Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Beneficial Soil Bacterium Pseudomonas frederiksbergensis OS261 Augments Salt Tolerance and Promotes Red Pepper Plant Growth

Soil salinity, being a part of natural ecosystems, is an increasing problem in agricultural soils throughout the world. Pseudomonas frederiksbergensis OS261 has already been proved to be an effective bio-inoculant for enhancing cold stress tolerance in plants, however, its effect on salt stress tolerance is unknown. The main aim of the present study was to elucidate P. frederiksbergensis OS261 mediated salt stress tolerance in red pepper. The plants were exposed to a salt stress using NaCl at the concentrations of 50, 100, and 150 mM after 12 days of transplantation, while plant growth and enzyme activity were estimated 50 days after sowing. The height in P. frederiksbergensis OS261 inoculated plants was significantly increased by 19.05, 34.35, 57.25, and 61.07% compared to un-inoculated controls at 0, 50, 100, and 150 mM of NaCl concentrations, respectively, under greenhouse conditions. The dry biomass of the plants increased by 31.97, 37.47, 62.67, and 67.84% under 0, 50, 100, and 150 mM of NaCl concentrations, respectively. A high emission of ethylene was observed in un-inoculated red pepper plants under salinity stress. P. frederiksbergensis OS261 inoculation significantly reduced ethylene emission by 20.03, 18.01, and 20.07% at 50, 100, and 150 mM of NaCl concentrations, respectively. Furthermore, the activity of antioxidant enzymes (ascorbate peroxidase, superoxide dismutase, and catalase) also varied in the inoculated red pepper plants. Salt stress resistance in the bacterized plants was evident from the improved antioxidant activity in leaf tissues and the decreased hydrogen ion concentration. Thus, we conclude that P. frederiksbergensis OS261 possesses stress mitigating property which can enhance plant growth under high soil salinity by reducing the emission of ethylene and regulating antioxidant enzymes.
Well-being, appraisal, and coping in Latina and Caucasian female dementia caregivers: findings from the REACH study

While there has been considerable interest in studying ethnically diverse family caregivers, few studies have investigated the influence of dementia caregiving on Latino families. The current study includes participants from two sites of the REACH (Resources for Enhancing Alzheimer's Caregiver Health) project to compare well-being, appraisal, and religiosity by ethnicity, with specific attention to levels of acculturation. Latina (n = 191) and Caucasian female (n = 229) dementia family caregivers from two regions of the United States (Miami, Florida and Northern California) were compared at baseline on demographics, care recipient characteristics, mental and physical health, and psychosocial resources, including appraisal style and religiosity. Latina caregivers reported lower appraisals of stress, greater perceived benefits of caregiving, and greater use of religious coping than Caucasian caregivers. The relationship of these variables to level of acculturation for the Latina caregivers was also explored. Implications of these results for psychosocial interventions with Latino and Caucasian family caregivers are discussed.
Stock Trading: An Optimal Selling Rule

Trading in stock markets consists of three major steps: select a stock, purchase a number of shares, and eventually sell them to make a profit. The timing to buy and sell is extremely crucial. A selling rule can be specified by two preselected levels: a target price and a stop-loss limit. This paper is concerned with an optimal selling rule based on the model characterized by a number of geometric Brownian motions coupled by a finite-state Markov chain. Such a policy can be obtained by solving a set of two-point boundary value differential equations. Moreover, the corresponding expected target period and probability of making money and that of losing money are derived. Analytic solutions are obtained in one- and two-dimensional cases. Finally, a numerical example is considered to demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.
The efficacy of a novel adenosine agonist (WAG 994) in postoperative dental pain.

AIMS To determine the comparative efficacy of a new novel adenosine agonist (WAG 994) in postoperative pain after third molar surgery. METHODS One hundred and twenty-two patients with postoperative pain after third molar surgery were randomised in a placebo double-blind trial with an active control group. In the early postoperative period patients received either a single dose of WAG 994 1 mg, ibuprofen 400 mg or matched placebos. Pain intensity score was recorded on serial visual analogue scales over a 6 h investigation period. Similarly, pain relief was completed on a 4 point categorical scale at each evaluation point. Patients had access to escape analgesic and if these were taken, the time and dosage were recorded. A sparse sampling technique was used to investigate the relationship between analgesic effects and plasma concentrations of WAG 994. RESULTS All three treatment groups were matched for various demographic variables. For all efficacy measures, WAG 994 was not significantly different from placebo (P >0.05), whereas ibuprofen 400 mg was significantly superior to placebo (P<0.001). No significant relationships (P<0.05) were found between WAG 994 pharmacokinetic variables and efficacy measures. Conclusion WAG 994, an adenosine agonist, did not show efficacy in the management of postoperative pain after third molar surgery. Although this pain responds well to nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, it appears to be resistant to compounds that interact with purinergic receptors.
Linking international agricultural research knowledge with action for sustainable development

We applied an innovation framework to sustainable livestock development research projects in Africa and Asia. The focus of these projects ranged from pastoral systems to poverty and ecosystems services mapping to market access by the poor to fodder and natural resource management to livestock parasite drug resistance. We found that these projects closed gaps between knowledge and action by combining different kinds of knowledge, learning, and boundary spanning approaches; by providing all partners with the same opportunities; and by building the capacity of all partners to innovate and communicate.
Graph Drawing by the Magnetic Spring Model

Abstract A novel and heuristic method for drawing graphs is proposed, introducing a new model called the magnetic spring model , that is an extension of the model by Eades. Graph drawing by force-directed placement has mainly been investigated so far for undirected graphs, and the idea of controlling edge orientations has not been considered. The proposed method can control orientations of links and can nicely draw not only undirected graphs but also other classes of graphs such as trees, directed graphs and mixed graphs in a simple and unified manner. Moreover, since the method is based upon simulations of physical systems, it is conceptually intuitive and therefore quite easy to understand, implement and improve the method. The magnetic spring model and algorithm are presented and many examples of drawings and results from statistical experiments are shown to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Electrostatic Origin of the Catalytic Power of Enzymes and the Role of Preorganized Active Sites*

Enzymatic reactions are involved in most biological processes. Thus, there is a major practical and fundamental interest in finding out what makes enzymes so efficient. Many crucial pieces of this puzzle were provided by biochemical and structural studies (1). Yet, as will be shown below, the actual reason for the catalytic power of enzymes is not widely understood. It is clearly not explained by the statement that “the enzyme binds the transition state stronger than the ground state” because the real question is how the differential binding can be accomplished. Similarly, it is not true that “evolution can use any factor to accelerate reactions. ” This review uses energy considerations and the results of computational studies to clarify open questions about enzyme catalysis.
Emerging Infectious Diseases

Resistance of Streptococcus pneumoniae to penicillin and other beta-lactams is increasing worldwide (1-4). The major mechanism of resistance involves the introduction of mutations in genes encoding penicillin-binding proteins (5). Selective pressure is thought to play an important role, and use of beta-lactam antibiotics has been implicated as a risk factor for infection and colonization (6-14). Wide geographic spread of resistant clones has been described (3,15). However, the effect of geographic patterns of antimicrobial-drug use on the emergence and spread of resistance is not known. We performed two previous surveillance studies of S. pneumoniae isolated at medical centers in the United States, one in 1994-95 (16), the other in 1997-98 (17). We report the relationship between antimicrobial-drug use in the geographic areas surrounding these medical centers and the change in penicillin resistance of S. pneumoniae over a 3-year period.
Research on Traditional Chinese acupuncture – Science or Myth: A Review

0141·0768/881 100588·031$02.00/0 © 1988 The Royal Society of Medicine In recent years there has been an increasing interest in acupuncture, both among the public and the medical profession. Interest in the West has been sparked by reports that it is widely used in China for anaesthesia and for the treatment of acute and chronic disease. In examining this literature we hoped to find a collectionof controlled studies demonstrating the effectiveness of acupuncture for one complaint or its ineffectiveness for another. However, such studies are rare. We actually encountered several problems in the reporting of acupuncture research. Such accounts tend to fall into four categories, namely, papers based on the assumption that acupuncture is effective, those which limit the potential value of acupuncture by considering it outside the framework of traditional Chinese medicine, those which try to establish the effects of acupuncture in western terms, and those which provide case histories or have a very small sample size. One weakness noted even among most of the sound studies was the failure to include an explanation of the Chinese diagnosis of the patient.
Investment-Based Momentum Profits

We offer an investment-based explanation of momentum. The neoclassical theory of investment implies that expected stock returns are related to expected investment returns, defined as the next-period marginal benefits of investment divided by the current-period marginal costs of investment. Empirically, winners have higher expected growth of investment-to-capital and higher expected marginal product of capital and consequently higher expected stock returns than losers. The investment-based expected return model captures well the momentum profits across a wide array of momentum portfolios. However, the individual alphas for several testing portfolios are large. All in all, we conclude that momentum is consistent with the value maximization of firms.
[Analysis of degradation failure of poly L-lactic acid fixators used in meniscus tears].

OBJECTIVES Biodegradable poly L-lactic acid (PLLA) fixators used in the repair of meniscal tears may cause adverse reactions inside the knee due to delayed degradation. This study was designed to determine the reasons for late degradation of PLLA fixators. METHODS Three unused and three used meniscal PLLA fixators (BioStinger) were analyzed. The latter were removed from three patients due to persisting symptoms within six months after knee arthroscopy. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy was performed and external and internal surfaces of the samples were examined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray fluoroscopy (XRF). Chemical structural analyses of two samples (one from each group) were made by 1H-nuclear magnetic resonance (1H-NMR) spectroscopy. Degradation times of two samples (one from each group) by oxidative hydrolysis in hydrogen peroxide solution were recorded. RESULTS Chemical structure of used and unused fixators did not differ in FTIR analysis. With increasing temperatures, unused and used fixators showed degradation with and without melt flow, respectively. In SEM analysis, inner sections of unused fixators were homogeneous, whereas those of the used ones exhibited crystals which were found to be sodium and potassium chloride salts in XRF analysis. The 1H-NMR spectrum of used and unused samples showed the normal pattern of lactic acid polymer. The unused and used fixators degraded in hydrogen peroxide solution in 10 days and 30 days, respectively. CONCLUSION Both fixators had the same chemical structure in FTIR and NMR analyses. Formation of salt crystals seemed to be the most important cause of degradation failure, while changes in the physical properties of fixators were thought to be associated with delayed degradation.
Antenatal peer support workers and initiation of breast feeding: cluster randomised controlled trial

Objective To assess the effectiveness of an antenatal service using community based breastfeeding peer support workers on initiation of breast feeding. Design Cluster randomised controlled trial. Setting Community antenatal clinics in one primary care trust in a multiethnic, deprived population. Participants 66 antenatal clinics with 2511 pregnant women: 33 clinics including 1140 women were randomised to receive the peer support worker service and 33 clinics including 1371 women were randomised to receive standard care. Intervention An antenatal peer support worker service planned to comprise a minimum of two contacts with women to provide advice, information, and support from approximately 24 weeks’ gestation within the antenatal clinic or at home. The trained peer support workers were of similar ethnic and sociodemographic backgrounds to their clinic population. Main outcome measure Initiation of breast feeding obtained from computerised maternity records of the hospitals where women from the primary care trust delivered. Results The sample was multiethnic, with only 9.4% of women being white British, and 70% were in the lowest 10th for deprivation. Most of the contacts with peer support workers took place in the antenatal clinics. Data on initiation of breast feeding were obtained for 2398 of 2511 (95.5%) women (1083/1140 intervention and 1315/1371 controls). The groups did not differ for initiation of breast feeding: 69.0% (747/1083) in the intervention group and 68.1% (896/1315) in the control groups; cluster adjusted odds ratio 1.11 (95% confidence interval 0.87 to 1.43). Ethnicity, parity, and mode of delivery independently predicted initiation of breast feeding, but randomisation to the peer support worker service did not. Conclusion A universal service for initiation of breast feeding using peer support workers provided within antenatal clinics serving a multiethnic, deprived population was ineffective in increasing initiation rates. Trial registration Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN16126175.
Dissociation in Undergraduate Students: Disruptions in Executive Functioning

The concept of dissociation refers to disruptions in attentional control. Attentional control is an executive function. Few studies have addressed the link between dissociation and executive functioning. Our study investigated this relationship in a sample of undergraduate students (N = 185) who completed the Dissociative Experiences Scale and the Random Number Generation Task. We found that minor disruptions in executive functioning were related to a subclass of dissociative experiences, notably dissociative amnesia and the Dissociative Experiences Scale Taxon. However, the two other subscales of the Dissociative Experiences Scale, measuring depersonalization and absorption, were unrelated to executive functioning. Our findings suggest that a failure to inhibit previous responses might contribute to the pathological memory manifestations of dissociation.
Direct ZVS start-up of a current-fed resonant inverter

Zero voltage switching (ZVS) is critical for reliable operation of standard current-fed parallel resonant inverters. Under steady-state conditions, ZVS can be achieved using common techniques such as a phase lock loop, a voltage controlled oscillator, and other integral controllers. However, during transient processes, achieving ZVS is not trivial for such controllers and consequently switch failure can occur. This paper proposes a dynamic ZVS method to solve the start-up problems by using a forced dc current. Start-up conditions are analyzed and complete dynamic ZVS control is achieved. If the ramp-up delay of practical dc power supplies is utilized, the start-up process can be controlled to be overshoot-free at no extra cost. The validity of this method is proven using both PSpice simulations and experimental results
A Ranking-Theoretic Approach to Conditionals

Conditionals somehow express conditional beliefs. However, conditional belief is a bi-propositional attitude that is generally not truth-evaluable, in contrast to unconditional belief. Therefore, this article opts for an expressivistic semantics for conditionals, grounds this semantics in the arguably most adequate account of conditional belief, that is, ranking theory, and dismisses probability theory for that purpose, because probabilities cannot represent belief. Various expressive options are then explained in terms of ranking theory, with the intention to set out a general interpretive scheme that is able to account for the most variegated usage of conditionals. The Ramsey test is only the first option. Relevance is another, familiar, but little understood item, which comes in several versions. This article adds a further family of expressive options, which is able to subsume also counterfactuals and causal conditionals, and indicates at the end how this family allows for partial recovery of truth conditions for conditionals.
Loss-Aware Geographic Routing for Unreliable Wireless Sensor Networks

The research community has recently witnessed the emergence of densely deployed Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) consisting of a large number of battery-operated sensor nodes. As a candidate for monitoring remote faulty regions, WSNs may suffer from hardware and software faults which may cause misbehavior of a portion of network. Geographic routing algorithms aims at traversing data packets in such environments with admissible communication complexity. In this paper, we propose a novel region routing algorithm that addresses message loss tolerability in harsh and hostile environments by assigning higher weights to higher harsh regions. Finally, we present extensive simulation experiments to validate the accuracy of the proposed algorithm.
Can Education and Psychology Join Forces

Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Digital Aestetics & Communication, IT-University of Copenhagen, Rued Langgaards 7, DK-2300 Copenhagen S, sen@itu.dk Contrasts like explicit versus tacit are often brought to the fore by boundary encounters. Any practice – even the most verbal – will have tacit aspects that are revealed by demands outside its regime of competence (Wenger, 1999: 140).
KEGGexpressionMapper allows for analysis of pathways over multiple conditions by integrating transcriptomics and proteomics measurements

Motivation: In transcriptomic and proteomics-based studies, the abundance of genes is often compared to functional pathways such as the Kyoto Encyclopaedia at Genes and Genomes (KEGG) to identify active metabolic processes. Even though a plethora of tools allow to analyze and to compare omics data in respect to KEGG pathways, the analysis of multiple conditions is often limited to only a defined set of conditions. Furthermore, for transcriptomic datasets, it is crucial to compare the entire set of pathways in order to obtain a global overview of the species' metabolic functions. Results: Here, we present the tool KEGGexpressionMapper, a module, that is implemented in the programming language R. The module allows to highlight the expression of transcriptomic or proteomic measurements in various conditions on pathways and incorporates methods to analyze gene enrichment analyses and expression clustering in time series data. KEGGexpressionMapper supports time series data from transcriptomic or proteomics measurements from different individuals. As the tool is implemented in the scripting language R, it can be integrated into existing analysis pipelines to obtain a global overview of the dataset. The R package can be downloaded from this https URL.
Assessing the Effects of Non-steroidal Anti-inflammatory Drugs on Antihypertensive Drug Therapy Using Post-Marketing Surveillance Database

Background Antihypertensive and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are used to treat many common diseases. However, it has been suspected that interactions between these drugs exist. Here, we assessed the interactions between non-selective NSAIDs and several classes of antihypertensive drugs. Methods The study design was a cohort study using “The Antihypertensive Drug Database,” which is a collection of data accumulated from Drug Use Investigations. Subjects newly starting antihypertensive drug therapy were identified in the database. We compared the “User” group, who were co-administered NSAIDs, with the “Non-user” group, who were not. The outcome measure was the change in systolic blood pressure from the baseline after 2 months of treatment. We estimated the non-adjusted and adjusted differences in the change in systolic blood pressure between the “User” and “Non-user” groups. Results Data were collected for a total of 1,204 subjects, of whom 364 were prescribed beta blockers, 60 were prescribed diuretics, 628 were prescribed angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, and 152 were prescribed calcium channel blockers. The adjusted difference in the change in systolic blood pressure between the User (n = 301) and Non-user (n = 903) groups was 2.88 mmHg (95% confidence interval: 0.89, 4.87); thus, systolic blood pressure in the Non-User group decreased further from the baseline than that in the User group. In subjects administered beta blockers, diuretics, angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, and calcium channel blockers, the corresponding differences were 0.37 mmHg (-3.24, 3.98), 6.11 mmHg (-3.16, 15.37), 3.85 mmHg (1.16, 6.66), and 3.50 mmHg (-2.03, 9.02). Conclusion The effectiveness of antihypertensive drugs was attenuated by the co-administration of NSAIDs. The differences in the effects of NSAIDs varied with different classes of antihypertensive drugs.
How Much Will I Pay for Freeway Real-Time Traffic Information?

Although there is research focused on real-time traffic information, in terms of types of information, timing of provision and drivers’ acceptance, not much is related to quantifying real-time traffic information and its perceived value, i.e . , amount of information and willingness to pay (WTP) for that information. In this study, freeway drivers’ preferred types of real-time traffic information and their willingness to pay for them are investigated. Due to traffic information having the property of non-market goods, a contingent valuation method is applied. A computer-aided survey was conducted in rest areas along freeways to obtain the samples needed. A Spike model is used to overcome the serious biases that would otherwise be caused by numerous zero WTPs in samples when logit and probit models are used. Finally, freeway drivers’ WTP for different types of real-time traffic information can be obtained from the estimation results. The results may be of importance in pricing different types of traffic information more realistically in the future.