Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Scanning Electron Microscopy and EDX Spectroscopy of Commercial Swabs Used for COVID-19 Lateral Flow Testing

The chemical composition of COVID test swabs has not been examined beyond the manufacturer’s datasheets. The unprecedented demand for swabs to conduct rapid lateral flow tests and nucleic acid amplification tests led to mass production, including 3D printing platforms. Manufacturing impurities could be present in the swabs and, if so, could pose a risk to human health. We used scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy to examine the ultrastructure of seven assorted brands of COVID test swabs and to identify and quantify their chemical elements. We detected eight unexpected elements, including transition metals, such as titanium and zirconium, the metalloid silicon, as well as post-transition metals aluminium and gallium, and the non-metal elements sulphur and fluorine. Some of the elements were detected as trace amounts, but for others, the amount was close to reported toxicological thresholds for inhalation routes. Experimental studies have shown that the detrimental effects of unexpected chemical elements include moderate to severe inflammatory states in the exposed epithelium as well as proliferative changes. Given the massive testing still being used in the context of the COVID pandemic, we urge caution in continuing to recommend repeated and frequent testing, particularly of healthy, non-symptomatic, individuals.
The Role of Item Analysis in Detecting and Improving Faulty Physics Objective Test Items

Results of candidates’ level of achievement in physics tests being conducted by public examining bodies show that candidates are not doing well in these public examinations. One of the reasons for the low level achievement in physics may be due to faulty test items that are being administered to candidates each year. The use of faulty items may be as a result of not conducting thorough analysis of these items before they are administered to candidates. In this study, therefore, the author examined the role of item analysis in detecting faulty items and in improving the quality of physics objective test items. Physics Paper 2 (PP2) of 2012 West Africa Examination Council consisting of 50 multiple choice items was administered to 900 senior secondary school three students (Age 16-18 years), who were randomly selected from 16 senior secondary schools in Ibadan Educational Zone I, Oyo State, and Irewole Local Government Area, Osun State, Nigeria. Specifically the difficulty and discriminating indices of each of the 50 items in PP2 were determined. Analyses of the students’ responses to the 50-item PP2 were carried out using both Classical Test Theory and Item Response Theory. Results of the analysis showed that some of the items were faulty in that their difficulty indices were very high and some items could not discriminate between high achievers and low achievers. These results imply that public examining bodies should carry out thorough analysis of their test items before they are administered to their candidates. More importantly the results of the analysis should be communicated to physics teacher so that they can use the information to clarify some concepts that may be confusing to students in physics. Keywords : Difficulty index, Discriminating index, Item response theory, Classical test theory, Physics objective test.
GEP 100-Arf 6-AMAP 1-Cortactin Pathway Frequently Used in Cancer Invasion Is Activated by VEGFR 2 to Promote Angiogenesis

Angiogenesis and cancer invasiveness greatly contribute to cancer malignancy. Arf6 and its effector, AMAP1, are frequently overexpressed in breast cancer, and constitute a central pathway to induce the invasion and metastasis. In this pathway, Arf6 is activated by EGFR via GEP100. Arf6 is highly expressed also in human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) and is implicated in angiogenesis. Here, we found that HUVECs also highly express AMAP1, and that vascular endothelial growth factor receptor-2 (VEGFR2) recruits GEP100 to activate Arf6. AMAP1 functions by binding to cortactin in cancer invasion and metastasis. We demonstrate that the same GEP100-Arf6-AMAP1-cortactin pathway is essential for angiogenesis activities, including cell migration and tubular formation, as well as for the enhancement of cell permeability and VE-cadherin endocytosis of VEGF-stimulated HUVECs. Components of this pathway are highly expressed in pathologic angiogenesis, and blocking of this pathway effectively inhibits VEGFor tumor-induced angiogenesis and choroidal neovascularization. The GEP100-Arf6-AMAP1-cortactin pathway, activated by receptor tyrosine kinases, appears to be common in angiogenesis and cancer invasion and metastasis, and provides their new therapeutic targets. Citation: Hashimoto A, Hashimoto S, Ando R, Noda K, Ogawa E, et al. (2011) GEP100-Arf6-AMAP1-Cortactin Pathway Frequently Used in Cancer Invasion Is Activated by VEGFR2 to Promote Angiogenesis. PLoS ONE 6(8): e23359. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0023359 Editor: Toru Ouchi, University of Chicago, United States of America Received April 25, 2011; Accepted July 13, 2011; Published August 15, 2011 Copyright: 2011 Hashimoto et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This work was supported in part by Grants-in-aid from the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture of Japan (MESSC), the Takeda Science Foundation, and the Mitsubishi Foundation. No additional external funding received for this study. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: sabeh@med.hokudai. ac.jp
High resolution tropical climate record for the last 6,000 years

Planktonic foraminiferal oxygen isotope records from the Cariaco Basin, offshore Venezuela were used to construct high‐resolution tropical Atlantic climate records for the mid to late Holocene. Our results indicate that major increases in δ18O due both to increases in salinity and decreases in sea surface temperature occurred at least six times over the last 6,000 years (∼6,000–5,000, 4,500–4,200, 3,800–3,200, 3,000–2,800, 2,200–2,000, and 1200–800 cal yrs. B.P.). The initial δ18O increase centered at 5,500 years ago is coincident with the development of arid conditions in the Caribbean region and the end of the “African humid period” indicating a global drying of the northern tropics at this time. Synchronous with the aridification of the Caribbean region are the onset of wetter conditions in the South American Altiplano and the reoccupation of this region by humans. This combination of contrasting climate conditions is attributed to a southward displacement of the Inter‐Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) that would have resulted in decreased precipitation and increased trade wind intensity in the Caribbean region and increased rainfall over the Altiplano.
N A ] 1 6 M ar 2 01 5 On Convergence of the Inexact Rayleigh Quotient Iteration with the Lanczos Method Used for Solving Linear Systems ∗

For the Hermitian inexact Rayleigh quotient iteration (RQI), the author has established new local general convergence results, independent of iterative solvers for inner linear systems. The theory shows that the method locally converges quadratically under a new condition, called the uniform positiveness condition. In this paper we first consider the local convergence of the inexact RQI with the unpreconditioned Lanczos method for the linear systems. Some attractive properties are derived for the residuals, whose norms are ξk+1’s, of the linear systems obtained by the Lanczos method. Based on them and the new general convergence results, we make a refined analysis and establish new local convergence results. It is proved that the inexact RQI with Lanczos converges quadratically provided that ξk+1 ≤ ξ with a constant ξ ≥ 1. The method is guaranteed to converge linearly provided that ξk+1 is bounded by a small multiple of the reciprocal of the residual norm ‖rk‖ of the current approximate eigenpair. The results are fundamentally different from the existing convergence results that always require ξk+1 < 1, and they have a strong impact on effective implementations of the method. We extend the new theory to the inexact RQI with a tuned preconditioned Lanczos for the linear systems. Based on the new theory, we can design practical criteria to control ξk+1 to achieve quadratic convergence and implement the method more effectively than ever before. Numerical experiments confirm our theory.
Wind Catcher: A Lost Architectural Heritage with Timeless Passive Attributes

Wind Catcher is prominently known as a passive cooling device in buildings, especially in hot humid, and hot dry regions. In metropolitan cities of Pakistan, the wind catcher is seen as a lost heritage of the past. Campaigns to revive the wind catcher as a cooling and air displacement device are surfacing amongst the global communities. The chapter aims to address the social paradigm of wind catchers in the past and present and discusses its prospects for the highly polluted cities of Lahore and Karachi with a focus on the landscape. Using digital ethnography, the responses toward wind catchers in non-residential buildings were observed via blogs and videos. A total of 1386 nodes were coded from 54 sources in Nvivo for thematic classification based on a deductive approach of Past, Present, and Future. The chapter suggests the implication of wind catcher revival in the buildings of Lahore and Karachi as an effective wind ventilation solution for indoor air pollution, infiltration, thermal comfort, and cultural identity.
Factors influencing survival after kidney transplant

Background: The failure of a kidney transplant is now a common reason for initiation of dialysis therapy. Kidney transplant recipients commencing dialysis have greater morbidity and mortality than transplant-naïve, incident dialysis patients. This study aimed to identify variables associated with survival after graft failure. Methods: All recipients of first, deceased donor kidney transplants performed in Northern Ireland between 1986 and 2005 who had a functioning graft at 12 months were included (n = 585). Clinical and blood-derived variables (age, gender, primary renal disease, diabetic status, smoking status, human leukocyte antigen (HLA) mismatch, acute rejection episodes, immunosuppression, cardiovascular disease, graft survival, haemoglobin, albumin, phosphate, C reactive protein, estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), rate of eGFR decline, dialysis modality, and access) were collected prospectively and investigated for association with re-transplantation and survival. The association between re-transplantation and survival was explored by modelling re-transplantation as a time-dependent covariate. Results: Median follow-up time was 12.1 years. Recipients with a failing graft (158/585) demonstrated rapid loss of eGFR prior to graft failure, reducing the time available to plan for alternative renal replacement therapy. Median survival after graft failure was 3.0 years. In multivariate analysis, age and re-transplantation were associated with survival after graft failure. Re-transplantation was associated with an 88% reduction in mortality. Conclusions: Optimal management of kidney transplant recipients with failing grafts requires early recognition of declining function and proactive preparation for re-transplantation given the substantial survival benefit this confers. The survival benefit associated with re-transplantation persists after prolonged exposure to immunosuppressive therapy.
What Drives Private Equity Investments in Romania?

Abstract This paper aims at presenting the determinants of private equity investments in Romania over the period 2000 - 2013. Additionally, this paper presents the main highlights in terms of evolution, source of funding and activities in which the private equity funds invested during the crisis. Starting from the existing literature, this paper extends the analysis of private equity drivers to Romanian market by including variables such as: economic growth, market capitalization, interest rate, unemployment rate and public R&D expenditure which were already tested in previous papers. In addition, this paper introduces new variables such us productivity and corruption index which we consider important factors in explaining the evolution of private equity investments in Romania. The results of our empirical model confirmed existing hypothesis regarding the importance of some determinants such as: unemployment rate, economic growth, market capitalization and corruption. Based on our empirical results, we have pointed several strategic directions that are meant to support the development of the private equity market in Romania. Keywords: private equity; economic growth; market capitalization; unemployment rate; corruption; private equity determinants; Romania.
Biodegradation of Inosine and Guanosine by Bacillus paranthracis YD01

Both inosine and guanosine are precursors of uric acid that may cause the diseases of hyperuricemia and gout in humans. Here, a promising bacterial strain for efficiently biodegrading both inosine and guanosine was successfully isolated from a healthy human intestine and identified as Bacillus paranthracis YD01 with 16S rRNA analysis. An initial amount of 49.6 mg·L−1 of inosine or 49.9 mg·L−1 of guanosine was completely removed by YD01 within 12 h, which showed that YD01 had a strong ability to biodegrade inosine and guanosine. Furthermore, the initial amount of 49.2 mg·L−1 of inosine or 49.5 mg·L−1 of guanosine was totally catalyzed by the intracellular crude enzymes of YD01 within 6 h, and the initial inosine amount of 49.6 mg·L−1 or guanosine of 49.7 mg·L−1 was biodegraded by the extracellular crude enzymes of YD01 within 9 h. Illumina Hiseq sequencing and database gene annotation were used to elucidate the genomic characteristics of B. paranthracis YD01. Purine nucleoside phosphorylase, encoded by gene 1785, gene 3933, and gene 4403, was found in the KEEG database, which played a crucial role in the biodegradation of inosine and guanosine. The results of this study provide valuable insights into the mechanisms for biodegrading inosine and guanosine using B. paranthracis YD01.
I o Polarizer Polarizer Liquid crystal Glass Unpolarized light Polarized light Color filter 0 E 0 E max E E 0 E

It is crucial for polarimetric imaging to accurately calibrate the polarizer angles and the camera response function (CRF) of a polarizing camera. When this polarizing camera is used in a setting of multiview geometric imaging, it is often required to calibrate its intrinsic and extrinsic parameters as well, for which Zhang’s calibration method is the most widely used with either a physical checker board, or more conveniently a virtual checker pattern displayed on a monitor. In this paper, we propose to jointly calibrate the polarizer angles and the inverse CRF (ICRF) using a slightly adapted checker pattern displayed on a liquid crystal display (LCD) monitor. Thanks to the lighting principles and the industry standards of the LCD monitors, the polarimetric and radiometric calibration can be significantly simplified, when assisted by the extrinsic parameters estimated from the checker pattern. We present a simple linear method for polarizer angle calibration and a convex method for radiometric calibration, both of which can be jointly refined in a process similar to bundle adjustment. Experiments have verified the feasibility and accuracy of the proposed calibration method.
How does confirmation of motivations influence on the pre- and post-visit change of image of a destination?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse the influence of the confirmation of the motivations of tourists in changing image of a tourist destination pre- and post-visit. That is, considering whether once the tourist has made the trip, depending on whether their expectations have been met and confirmed motivations, will have a more or less image gap. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted an empirical study with a representative sample of leisure tourists to Tenerife (Canary Islands, Spain) of both sexes, 16 or more years of age, and visiting the island of Tenerife for the first time from abroad and from the rest of Spain. The final sample was 411 participants. Findings The results verify that the confirmation of the intellectual and escape motivations influences directly and positively change cognitive image pre- and post-visit. The fact that the affiliation motivations do not influence the cognitive image gap may be due to that tourists who visit a destination stay with friends or family and for this they interact less with the destination, which will imply that the cognitive image pre- and post-visit do not vary. Originality/value This research has sought to contribute towards a better understanding of the area, which is concerned, with the image of destinations and, more specifically, the concept of how the image changes after a visit to the destination. In this sense, and given the of lack empirical evidence about how confirmation of motivations influences on destination image gap, this research aims to contribute to the improvement of knowledge about the personal factors that influence the change of the pre- and post-visit destination image.
The burden of stroke in Sweden

The costs for stroke management and reduced health related quality of life (QoL) can extend throughout life as mental and physical disabilities are common. The aim of this thesis was to quantify this stroke-related burden with data from Riks-Stroke (RS), the Swedish stroke register. Costs for hospital and primary care, secondary drug prevention, home and residential care services, and production losses were estimated for first-ever stroke patients registered in the RS. The present value lifetime costs were estimated from the expected survival and discounted by 3%. Quality of life was estimated with the EQ-5D instrument on a subset of patients at 3 months after the index event and mapped to patient-reported outcome measures in the RS. Standard descriptive and analytic (multivariate regressions) statistical methods were used. The life-time societal present value cost per patient in 2009 was approximately €69,000 whereof home and residential care due to stroke was 59% and indirect costs for productivity losses accounted for 21% (year 2009 prices). Women had higher costs than men in all age groups. Treatment at stroke units had a low incremental cost per life-year gained compared to patients who were not treated at such facilities. The estimated disutility from stroke was greatest for women and the oldest, and compared to 1997 the cost per patient increased after a revised assumption. Hospitalisation costs were stable while long-term costs for ADL support increased in part due to a changed age structure. Patients with atrial fibrillation (AF; 24%) had €367 higher inpatient costs compared to non-AF stroke patients €8,914 (P<0.01; year 2001 prices). As the index case fatality was higher among AF patients, the cost difference was higher for patients surviving the first 28 days. A multivariate regression showed that AF, diabetes, stroke severity, and death during the 3-year follow-up period were independent cost drivers. Three regression techniques (OLS, Tobit, CLAD) were chosen for mapping EQ-5D utilities to patient-reported outcome measures in the RS. The mean utility was overestimated with all models and had lower variance than the original data. In conclusion, total societal lifetime cost for 22,000 first-ever stroke patients in 2009 amounted to €1.5 billion (whereof production losses were €314 million). About 56,600 QALYs were lost due to premature death and disability. Including a preference-based QoL instrument in the RS would allow cost-utility analyses, but it is important to control for confounders in comparator arms to avoid bias.
Where have all the beetles gone? Long‐term study reveals carabid species decline in a nature reserve in Northern Germany

The drastic insect decline has received increasing attention in scientific as well as in public media. Long‐term studies of insect diversity trends are still rare, even though such studies are highly important to assess extent, drivers and potential consequences of insect loss in ecosystems. To gain insights into carabid diversity trends of ancient and sustainably managed woodlands, we analysed data of carabid beetles from a trapping study that has been run for 24 years in an old nature reserve of Northern Germany, the Lüneburg Heath. We examined temporal changes in several diversity measures (e.g. biomass, species richness, functional diversity and phylogenetic diversity) and tested diverse species traits as predictor variables for species occurrence. In contrast to recently published long‐term studies of insect diversity, we did not observe a decline in biomass, but in species richness and phylogenetic diversity in carabids at our study site. Additionally, hibernation stage predicted the occurrence probability of carabids: Species hibernating as imagines or both imagines and larvae and breeding in spring showed strongest declines. We assume the detected trends to be the result of external effects such as climate change and the application of pesticides in the surrounding. Our results suggest that the drivers for the insect decline and the responses are multifaceted. This highlights the importance of long‐term studies with identification of the catches to, at best, species level to support the understanding of mechanisms driving changes in insect diversity and abundance.
Exploring Purchase and Repurchase Behavior in Online Mobile Games: A Preliminary Study

With the popularity of mobile games, mobile phones have become the first choice for consumer entertainment. However, few players are willing to continually spend money on mobile games. There is a significant need to understand players' purchase behaviors and repurchase behaviors. Thus, this paper uses social cognitive theory as a theoretical basis to develop a research model for understanding players' purchase behaviors, as well as repurchase behaviors, in relation to mobile games. Specifically, the model first divides the factors of players' purchase behaviors into self-cognition and social environment. For the self-cognition aspect, uses and gratifications theory is applied to separate players' gratification from hedonic gratification and utilitarian gratification. For social environment, conformity is used to study how social environments influence purchase behaviors. Moreover, the model considers flow as a moderating variable to explore the relationship between players' purchase and repurchase behaviors for mobile games.
Research on B2C Reverse Logistics Service Quality Evaluation System

Based on SERVQUAL model and LSQ model, combined with the characteristics of B2C e-commerce, this paper expounds the consumer perception of reverse logistics service quality, constructs the evaluation system, through exploratory factor analysis, five dimensions of communication quality, information quality, return process quality, convenience and empathising were established, and the index scale with 25 items was included. Through confirmatory factor analysis, it was proved to have good reliability and validity. SERVPERF model is applied to the case analysis of Jingdong group, which proves that the index system has practical application value.