-based interventions to decrease the burden of obesity complications are being investigated. Many of the edible parts of plants are not sold for consumption and end up as massive waste, losing nutritional potential. In fact, a sizeable amount of waste is generated within the different steps of the food supply chain, representing a massive loss of both plant material and natural resources. A good example is Brassica by-products (BBPs). The objective of this work was to investigate the effect of three different extracts from broccoli (Brassica oleracea var italica) by-products in an in vitro model of free fatty acid (FFA)-induced lipotoxicity using human hepatoma HepG2 cells. Broccoli leaf, stalk, and inflorescence extracts induced a dose-dependent decrease in the cell viability of HepG2 cells. However, the maximal non-lethal concentrations of leaves, stalks, and inflorescences (10 μg/mL) did not compromise mitochondrial function or neutral lipid accumulation in HepG2 cells. The extracts significantly decreased FFA-induced lipid accumulation in HepG2 cells either in a co-incubation or pre-incubation strategy. The broccoli extracts’ capacity to prevent the FFA-induced decrease in catalase activity in HepG2 may explain the observed effects.
1–10 Myr–old Low‐Mass Stars and Brown Dwarfs in Nearby Star‐forming Regions

My thesis research has focused primarily on identifying and characterizing pre-main sequence stars in nearby star-forming regions. To this end, I carried out wide-field (~150-250 deg(2)) optical photometric and spectroscopic surveys in and near the star forming regions of Taurus and Upper Scorpius. In Taurus, the aim of my optical photometric/spectroscopic survey was specifically to probe for a population of intermediate-age pre-main sequence stars outside of the young subclusters that are known to contain most of the young Taurus population. From this work I found tens of young (~1-3 Myr) and intermediate-age (~5-10 Myr) stars both near the known Taurus population and to the east, but relatively few pre-main sequence stars of any age to the west. I argued that the new pre-main sequence stars identified far from Taurus can not have originated from the vicinity of the 1-2 Myr-old subclusters and I proposed instead that they comprise a new, previously undiscovered region of recent star formation. In USco, the aim of my optical photometric/spectroscopic survey was to probe beyond previously explored regions to identify large numbers of 5 Myr-old low mass stars. From the spectroscopic data I have discovered 145 low mass members of USco. Using Monte Carlo simulations I showed that, taking into account known observational errors, the observed age dispersion for the low mass population in USco is consistent with all stars forming in a single burst ~5 Myr ago. I also derived the first spectroscopic mass function for USco that extends into the substellar regime and compared results to similar mass functions derived for stars in four other young clusters and associations.
Direct simulation of concentration creep in a binary gas‐filled enclosure

A Cartesian, two‐dimensional enclosure containing an isothermal rarefied binary gas mixture is studied as a limiting‐case model for actual crystal growth experiments conducted in reduced gravity environments. By employing a microscopic approach related to the Boltzmann equation, it is demonstrated that in the presence of appreciable partial concentration gradients a steady‐state flow pattern develops, driven by kinetic boundary layers adjacent to solid boundaries. In contrast, a macroscopic analysis based on the continuum transport equations and the classical no‐slip boundary condition would predict no flow whatsoever. For the case of equal mass species, the velocity scales involved are shown to increase with the disparity in accommodation coefficients, in agreement with expectations based on one‐dimensional, linearized Knudsen sublayer theory, while quantitative comparison between simulations and the latter theory reveals significant confinement effects. Simulation of concentration creep in binary mixtu.
The Size Effect of Silver Nanoparticles on Reinforcing the Mechanical Properties of Regenerated Fibers

Regenerated silk fibroin (RSF), made from discarded silk cocoons, can be processed into regenerated silk fibers by a simple, inexpensive, and environmentally friendly wet-spinning process. However, the breaking strength and toughness of most RSF fibers are lower than those of natural silk. In this study, Ag nanoparticles (NPs) of different sizes were introduced into RSF to form RSF/AgNPs hybrid fibers by wet spinning. The effects of AgNPs of different sizes on the mechanical properties and structure of the hybrid fibers were investigated. The results demonstrated that the mechanical properties of hybrid fibers were significantly improved, especially the breaking strain, after the addition of four different sizes of AgNPs. With the reduction in AgNPs size (2–60 nm), the breaking strength and breaking strain of hybrid fibers tended to increase. The results showed that the hybrid fibers containing 2 nm AgNPs were remarkable, with excellent mechanical properties and toughness, and the breaking strain reached 138.27%, which was far greater than blank RSF fibers (15.02%) and even natural silk (about 21%). The S-FTIR and WAXD showed that, compared with the larger AgNPs, the smaller AgNPs contributed more to the formation of silk fibroin β-sheet and crystallinity, and reduced the β-crystallite size. This study is helpful to understand the relationship between the size of nanoparticles and the mechanical properties of hybrid fibers.
Potential of Honey in Sustainable Health Management

Honey is a precious and sustainable natural resource. Ancient literatures belonging to early civilizations mention the use of honey by their physicians to treat patients with different symptoms, injuries or infections. The past few decades have witnessed various laboratories across the globe reporting their findings about the antimicrobial, wound-healing, anti-inflammation, anti-oxidant and anti-tumour effects of natural honey. Unfortunately, its use in modern medicine is severely limited. Scientific community is largely sceptical of its curative impact. The complex chemical composition and different beneficial properties of honey vary with its floral origin. Recently it has come into focus that honey has a very promising role in ‘green nanotechnology’. Nanotechnology offers the opportunity to better exploit the potential of many natural compounds for application in nanomedicine. However, the classic nanotechnology synthetic approaches are often hazardous. Many nations are hence focusing on safer, easier, eco-friendly synthesis methods, using natural resources like honey. But in India, only a handful of laboratories are interested in exploring the immense valuable prospects of different varieties of honey available in different states.Every year only 30-40% of India’s natural honey is harvested for sale and export, while the rest simply dries up. This is a huge waste of a valuable research resource that holds great promise for the pharmaceutical industry and in sustainable health management.
Carriers capturing of V-defect and its effect on leakage current and electroluminescence in InGaN-based light-emitting diodes

The effect of quantum well (QW) number on performances of InGaN/GaN multiple-quantum-well light-emitting diodes has been investigated. It is observed that V-defects, originated from various InGaN well layers intercepted by threading dislocations (TDs), increase in density and averaged size with more periods of QWs, resulting in larger reverse-bias leakage current and lower emission efficiency of light-emitting diodes. Conductive atomic force microscopy measurements demonstrate that V-defects may preferentially capture carriers, subsequently enhance local current and nonradiative recombinations at associated TD lines, which suggest that TD lines with V-defects at vertex have larger influence on emission efficiency than those without V-defects.
Using Continuous Ground-Based Radar and Lidar Measurements for Evaluating the Representation of Clouds in Four Operational Models

The ability of four operational weather forecast models [ECMWF, Action de Recherche Petite Echelle Grande Echelle model (ARPEGE), Regional Atmospheric Climate Model (RACMO), and Met Office] to generate a cloud at the right location and time (the cloud frequency of occurrence) is assessed in the present paper using a two-year time series of observations collected by profiling ground-based active remote sensors (cloud radar and lidar) located at three different sites in western Europe (Cabauw, Netherlands; Chilbolton, United Kingdom; and Palaiseau, France). Particular attention is given to potential biases that may arise from instrumentation differences (especially sensitivity) from one site to another and intermittent sampling. In a second step the statistical properties of the cloud variables involved in most advanced cloud schemes of numerical weather forecast models (ice water content and cloud fraction) are characterized and compared with their counterparts in the models. The two years of observations are first considered as a whole in order to evaluate the accuracy of the statistical representation of the cloud variables in each model. It is shown that all models tend to produce too many high-level clouds, with too-high cloud fraction and ice water content. The midlevel and low-level cloud occurrence is also generally overestimated, with too-low cloud fraction but a correct ice water content. The dataset is then divided into seasons to evaluate the potential of the models to generate different cloud situations in response to different large-scale forcings. Strong variations in cloud occurrence are found in the observations from one season to the same season the following year as well as in the seasonal cycle. Overall, the model biases observed using the whole dataset are still found at seasonal scale, but the models generally manage to well reproduce the observed seasonal variations in cloud occurrence. Overall, models do not generate the same cloud fraction distributions and these distributions do not agree with the observations. Another general conclusion is that the use of continuous ground-based radar and lidar observations is definitely a powerful tool for evaluating model cloud schemes and for a responsive assessment of the benefit achieved by changing or tuning a model cloud parameterization.
The effect of subgrid-scale models on the vortices computed from large-eddy simulations

Direct numerical and large-eddy simulations (DNS/LES) of temporal plane jets are carried out in order to analyze the effect of the subgrid-scale (SGS) models on the vortices obtained from LES. The dynamics of the filtered vorticity norm (or filtered enstrophy) is analyzed through the application of a box filter to temporal DNS of turbulent plane jets (Reλ≈100), using a methodology similar to da Silva and Metais [J. Fluid Mech. 473, 103 (2002)]. Special emphasis is placed on the enstrophy SGS dissipation term, which represents the effect of the SGS models on the vortices computed from LES. When the filter is placed in the inertial range region the evolution of the vorticity norm is governed by the enstrophy production and enstrophy SGS dissipation, which represents, in the mean, a sink of resolved enstrophy. Thus the coherent vortices obtained from LES are subjected to an additional (nonviscous) dissipation mechanism. Locally, however, the enstrophy SGS dissipation can be either a sink or a source of resol.
Breaking of Wavelength-Dependence in Holographic Wavefront Sensors Using Spatial-Spectral Filtering

Nowadays, wavefront sensors are widely used to control the shape of the wavefront and detect aberrations of the complex field amplitude in various fields of physics. However, almost all of the existing wavefront sensors work only with quasi-monochromatic radiation. Some of the methods and approaches applied to work with polychromatic radiation impose certain restrictions. However, the contemporary methods of computer and digital holography allow implementing a holographic wavefront sensor that operates with polychromatic radiation. This paper presents a study related to the analysis and evaluation of the error in the operation of holographic wavefront sensors with such radiation.
Multiresolution Delaunay triangulation model-based image representation scheme

This paper presents a Delaunay triangulation (DT) model-based multiresolution image representation of irregular triangles. After "minimizing the difference" and "minimizing the variance" criteria for image representation are given, splitting and merging methods for DT meshes are then discussed. Comparison of the two criteria is made with the aid of examples. The method demonstrated in the paper can be applied to still image coding, motion compensation for active image sequences and other image processing applications.
Effects of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungus on Sodium and Chloride Ion Channels of Casuarina glauca under Salt Stress

Casuarina glauca is an important coastal protection forest species, which is exposed to high salt stress all year round. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) can promote the growth and salt tolerance of C. glauca under salt stress. However, the effects of AMF on the distribution of Na+ and Cl− and the expression of related genes in C. glauca under salt stress need to be further explored. This study explored the effects of Rhizophagus irregularis on plant biomass, the distribution of Na+ and Cl−, and the expression of related genes in C. glauca under NaCl stress through pot simulation experiments. The results revealed that the mechanisms of Na+ and Cl− transport of C. glauca under NaCl stress were different. C. glauca took a salt accumulation approach to Na+, transferring Na+ from roots to shoots. Salt accumulation of Na+ promoted by AMF was associated with CgNHX7. The transport mechanism of C. glauca to Cl− might involve salt exclusion rather than salt accumulation, and Cl− was no longer transferred to shoots in large quantities but started to accumulate in roots. However, AMF alleviated Na+ and Cl− stress by similar mechanisms. AMF could promote salt dilution of C. glauca by increasing biomass and the content of K+, compartmentalizing Na+ and Cl− in vacuoles. These processes were associated with the expression of CgNHX1, CgNHX2-1, CgCLCD, CgCLCF, and CgCLCG. Our study will provide a theoretical basis for the application of AMF to improve salt tolerance in plants.
The Molecular Clouds in a Section of the Third Galactic Quadrant: Cloud Catalog

We present results of cloud catalogs of 12CO, 13CO, and C18O (J = 1–0) in a section of the third Galactic quadrant over (195° < l < 220°, ∣b∣ < 5°) from the Milky Way Imaging Scroll Painting project. The data were acquired with the PMO 13.7 m millimeter telescope with ∼50″angular resolution. We construct three molecular cloud catalogs containing information of 12CO, 13CO, and C18O from the position–position–velocity (PPV) data cubes. The 12CO cloud catalog contains 7069 samples identified based on the DBSCAN algorithm. We develop a new algorithm, the stacking bump algorithm, for identifying 13CO and C18O emission by searching for weak signals in the original spectra of 13CO and C18O within the boundary in PPV space defined by the 12CO cloud. Above the 2σ threshold level, we identified 1197 clouds having 13CO emission and 32 clouds having C18O emission. We test the stacking bump algorithm in the noise-only datacube and find that the 2σ threshold can effectively avoid the possibility of false detection generated by noise. The results proved that the new algorithm has high accuracy and completeness. Statistics of peak intensity, projected angular area, line width, and flux of the clouds show that the power-law indices obtained from different isotopic lines are close to each other.
Quantum degenerate Bose-Fermi atomic gas mixture of 23Na and 40K

We report a compact experimental setup for producing a quantum degenerate mixture of Bose 23Na and Fermi 40K gases. The atoms are collected in dual dark magneto–optical traps (MOT) with species timesharing loading to reduce the light-induced loss, and then further cooled using the gray molasses technique on the D 2 line for 23Na and D 1 line for 40K. The microwave evaporation cooling is used to cool 23Na in | F = 2,mF = 2〉 in an optically plugged magnetic trap, meanwhile, 40K in | F = 9/2,mF = 9/2〉 is sympathetically cooled. Then the mixture is loaded into a large volume optical dipole trap where 23Na atoms are immediately transferred to |1,1〉 for further effective cooling to avoid the strong three-body loss between 23Na atoms in |2,2〉 and 40K atoms in |9/2,9/2〉. At the end of the evaporation in optical trap, a degenerate Fermi gas of 40K with 1.9 × 105 atoms at T/TF = 0.5 in the |9/2,9/2〉 hyperfine state coexists with a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) of 23Na with 8 × 104 atoms in the |1,1〉 hyperfine state at 300 nK. We also can produce the two species mixture with the tunable population imbalance by adjusting the 23Na magneto–optical trap loading time.
Classical and quantum modifications of gravity

Einstein’s General Relativity has been our best theory of gravity for nearly a century, yet we know it cannot be the final word. In this thesis, we consider modifications to General Relativity, motivated by both high and low energy physics. In the quantum realm, we focus on Horava gravity, a theory which breaks Lorentz invariance in order to obtain good ultraviolet physics by adding higher spatial derivatives to the action (improving propagator behaviour in loops) but not temporal (avoiding Ostrogradski ghosts). By using the Stuckelberg trick, we demonstrate the necessity of introducing a Lorentz violating scale into the theory, far below the Planck scale, to evade strong coupling concerns. Using this formalism we then show explicitly that Horava gravity breaks the Weak Equivalence Principle, for which there are very strict experimental bounds. Moving on to considering matter in such theories, we construct DiffF(M) invariant actions for both scalar and gauge fields at a classical level, before demonstrating that they are only consistent with the Equivalence Principle in the case that they reduce to their covariant form. This motivates us to consider the size of Lorentz violating effects induced by loop corrections of Horava gravity coupled to a Lorentz invariant matter sector. Our analysis reveals potential light cone fine tuning problems, in addition to evidence that troublesome higher order time derivatives may be generated. At low energies, we demonstrate a class of theories which modify gravity to solve the cosmological constant problem. The mechanism involves a composite metric with the square root of its determinant a total derivative or topological invariant, thus ensuring pieces of the action proportional to the volume element do not contribute to the dynamics. After demonstrating general properties of the proposal, we work through a specific example, demonstrating freedom from Ostrogradski ghosts at quadratic order (in the action) on maximally symmetric backgrounds. We go on to demonstrate sufficient conditions for a theory in this class to share a solution space equal to that of Einstein’s equations plus a cosmological constant, before determining the cosmology these extra solutions may have when present.
Survival benefit of anticoagulation in patients with end-stage kidney disease and atrial fibrillation: A national population-based study

Abstract Background: The prevalence of atrial fibrillation (AF) in patients with end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) is high and increasing; however, current evidence is insufficient and conflicting regarding oral anticoagulant (OAC) use in patients with ESKD and AF. Methods: A retrospective cohort study of patients diagnosed with AF after ESKD from January 2007 to December 2017 was conducted using the Korea National Health Insurance System Database. The primary outcome was all-cause death. Secondary outcomes were ischemic stroke, severe bleeding, and major adverse cardiovascular event (MACE). Outcomes were compared between OAC user and nonuser groups using landmark analysis (6 months after AF diagnosis) and 1:3 propensity score matching. Results: Among patients diagnosed with AF after ESKD, the number of patients prescribed any OAC increased 2.3-fold from 2012 (n=3,579) to 2018 (n=8,341), and the proportion prescribed direct OACs (among those prescribed any OAC) increased steadily from 0% in 2012 to 51.4% in 2018. Matched cohort analysis showed that compared with OAC nonusers, OAC users had a lower risk of all-cause death (hazard ratio [HR] 0.71; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.58-86), ischemic stroke (HR 0.63; 95% CI 0.43-92), and MACE (HR 0.76; 95% CI 0.59-0.98) but no increased risk of severe bleeding (HR 1.58; 95% CI 0.99-2.52). Subgroup analysis according to type of OAC revealed that patients receiving direct OACs had a significantly lower risk of all-cause death (HR 0.44; 95% CI 0.28-0.69), ischemic stroke (HR 0.36; 95% CI 0.13-0.99), and MACE (HR 0.42; 95% CI 0.22-0.79) than OAC nonusers but no increased risk of severe bleeding (HR 0.26; 95% CI 0.04-1.90). Conversely, warfarin use was not associated with all-cause death (HR 0.98; 95% CI 0.79-1.21), ischemic stroke (HR 0.78; 95% CI 0.51-1.19), or MACE (HR 1.03; 95% CI 0.79-1.36) but was associated with a higher risk of severe bleeding (HR 2.43; 95% CI 1.50-3.93). Conclusions: In patients with ESKD and AF, OACs were associated with reduced all-cause death, ischemic stroke, and MACE risks but no increased risk of severe bleeding. Direct OACs were preferable to warfarin with regard to efficacy and safety.