Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Surviving the marine environment: two new species of Mallomonas (Synurophyceae)

ABSTRACT The genus Mallomonas consists of single-celled flagellates covered with siliceous scales and bristles and is well known in freshwater environments. Two new marine Mallomonas species were collected from Dongho Beach, Jeollabukdo, Korea. To fully understand the taxonomy of the new species, we performed molecular phylogenetic analysis based on a concatenated dataset and observed morphological features using light and electron microscopy. For the phylogenetic analysis, we used a combined dataset from five gene sequences: nuclear small subunit (SSU) and large subunit (LSU) rDNA and plastid LSU rDNA, rbcL and psaA genes. The new species M. cuspis sp. nov. grouped with M. heterospina and M. oviformis in the section Planae. It had scales with a broad shield marked with V-shaped internal ridge that lacked submarginal ribs and a dome. The other new species, M. marina sp. nov., clustered with M. cratis, M. pseudocratis, M. asmundiae and M. striata var. serrata in section Striatae and had scale characters that matched the group, including a well-developed posterior submarginal rib and series of transverse ribs on the shield and dome. In addition, we investigated the effect of salinity on growth rate and cell morphology. The two marine species represented high growth rate between salinities of 10 and 30 psu, suggesting that both species are well adapted in marine environments. When exposed to salinities of 0 and 5 psu, they underwent cell enlargement.
Enhancement of the antimicrobial properties of bacteriophage‐K via stabilization using oil‐in‐water nano‐emulsions

Bacteriophage therapy is a promising new treatment that may help overcome the threat posed by antibiotic‐resistant pathogenic bacteria, which are increasingly identified in hospitalized patients. The development of biocompatible and sustainable vehicles for incorporation of viable bacterial viruses into a wound dressing is a promising alternative. This article evaluates the antimicrobial efficacy of Bacteriophage K against Staphylococcus aureus over time, when stabilized and delivered via an oil‐in‐water nano‐emulsion. Nano‐emulsions were formulated via thermal phase inversion emulsification, and then bacterial growth was challenged with either native emulsion, or emulsion combined with Bacteriophage K. Bacteriophage infectivity, and the influence of storage time of the preparation, were assessed by turbidity measurements of bacterial samples. Newly prepared Bacteriophage K/nano‐emulsion formulations have greater antimicrobial activity than freely suspended bacteriophage. The phage‐loaded emulsions caused rapid and complete bacterial death of three different strains of S. aureus. The same effect was observed for preparations that were either stored at room temperature (18–20°C), or chilled at 4°C, for up to 10 days of storage. A response surface design of experiments was used to gain insight on the relative effects of the emulsion formulation on bacterial growth and phage lytic activity. More diluted emulsions had a less significant effect on bacterial growth, and diluted bacteriophage‐emulsion preparations yielded greater antibacterial activity. The enhancement of bacteriophage activity when delivered via nano‐emulsions is yet to be reported. This prompts further investigation into the use of these formulations for the development of novel anti‐microbial wound management strategies. © 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog. , 30:932–944, 2014
Phytochemicals and in vitro antioxidant potentials of defatted methanolic extract of Holarrhena floribunda leaves

Plant-based dietary components and additives are known to protect cells from deleterious effect of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Proximate, phytochemical and antioxidant potentials of methanolic extract of defatted Holarrhena floribunda (G.Don) leaves were assessed using in vitro systems such as, 1,1 diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical, hydroxyl radical, nitric oxide radical scavenging and inhibition of lipid peroxidation. Total antioxidant activity was measured using phosphomolybdenum method. Total phenol content and the reductive potential of the extract were also evaluated. The results of the proximate analysis revealed that the leaf contained 0.23% moisture, 12.8% ash, 9.62% crude fat, 23.3% crude fibre, 21.17% protein and 32.68% carbohydrate while the phytochemical constituents included alkaloid, saponin, tannin and cardiac glycosides. The leaf extract of H. floribunda (G. Don) exhibited scavenging activity with IC50 of 12.63, 1,377.00 and 244.00 μg/ml for DPPH, hydroxyl radical and nitric oxide radical respectively. The extract conferred 50% protection at the concentration of 73.80 μg/ml on lipid peroxidation induced by FeSO4 in egg yolk. Total antioxidant capacity equivalent of gallic acid and vitamin C were 195.57 and 519.28 μg/mg of extract respectively and total phenol content equivalent of gallic acid was 1427.87 μg/mg. The reductive potential increased with increasing concentration of extract. The results obtained from this study reveal that the extract is rich in antioxidant components with several mechanisms of eliciting antioxidant actions which provide scientific basis for its use in folk medicine.
Statistical Package for the Social Sciences

The present study aimed the expected roles of the faculty member at menoufia university in the light of the concept of enterprinership education , The descriptive approach was used and a survey was conducted as a tool to collect information to reach the results of the field study. The study sample was selected and the tool was applied to 1,600 students from three theoretical faculties (Faculty of Education, Law and Commerce), and three practical colleges (Faculty of Science and Home Economics and Agriculture). The study concluded that the degree of the performance of the faculty staff of their role is moderate in the light of the concept of entrepreneurial education. The most salient role is the role of a faculty member in showing pioneering behavior among his students, since one of the most applied roles is promoting optimism and direction to support students with a positive energy that enhances students' thinking and guide them towards clear, correct and updated information. The results indicate the weak role of the faculty staff in promoting the culture of pioneering among his students, whose role is to direct students to do modern scientific research about problems facing society that attract attention in the current situation. The study came up with the expected roles of the faculty member at menoufia university in the light of the concept of enterprinership education.
Classiﬁcation of human actions using pose-based features and stacked auto encoder ✩

In this paper, we propose a method for classiﬁcation of human actions using pose based features. We demonstrate that statistical information of key movements of actions can be utilized in designing an eﬃcient input representation, using fuzzy membership functions. The ability of stacked auto encoder to learn the underlying features of input data is exploited to recognize human actions. The eﬃcacy of the proposed approach is demonstrated on CMU MOCAP and Berkeley MHAD datasets.
TSU-net: Two-stage multi-scale cascade and multi-ﬁeld fusion U-net for right ventricular segmentation

Accurate segmentation of the right ventricle from cardiac magnetic resonance images (MRI) is a critical step in cardiac function analysis and disease diagnosis. It is still an open problem due to some diﬃculties, such as a large variety of object sizes and ill-deﬁned borders. In this paper, we present a TSU-net network that grips deeper features and captures targets of diﬀerent sizes with multi-scale cascade and multi-ﬁeld fusion in the right ventricle. TSU-net mainly contains two major components: Dilated-Convolution Block (DB) and Multi-Layer-Pool Block (MB). DB extracts and aggregates multi-scale features for the right ventricle. MB mainly relies on multiple eﬀective ﬁeld-of-views to detect objects at diﬀerent sizes and ﬁll boundary features. Diﬀerent from previous networks, we used DB and MB to replace the convolution layer in the encoding layer, thus, we can gather multi-scale information of right ventricle, detect diﬀerent size targets and ﬁll boundary information in each encoding layer. In addition, in the decoding layer, we used DB to replace the convolution layer, so that we can aggregate the multi-scale features of the right ventricle in each decoding layer. Furthermore, the two-stage U-net structure is used to further improve the utilization of DB and MB through a two-layer encoding/decoding layer. Our method is validated on the RVSC, a public right ventricular data set. The results demonstrated that TSU-net achieved an average Dice coeﬃcient of 0.86 on endocardium and 0.90 on the epicardium, thereby outperforming other models. It eﬀectively assists doctors to diagnose the disease and promotes the development of medical images. In addition, we also provide an intuitive explanation of our network, which fully explain MB and TSU-net’s ability to detect targets of diﬀerent sizes and ﬁll in boundary features.
Knowledge and adoption of water use efficiency techniques among women irrigators: evidence from South Africa

The aim of the study was to determine the knowledge and adoption of water use efficiency techniques among women irrigators in the North West Province, South Africa. In this study, ex-post facto designed was used with a sample size of 108 farmers interviewed from the list obtained from the Department of Rural Environment and Agricultural Development (Farmer Support and Development – extension officers). Data collected was analysed using frequency counts, percentages, means, standard deviation and probit regression model. The findings revealed that majority of women irrigators were above 40 years of age, had secondary level of education, married and had a household size of 4-6 members. Majority of the women involved in irrigation farming were allocated land by tribal authorities with the assistance of the Department of Agriculture. Women irrigators in the study area were mostly aware of water use efficiency techniques such as crop rotation (93.5%), application of manure and fertilizer (92.6%) and terracing techniques (78.7%). The water use efficiency techniques adopted in the schemes are: crop rotation (78.8%), application of manure and fertilizer (78.8%) and cover crops (47.2%). The farmers were highly knowledgeable on mulching (91.7%), water harvesting (88.9%) and weed control (86.1%) while the most common constraint faced by women farmers on water use efficiency is lack of information (92.6%). Probit regression model revealed that the significant determinants for adoption of water use efficiency techniques include membership of farmers’ groups, frequency of extension visits, existence of water tariffs, payment of tariffs, age, farm size and number of plot. The study recommends that extension services be strengthened in order to improve the knowledge on water use efficiency techniques among farmers.
Direct solid surface ﬂ uorescence spectroscopy of standard chemicals and humic acid in ternary system

The front face ﬂ uorescence spectroscopy is often used to quantify chemicals in well-known matrices as it is a rapidand powerful technique,with no samplepreparation. Howeveritwasnot used toinvestigate extractedor-ganic matter like humic substances. This work aims to fully investigate for the ﬁ rst time front face ﬂ uorescence spectroscopyresponseofaternarysystemincluding boricacid,tryptophanandhumicsubstances,andtwobina-ries system containing quinine sulfate or humic substance in boric acid. Pure chemicals, boric acid, tryptophan, quinine sulfate and humic acid were mixed together in solid pellet at different contents from 0 to 100% in mass. The measurement of excitation emission matrix of ﬂ uorescence (3D ﬂ uorescence) and laser induced ﬂ uo-rescencewerethendoneinthefrontfacemode.FluorescencematricesweredecomposedusingtheCP/PARAFAC tools after scattering treatments. Results show that for 3D ﬂ uorescence there is no speci ﬁ c component for tryptophan and quinine sulfate, and that humic substances lead to a strong extinction effect for mixture containing quinine sulfate. Laser induced ﬂ uorescence gives a very good but non-speci ﬁ c related response for both quinine sulfate and tryptophan. No humic substances ﬂ uorescence response was found, but extinction effect is observed as for 3D ﬂ uorescence. This effect is stronger for quinine sulfate than for tryptophan. These responses were modeled using a simple absorbance versus emission model. ©
Fast BDS Positioning Convergence Based on the Contribution of GPS Observations

ABSTRACT Comparing to single BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) Precise Point Positioning (PPP), a method which can more quicklydetermine the ambiguity parameters of BDS through applying the contribution of GPS observations is proposed and analyzed in this article. The numerical examples and analysis show that the ionosphere-free ambiguities of BDS satellites can be determined and converged more quickly because of the contribution of GPS observations. The average improvement of the convergent speed of positioning is 18.5% and its positioning accuracy in N, E, and U components are improved by 29.4, 30.3, and 34.4%, respectively, with the contribution of the a priori coordinates obtained from GPS observations. This method is useful for single BDS system positioning when there is a priori information provided by GPS or other sensors which be replaced by and can be applied at the beginning of the computation.
The cytotoxic drug cyclopentenyl cytosine : from manufacturing to anti-tumor activity and (cardio) toxicity

This paper describes the formulation and quality control of an aqueous sterilized formulation of the experimental cytostatic drug cyclopentenyl cytosine (CPEC) to be used in Phase I/II clinical trials. The raw drug substance was extensively tested. A High Performance Liquid Chromotography (HPLC) method was validated for the quality control of the formulated product. The aqueous formulation was found to be stable for at least 2 years at 2-8ºC. Sterilization (15 min at 121 ºC) showed no influence on drug stability. The results show that CPEC can be formulated in an aqueous solution. The described HPLC method is a useful tool in the pharmaceutical quality control.
Relationship between the Modes of Winter Tropical Pacific SST Anomalies and the Intraseasonal Variations of the Following Summer Rainfall Anomalies in China

Abstract In present study, EOF analysis and extended singular value decomposition (ESVD) analysis are performed to explore the relationship between the winter tropical sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTAs) in the Pacific and the following summer rainfall anomalies in China. The two leading modes of winter tropical SSTAs in the Pacific are the SSTAs pattern characterized by “positive anomalies in the East and negative anomalies in the West” like the typical eastern Pacific El Nio and negative anomalies in the West and the central Pacific warming pattern characterized by “positive anomalies in the central region but negative anomalies in the East and West”. The intraseasonal variations of the rainfall anomalies during the following summer in China that are associated with the eastern Pacific warming mode are characterized by positive anomalies south of the Yangtze River and negative anomalies in the Yangtze-Huai River Valley in June, and negative anomalies in South China and positive anomalies in the Yangtze River Valley and North China in July and August. In contrast, after the central Pacific warming mode, the corresponding intraseasonal variations of China’s summer rainfall are characterized by a nearly consistent pattern during the three summer months, which is positive in the South China coast and North China and negative in the Yangtze River Valley except for the positive anomalies in the Yangtze-Huai River Valley in July. These results may provide a reference for the seasonal prediction of the summer drought and flood distributions in China.
Assessment of Sex and Age Impersonation as Academic Dishonest Behaviour among Postgraduate Students’ of Federal Universities in South-South Zone of Nigeria

The study investigated assessment of sex and age impersonation as academic dishonest behaviour among post graduate students’ of Federal Universities of South-South, Nigeria. The study which is a survey research, involved a multi-stage stratified random sampling technique of 440 males and 490 females from 3 universities and 3 faculties of the same universities in South-South, Nigeria. Sample was selected through stratified random sampling approach. The study adopted frequencies, percentages, factor analysis and multiple classification analysis statistical tools. A questionnaire developed and validated by the researcher titled: “Academic Dishonest Behaviour Questionnaire’’ (ADBQ) with Cronbach coefficient alpha reliability of 0.83 was used for data collection. Two research questions and one hypothesis were formulated for the study. The findings indicated that the students used for this study were involved in Sex and Age impersonation aspect of academic dishonest behaviours. Female students were seen to be more involved than male in impersonation, Students ages 25-29years are more culpable in impersonation as academic dishonest behaviour. It is therefore recommended among others that there should be synergy among stakeholders in the educational process to fight this art of impersonation.
Action Policy Testing with Heuristic-Based Bias Functions

When using action policies for sequential decision making, testing is a valuable tool to gain trust in their decisions. In particular, the action policies obtained via training deep neural networks are notoriously hard to verify and therefore need to be tested as black-box policies. Early approaches to policy testing aimed at finding environment conditions with problematic policy decisions. However, in these states, such decisions might be unavoidable, even for an optimal policy. Recently, a novel approach was introduced that instead looks for states where there provably exists a better decision. Such states are called (policy) bugs . While proving that a state is a bug is in general as hard as finding an optimal policy, several approaches have been proposed to successfully solve it in practice. They contain two sub-tasks that can be tackled separately: finding states prone to be bugs and proving that they actually are bugs. Here we deal with the former task and introduce two novel approaches for generating test states, which we call loopiness bias and surface bias . Both use techniques from heuristic search in classical planning to find states likely to cause the policy to behave suboptimally.
Optimal control of conveyor-mode spin-qubit shuttling in a Si/SiGe quantum bus in the presence of charged defects

Spin-qubit shuttles are novel functional elements in modular architectures of semiconductor quantum processors, that have the capability of solving the scalability problem. Such coherent quantum links serve to interconnect different processor units and enable the transfer of quantum information over longer distances across the chip by physical transport of electrons. The shuttling fidelity is limited by hardly avoidable material defects and fabrication imperfections, which can cause spin dephasing. In this paper, we present a numerical simulation framework for conveyor-mode spin-qubit shuttling in Si/SiGe and investigate the impact of charged defects in the channel on the orbital state dynamics of the transported electron. Quantum optimal control theory is employed to engineer control pulses that enable nearly deterministic passage of the electron through the channel by minimizing the accumulated energy uncertainty. The resulting control pulses facilitate quasi-adiabatic driving of the electron by circumventing critical regions in the channel without reducing the shuttling speed. Moreover, we demonstrate that trailing electrons subject to the same control pulse at a defect-free segment of the channel are not disturbed by the control. The theoretical results serve as a guideline for fine-tuning the controls in spin-qubit shuttling experiments.
EFFECT OF VARIOUS THAWING METHODS ON SENSORY AND PHYSICO-CHEMICAL PROPERTIES OF IMPORTED FROZEN BEEF

This study aimed to assess the physical, sensory, and chemical changes that occurred to imported frozen beef meat following defrosting. Four meat thawing methods regularly used in everyday life are employed, which are: room temperature, tap water, refrigeration, and microwave. Results revealed that the most rapid way was microwave (1.7 minutes), then using water of the tap, and then defrosting at temperature of the room, while refrigerator took longer duration. Regarding drip loss, frozen beef samples that were thawed at 4°C in the refrigerator had the least amount of drip loss. (1%), while using tap water in thawing caused the highest drip loss value (5%). The only method that reduced the ability of meat to hold water was microwave thawing. For sensory characteristics, there is no difference between beef samples in color or consistency after all thawing methods. Following all thawing procedures, the levels of Thiobarbituric acid reactive substance (TBARS) in all of the examined meat samples remained below 0.9 mg MDA/kg. Also, TVB-N values of all examined samples remained below 20 mg/100 g, which are compatible with Egyptian Standards Specifications (E. S. 1522/2018). Hence, it has been concluded that the ideal way to thaw frozen meat is to use refrigerator thawing, as it provides less drip loss and less weight loss, but there are some drawbacks, such as a longer thawing time.
Deterministic Parallel (DP)2LL

Parallel Satisﬁability is now recognized as an important research area. The wide deployment of multicore platforms combined with the availability of open and challenging SAT instances are behind this recognition. However, the current parallel SAT solvers suffer from a non-deterministic behavior. This is the consequence of their architectures which rely on weak synchronizing in an attempt to maximize performance. This behavior is a clear downside for practitioners, who are used to both runtime and solution reproducibility. In this paper, we propose the ﬁrst Deterministic Parallel DPLL engine. It is based on a state-of-the-art parallel portfolio architecture and relies on a controlled synchronizing of the different threads. Our experimental results clearly show that our approach preserves the performance of the parallel portfolio approach while ensuring full reproducibility of the results.
Investigating the Impact of Process Parameters on Thinning and Formability in Aluminum Alloy AA 1050 Incremental Sheet Metal Forming

To make cone-shaped structures with SPIF, the spindle speed (1000, 1500, and 2000 RPM), feed rate (200, 400, and 600 mm/min), tool width (8, 10, and 12 mm), and step-down (0.2, 0.4, and 0.6 mm) at the specimen interface were all changed. For aluminum alloy AA 5010, the maximum thinning (mm) and formability (%) were the important mechanical qualities. The L9 orthogonal array was used for a complete look at these qualities. Making high-quality cones using a computer numerically controlled machine was the aim of this research. (CNC) machine. The important factors affecting engineering and forming quality were studied using the Taguchi and analysis of variance methods. The most influential factor on maximum thinning was the rotational speed followed by the feeding, which is inversely proportional to it. In contrast, the most effective factor on the formability is the feeding followed by the rotational speed, which is directly proportional to it. It was discovered that a spindle speed of 1500 revolutions per minute (RPM), a feed rate of 200 millimeters per minute (mm/min), a tool diameter of 10 millimeters (mm), and a step down of 0.4 millimeters provide the least amount of maximum thinning (mm) and formability (percent).