Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dextran-Chitosan Composites: Antioxidant and Anti-Inflammatory Properties

This study presents the development of new formulations consisting of dextran (Dex) and chitosan (Ch) matrices, with fillings such as chitosan stearate (MCh), citric acid, salicylic acid, or ginger extract. These materials were characterized using Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), and mechanical tests, and evaluated for antioxidant properties, including scavenging activities, metal chelation, and ferric ion reducing power, as well as anti-inflammatory properties, measuring the binding affinity between serum albumin and the bioactive substances, which can influence their bioavailability, transport, and overall anti-inflammatory effect. Compounds in ginger such as 6-gingerol reduce inflammation by inhibiting the production of inflammatory substances, such as prostaglandin, cytokines, interleukin-1β, and pro-inflammatory transcription factor (NF-κB) and, alongside citric and salicylic acids, combat oxidative stress, stabilizes cell membranes, and promote membrane fluidity, thereby preserving membrane integrity and function. Incorporating chitosan stearate in chitosan:dextran samples created a dense, stiff film with an elastic modulus approximately seventeen times higher than for the chitosan:dextran matrix. The Dex:Ch:MCh sample exhibited low compressibility at 48.74 ± 1.64 kPa, whereas the Dex:Ch:MCh:citric acid:salicylic acid composite had a compact network, allowing for 70.61 ± 3.9% compression at 109.30 kPa. The lipid peroxidation inhibitory assay revealed that Dex:Ch:MCh:citric acid had the highest inhibition value with 83 ± 0.577% at 24 h. The study highlights that adding active substances like ginger extract and citric acid to Dex:Ch composites enhances antioxidant properties, while modified chitosan improves mechanical properties. These composites may have potential medical applications in repairing cell membranes and regulating antioxidant enzyme activities.
Dynamics, variability and adaptation of single neuron response over extended timescales

Cellular excitability is a fundamental physiological process. The mathematical description of the excitation event, the action potential, was introduced 60 years ago by Hodgkin and Huxley and is one of the cornerstones of theoretical neuroscience. While excitability is well understood around the timescale of a single action potential, the nature of the slower dynamics of its determinants is still
Surface modification of poly(methyl methacrylate)-sulphadiazine complexes as self photostabilizer against Ultraviolet (UV) Irradiation

ABSTRACT Surface functionalization of PMMA by Aminolysis reaction was utilised along with the addition of inorganic photo stabilisers (Zn(II), Ni(II), Cu(II) and Co(II)) to enhance the photostability of PMMA under exposure to UV light. The new polymers were characterised via different spectroscopic techniques. In order to assess the effectiveness of the PMMA films, Tinuvin 622, a commercial photo-stabiliser, was employed to assess the photostabilizing efficiency of our approach. The results have shown that Copper chloride was the most effective photostabilizer, followed by nickel, cobalt, and zinc chloride, in that order.
The Effect of Grain Size of the Stock on Electrical Characteristics of the Li0.03Na0.97Ta0.05Nb0.95O3 Perovskite Ceramics

The microstructure and electrical properties of two samples of the ferroelectric Li0.03Na0. 97Ta0.05Nb0. 95O3 ceramic solid solution prepared from initial charge stocks of different dispersity by conventional ceramics technology are compared. The average size of grains and concentration of pores in the samples are found to be of little difference while the electrical properties of the ceramics are strongly affected by the grain size of the initial mixture. The difference in properties is due to conditions at the diffusion stage of the solid-phase synthesis caused by differences in composition of larger grains rather than the grain size itself.
The Use of Brain Natriuretic Peptide in the Evaluation of Heart Failure in Geriatric Patients

Heart failure is one of the main morbidity and mortality factors in the general population and especially in elderly patients. Thus, at the European level, the prevalence of heart failure is 1% in people under 55 years of age but increases to over 10% in people over 70 years of age. The particularities of the elderly patient, which make the management of heart failure difficult, are the presence of comorbidities, frailty, cognitive impairment and polypharmacy. However, elderly patients are under-represented in clinical trials on the diagnosis and treatment of heart failure. The need for complementary methods (biomarkers) for differential and early diagnosis of heart failure is becoming more and more evident, even in its subclinical stages. These methods need to have increased specificity and sensitivity and be widely available. Natriuretic peptides, in particular B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) and its fraction NTproBNP, have gained an increasingly important role in the screening, diagnosis and treatment of heart failure in recent years.
Autophagic Degradation Is Involved in Cell Protection against Ricin Toxin

Autophagy is a complex and highly regulated degradative process, which acts as a survival pathway in response to cellular stress, starvation and pathogen infection. Ricin toxin is a plant toxin produced by the castor bean and classified as a category B biothreat agent. Ricin toxin inhibits cellular protein synthesis by catalytically inactivating ribosomes, leading to cell death. Currently, there is no licensed treatment for patients exposed to ricin. Ricin-induced apoptosis has been extensively studied; however, whether its intoxication via protein synthesis inhibition affects autophagy is not yet resolved. In this work, we demonstrated that ricin intoxication is accompanied by its own autophagic degradation in mammalian cells. Autophagy deficiency, by knocking down ATG5, attenuates ricin degradation, thus aggravating ricin-induced cytotoxicity. Additionally, the autophagy inducer SMER28 (Small Molecule Enhancer of Rapamycin 28) partially protects cells against ricin cytotoxicity, an effect not observed in autophagy-deficient cells. These results demonstrate that autophagic degradation acts as a survival response of cells against ricin intoxication. This suggests that stimulation of autophagic degradation may be a strategy to counteract ricin intoxication.
Slice Sampling with Multivariate Steps

Slice Sampling with Multivariate Steps Madeleine B. Thompson Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Statistics University of Toronto 2011 Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) allows statisticians to sample from a wide variety of multidimensional probability distributions. Unfortunately, MCMC is often difficult to use when components of the target distribution are highly correlated or have disparate variances. This thesis presents three results that attempt to address this problem. First, it demonstrates a means for graphical comparison of MCMC methods, which allows researchers to compare the behavior of a variety of samplers on a variety of distributions. Second, it presents a collection of new slice-sampling MCMC methods. These methods either adapt globally or use the adaptive crumb framework for sampling with multivariate steps. They perform well with minimal tuning on distributions when popular methods do not. Methods in the first group learn an approximation to the covariance of the target distribution and use its eigendecomposition to take non-axis-aligned steps. Methods in the second group use the gradients at rejected proposed moves to approximate the local shape of the target distribution so that subsequent proposals move more efficiently through the state space. Finally, this thesis explores the scaling of slice sampling with multivariate steps with respect to dimension, resulting in a formula for optimally choosing scale tuning parameters. It shows that the scaling of untransformed methods can sometimes be improved by alternating steps from those methods with radial steps based on those of the polar slice sampler.
Learning-Based Near-Infrared Band Simulation with Applications on Large-Scale Landcover Classification

Multispectral sensors are important instruments for Earth observation. In remote sensing applications, the near-infrared (NIR) band, together with the visible spectrum (RGB), provide abundant information about ground objects. However, the NIR band is typically not available on low-cost camera systems, which presents challenges for the vegetation extraction. To this end, this paper presents a conditional generative adversarial network (cGAN) method to simulate the NIR band from RGB bands of Sentinel-2 multispectral data. We adapt a robust loss function and a structural similarity index loss (SSIM) in addition to the GAN loss to improve the model performance. With 45,529 multi-seasonal test images across the globe, the simulated NIR band had a mean absolute error of 0.02378 and an SSIM of 89.98%. A rule-based landcover classification using the simulated normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) achieved a Jaccard score of 89.50%. The evaluation metrics demonstrated the versatility of the learning-based paradigm in remote sensing applications. Our simulation approach is flexible and can be easily adapted to other spectral bands.
Physiological Responses of Anemic Women to Exercise under Hypoxic Conditions

When combining two conditions of reduced oxygen availability, anemia and hypoxia, human physiological responses are highly challenged to maintain arterial oxygen delivery, especially during whole-body exercise. The aim of this study was to compare the cardiorespiratory responses of mildly anemic women with those of healthy controls, while cycling in normobaric hypoxia. Two groups of young females were matched for age, weight, height, and involvement in physical activity, one with normal hemoglobin, hematocrit, and ferritin levels and another suffering from mild iron deficiency anemia (10 < (Hb) < 12 g/dL, 34 < Hct < 37%, ferritin < 15 μg/L). They cycled to exhaustion under normoxia and hypoxia (FIO2 0.21 and 0.14), and their physiological responses were compared at 40, 80, and 100% VO2max of the specific condition. The two groups differed (p < 0.05) mainly at the higher exercise intensities; the anemic participants exhibited similar heart rate but lower oxygen pulse than their control counterparts, as well as a larger drop in maximal oxygen uptake. However, they sustained maximal effort by employing the anaerobic metabolism to a larger extent, which stimulated a greater ventilatory response. It appears that iron deficiency anemia of mild severity, which is commonly observed in young athletic females, impacts physiological responses during whole-body exercise in the presence of moderate hypoxia.
Stability Control and Mode Shift of Ramp Compensation in V2 Controlled Buck Converter

V2 controlled buck converter with ramp compensation is studied, its two border voltages are derived and one-dimensional discrete-time model is established, upon which the dynamical effect of V2 control technique on stability control and mode shift of V2 controlled buck converter with ramp compensation is studied by using the bifurcation diagram, Lyapunov exponent spectrum, and parameter space map. The research results verified by simulation and experimental measurements indicate that by utilizing ramp compensation, V2 controlled buck converter can not only shift its operation mode from discontinuous conduction mode to continuous conduction mode, but also effectively stabilize its operation state from unstable subharmonic oscillation to stable periodic state.
Isolation and identification of microbiota of Culex quinquefasciatus for their application as paratransgenic tools in vector control

Background and Objectives: Although the study on the bacteria residing in the mid-gut, salivary gland, and reproductive organs of insect vectors have drawn appeal to the host-pathogen interactions, we know comparatively less about microbiota that naturally exist in different mosquito organs within Iran. Materials and Methods: In the current investigation, PCR assay by using 16S rRNA gene amplification and DNA sequencing, in addition to the traditional culture-based approach utilized for the detection of cultivable bacterial assemblages in mid-gut and reproductive tracts of Culex quinquefasciatus. Results: The identified bacteria isolated from different tissues of 45 individuals were consisted of Achromobacter, Aeromonas, Arthrobacter, Asaia, Enterobacter, Gluconobacter, Klebsiella, Lysinibacillus, Micrococcus, Psuedomonas and Serratia. The results showed that Proteobacteria was the most prevalent phylum in both genders' mid-gut and reproductive tracts, and Asaia was the most common bacteria that originated in adult females and males’ tissues. Conclusion: These outcomes recommend that the discovered microbiome may span through Cx. quinquefasciatus populations. This data can be utilized to interfere with the transmission of pathogens and design new strategies for the control of mosquito-borne diseases.
The interpretive and relational work of financial innovation: a resemblance of assurance in Islamic finance

ABSTRACT What social forces shape the trajectory of novel, moralized forms of finance such as social finance, green finance, or Islamic banking and finance? More broadly, how do agents mobilize arguments and organize each other to create any form of financial innovation? This article addresses both questions by contributing an ethnography of a novel financial innovation pseudonymously named Sukuk Illumination, an internationally traded moral alternative to a corporate bond. This article’s findings both elaborate and subsume existing functionalist and critical explanations of financial innovation. The central argument is that we can better understand what causes financial innovation and the trajectory that new innovations take when we conceptualize each financial instrument as a polysemic cultural object materialized in legal contracts and institutionalized work practices and created by parties with asymmetric power to define the new object. Financial innovation necessarily involves multiple parties in a financial service commodity chain with multivalent motivations co-producing and hotly debating interpretations of the prospective financial instrument while simultaneously creating, refashioning, and differentiating existing relationships with one another. Sukuk Illumination demonstrates both the potential and constraints for creating new moralized financial instruments and for transforming financial systems.
Isolation, functional evaluation of probiotic properties and molecular identification of strains isolated from Iranian poultry’s gut

Background and Objectives: The use of probiotics as an alternative to antibiotics in poultry diets has attracted a lot of interest recently. In this context, the determination of probiotic characteristics was evaluated on several isolates obtained from Iranian poultry’s gut. Materials and Methods: Probiotic characteristics such as hemolysis activity, acid, bile, gastric juice tolerate, in vitro adhesion assay, cell surface properties (hydrophobicity, auto-aggregation and co-aggregation) and antibiotic susceptibility test were evaluated. Finally, selected isolates identified molecularly after temperature-salt tolerance and extracellular enzyme activity (amylase, protease and cellulose). Results: Out of 362 strains isolated from native poultry in three geographical regions of Iran, nine strains (belong to Bacillus sp., Enterococcus sp., Pediococcus sp., Lactobacillus sp., Kluyveromyces sp.) showed resistance against gastrointestinal physiological conditions, desirable surface properties, ability to adhere to epithelial intestine cell line and antibiotic susceptibility. Also, these strains were discovered to be temperature-salt tolerant but, only a small number of them were able to produce hydrolase enzymes. Conclusion: According to the results, the selected strains can be introduced as native probiotic candidates for utilization in novel poultry feeds.
An FPGA-Based High-Throughput Keypoint Detection Accelerator Using Convolutional Neural Network for Mobile Robot Applications

Keypoint detection is a key procedure for Visual-Inertial Odometry (VIO). In recent years, Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) has been introduced to enhance the robustness of keypoint detection. However, the high computational complexity and memory usage make them difficult to be deployed to edge platforms for high-throughput mobile robot applications such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs). In this work, we proposed an FPGA-based high-throughput keypoint detection accelerator using CNN with algorithm-hardware co-design, including a lightweight keypoint detection neural network and a dedicated hardware accelerator architecture. Implemented on a Xilinx ZCU104 FPGA board, the proposed accelerator is able to perform keypoint detection at 94 FPS for $640 \times 480$ input image with a low ATE, outperforming the state-of-the-art designs.
Irrigation organizations

Groundwater resources are vital for U.S. and global irrigated agricultural production. In the United States, groundwater supplies water to approximately 65 percent of all irrigated acreage. The connectivity among irrigators pumping from the same aquifer—paired with growing concerns about groundwater depletion—led to the creation of many of the groundwater organizations currently active in the United States. Groundwater organizations perform a variety of functions to promote groundwater resource stewardship and address groundwater overdraft and quality concerns that impact groundwater irrigators and other nonagricultural users (i.e., residential and municipal groundwater users). The operations of groundwater organizations are shaped by State-level groundwater law, organization governance, and the other irrigation-related activities performed by the organization (such as delivering water directly to farms and ranches). This report leverages data from the USDA’s 2019 Survey of Irrigation Organizations to characterize the unique institutions that steward much of the Nation’s groundwater resources.
Analysis for a Finite Element Preconditioned Spectral Element Method of the Poisson Equation

In this paper, we analyze the spectrum of a preconditioned spectral element approximation to the Poisson problem. The analysis is carried out based on the algebraic properties of the stiffness matrix (Sh) of the linear finite element method associated to the global Gauss-Lobatto-Legendre nodes,which is used as the preconditioner of the spectral element system AhU = Fh. We show the equivalence between (ShU,U)l2 and (AhU,U)l2 in the case of domain decomposition. Precisely, we prove that there exist two positive constants c0, C1, such that λk∈[c0,c1]for all eigenvalues λk of Sh-1Ah.
Local Directional Patterns for Plant Leaf Disease Detection

Plant leaf disease detection is an attractive research issue for artificial intelligence and computer vision community, who aims to develop intelligent systems that make an automatic detection of plant leaf diseases. In the recent past years, deep learning techniques were extensively used since they allow developing end-to-end systems. However, for several case studies detection scores still need improvement. Presently, we propose a new descriptor that is based on local Directional Patterns to perform feature generation from plant leaves. This descriptor is associated with SVM classifier to develop the full detection system. Experiments are conducted by considering three crop species that are Tomato, Potato, and Bell pepper diseases. The proposed LDP features are evaluated comparatively to convolutional neural networks features as well as to the histogram of oriented gradients. The results obtained highlight the effectiveness of the proposed system which outperforms the LeNet-5 convolutional neural network by 3% in the over-all accuracy.
Multiple quadrate soliton solutions and chaotic behaviours of (2+1)-dimensional breaking soliton equation

With the projective equation method and the variable separation method, new exact solutions of the (2+1)-dimensional breaking soliton equation is derived. Based on the derived solitary wave excitation, we obtain multi-quadrate soliton structures with Weierstrassp function and study the chaotic behaviours of the equation for two chaotic systems.
Integrated Omic Analysis Delineates Pathways Modulating Toxic TDP-43 Protein Aggregates in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a multi-systemic, incurable, amyloid disease affecting the motor neurons, resulting in the death of patients. The disease is either sporadic or familial with SOD1, C9orf72, FUS, and TDP-43 constituting the majority of familial ALS. Multi-omics studies on patients and model systems like mice and yeast have helped in understanding the association of various signaling and metabolic pathways with the disease. The yeast model system has played a pivotal role in elucidating the gene amyloid interactions. We carried out an integrated transcriptomic and metabolomic analysis of the TDP-43 expressing yeast model to elucidate deregulated pathways associated with the disease. The analysis shows the deregulation of the TCA cycle, single carbon metabolism, glutathione metabolism, and fatty acid metabolism. Transcriptomic analysis of GEO datasets of TDP-43 expressing motor neurons from mice models of ALS and ALS patients shows considerable overlap with experimental results. Furthermore, a yeast model was used to validate the obtained results using metabolite addition and gene knock-out experiments. Taken together, our result shows a potential role for the TCA cycle, cellular redox pathway, NAD metabolism, and fatty acid metabolism in disease. Supplementation of reduced glutathione, nicotinate, and the keto diet might help to manage the disease.
Alternative Splicing of NAC Transcription Factor Gene CmNST1 Is Associated with Naked Seed Mutation in Pumpkin, Cucurbita moschata

In pumpkin (Cucurbita moschata), the naked or hull-less seed phenotype has great benefits for breeding this crop for oil or snack use. We previously identified a naked seed mutant in this crop. In this study, we report genetic mapping, identification, and characterization of a candidate gene for this mutation. We showed that the naked seed phenotype is controlled by a single recessive gene (N). The bulked segregant analysis identified a 2.4 Mb region on Chromosome 17 with 15 predicted genes. Multiple lines of evidence suggested that CmoCh17G004790 is the most probable candidate gene for the N locus which encodes a NAC transcription factor WALL THICKENING PROMOTING FACTOR 1 (CmNST1). No nucleotide polymorphism or structural variation was found in the genomic DNA sequences of CmNST1 between the mutant and the wildtype inbred line (hulled seed). However, the cDNA sequence cloned from developing seed coat samples of the naked seed mutant was 112 bp shorter than that from the wildtype which is due to seed coat-specific alternative splicing in the second exon of the mutant CmNST1 transcript. The expression level of CmNST1 in the developing seed coat was higher in the mutant than in the wildtype during early seed coat development which was reversed later. Transcriptomic profiling with RNA-Seq at different stages of seed development in the mutant and wildtype revealed a critical role of CmNST1 as a master regulator for the lignin biosynthesis pathway during seed coat development while other NAC and MYB transcription factors were also involved in forming a regulatory network for the building of secondary cell walls. This work provides a novel mechanism for the well-characterized NST1 transcription factor gene in regulating secondary cell wall development. The cloned gene also provides a useful tool for marker-assisted breeding of hull-less C. moschata varieties.