Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ameliorative Effect of Galium Verum (Rubiaceae Family) Methanolic Extract on Folic Acid-induced Acute kidney Injury in Male Rats.

Background: Antioxidant, sedative, anticancer, and antibacterial properties are among the numerous pharmacological characteristics of Galium verum. Aim: The primary goal of this research was to investigate the therapeutic effects of G. verum extract against folic acid-induced acute kidney injury (AKI). Materials and methods: 18 male rats were assigned into three groups: Control, AKI, and G. verum. AKI was induced by a dose of folic acid (250 mg/kg, i.p.) while G. verum (250 mg/kg) was administrated for 7 consecutive days. Results: G. verum methanol extract contains flavonoids, anthraquinones, tannins, iridoids, triterpenes, steroids, phenols, and saponins, while it free of cardiac glycosides and alkaloids. G. verum extract significantly decreased levels of creatinine, urea, uric acid, sodium, chloride, potassium, microalbumin, malondialdehyde and nitric oxide while it increased creatinine clearance, glutathione reduced, and catalase levels. Meanwhile, histological examination of the kidney’s tissues revealed apparently normal structure. Conclusions: Underlying renal therapeutic mechanisms of G. verum action include a diuretic, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory properties of G. verum extract resulting in improving kidney structure and enhance recovery of renal function.
Genetic polymorphism and linkage disequilibrium of the HLA-DP region in Basques from Navarre (Spain) A.M. Perez-Miranda M.A. Alfonso-Sanchez

In this work, a sample of 116 individuals from an autochthonous Basque population (northern Navarre, Spain) was typed at the DNA level for HLA-DPA1 and HLA-DPB1 loci, with the aim of analysing the genetic polymorphism and the linkage disequilibrium (LD) of the HLA-DP region. In this Basque subpopulation, the most frequent alleles were *0103 (0.767) and *0201 (0.185) for DPA1 locus, whereas for DPB1 locus the *0401 allele was predominant (0.307). Accordingly, the most frequent haplotype was DPA1*0103-DPB1*0401 (0.300), which showed a significant LD. However, the haplotypes that most differentiated the sample of Navarre from other worldwide populations already analysed were DPA1*0105-DPB1*1901 (0.011) and DPA1*0201-DPB1*7601 (0.021), both of which showed a strong LD. Analysis of the relationships between populations based on data provided by HLA-DPA1 and HLA-DPB1 loci revealed a high genetic affinity between the Basque samples (North Navarre and Guipuzcoa), which, in turn, tend to plot separately from the remaining European populations. Gene frequency clines for DPB1*01, DPB1*04 and DPB1*11 alleles among European populations are reported for the first time. These alleles showed maximum values of FST (0.033, 0.034 and 0.025, respectively). Various evolutionary forces were considered in discussing the origin of the spatial structuring of the gene frequencies: (i) gene flow, argued from the hypotheses of Post-glacial recolonization from southern Europe or the demic diffusion of farmers from the Near East into Europe, and (ii) the existence of selective pressures that could have generated genetic microdifferentiation.
Effect of Hydrogen Peroxide and Vermicompost on Germination and Development of
Vigna Mungo

With the aim of securing the nutritional security with legumes the study aims at the effect of hydrogen peroxide and vermicompost on germination as well as morphology of Vigna mungo. Before sowing the seeds were treated with hydrogen peroxide as well as vermicompost. Then after sowing observations were made on the percentage of germination, plant height, number of leaves, width and height of leaves, area of leaves and root length and nodule formation. The percentage of germination is calculated after 7 days of seed sowing. The plant height was measured at 6, 12, 17, 24, 35 and 42 days after seed germinating with the help of measuring scale. The root length was measured after 16 and 25 days of germination. The leaf width and length were also measured with the help of measuring scale and leaf area was calculated on this basis. From the experiment conducted it was found that the seed germination percentage was highest in Vermicompost treated soil in Vigna mungo. The germination percentage in treatment with vermicompost (T3) was highest 95% then followed by 85% germination rate in treatment with hydrogen peroxide (T2) and the least 65% in the control (T1). Moreover, the seeds treated with vermicompost show tremendous increase in plant height, increase in number of leaves and relatively large leaf area compared to the seeds treated with hydrogen peroxide and then followed by control. Therefore, the study recommends the use of vermicompost over any inorganic material or chemical.
DarkLoc+: Thermal Image-Based Indoor Localization for Dark Environments With Relative Geometry Constraints

Thermal images capture temperature information of the environments instead of texture, making it well suitable for obtaining position in dark environments. Many methods have been proposed to handle RGB images, while thermal image-based localization methods are not well studied. To address it, we propose DarkLoc+, a thermal image-based indoor localization method based on the attention model and relative constraints between images under a learning-based localization framework. To be specific, we utilize self-attention to extract reprehensive features from thermal images and exploit relative constraints to enforce the convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to predict global poses. Relative pose loss(RelLoss)and relative regression loss are designed to work with global poses to constrain the network in feature and pose space simultaneously. We evaluate the proposed method on the public thermal images indoor dataset and our own dataset. The experimental results demonstrate that our method can obtain accurate position information.
Floristic Composition of Home Gardens and their Role in the Livelihood of the People of Kumba Municipality, Southwest Region, Cameroon

: Information on species diversity in home garden is scanty as most attention is focused on cash crops production for exports. The main objective of this study was to contribute to knowledge on the specie composition of home gardens and the role it plays in livelihoods of home garden owners in Kumba Municipality. A purposive sampling technique was used to select respondents for the study area. Seventy (70) well-structured questionnaires were established in the three zones. Zone 1(Lower Meta quarter block 1), zone II (Upper Meta quarter block 2) and zone III (Kumba town) for the collection of socio-demographic data and home garden information. For vegetation data collection, quadrats of 10x10m were established to collect all tree species. Trees were measured at DBH 1.37 using a diameter tape while for herbs, climbers and creepers quadrats of 2x2m were established in all plots. Shrubs, herbs, climbers and creepers were counted in all the plots. Diversity indices were calculated and analyzed using excel and SPSS version 22.0. Descriptive statistical such as frequency tables, pie and bar charts were derived. Results revealed that females who are of the middle aged 30-40 and 50 years above who are married with some level of education having as occupation trading dominated across the study sites. Also, they mostly have a house hold size of 4-7 persons. Trees, herbs, climbers, shrubs and creepers are the main plant species recorded across sites. A total of 86 useful plants species with a total of 46 families were reported during plant inventory. Species richness, abundance, number of genera, number of families and Shannon index of trees species showed significant differences (P< 0.05) across zones. Socially, economically and environmentally home garden plays major role in the livelihoods of the farmers. The main role was for food (29%) closely followed by medicine and income (12%) respectively and the least wind breaks (3%) to protect their houses and some home garden crops expose to wind action. Management activities of home gardens were mostly carried out by women who are busy to plant, weed, mulch, thin, fertilize, harvest and market the produces from garden. Majority of the respondents across the study sites faced challenges of destruction by domestic animal, pest and disease infestation, theft, climate change, small size of home garden areas, lack of improved seeds, seedlings failure, and lack of extension agents. It was recommended that government should facilitate the acquisition of land especially to women and subsidize farm inputs and also ensures regular visit of extension agents
Text clustering based on pre-trained models and autoencoders

Text clustering is the task of grouping text data based on similarity, and it holds particular importance in the medical field. sIn healthcare, medical data clustering is a highly active and effective research area. It not only provides strong support for making correct medical decisions from medical datasets but also aids in patient record management and medical information retrieval. With the development of the healthcare industry, a large amount of medical data is being generated, and traditional medical data clustering faces significant challenges. Many existing text clustering algorithms are primarily based on the bag-of-words model, which has issues such as high dimensionality, sparsity, and the neglect of word positions and context. Pre-trained models are a deep learning-based approach that treats text as a sequence to accurately capture word positions and context information. Moreover, compared to traditional K-means and fuzzy C-means clustering models, deep learning-based clustering algorithms are better at handling high-dimensional, complex, and nonlinear data. In particular, clustering algorithms based on autoencoders can learn data representations and clustering information, effectively reducing noise interference and errors during the clustering process. This paper combines pre-trained language models with deep embedding clustering models. Experimental results demonstrate that our model performs exceptionally well on four public datasets, outperforming most existing text clustering algorithms, and can be applied to medical data clustering.
Integrated Study of AD-Net Mie-Lidar Network and Data Assimilated CTM for Asian Dust Epidemiology in Japan

Mie-scattering lidar data are going to be incorporated into data assimilation in chemical transport model to represent more reliable / useful horizontal distribution of Asian dust over Japan. The result is utilized in an epidemiology which surveys effect of Asian dust to human health. Wider application of AD-Net is expected in the field of environmental researches.
Anomaly-based network intrusion detection using Transfer learning

The rapid development of computer networks and network applications, along with the present global increase in hacking and computer network attacks, has increased the demand for stronger intrusion detection and prevention solutions. The intrusion detection system (IDS) is crucial in detecting irregularities and attacks on the network, which has expanded in size and pervasiveness. In this paper, we develop an intrusion detection system based on deep learning and leverage a recent security dataset, CSE-CIC-IDS2018, to implement a more realistic IDS. We proposed an approach for network intrusion detection using Transfer learning to address both the binary and multiclass classification of network attacks. Network features from the dataset are transformed into grayscale images, the images are used as input to the ResNet50 deep learning model. The dataset is imbalanced, therefore, to increase the generalization of model, the imbalance ratio is reduced by using a synthetic data generation model called Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique (SMOTE). Experimental results show that our model achieves good performance for both binary and multiclass classification with accuracy of 92 percent for each case. The proposed approach provides a new method for intrusion detection using transfer learning and SMOTE for correcting data imbalance.
Feedback Intervention for the Control of Glucocorticoid Prescription in Primary Care Institutions: A Cluster Randomized Cross-Over Controlled Trial in Southwest China

Purpose The purpose of this study is to assess the effect of glucocorticoid prescription feedback intervention in complex primary care institutions for regulating its inappropriate use. Design, Setting and Interventions A six-month cluster randomized cross-over controlled trial was conducted in primary care institutions. A total of 347 physicians from 69 participating institutions were randomly allocated to either group A or group B. Both groups were given feedback interventions or serve as control. The feedback intervention comprised two components: a real-time pop-up warning of inappropriate glucocorticoid prescriptions based on the Hospital Information System and a high-proportion prescription feedback intervention warning system. Outcome Measures The primary outcome measure was the 10-day inappropriate glucocorticoid prescription rate, while the 10-day glucocorticoid prescription rate served as secondary outcome measure. Results At baseline, the 10-day inappropriate glucocorticoid prescription rates were 66.63% and 66.57% in group A and group B, respectively, showing no significant difference (p = 0.140). Following the intervention, group A exhibited a significant reduction in 10-day inappropriate glucocorticoid prescription rate at the crossing point by 13.69% (p < 0.001). In contrast, group B, which served as the control group, experienced an increase of 5.93% (p = 0.037) at the same crossover point. After the crossover point, there was a decrease in 10-day inappropriate glucocorticoid prescription rate for both groups. Group B as the intervention group demonstrated a reduction of 28.22% compared to the crossing point (p < 0.001), whereas group A showed a decrease of 12.20% (p = 0.339). The characteristics of physicians did not significantly influence the inappropriate glucocorticoid prescription rate. Conclusion The real-time pop-up warning of inappropriate glucocorticoid prescriptions based on the Hospital Information System and high-proportion prescription feedback intervention warning system can effectively regulate the inappropriate glucocorticoid prescribing behavior of physicians. Trial Registration ISRCTN11747547.
Can Participation in Mock Elections Boost Civic Competence among Students?

Mock elections are an increasingly popular form of active learning, adopted in many European countries and the United States. However, we have limited knowledge regarding the extent to which they enhance students’ civic competence. This article analyzes data from over 9,000 students aged 13-19 who participated in a 2022 mock election in Sweden. The goal is to determine the extent to which mock elections boost civic competence, with an emphasis on potential variations related to gender, ethnic background, and educational stage. Results indicate that such participation positively influences students’ self-reported political knowledge and, to a lesser extent, their political interest, engagement, and efficacy. Yet, the impact varies among student demographics. For instance, foreign-born students reported greater effects than their Swedish-born counterparts. Female students displayed heightened political knowledge and interest compared to males, while male students demonstrated higher political engagement. Interestingly, mock elections seemed to enhance political knowledge more in primary school students than in secondary school ones. Conversely, they had a more pronounced impact on the political interests and engagement of secondary school students. The study concludes with suggestions for future research to employ more rigorous methods to assess the influence of mock elections on civic competencies.
Laparoscopic D2+ lymph node dissection in patients with obesity and gastric cancer: A retrospective study

D2 lymph node dissection is widely used in laparoscopic radical gastrectomy for gastric cancer, and its efficacy and safety are known for patients with obesity. Currently, D2+ lymph node dissection is also applied to certain patients with gastric cancer of later stages. Due to the high difficulty of D2+ surgery, it is more challenging to perform on patients with obesity. There is currently limited research on the efficacy and safety of D2+ surgery in obese patients with gastric cancer. The present study aimed to retrospectively analyze the clinical data of patients undergoing laparoscopic radical gastrectomy for gastric cancer admitted to a single gastroenterology department. Patients with a body mass index ≥25 kg/m2 were included in the study. A total of 149 patients were selected as the research subjects and divided into two groups. The observation group comprised 74 patients who underwent D2+ lymph node dissection, while the control group comprised 75 patients who underwent standard D2 lymph node dissection. The surgical performance, postoperative recovery and postoperative complications of the two groups were compared. The results showed that the rates of conversion to open surgery in the D2+ and D2 groups were 5.4% (4/74) and 2.7% (2/75), respectively, and were not significantly different. The duration of surgery in the D2+ group (282.55±23.02 min) was significantly longer than that in the D2 group (271.45±20.05 min). The mean number of lymph node dissections in the D2+ group was 28.57±7.19, which was significantly higher than that in the D2 group (25.29±6.41). No statistically significant differences in intraoperative blood loss, time to first flatus, postoperative hospitalization days, total hospitalization expenses or postoperative complications was detected between the two groups. There were no deaths in either group within the 30-day perioperative period. In addition, there was no significant difference in the 3-year overall survival rate between the two groups, while the 5-year overall survival rate of the D2+ group was significantly higher than that of the D2 group. For obese patients with gastric cancer, D2+ surgery may increase the duration of surgery and slightly increase intraoperative blood loss compared with standard D2 radical surgery, but does not increase the incidence of postoperative complications. Moreover, D2+ surgery increases the number of lymph node dissections and improves the 5-year survival rate of patients. Therefore, it may be concluded that laparoscopic D2+ lymph node dissection is safe and feasible for obese patients with gastric cancer.
Systematic and palaeoecological significance of the first record of Pygocephalomorpha females bearing oöstegites (Malacostraca, Peracarida) from the lower Permian of southern Brazil

Malacostracan crustaceans of the fossil order Pygocephalomorpha are conspicuous elements in brackish to freshwater faunas in the upper Carboniferous of Laurentia and lower Permian of Gondwana. A pronounced sexual dimorphism is recognizable within its members, with Pygocephalomorpha females bearing oöstegites: modified epipodites that hold a brood pouch where the eggs develop until juvenile stage, with no planktonic dispersal of larvae. The preservation of oöstegites is quite rare and is described here for the first time from the American continents. The specimens, ventrally preserved Liocaris huenei females bearing oöstegites, come from the Irati Formation, a lower Permian sequence of the Paraná Basin, from an outcrop in southern Brazil. The oöstegites are similar to those previously described for Pygocephalomorpha, displaying seven pairs of overlapping epipodites that cover the whole cephalothorax. The scarcity of these structures in the fossil record may be explained by taphonomic bias (it requires ventrally preserved crustaceans) but more likely by palaeobiological aspects, such as preservation of an ovigerous moult. The record from the Irati Formation suggests that pygocephalomorphs had seasonal reproduction, with females maturing at the same time and acquiring oöstegites that would be lost after the release of juveniles. This record confirms the relationship of the Brazilian Liocaris Beurlen to the English Pygocephalus Huxley and South African Notocaris Broom pygocephalomorphs and provides an insight into its palaeoecological significance.
Identifying culture as cause: Challenges and opportunities

Causal inference lies at the core of many scientific endeavours. Yet answering causal questions is challenging, especially when studying culture as a causal force. Against this backdrop, this paper reviews research designs and statistical tools that can be used - together with strong theory and knowledge about the context of study - to identify the causal impact of culture on outcomes of interest. We especially discuss how overlooked strategies in cultural evolutionary studies can allow one to approximate an ideal experiment wherein culture is randomly assigned to individuals or entire groups (instrumental variables, regression discontinuity design, and epidemiological approach). In doing so, we also review the potential outcome framework as a tool to engage in causal reasoning in the cultural evolutionary field.
Production of Xylanase by Trichoderma Species Growing on Olive Mill Pomace and Barley Bran in a Packed-Bed Bioreactor

Xylanases are hydrolytic enzymes that have tremendous applications in different sectors of life, but the high cost of their production has limited their use. One solution to reduce costs and enhance xylanase production is the use of agro-wastes as a substrate in fungal cultures. In this study, olive mill pomace (OMP) and barley bran (BB) were used as carbon sources and possible inducers of xylanase production by three species of Trichoderma (atroviride, harzianum, and longibrachiatum), one major xylanase producer. The experiments were conducted under a solid-state fermentation system (SSF) in flask cultures and a packed-bed bioreactor. Cultures of OMP and BB were optimized by examining different ratios of OMP and BB, varied particle sizes, and inoculum size for the three species of Trichoderma. The ratio of 8:2 OMP and BB yielded the highest xylanase activity, with a particle size of 1 mm at 29 °C and an inoculum size of 1 × 107 spores/mL. Studying the time profile of the process revealed that xylanase activity was highest after seven days of incubation in flask SSF cultures (1.779 U/mL) and after three days in a packed-bed bioreactor (1.828 U/mL). The maximum percentage of OMP degradation recorded was about 15% in the cultures of T. harzianum flask SSF cultures, compared to about 11% in T. longibrachiatum bioreactor cultures. Ammonium sulfate precipitation and dialysis experiments showed that Xylane enzyme activity ranged from 0.274 U/mL in T. harzianum to 0.837 U/mL in T. atroviride when crude extract was used, with the highest activity (0.628 U/mL) at 60% saturation. Xylose was the main sugar released in all purified fractions, with the G-50 and G-75 fractions showing the maximum units of xylanase.
WIP-Designing an Educational Cyber-Physical System Based on a Model-Based Approach

This research proposes a comprehensive model-based cyber-physical systems (CPS) design and development environment for undergraduate cyber engineering curriculum. CPSs are characterized by usability, dependability, and tight development time, and require addressing key questions related to security and performance. The traditional deterministic modeling approach becomes insufficient when multiple CPS models are combined, thus the proposed research aims to develop reliable fault-tolerant CPS models using various modeling techniques. The goal is to prepare cyber engineering courses for future generation CPS design, incorporating data-driven learning, and supporting evolving trends in model-based CPS design, while fostering collaboration with other institutions.