Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of Phanerochaete chrysosporium on biologic activity of soil amended with olive mill wastewaters

Effects of the untreated olive mill wastewater (UOMW) and the bioaugmented olive mill wastewater (BOMW) with the fungus Phanerochaete chrysosporium (P. chrysosporium ) for the amendment of soil were investigated. Results showed that UOMW inhibited the soil respirometric activity, while BOMW exhibited significantly higher respiration levels compared to the unamended and the UOMW amended soils. The ratio of C-CO 2/C tot decreased from 6.7 in the unamended soil to 6.34, to 2.74 and to 1.6 in soils amended consecutively with 50, 100 and 200 m 3 ha -1 of UOMW. Based on the first results, the UOMW dose of 50 m 3 ha -1 showed the elevated C-CO 2/C tot ratio in comparison with the two other doses (100 and 200 m 3 ha -1 ) so that it was chosen to test the effects of its bioaugmentation with P. chrysosporium on the soil biodegradation activities. The fungus P. chrysosporium was added at three different forms; spores suspension (10 6 spores g -1 ), mycelium form (cultivated in liquid medium) and colony form (mycelium fragments from solid medium). The soil amended with 50 m 3 ha -1 of BOMW showed higher CCO 2/C tot ratio in comparison with control soil (unamended) and with soil amended with 50 m 3 ha -1 of
Shewanella carassii sp. nov., isolated from surface swabs of crucian carp and faeces of a diarrhoea patient.

Two strains, 08MAS2251T and LZ2016-166, were isolated from diverse samples in China collected from the surface of crucian carp and the faeces of a diarrhoea patient, respectively. Both strains were pink-orange coloured, Gram-negative, oxidase- and catalase-positive, facultative anaerobic and motile bacteria, produced H2S and reduced nitrates to nitrites. Growth occurred in the presence of 0-9 % (w/v) NaCl and at 10-42 °C. The optimum conditions were with 1 % (w/v) NaCl and at 35 °C. The phylogenetic tree of 16S rRNA gene demonstrated that strains 08MAS2251T and LZ2016-166 clustered in a distinctive clade next to the species Shewanella chilikensis JC5T within the genus Shewanella. Meanwhile, gyrB gene sequence analysis indicated that the two strains formed an independent branch that was clearly separate from all the other Shewanella species with sequence similarities from 68.49 to 95.74 %. The DNA G+C content of strain 08MAS2251T was 52.68 mol%. Genomic relatedness of in silico DNA-DNA hybridization between strain 08MAS2251T and phylogenetic neighbours ranged from 50.5-51.8 %, below the cutoff of 70 %. In addition, corresponding average nucleotide identity values were between 93.01 to 93.49%, which were lower than 95 % threshold. The major fatty acids of strain 08MAS2251T were C17 : 1ω8c (27.2 %), iso-C15 : 0 (22.5 %), summed feature 3 (C16 : 1ω6c and/or C16 : 1ω7c; 8.7 %), C16 : 0 (6.2 %), iso-C13 : 0 (5.6 %) and C17 : 0 (4.5 %). Based on phenotypic and genetic analysis, strains 08MAS2251T and LZ2016-166 are identified as a novel species of the genus Shewanella, for which the name Shewanellacarassii sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is 08MAS2251T (=DSM 104682T=CGMCC 1.16033T).
Paracoccidioides brasiliensis presents metabolic reprogramming and secretes a serine proteinase during murine infection

ABSTRACT Paracoccidoides brasiliensis and Paracoccidioides lutzii, the etiologic agents of paracoccidioidomycosis, cause disease in healthy and immunocompromised persons in Latin America. We developed a method for harvesting P. brasiliensis yeast cells from infected murine lung to facilitate in vivo transcriptional and proteomic profiling. P. brasiliensis harvested at 6 h post-infection were analyzed using RNAseq and LC-MSE. In vivo yeast cells had 594 differentially expressed transcripts and 350 differentially expressed proteins. Integration of transcriptional and proteomic data indicated that early in infection (6 h), P. brasiliensis yeast cells underwent a shift in metabolism from glycolysis to β-oxidation, upregulated detoxifying enzymes to defend against oxidative stress, and repressed cell wall biosynthesis. Bioinformatics and functional analyses also demonstrated that a serine proteinase was upregulated and secreted in vivo. To our knowledge this is the first study depicting transcriptional and proteomic data of P. brasiliensis yeast cells upon 6 h post-infection of mouse lung.
Infinite Ensemble for Image Clustering

Image clustering has been a critical preprocessing step for vision tasks, e.g., visual concept discovery, content-based image retrieval. Conventional image clustering methods use handcraft visual descriptors as basic features via K-means, or build the graph within spectral clustering. Recently, representation learning with deep structure shows appealing performance in unsupervised feature pre-treatment. However, few studies have discussed how to deploy deep representation learning to image clustering problems, especially the unified framework which integrates both representation learning and ensemble clustering for efficient image clustering still remains void. In addition, even though it is widely recognized that with the increasing number of basic partitions, ensemble clustering gets better performance and lower variances, the best number of basic partitions for a given data set is a pending problem. In light of this, we propose the Infinite Ensemble Clustering (IEC), which incorporates the power of deep representation and ensemble clustering in a one-step framework to fuse infinite basic partitions. Generally speaking, a set of basic partitions is firstly generated from the image data, then by converting the basic partitions to the 1-of-K codings, we link the marginalized auto-encoder to the infinite ensemble clustering with i.i. d. basic partitions, which can be approached by the closed-form solutions, finally we follow the layer-wise training procedure and feed the concatenated deep features to K-means for final clustering. Extensive experiments on diverse vision data sets with different levels of visual descriptors demonstrate both the time efficiency and superior performance of IEC compared to the state-of-the-art ensemble clustering and deep clustering methods.
Low validity of predictive equations for calculating resting energy expenditure in overweight and obese women with polycystic ovary syndrome

BACKGROUND Predictive equations are the main clinical tools for determining resting energy expenditure (REE). However, their adequate use in overweight and obese individuals is unclear. Thus, we investigated the best predictive equations for estimating REE in overweight and obese women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). METHODS Eleven analyses were performed with prediction equations (pREE) based on anthropometric parameters in 30 overweight or obese women with PCOS without other chronic diseases. The measured REE (mREE) was calculated by indirect calorimetry. The validity of the equations was investigated by comparison, accuracy and agreement tests between pREE and mREE at both the individual and group level. RESULTS Four analyses were similar to those of mREE, and smallest mean differences were observed for the World Health Organization/Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations/United Nations University (WHO/FAO/UNU) considering weight (W) [0.07 (1.13) MJ (16 [270] kcal)]. Individual accuracy was greater than 50% for Harris and Benedict, Müller and Lazzer equations. The percentage of REE underestimation ranged between 16.7% and 73.3%, whereas higher rates of overestimation were observed in the De Luis (66.7%) and Ireton-Jones (43.3%) equations. Mean bias at the group level was lowest in the WHO/FAO/UNU W and WHO/FAO/UNU considering weight and height (WH), Müller and Lazzer equations (-2.8 to 0.5). The WHO/FAO/UNU W and WHO/FAO/UNU WH formulas were optimal in individual agreement (33.3%). CONCLUSIONS FAO/WHO/UNU W equations may estimate the REE in overweight and obese women with PCOS. However, the low individual accuracy and agreement in relation to mREE suggest caution regarding when to use the formula to perform an individual nutritional plan.
Engineered and Natural Promoters and Chromatin‐Modifying Elements for Recombinant Protein Expression in CHO Cells

Promoters play a pivotal role in integrating and processing the signals related to transcription initiation. Strong natural viral promoters, such as hCMV or SV40E, have been routinely employed to achieve a high rate of gene expression in ubiquitously used Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells. However, viral promoters are susceptible to epigenetic silencing and lack precise regulation levers. This has paved the way to more sensible control elements: endogenous, inducible, and synthetic promoters. In this review we summarize and discuss the use of natural viral, mammalian, and endogenous promoters, as well as recent advances in synthetic promoters and inducible systems for protein expression in CHO cells. Not only the level of transcription, but its long‐term stability is crucial for recombinant protein production. Epigenetic chromatin‐modifying elements, such as ubiquitously acting chromatin opening elements (UCOEs), matrix attachment regions (MARs), insulators and stabilizing anti‐repressors (STARs) significantly improve transcription levels over extended cultivation time and are also discussed here. This review provides up‐to date information to facilitate the choice of a suitable promoter and adjacent chromatin‐modifying elements to maximize transgene expression as well as ensure long‐term expression stability in CHO cell culture.
Food safety issues in China: a case study of the dairy sector.

BACKGROUND Over the past 10 years, food safety incidents have occurred frequently in China. Food safety issues in the dairy sector have increasingly gained the attention of the Chinese government and the public. The objective of this research is to explore consumption changes of dairy products of different income groups after these dairy safety incidents. RESULTS The research indicates that consumers' response to dairy safety risk is very intense. Dairy consumption has experienced a declining trend in recent years, and the impact of dairy safety incidents has lasted for at least 5 years. Until 2012, dairy consumption had not yet fully recovered from this influence. Using the random effects model, this study examined the relationship between food safety incident and consumption. CONCLUSIONS Overall, the results show that consumers in the low-income group are more sensitive to safety risk than those in the high-income group. It can be seen from this paper that the decrease of urban residents' dairy consumption was mainly driven by changes in fresh milk consumption, while the decline of milk powder consumption, which was affected by the melamine incident, was relatively moderate, and milk powder consumption for the high-income group even increased.
RE-COVERY DVT/PE: Rationale and design of a prospective observational study of acute venous thromboembolism with a focus on dabigatran etexilate

Summary The therapeutic management of venous thromboembolism (VTE) is rapidly evolving. Following the positive results of pivotal large-scale randomised trials, the non-vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulants (NOACs) represent an important alternative to standard anticoagulation. In phase III studies, dabigatran was as effective as, and significantly safer than warfarin. Additional information on real-world data of dabigatran is now warranted. RE-COVERY DVT/PE is a multi-centre, international, observational (i. e. non-interventional) study enrolling patients with acute DVT and/or PE within 30 days after objective diagnosis. The study is designed with two phases. Phase 1 has a cross-sectional design, enrolling approximately 6000 patients independently of treatment choice, with the aim of providing a contemporary picture of the management of VTE worldwide. Phase 2 has a prospective cohort design, with follow-up of one year, enrolling 8000 patients treated with dabigatran or vitamin K antagonists (VKAs) with the aim of comparing their safety, defined by the occurrence of major bleeding, and effectiveness, defined by the occurrence of symptomatic recurrent VTE. RE-COVERY DVT/PE will complement both the results of other observational studies in this field and the results of phase III studies with dabigatran, in particular by assessing its clinical benefit in various patient subgroups treated in routine clinical practice.
STEREOTYPE RELIANCE IN SOURCE MONITORING: AGE DIFFERENCES AND NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL TEST CORRELATES

This study provides evidence that when source-specifying features are less available, people will rely more on their general knowledge to attribute memories to sources. Two factors (ageing and emotional self-focus) that, in general, are associated with poorer source identification performance both led to a greater reliance on stereotypes when participants attempted to remember who had said statements in a video they had watched earlier. In addition, correlations between older adults' ability to attribute statements correctly and their scores on a battery of neuropsychological tests suggests that both frontally based processes and medial temporally based processes affect accuracy of source identification, but do so to different degrees depending upon the nature of the source identification tasks.
Effect of the Blending Ration of Polylactic Acid Fcid Fiber (PLA) and Cotton on the Yarn's Properties

PLA is a kind of new green environmental fibers,which can be blended with natural fibers such as cotton,wool etc.Tests of yarn's tensile and elastic recovery properties under different blending ratios show that the blending ratio of polylactic acid fiber and cotton fiber has important effects on the yarn's mechanical properties.
The Improvement of Respiratory Performance After Phototherapy‐Induced EPC Mobilization in Preterm Infants With RDS

Many infants who develop bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) are born with serious respiratory distress syndrome (RDS), which is associated with impaired vascular and alveolar growth. RDS is a breathing disorder that mostly affects preterm infants and occurs in infants whose lungs have not yet been fully developed. The use of surfactant in RDS treatment does not necessarily prevent BPD. Endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) may contribute to lung angiogenesis for the prevention and treatment of BPD. The aim of this study was to evaluate the therapeutic efficacy of phototherapy for EPC release in preterm infants born with RDS. Seventy‐five RDS preterm infants were divided into two groups: RDS with phototherapy and RDS without phototherapy. Respiratory indices were recorded for each patient. Circulating EPCs were isolated before and after phototherapy and colony forming efficiency, chemotactic, tubulogenic, proliferative, and functional properties of these cells were analyzed. Our results showed that phototherapy increased the release of EPCs into the circulation in RDS preterm infants, with augmentation of cell proliferation, tubulogenic, chemotactic, and proliferative properties of EPCs. Phototherapy‐induced EPC release was associated with improved lung function as was recorded by significantly decrease in continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) days, CPAP plus ventilator days, and PCO2 along with a significant increase in PO2 and PaO2/FiO2, resulting in markedly decreased rate of BPD occurrence in preterm infants with RDS. Overall, phototherapy is touted as a promising modality for the amelioration of respiratory performance and prohibition of BPD occurrence in RDS preterm infants. J. Cell. Biochem. 118: 594–604, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Expression of Six Proteins Causes Reprogramming of Porcine Fibroblasts Into Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells With Both Active X Chromosomes

In this study, we created porcine‐induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells with the expression of six reprogramming factors (Oct3/4, Klf4, Sox2, c‐Myc, Lin28, and Nanog). The resulting cells showed growth dependent on LIF (leukemia inhibitory factor) and expression of multiple stem cell markers. Furthermore, the iPS cells caused teratoma formation with three layers of differentiation and had both active X chromosomes (XaXa). Our iPS cells satisfied the both of important characteristics of stem cells: teratoma formation and activation of both X chromosomes. Injection of these iPS cells into morula stage embryos showed that these cells participate in the early stage of porcine embryogenesis. Furthermore, the RNA‐Seq analysis detected that expression levels of endogenous pluripotent related genes, NANOG, SOX2, ZFP42, OCT3/4, ESRRB, and ERAS were much higher in iPS with six factors than that with four reprogramming factors. We can conclude that the expression of six reprogramming factors enables the creation of porcine iPS cells, which is partially close to naive iPS state. J. Cell. Biochem. 118: 537–553, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Phase Noise Self-Cancellation Scheme Based on Orthogonal Polarization for OFDM System

In orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, phase noise introduced by the local oscillators can cause bit error rate (BER) performance degradation. To solve the phase noise problem, a novel orthogonal-polarization-based phase noise self-cancellation (OP-PNSC) scheme is proposed. First, the efficiency of canceling the phase noise of the OP-PNSC scheme in the AWGN channel is investigated. Then, the OP-PNSC scheme in the polarization-dependent loss (PDL) channel is investigated due to power imbalance caused by PDL, and a PDL pre-compensated OP-PNSC (PPC -OP-PNSC) scheme is proposed to mitigate the power imbalance caused by PDL. In addition, the performance of the PPC-OP-PNSC scheme is investigated, where the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) and spectral efficiency (SE) performances are analyzed. Finally, a comparison between the OP-PNSC and polarization diversity scheme is discussed. The numerical results show that the BER and SINR performances of the OP-PNSC scheme outperform the case with the phase noise compensation and phase noise self-cancellation scheme.
Improving the match between callers and receivers: A study on the effect of contextual information on cell phone interruptions

A problem with the location-free nature of cell phones is that callers have difficulty predicting receivers' states, leading to inappropriate calls. One promising solution involves helping callers decide when to interrupt by providing them contextual information about receivers. We tested the effectiveness of different kinds of contextual information by measuring the degree of agreement between receivers' desires and callers' decisions. In a simulation, five groups of participants played the role of ‘Callers’, choosing between making calls or leaving messages, and a sixth group played the role of ‘Receivers’, choosing between receiving calls or receiving messages. Callers were provided different contextual information about Receivers' locations, their cell phones' ringer state, the presence of others, or no information at all. Callers provided with contextual information made significantly more accurate decisions than those without it. Our results suggest that different contextual information generates different kinds of improvements: more appropriate interruptions or better avoidance of inappropriate interruptions. We discuss the results and implications for practice in the light of other important considerations, such as privacy and technological simplicity.
Face2Emoji: Using Facial Emotional Expressions to Filter Emojis

One way to indicate nonverbal cues is by sending emoji (e.g., 😂), which requires users to make a selection from large lists. Given the growing number of emojis, this can incur user frustration, and instead we propose Face2Emoji, where we use a user's facial emotional expression to filter out the relevant set of emoji by emotion category. To validate our method, we crowdsourced 15,155 emoji to emotion labels across 308 website visitors, and found that our 202 tested emojis can indeed be classified into seven basic (including Neutral) emotion categories. To recognize facial emotional expressions, we use deep convolutional neural networks, where early experiments show an overall accuracy of 65% on the FER-2013 dataset. We discuss our future research on Face2Emoji, addressing how to improve our model performance, what type of usability test to run with users, and what measures best capture the usefulness and playfulness of our system.
Phase 1 clinical trial evaluating abatacept in patients with steroid-refractory chronic graft-versus-host disease.

Steroid-refractory chronic graft-versus-host disease (SR-cGVHD) remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality after allogeneic stem cell transplantation. Innovative immunotherapeutic strategies are urgently needed for the treatment of SR-cGVHD. We conducted a phase 1 clinical trial to evaluate the safety, efficacy, and immune effects of abatacept, a novel immunomodulatory drug that acts as an inhibitor of T-cell activation via costimulatory blockade, in the treatment of SR-cGVHD. The study followed a 3+3 design with 2 escalating abatacept doses: 3 mg/kg and 10 mg/kg, with an expansion cohort treated at 10 mg/kg. Abatacept was well-tolerated with no dose-limiting toxicities. Of the 16 evaluable patients, 44% achieved a clinical partial response per 2005 National Institutes of Health Consensus Criteria. Importantly, abatacept resulted in a 51.3% reduction in prednisone usage in clinical responders (mean baseline, 27 vs 14 mg; P = .01). Increased PD-1 expression on circulating CD4 (P = .009) and CD8 (P = .007) T cells was observed in clinical responders. In summary, abatacept was safe and led to a marked improvement in National Institutes of Health cGVHD scores and a significant reduction in prednisone use. In this cohort of heavily pretreated patients, the results suggest abatacept may be a promising therapeutic agent for SR-cGVHD, and a phase 2 trial has been initiated. This trial was registered at www.clinicaltrials. gov as #NCT01954979.
Opportunistic Multicast NOMA with Security Concerns in a 5G Massive MIMO System

This article concentrates on the multicast service in massive MIMO systems, and develops a hierarchical security model-based opportunistic NOMA scheme for 3D massive MIMO channel. In the considered scenario, the base station communicates with different security level users, where eavesdroppers are randomly deployed. Different security level users are classified into NOMA users and non-NOMA users, where NOMA users employ successive interference cancellation to cancel the low security multicast interference and separate their own data streams. The proposed scheme employs multicast beamforming in the multicast group, and applies null-space-based interference cancellation to eliminate the signal leakage generated by other groups. Numerical results revealed that hierarchical security model-based opportunistic NOMA schemes can significantly improve the network throughput and secrecy capacity in typical massive MIMO scenarios.
Ulnocarpal arthrodesis for the treatment of radial agenesis in a dog

Summary Forelimb deformity caused by radial agenesis was diagnosed in a one-year-old Shih Tzu dog. In contrast to most of the previously reported cases of radial agenesis, the humeroulnar joint was inherently stable. The deformity was treated by means of a one-stage ulnocarpal arthrodesis with the application of an eight hole dorsolateral arthrodesis bone plate and autogenous corticocancellous bone graft from the ilial wing. Radiographic evaluation at the eighth and sixteenth post-operative week showed evidence of union of the arthrodesis. At sixteen weeks post-operatively, the dog had much improved limb function. In humans afflicted with radial agenesis, ulnocarpal arthrodesis is used to restore forearm function by minimizing pain and decreasing the magnitude of angular deformity and instability at the level of the ulnocarpal joint. However, to our knowledge, this is the first report of treatment of radial agenesis in the dog by means of a one-stage, ulnocarpal arthrodesis.