Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Degradation kinetics of butyltin compounds during the bioremediation of contaminated harbour sediments

The present study was aimed at the reclamation of harbour sediments contaminated with butyltin compounds (BTCs) by means of biostimulation and/or bioaugmentation experiments carried out in a 5-L slurry bioreactor. In the biostimulation experiment with inorganic nutrients, almost 50% of TBT was degraded in 20 weeks. In the bioaugmentation experiment with a microbial consortium, no significant degradation of TBT was observed. Conversely, bioaugmentation combined with biostimulation led to a decrease of ∼50% in TBT after four weeks. A simple kinetic model fitted to the experimental data of BTC concentration allowed us to estimate that 10 weeks are needed to decrease BTC contamination by 90% using a strategy based on both biostimulation and bioaugmentation, and 29 weeks for a strategy using biostimulation only. Overall, our study indicates that strategies based on biostimulation coupled to bioaugmentation can be effective in significantly reducing the concentration of BTCs over relatively short timescales.
Atomistic analysis of piezoelectric potential fluctuations in zinc-blende InGaN/GaN quantum wells: A Stillinger-Weber potential based analysis

Title Atomistic analysis of piezoelectric potential fluctuations in zinc-blende InGaN/GaN quantum wells: A Stillinger-Weber potential based analysis Author(s) Sheerin, Thomas P.; Tanner, Daniel S. P.; Schulz, Stefan Publication date 2021-04-19 Original citation Sheerin, T. P., Tanner, D. S. P. and Schulz, S. (2021) 'Atomistic analysis of piezoelectric potential fluctuations in zinc-blende InGaN/GaN quantum wells: A Stillinger-Weber potential based analysis', Physical Review B, 103(16), 165201 (13pp). doi: 10.1103/PhysRevB.103. 165201 Type of publication Article (peer-reviewed) Link to publisher's version http://dx.doi. org/10.1103/PhysRevB.103. 165201 Access to the full text of the published version may require a subscription. Rights © 2021, American Physical Society. All rights reserved. Item downloaded from http://hdl.handle. net/10468/11250
Antidiabetic potential of Moringa oleifera Lam. leaf extract in type 2 diabetic rats, and its mechanism of action

Purpose: To explore the antidiabetic potential of Moringa oleifera leaf extract in type 2 diabetic rats, and the underlying mechanisms.Methods: Streptozotocin (STZ) at a dose of 40 mg/kg was given to high fat diet (HFD)- fed rats to induce type 2 diabetes. M. oleifera leaf extract at doses 100, 200 and 400 mg/kg were given to 3 groups of type 2 diabetic rats. The area under curve (AUC) of glucose and homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-R) were calculated using appropriate formulas, whereas levels of glucose,insulin, peroxisome proliferator activated receptor-γ (PPARγ, dipeptidyl peptidase-IV (DPP-IV) and inflammatory cytokines (IL-6, IL-1β and TNFα) were assayed using ELISA kits.Results: The leaf extract of M. oleifera significantly reduced the levels of glucose, insulin and cytokines in treated type 2 diabetic groups (p < 0.05). DC group had significantly increased AUC for glucose, whereas the extract-treated groups showed significant decrease in glucose AUC. There was significant decrease in insulin sensitivity parameters, as indicated by increase in HOMA-R and decrease in PPARγ levels in the DC group (p < 0.05). However, treatment with the M. oleifera extract reversed this trend via marked decrease in HOMA-R level and significant rise in PPARγ level. In contrast, the extract had no effect on DPP-IV concentration in diabetic treated groups (p < 0.05). Conclusion: These results indicate that M. oleifera leaf extract mitigates hyperglycemia in type 2 DM by modulating hyperinsulinemia, PPARγ and inflammatory cytokines. Thus, the extract is a potential source of drug for the management of type 2 DM. Keywords: Moringa oleifera, Diabetes mellitus, Streptozotocin, Peroxisome proliferator activated receptor-γ, Dipeptidyl peptidase IV
Sport club consultants as street-level bureaucrats in sport policy processes: conceptualising micro-level interaction styles and their macro-level consequences

Abstract The focus of this paper is sport club consultants, an under-researched role that is uniquely situated at the interface of sport policy systems and clubs. Incumbents of this role—the label of which varies between countries—conduct club-directed developmental work to align clubs with centrally issued policies and programmes. Conceptualising sport club consultants as a sport-specific street-level bureaucrat, the paper’s purpose is, first, to analyse sport club consultants’ interaction style vis-à-vis clubs and, second, to demonstrate that broader and unintended transformative effects may follow from this rather micro practice. We propose that sport club consultants’ institutionally shaped interaction style may be operationalised along four dimensions (e.g. case prioritisation principle, shaping of interaction context, interactor positioning, communicative strategy). The substantive empirical content of these dimensions may vary between systems and the policy in question. Nonetheless, we show that system-level fragmentation, professionalisation, and centralisation are potential consequences of the work through which sport club consultants attempt to reconcile tensions between centrally distilled policies and clubs’ readiness, willingness, and ability to change.
Heterogeneous ice nucleation ability of aerosol particles generated from Arctic sea surface microlayer and surface seawater samples at cirrus temperatures

Abstract. Sea spray aerosol particles are a recognised type of ice-nucleating particles under mixed-phase cloud conditions. Entities that are responsible for the heterogeneous ice nucleation ability include intact or fragmented cells of marine microorganisms as well as organic matter released by cell exudation. Only a small fraction of sea salt aerosol is transported to the upper troposphere, but there are indications from mass-spectrometric analyses of the residuals of sublimated cirrus particles that sea salt could also contribute to heterogeneous ice nucleation under cirrus conditions. Experimental studies on the heterogeneous ice nucleation ability of sea spray aerosol particles and their proxies at temperatures below 235 K are still scarce. In our article, we summarise previous measurements and present a new set of ice nucleation experiments at cirrus temperatures with particles generated from sea surface microlayer and surface seawater samples collected in three different regions of the Arctic and from a laboratory-grown diatom culture (Skeletonema marinoi). The particles were suspended in a large cloud chamber and ice formation was induced by expansion cooling. We confirmed that under cirrus conditions, apart from the ice-nucleating entities mentioned above, also crystalline inorganic salt constituents can contribute to heterogeneous ice formation. This takes place at temperatures below 220 K, where we observed in all experiments a strong immersion freezing mode due to the only partially deliquesced inorganic salts. The inferred ice nucleation active surface site densities for this nucleation mode reached a maximum of about 5·1010 m−2 at an ice saturation ratio of 1.3. Much smaller densities in the range of 108–109 m−2 were observed at temperatures between 220 and 235 K, where the inorganic salts fully deliquesced and only the organic matter and/or algal cells and cell debris could contribute to heterogeneous ice formation. These values are two orders of magnitude smaller than those previously reported for particles generated from microlayer suspensions collected in temperate and subtropical zones. While this difference might simply underline the strong variability of the amount of ice-nucleating entities in the sea surface microlayer across different geographical regions, we also discuss how far instrumental parameters like the aerosolisation method and the ice-nucleation measurement technique might affect the comparability of the results amongst different studies.
A Simple Decoupling Network With Filtering Response for Patch Antenna Arrays

Facing the demand for decoupling and filtering for large-scale antenna arrays in modern communication systems, a transmission-line-based scheme is proposed and studied in this article. Different from other decoupling networks published recently featuring narrow decoupling bandwidths and high spurious levels, the proposed approach uses simple T-shaped networks where decoupling and filtering responses are realized simultaneously, leading to high-frequency selectivity and improved decoupling bandwidth. The proposed design is a simple 1-D configuration but powerful for 2-D arrays. Based on the study case of a $4\times {4}$ dual-polarized patch array, theoretical analysis and full-wave simulation are carried out to verify the performance in decoupling and frequency selectivity of this method. A prototype is further fabricated, assembled, and measured to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method in practice. The measured and simulated results are consistent with each other where a low insertion loss of around 0.6 dB is observed. The results denote that the proposed method is easily realized with a very small effect on the radiation performance of antenna elements, making it to be a potential and valuable decoupling and filtering solution for large-scale arrays.
Coenzyme A: pKa and g values

The pKa and γ values at 25°, I 0.1 M, of the mercapto group of coenzyme A were calculated to be 10.35±0.15 and 0.70±0.02 respectively. The γ value was calculated from differences in the partition coefficient of quinazoline between cyclohexane and aqueous buffers and that between cyclohexane and aqueous buffers which contained coenzyme A. The described procedure could be used to obtain γ values of other nucleophilic reagents which, like coenzyme A, absorb u.v, energy strongly.
An aggregated deep convolutional recurrent model for event based surveillance video summarisation: A supervised approach

Surveillance video summarisation is characterised by extracting video segments con-taining abnormal events from surveillance video footages. Accurate identification of abnormal events from surveillance footages is of paramount importance in surveillance video summarisation. Accordingly, the proposed framework builds an aggregated convolutional recurrent model that can precisely detect the suspicious events in a surveillance footage, by employing a supervised learning which is found to yield better results compared with unsupervised counterparts. The preliminary stage in the model is a multilayer Convolutional Neural Network for frame-level feature extraction followed by stacked bidirectional Gated Recurrent Unit for sequence-level feature extraction and classification. Since the video clips used for training are not implicit to surveillance, a block-based approach for testing on surveillance videos is proposed. The results evaluated on two custom datasets, Streets and Campus, prove that the proposed model pro-duces remarkable results leveraging the properties of bidirectional GRU with supervised learning. Extensive experimental analysis on selection of optimum architecture is conducted which substantiates the significance of stacked bidirectional GRUs over unidirectional ones. Additionally, qualitative results ensure that summaries produced are concise, representative, complete, diverse and informative. Moreover, comparison of the performance of the proposed model with state of the art certainly proves the superiority of the proposed model.
Real Estate Investment, Loan Preference, and National Happiness: Evidence from China

With two-stage least squares and LS models, this paper investigates the effects of real estate investment and loan preference on national happiness with data of 31 provinces in China from 2000 to 2018. The conclusions are that a rapid growth of real estate investment has significant adverse effects on national happiness in modern China. Specifically, real estate investment has negative impacts on disposable income, consumption structure, and personal development. Moreover, the rapid growth of real estate investment and institutions’ loan preference leads to other inhibitory effects on national happiness. The intermediary effect model confirms the transmission mechanism of the rapid growth of real estate investment, the loan structure, and national happiness. According to our research, we propose conductive suggestions for the governments.
Feral horses (Equus caballus) increase suspended sediment in subalpine streams

Feral horses preferentially utilise aquatic landscape elements. Damage to stream banks by feral horses potentially degrades water quality and affects aquatic ecosystems. Despite the global predominance of horse activity in or near water, there is poor understanding of in-stream impacts. Motion-sensing cameras were used near subalpine streams to quantify frequency and behaviour of horses interacting with streams. Deployed turbidity loggers were used to indicate the presence of suspended sediment from interactions and to assess long-term (3 year) seasonal suspended sediment regime at sites with very small and large amounts of horse activity. In summer, 99.9% of large grazer interactions with streams were horses and we estimate 130 horse interactions per kilometre of stream per day, resulting in stream turbidity increases up to 100 NTU. Long-term turbidity at sites with greater riparian damage from horses was significantly greater than at control sites. Turbidity in horse-affected streams peaked at 50 times the national turbidity guideline and, in summer, averaged eight times the guideline. Suspended sediment leads to a high risk of loss of aquatic diversity and impairment of ecosystem function. Linear relationships between turbidity and riparian damage suggest that any level of horse presence affects subalpine waterways.
Modulation Recognition of Communication Signals Based on Deep Learning Joint Model

In modern communication, it is often required for a non-cooperative party to identify the modulation mode when no prior knowledge is given to facilitate the subsequent demodulation and analysis. However, the traditional modulation recognition process requires cumbersome and uncertain manual signal-feature extraction, making it inapplicable to the complex communication environment. In order to overcome this limitation, this paper proposes a communication-signal modulation recognition model based on the dense connection network (DenseNet) and residual connection network (ResNet). The convolutional block attention mechanism (CBAM) is introduced into the DenseNet and ResNet structures, significantly enhancing the modulation recognition accuracy of the proposed global network model. Besides DenseNet and ResNet, the long short-time memory (LSTM) network is also adopted. The experimental results show the performance of the proposed model.
Do Relationship Marketing Constructs Enhance Consumer Retention? An Empirical Study Within the Hotel Industry

The increasing growth of new hotels in the Malaysian domestic market indicates that the hospitality and tourism industry is growing rapidly. As a result, there will be high competition as customers can easily switch from one hotel to the other. Therefore, to maintain competition in the market, it is crucial for hotels to recognize the importance of conflict handling, trust, and customer commitment in maintaining good relationships with their customers. Hence, the objective of this study is to study, relationship marketing constructs such as conflict handling, trust, and commitment are evaluated based on their direct and indirect relationships with customer retention. Overall, 188 questionnaires were collected from hotel guests in Malaysia to evaluate the structural relationships between these constructs and the performance of the measurement model using SmartPLS 3.2. 3. Moreover, the importance-performance map analysis (IPMA) was used to identify measures that could be utilized to enhance management activities. The research outcomes of this study indicated that customer retention is directly influenced by conflict handling, whereas customer engagement is directly affected by trust, conflict handling, and commitment. However, conflict handling, commitment, and trust indirectly affected customer retention via customer engagement. The IPMA also revealed several aspects to help decision-makers and managers prioritize their actions efficiently. The results of this study revealed that customer engagement and conflict handling had the highest effect, whereas commitment and customer engagement had the highest performance on customer retention in the hotel industry. Therefore, to maintain customer loyalty, it is recommended that hotel managers prioritize their customers’ complaints and resolve them effectively.
Increased High Frequency Compared to Low Frequency Power in Heart Rate Variability in Parkinsonism

Heart rate variability (HRV) decreases in Parkinson’s disease which could be a consequence of reduced motor activity besides being a marker of cardiovascular dysautonomia. The diurnal low frequency power and high frequency power decrease in advanced Parkinsonism. In this case, there is decreased low frequency (LF) but high frequency (HF) is found to be very high compared to LF, which needs explanation. Multiple lobed pattern on Poincare plot in this case increases SD1, which has an analogy to HF, therefore HF is increased. If we remove premature beats from the recording while analysing, and then frame Poincare plot, it would be a normal torpedo pattern and HF value will be decreased in this case like LF, as is normally found in Parkinsonism, which would truly reflect the HRV values due to autonomic effects. HRV report should be interpreted for autonomic dysfunction when Poincare plot is torpedo pattern as other patterns may signify some intrinsic disease of heart.
Novel tests of gravity using nano-Hertz stochastic gravitational-wave background signals

Gravity theories that modify General Relativity in the slow-motion regime can introduce nonperturbative corrections to the stochastic gravitational-wave background~(SGWB) from supermassive black-hole binaries in the nano-Hertz band, while remaining perturbative in the highly-relativistic regime and satisfying current post-Newtonian~(PN) constraints. We present a model-agnostic formalism to map such theories into a modified tilt for the SGWB spectrum, showing that negative PN corrections (in particular -2PN) can alleviate the tension in the recent pulsar-timing-array data if the detected SGWB is interpreted as arising from supermassive binaries. Despite being preliminary, current data have already strong constraining power, for example they set a novel (conservative) upper bound on theories with time-varying Newton's constant at least at the level of $\dot{G}/G \lesssim 10^{-5} \text{yr}^{-1}$ for redshift $z=[0.1\div1]$. We also show that NANOGrav data are best fitted by a broken power-law interpolating between a dominant -2PN or -3PN modification at low frequency, and the standard general-relativity scaling at high frequency. Nonetheless, a modified gravity explanation should be confronted with binary eccentricity, environmental effects, nonastrophysical origins of the signal, and scrutinized against statistical uncertainties. These novel tests of gravity will soon become more stringent when combining all pulsar-timing-array facilities and when collecting more data.
First Report on Molecular Identification of Babesia bigemina in a Nervous Signs Evident Naturally Infected Holstein-Friesian Cattle from Central India

Background: Bovine babesiosis caused by an intraerythrocytic apicomplexan protozoon responsible for the most prevalent and costly tick borne diseases (TBD’s) of cattle throughout the globe. Cerebral babesiosis of bovine is fatal and mainly caused by Babesia bovis. To the knowledge of author, there is no confirm molecular report of Babeisa bigemina caused cerebral babesiosis in cattle. Therefore, authors want to report Babesia bigemina caused cerebral babesiosis on record. Methods: In the year 2015, a Holstein-Friesian cow aged 3 years and weighing approximately 300 kg, was attended at Jabalpur, (M.P.) with the clinical signs of high rise in temperature (104°F), recumbency, severe dysponea, peculiar sound during open mouth breathing, pale color of eye conjunctiva and mucous membrane of vagina, convulsions, sever anaemia, paddling of legs at frequent interval. After preparation of peripheral thin blood smear from animal at the site of collection and fixation with methanol, blood sample brought to Department of Veterinary Parasitology, College of Veterinary Science and A.H, Jabalpur and stained by standard protocol for Giemsa staining. Genomic DNA was isolated from the collected blood sample using QIAamp® DNA blood mini kit following the manufacturer’s recommendations and PCR was performed. Conclusion: The thin blood smear examination revealed the presence of Babesia parasite. The species of Babesia was confirmed by molecular amplification of genomic DNA as B. bigemina. This might be the first confirmed report of cerebral babesiosis caused by B. bigemina from Central India.
A comparison of response curves of winter wheat photosynthesis to flag leaf inte rcellular and air CO_2 concentrations.

By using Li-6400 portable photosynthesis system, the photosynthetic parameters of winter wheat (Triticum aestivum) during its heading stage in North China Plai n were measured at air temperature 25 ℃ and 30 ℃ and at photosynthetically ava ilable radiation 1500 and 2000 mmol·m-2·s -1. The measured data were fitted with the modified rectangular hyperbola mode ls of the photosynthetic responses to flag leaf intercellular CO_2 concentratio n (A/Ci) and air CO_2 concentration (A/Ca), aimed to approach the r easonability of the fitted results obtained from the models. The photosynthetic capacity and CO_2 compensation point estimated by the modified A/Ci curve and A/Ca curve were nearly the same, but the photorespiration and initial carboxylation efficiency estimated by them were completely different. The diffe rence between the two modified curves came from the calculated but not the real intercellular CO_2 concentration. Modified A/Ca curve was more reasonable than the modified A/Ci curve, because the photorespiration rate estimated by the former was close to the measured value.