Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Isolation and Identification of PGPR Strain and its Effect on Soybean Growth and Soil Bacterial Community Composition

Plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) are considered environmentally sound option to reduce chemical fertilizer inputs, improve soil quality and increase crop yields. The objective of this study was to isolate an effective PGPR strain and investigate its effects on soybean growth and soil bacterial community composition. A total of 163 bacterial isolates were obtained from rhizospheres of plants in four provinces of China. According to capacities for mineral potassium and phosphate solubilization, the best strain (designated 3016) was selected and identified as Paenibacillus mucilaginosus based on biochemical characterization and phylogenetic analysis. Moreover, strain 3016 showed a higher capacity for nitrogen fixation and phytohormone production than commercial strains. In a field experiment, P. mucilaginosus 3016 was used as an inoculant for seed dressing survived in the soybean rhizosphere as revealed by a species-specific PCR method. Inoculation significantly improved symbiotic nodulation, soybean growth parameters, nutrient contents and yields. The number of nodules was increased by 31.8% for the inoculation treatment compared with CK. Soybean height, pods and seeds per plant and dry weight of nodules were also significantly higher for the inoculation, as well as nutrient contents. Regarding yields, the highest of 3191.4 kg hm -2 was obtained under inoculation regime. Moreover, numerous bacterial classes and genera, which were associated with symbiotic nitrogen-fixation, plant growth promotion, biological control and soil catalase activity improvement, were also overrepresented in the inoculation treatment. Some taxa with negative impacts on soil quality decreased. In conclusion, inoculation with P. mucilaginosus 3016 had beneficial effects on both soybean growth and soil quality, and is a potential candidate for developing commercial inoculants of PGPR to be used as a bio-fertilizer. © 2018 Friends Science Publishers
Folic Acid inhibits hypoxia-induced THP1Cells inflammation by suppressing NF-kB signaling pathway.

Lowering of homocysteine by folic acid is known to prevent cardiovascular events. However, the mechanism by which this impact related diseases is not clear. Therefore, we investigated whether folic acid has protective effects on the inflammatory response to hypoxia of human mononuclear cells in vitro, and the involved signaling pathways. The human monocyte cell line THP-1 cells were pretreated with folic acid for 30 min, and then incubated with 1% O2 for 24 h to induce hypoxia injuries. The protein levels and mRNA expression of interleukin-1 beta (IL-1β) and interleukin-8 (IL-8) were respectively determined by ELISA and qRT-PCR. The expressions of hypoxia-inducible factor-1 alpha (HIF-1α), prolyl hydroxylase1 (PHD1), inhibitor of nuclear factor κB kinase beta (IKKβ), nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) were analyzed with western blotting and immunofluorescence. The results showed that hypoxia increased the expression of IL-1β and IL-8 accompanied by significant augmentation of HIF-1α, IKKβ and NF-κB expression as well as inhibition of PHD1. However, pretreatment with folic acid significantly reduced hypoxia-induced production of IL-1β and IL-8. Moreover, folic acid markedly attenuated hypoxia-induced upregulation of HIF-1α, IKKβ and NF-κB, and upregulated PHD1. In summary, folic acid inhibits the inflammatory response of THP-1 cells to hypoxia by inhibiting NF-κB pathways, which may represent one of the mechanisms by which folic acid exerts a protective effect in cardiovascular disorders.
Heterogeneous Degradation of Dyes in Industrial Effluent over Fenton-Like Nano-Fe2O3/Goldmine Complex

Nano-Fe2O3/goldmine complex was obtained by chemical coprecipitation reaction on the surface of goldmine waste-solid. Being used as the heterogeneous catalyst in Fenton-like advanced oxidation processes (AOPs), its treatment effect was studied in the removal performance of industrial dyes effluent. Although the maximal COD removal efficiency would reach 35.4% when 5 mL NaClO was added in 100 mL industrial dyes effluent, it is found that by using nano-Fe2O3/goldmine system, the COD removal efficiency of 13,000 mg/L dyes wastewater could reach up to 75.5% in the presence of 30 g/L nano-Fe2O3/goldmine complex and 50 mL/L NaClO at 50。 C.
A Robust Method of Vehicle Stability Accurate Measurement Using GPS and INS

Abstract With the development of the vehicle industry, controlling stability has become more and more important. Techniques of evaluating vehicle stability are in high demand. Integration of Global Positioning System (GPS) and Inertial Navigation System (INS) is a very practical method to get high-precision measurement data. Usually, the Kalman filter is used to fuse the data from GPS and INS. In this paper, a robust method is used to measure vehicle sideslip angle and yaw rate, which are two important parameters for vehicle stability. First, a four-wheel vehicle dynamic model is introduced, based on sideslip angle and yaw rate. Second, a double level Kalman filter is established to fuse the data from Global Positioning System and Inertial Navigation System. Then, this method is simulated on a sample vehicle, using Carsim software to test the sideslip angle and yaw rate. Finally, a real experiment is made to verify the advantage of this approach. The experimental results showed the merits of this method of measurement and estimation, and the approach can meet the design requirements of the vehicle stability controller.
Aging As a Developmental Perspective

This qualitative research study compares a small sample of University students 50 and older with seniors at a community senior center. Their perspectives of aging are shown to be affected by societal views on aging and cultural values. Though aging was not feared by most participants, their concern about physical limitations, slowing down, and being less productive was noticeable. Body image was a reminder of these changes and the younger respondents, ages 50-59, were more concerned about these things than those 60 and older. The author relates these concerns to current societal values that are desired in individuals such as independence, productivity and remaining active.
Personal, Master, and Alternative Narratives: An Integrative Framework for Understanding Identity Development in Context

In this paper we propose a model for examining personal identity development that moves attention from a relatively exclusive examination of the individual to an examination of the intersection between self and society. We propose that a master narrative model of identity development allows researchers to: (a) align the study of culture and individual on the same metric of narrative, (b) investigate the processes of negotiating personal and cultural narratives, the latter of which are embedded within the structures of society, and (c) investigate the internalization of those structures in personal identities. In laying out this model we define a narrative approach to identity development, five principles for defining master narratives (ubiquity, utility, invisibility, rigidity, and their compulsory nature), three types of master narratives (life course, structural, and episodic), and case examples of each type. This model brings attention to the interaction between self and society, as well as to the constraints on individual agency to construct a personal identity. We conclude by raising questions that emerge out of this framework that we hope will inspire future work on the relationship between self and society in the study of identity development.
Development of a computational cognitive model for in-vehicle speech interfaces

Over the past decades, a variety of in-vehicle speech interfaces have been developed as both research prototypes and commercial applications. While many human subject studies have been conducted to evaluate in-vehicle speech interaction systems, there are few modeling studies using cognitive architectures and quantitative prediction methods. In this paper we present a computational cognitive model that predicts human performance (i.e., task completion time) while using in-vehicle speech interaction systems. The model was evaluated with 40 human subjects’ data from a laboratory experiment using a speech interface to adjust an in-vehicle multi-contour seat. Furthermore, we compared the human performance of using the speech interface with data from a corresponding manual task using a touchscreen mounted on the vehicle center stack.
Developing a soft sensor Random Forest model for the inline product characterization of Polylactide (PLA) in a twin screw melt extrusion process

The melt processing of Polylactide faces challenges due to its poor thermal stability which is influenced by processing temperatures and shearing. The characterization of processed products takes place offline in laboratory environments. Typical scrap rates of a medical grade product can be up to 25-30%. This work discusses the development of soft sensor random forest models for a twin screw melt extrusion process. The resulting models can predict product end characteristics from inline data. These include mechanical properties and percentage mass change of a product during its degradation cycle. These models will act as novel inline indicators as to whether products will be in or out of specification. This will reduce manufacturing costs and minimize waste as well as accurately predicting future performance and behavior of products.
Detection of comic books twin pages with a non-overlapping stitching method

We address in this paper the issue of stitching non overlapping pairs of real digitized comic books' pages. The main objective is to be able to decide if two pages are meant to be displayed together for their content to be understood. First, the relevant content is separated from the background so the pairing is done over relevant pieces of visual information. We define the different kinds of noise that one can found on the edges of such documents and how to get rid of it. Then we propose a method to decide whether a couple of pages should be paired or not, based on the analysis of the relevant content. Our compatibility methods are evaluated against the methods from the literature, adapted from jigsaw puzzles solvers. Results are discussed over an actual commercial dataset of digitized comic books.
Psychoeducation against depression, anxiety, alexithymia and fibromyalgia: a pilot study in primary care for patients on sick leave

Abstract Objectives: Feasibility testing of a psychoeducational method -The Affect School and Script Analyses (ASSA) – in a Swedish primary care setting. Exploring associations between psychological, and medically unexplained physical symptoms (MUPS). Design: Pilot study. Setting: Three Swedish primary care centers serving 20,000 people. Intervention: 8 weekly 2-hour sessions with a 5–7 participant group led by two instructors - followed by 10 individual hour-long sessions. Subjects: Thirty-six patients, 29 women (81%), on sick-leave due to depression, anxiety, or fibromyalgia. Outcome measures: Feasibility in terms of participation rates and expected improvements of psychological symptoms and MUPS, assessed by self-report instruments pre-, one-week post-, and 18 months post-intervention. Regression coefficients between psychological symptoms and MUPS. Results: The entire 26-hour psychoeducational intervention was completed by 30 patients (83%), and 33 patients (92%) completed the 16-hour Affect School. One-week post-intervention median test score changes were significantly favorable for 27 respondents, with p < . 05 after correction for multiple testing for 9 of 11 measures (depression, anxiety, alexithymia, MUPS, general health, self-affirmation, self-love, self-blame, and self-hate); 18 months post intervention the results remained significantly favorable for 15 respondents for 7 of 11 measures (depression, alexithymia, MUPS, general health, self-affirmation, self-love, and self-hate). Conclusions: A psychoeducational method previously untested in primary care for mostly women patients on sick-leave due to depression, anxiety, or fibromyalgia had >80% participation rates, and clear improvements of self-assessed psychological symptoms and MUPS. The ASSA intervention thus showed adequate feasibility in a Swedish primary care setting. Key Points A pilot study of a psychoeducational intervention – The Affect School and Script Analyses (ASSA) – was performed in primary care • The intervention showed feasibility for patients on sick-leave due to depression, anxiety, or fibromyalgia • 92% completed the 8 weeks/16 hours Affect School and 83% completed the entire 26-hour ASSA intervention • 9 of 11 self-reported measures improved significantly one-week post intervention • 7 of 11 self-reported measures improved significantly 18 months post-intervention
Variance-Optimal Hedging for Processes with Stationary Independent Increments

We determine the variance-optimal hedge when the logarithm of the underlying price follows a process with stationary independent increments in discrete or continuous time. Although the general solution to this problem is known as backward recursion or backward stochastic differential equation, we show that for this class of processes the optimal endowment and strategy can be expressed more explicitly. The corresponding formulas involve the moment resp. cumulant generating function of the underlying process and a Laplace- or Fourier-type representation of the contingent claim. An example illustrates that our formulas are fast and easy to evaluate numerically.
0 A Survey of Mobile Device Virtualization : Taxonomy and State

Recent growth in the processing and memory resources of mobile devices has fueled research within the field of mobile virtualization. Mobile virtualization enables multiple persona on a single mobile device by hosting heterogeneous operating systems concurrently. However, adding a virtualization layer to resourceconstrained mobile devices with real-time requirements can lead to intolerable performance overheads. Hardware virtualization extensions that support efficient virtualization have been incorporated in recent mobile processors. Prior to hardware virtualization extensions, virtualization techniques that are enabled by performance prohibitive and resource consuming software were adopted for mobile devices. Moreover, mobile virtualization solutions lack standard procedures for device component sharing and interfacing between multiple operating systems. The objective of this article is to survey software and hardware based mobile virtualization techniques in light of the recent advancements fueled by the hardware support for mobile virtualization. Challenges and issues faced in virtualization of CPU, memory, I/O, interrupt, and network interfaces are highlighted. Moreover, various performance parameters are presented in a detailed comparative analysis to quantify the efficiency of mobile virtualization techniques and solutions. CCS Concepts: rComputer systems organization → Real-time operating systems; Embedded and cyber-physical systems; rSoftware and its engineering→ Operating systems; Virtual machines;
Detecting Collusive Spamming Activities in Community Question Answering

Community Question Answering (CQA) portals provide rich sources of information on a variety of topics. However, the authenticity and quality of questions and answers (Q&As) has proven hard to control. In a troubling direction, the widespread growth of crowdsourcing websites has created a large-scale, potentially difficult-to-detect workforce to manipulate malicious contents in CQA. The crowd workers who join the same crowdsourcing task about promotion campaigns in CQA collusively manipulate deceptive Q&As for promoting a target (product or service). The collusive spamming group can fully control the sentiment of the target. How to utilize the structure and the attributes for detecting manipulated Q&As? How to detect the collusive group and leverage the group information for the detection task? To shed light on these research questions, we propose a unified framework to tackle the challenge of detecting collusive spamming activities of CQA. First, we interpret the questions and answers in CQA as two independent networks. Second, we detect collusive question groups and answer groups from these two networks respectively by measuring the similarity of the contents posted within a short duration. Third, using attributes (individual-level and group-level) and correlations (user-based and content-based), we proposed a combined factor graph model to detect deceptive Q&As simultaneously by combining two independent factor graphs. With a large-scale practical data set, we find that the proposed framework can detect deceptive contents at early stage, and outperforms a number of competitive baselines.
Non-overt disseminated intravascular coagulation scoring for critically ill patients: The impact of antithrombin levels

Summary Validation of a scoring algorithm for non-overt disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) proposed by the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis (ISTH) is still incomplete. It was the objective of this study to assess the impact of including AT to non-overt DIC scoring on the predictability for intensive care unit (ICU) death and the later development of overt-DIC defined by the Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare (JMHW) or the ISTH. We performed a retrospective observational study conducted in 364 patients in critical care. Coagulation parameters obtained daily for DIC screening were utilised for scoring. There were 194 and 196 patients scored as positive non-overt DIC with and without AT, respectively; diagnostic agreement between the two was 78%. As compared with patients without non-overt DIC, these non-overt DIC patients had significantly higher mortality. In 37 ICU non-survivors, positive non-overt DIC scoring with AT preceded ICU death by a median of 6.8 days, which was significantly earlier as compared with a median of 5.4 days for non-overt DIC without AT (p=0.022). In patients who developed overt-DIC after admission, the time period from positive non-overt DIC to positive overt-DIC was significantly longer when AT was utilised (overt-DIC ISTH; 1.3 days vs. 0.1 days, p=0.004, overt-DIC JMHW; 2.5 days vs. 2.0 days, p=0.04, with AT vs. without AT, respectively). Non-overt DIC scoring predicted a high risk of death in critically ill patients. When information on AT levels was included, non-overt DIC scoring was found to predict development of overt-DIC significantly earlier than non-overt DIC scoring without AT.
The Impact of Complex Family Structure on Child Well‐being: Evidence From Siblings

Evidence from the United Kingdom Millennium Cohort on children at ages 3 and 5 with older siblings addresses the questions of whether those living with both biological parents and only full siblings have better emotional and behavior outcomes than other children, and whether nonfull siblings affect children's outcomes independently of parents' partnership status. Adjusting for measured family circumstances and resources in cross‐sectional regressions accounted for much of the adverse association of family complexity with child outcomes. Controlling for unobserved family and child fixed effects did not, however, attenuate all estimates further. Fixed unobservable factors appeared to be masking underlying associations. Allowing for them intensified some, albeit modest, estimates. These revealed excess externalizing behavior problems for boys with single or stepparents but only full siblings. For girls with single mothers, the chances of internalizing problems were raised. Whether siblings were full or not made little difference to outcomes in general.
An auditorily motivated analysis method for room impulse responses

In this paper a new auditorily motivated analysis method for room impulse responses is presented. The method applies same kind of time and frequency resolution than the human hearing. With the proposed method it is possible to study the decaying sound field of a room in more detail. It is applicable as well in the analysis of artificial reverberation and related audio effects. The method, used with directional microphones, gives us also hints about the diffuseness and the directional characteristics of the sound fields in the time-frequency domain. As a case study two example room impulse responses are analyzed.
A Comparative Study: Immersion Bilingual Education in Canada and Submersion Bilingual Education in the U. S.

This paper discusses the variance between immersion bilingual education in Canada and submersion bilingual education in the US, illustrating the features and application of the two models. The immersion programme can be addictive and regarded as the strong form of bilingual education, aiming to create biliteracy. However, the submersion programme can be subtractive and considered as the weak form of bilingual education with the expectation of realizing monolingualism and monolingual society.
Messung von Ausmaß, Intensität und Konzentration des Einkommens-und Vermögensreichtums in Deutschland (Measuring the Extent, Intensity and Concentration at the Upper Edge of the Income and Wealth Distribution in Germany)

German abstract: In diesem Beitrag wird der obere Rand der Einkommens-und Vermogensverteilung in Deutschland mit Daten des Sozio‐oekonomischen Panels (SOEP) analysiert. In Anlehnung an das von Sen (1976) fur die Armutsmessung vorgeschlagene Vorgehen werden zunachst unterschiedliche Schwellenwerte definiert, oberhalb derer eine Person zum reichen Teil der Gesellschaft gehort. Anschliesend wird untersucht, wie viele Menschen uber diesen Schwellen liegen (Ausmas), uber wie viel Einkommen oder Vermogen diese im Durchschnitt verfugen (Intensitat) und wie diese finanziellen Mittel zwischen den reichen Personen verteilt sind (Konzentration). Eine simultane Analyse von Ausmas, Intensitat und Konzentration ermoglicht ein breites Verstandnis des oberen Rands der Einkommens- und Vermogensverteilung sowie dessen Dynamik. Zum Beispiel ergeben die Untersuchungen, dass im Vergleich zum Durchschnitt in Deutschland Beamte sowohl beim Einkommen als auch beim Vermogen ein hohes Ausmas, aber eine geringe Intensitat aufweisen. Zudem sind ihre finanziellen Ressourcen weniger konzentriert als im deutschen Durchschnitt.English Abstract: In this paper we analyze the upper edge of income and wealth distribution in Germany with data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). According to Sen's (1976) recommendation for the poverty measurement, we first define different thresholds above which a person belongs to the rich part of society. Then we examine how many people are above these thresholds (extent), how much income or wealth they have on average (intensity), and how these financial resources are distributed among the rich persons (concentration). Analyzing extent, intensity and concentration simultaneously gives a broader understanding of the dynamics of the upper edge of income and wealth distribution. For example, we find that in comparison to the average in Germany, civil servants are more often above the defined thresholds but receive on average less income and own less wealth. In addition, their financial resources are less concentrated then the German average.