Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Genetic and physiological analysis of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) adaption under heat and disease stress

High temperature limits the growth and fruit yield of tomato. A series of five studies were conducted on tomato focusing on plant physiology, genetics and Fusarium wilt reaction to better understand genotype responses to high-temperature. The first study developed a method to identify the high performing genotypes under high temperature stress. Two cycles of experiments were conducted on forty four diverse tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) lines collected from UC Davis. These included one genotype each of the wild species S. pimpinellifolium (LA0373), S. Pennellii (LA0716) and S. chillense (LA1930). Experiments were conducted in both a growth-chamber and a poly-tunnel house. Three physiological parameters; stomatal conductance, electrolyte leakage (EL) and chlorophyll fluorescence were used to evaluate the first cycle materials in a growth chamber. Two-month old tomato plants were exposed to heat stress of 44°C for four hours and traits were assessed prior to and following heat shock treatment. Electrolyte leakage differentiated the materials best and was therefore used in subsequent evaluations. The agronomic superiority of the more heat tolerant materials was assessed using an Agronomic Superiority Index (Ag Index) calculated using Euclidean distance for fruit set %, fruit yield, plant dry weight and electrolyte leakage. Plants were grown hydroponically in cocopeat bags in a tunnel house for two crop seasons. The temperature in the tunnel house was maintained using natural sunlight and controlled ventilation. The Ag Index successfully identified heat tolerant and agronomically superior genotypes and fruit yield and the Ag Index were strongly correlated (R=0.96). Two lines, LA4284 and LA3847, were classified as superior for heat tolerance and agronomic performance. The electrolyte leakage response in the growth chamber and the tunnel house was significantly correlated (R=0.30), thus validating the use of electrolyte leakage for screening. Histological studies on the selected lines confirmed that pollen development was significantly impaired by heat stress.
Improving Students’ Learning interest and Outcome through STAD Cooperative Learning Model at SDN 8 Elementary School Kwandang of North Gorontalo Regency

The objective of this study is to improve students’ learning interest and outcome in the topic of earth structure at grade V of Elementary School SDN 8 Kwandang, North Gorontalo Regency by using Student Team Achievement Divisions (STAD) cooperative learning model. The study involved 26 students as the subject. The action was performed in three cycles, consisting of three meetings of each cycle. It employed students’ activity observation sheets, data collection instruments, students’ learning interest and outcome assessment instruments. The data were descriptively analyzed using the percentage analysis. The results show that nine students (34.62%) lack of learning interest and 11 students (42.31%) have not met the mastery standard of learning outcome in cycle I. After cycle II, 11 students (42.31%) have a moderate learning interest and 17 students (65.38%) have complied with the learning outcome mastery standard. Moreover, students’ learning interest and outcome are increased to the percentage of 80.77% (21 students) and 84.61% (22 students) respectively in cycle III. It arrives at the very good classification of learning interest and mastery standard of learning outcome.In conclusion, STAD cooperative learning model is able to enhance students’ learning interest and outcome in the academic year of 2016-2017 at the research site. This study recommends several things, including (1) teachers should analyze learning materials and prepare a method before coming to the class in order to help students master the materials, (2) natural sciences learning should be started from an easy topic to the complex one that is adjusted to students’ development level, (3) students are expected to be more creative and engaged in Natural Sciences learning to reach an active, innovative, creative, effective, and fun learning.
OS4.2 Radiological response assessment in the era of bevacizumab: RANO or volumetry? A report from the BELOB trial.

Purpose: Response assessment in brain tumors is currently done with the 2D Response Assessment in Neuro-Oncology (RANO) criteria. However, bevacizumab-treated patients may show pseudoresponse on contrast enhanced T1w- (T1w+C), and more infiltrative growth on T2w/FLAIR images at recurrence. We assessed whether in recurrent glioblastoma volumetric methods improve assessment of progressive disease (PD) over the RANO criteria, by correlating PD with overall survival (OS), the golden endpoint in oncology studies.
PointerViz - Towards Visualizing Pointers for Novice Programmers

Pointers are considered as one of the key concepts in learning programming and are extensively used for implementing several data structures. They lay the foundation for handling dynamic aspects of a program, increase execution speed and handle data types with more efficiency. This makes it critical for budding programmers to be well versed with using pointers. However, most of the novice programmers find it difficult and tricky to understand concepts such as address allocations, pointers referring pointers and data structures containing pointers. Hence, drawing the physical structure and flow of pointers is considered to be a common learning practice to gain better clarity and avoid confusion when learning pointers. But, it is time consuming and tedious to draw the flow of pointers on paper while programming. To help programmers understand these variations in pointers, we propose PointerViz as a Google Chrome extension that displays the pictorial representation of selected code with pointers. We conducted a preliminary survey with 40 students from various universities and 83% of the users reported positive experience with the plugin.
Mechanical properties, shrinkage, abrasion resistance and carbonation of concrete containing recycled coarse aggregate of different size range

The coarse aggregate component in concrete ranges from 35% to 55% of the total mass, therefore; the characteristics of coarse aggregate significantly influence properties of a concrete. The presence of different components in recycled coarse aggregate obtained from recycling of construction and demolition waste makes the aggregate properties dynamic in nature compared with a natural crushed aggregate. This paper discusses influence of replacement of natural aggregate of size range 4.75-20 mm by recycled concrete aggregate (RCA) on mechanical properties, drying shrinkage, abrasion resistance, and carbonation of concrete. The study on mechanical properties of concrete suggests that 50% replacement of natural aggregate in size range 10-20 mm by RCA has insignificant influence on compressive and flexural strength of concrete. However, the abrasion resistance, drying shrinkage, and carbonation durability of such concrete are inferior to the control concrete yet adequate for several applications including the construction of cement concrete roads for pneumatic tired traffic.
Rural and Metropolitan Experiences during Pregnancy: A View from CentralNorth Carolina

Objectives: Understanding health behaviors and barriers to care and access among pregnant and postpartum women in central North Carolina. Our seminal study explores the experiences of pregnant and postpartum women to provide recommendations on policy and practice for a comprehensive approach to care for women in rural and metropolitan North Carolina. Methods: We designed a culturally tailored guided interview to assess information-seeking behaviors and barriers to information seeking among pregnant and postpartum women in three central NC counties. Four community-based focus were conducted. We used a local informant and health care worker through health departments and WIC offices to recruit 26 expectant and 2 postpartum women. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed by coding the data into thematic themes. Results: The data were coded manually and emerging themes included pregnancy and postpartum related knowledge and misconceptions and personal, societal, and structural barriers. Lack of access to primary care and transportation were the largest barriers to accessing medical care as well as inadequate medical information from their medical provider. Conclusion: Lack of access to transportation and adequate health care information were of primary concern to pregnant and postpartum women in Central North Carolina. The eight themes that arose in the focus groups are useful and essential in understanding the socioeconomic and barriers to care of women in rural and metropolitan NC. Significance: More research is needed to understand the unique perspective of pregnant and postpartum women in rural North Carolina and how the public health community can reduce disparities and barriers to care. This sample of women’s voices in central North Carolina directly informs public health knowledge of the resources needed to improve women’s health throughout pregnancy and postpartum.
ASBKS: Towards Attribute Set Based Keyword Search Over Encrypted Personal Health Records

With the growth of public demand for online access to health services, many efforts have been devoted to personal health records (PHR) in cloud computing. It enables patients to manage their personal health information (PHI) in cloud servers, which greatly facilitates the collection, access and sharing of PHI. Since cloud servers are not fully trusted, it is desirable that the PHI can be encrypted for privacy protection before uploaded to the cloud. Besides the privacy of PHI, fine-grained and flexible search control is also strongly desired for a secure PHR system. In this article, we first present attribute set based keyword search (ASBKS) which can realize fine-grained keyword search of encrypted PHR. Compared with the existing searchable encryption with access control, the proposed ASBKS can achieve more flexibility in user attributes organization and more efficiency in specifying policies. Furthermore, we present a hierarchical ASBKS scheme to improve scalability by extending ASBKS with a hierarchical structure of users. We implement our ASBKS scheme and the experimental results demonstrate that it is both efficient and flexible for encrypted PHR in cloud computing.
Professional Development of Nursing Leaders: A Case Study of Canadian Nurses Association Presidents (CNA)

Nursing leadership is important in every domain of nursing. However, nursing leadership development is not well understood or documented. This study addresses this gap by turning to an overlooked source of leadership knowledge: presidents of the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA). The CNA has had exceptional leaders during its 108-year history. Many have influenced nursing practice, changed the perception of nursing, and improved healthcare. Yet, little is known about how they became such outstanding leaders. Using a qualitative design, this study aims to inspire and inform current and future nurses by exploring the experiences and leadership journeys of CNA presidents. Altogether, seven nurses who have held the title of president of the CNA were interviewed, either face to face or by Skype. These interviews focused on their personal experiences and perspectives about their leadership journey. Their definitions, philosophies, and motivations for pursuing this particular leadership role were also explored. Through interpretive description methodology the following six themes were identified: Relentless Incrementalism; Embracing Opportunities, , A Service Mindset, Taking the Long View, Enduring Heartbreak, and Taking a Seat at the Table. By providing a deeper understanding of the motivation and experiences of CNA presidents, the findings of this study not only provide insight into the practice wisdom of those who have gone before, they also provide a resource for the development of nursing leaders
Ripples of hope: leading educational change for equity in Egypt’s public schools

ABSTRACT Globally, economically disadvantaged and minority students are especially negatively impacted by less-qualified teachers, yet less-qualified teachers are disproportionately found in low-income, minority communities. Many countries struggle with the need for highly qualified teachers, in low-performing schools. This case study investigated how a private-public-international partnership fostered large-scale educational change in Egypt to improve teacher quality through teacher-of-teacher professional development. Employing interviews, surveys and document analysis, including evaluations of 720 experimental public schools in 27 governorates, with a sample of 90 educators, the study spotlights large-scale educational change. Change was initiated at the school level by leaders seeking educational change for equity, demonstrating qualities of transformative leadership. Preliminary findings of educators changing their mindset about pedagogy, accompanied by modifying practices and beliefs. Findings illuminate how the leaders’ utilized the existing centralized, hierarchical system, incorporating both upper and middle management to support change. We conclude that large-scale educational change can be initiated at the school level by courageous transformative leaders and that interconnectedness at all levels is essential for sustainability. The international partnership exemplified global interconnectedness and was advantageous to public-school reform. Finally, professional learning is a bedrock of school-reform and could be the place where knowledge frameworks are deconstructed and reconstructed.
Ischemic stroke in the elderly: an overview of evidence

Abstract: Stroke mostly occurs in elderly people and patient outcomes after stroke are highly influenced by age. A better understanding of the causes of stroke in the elderly might have important practical implications not only for clinical management, but also for preventive strategies and future health-care policies. In this Review, we explore the evidence from both human and animal studies relating to the effect of old age—in terms of susceptibility, patient outcomes and response to treatment—on ischemic stroke. Several agingrelatedchanges in the brain have been identified that are associated with an increase in vulnerability toischemic stroke in the elderly. Furthermore, risk factor profiles for stroke and mechanisms of ischemic injury differ between young and elderly patients. Elderly patients with ischemic stroke often receive less-effective treatment and have poorer outcomes than younger individuals who develop this condition. Neuroprotective agents for ischemic stroke have been sought for decades but none has proved effective in humans. One contributing factor for this translational failure is that most preclinical studies have used young animals. Future research on ischemic stroke should consider age as a factor that influences stroke prevention and treatment,and should focus on the management of acute stroke in the elderly to reduce the incidence and improve outcomes in this vulnerable group.The review is available hereChen, R. -L. et al. Nat. Rev. Neurol. 6, 256–265 (2010); published online 6 April 2010; doi:10.1038/nrneurol.2010. 36
Modeling the Birth Rate of Single-Industry Towns on the Basis of Indicators of Business Demography

Without knowledge of business demography, it is impossible to obtain accurate quantitative characteristics of the market situation and conduct their research and forecasting. Without an understanding of the statistical structure of business statistics and statistical studies of the quantitative characteristics of entrepreneurship, any business can suffer serious damage. Only the use of methods of processing statistical indicators, the available data on the business environment can help managers, economists, managers and other consumers of information to form and improve their theories and better understand the processes of business development in the context of the creation of new enterprises, to assess its prospects.
Surrogate endpoints in assessment of clinical efficacy and safety of oncology drugs — analysis of AHTAPol recommendations

Terapie stosowane w onkologii oceniane są pod wzgledem skuteczności i bezpieczenstwa zarowno na etapie decyzji terapeutycznych podejmowanych przez lekarzy, jak i na etapie procesow refundacyjnych (m.in. przez Agencje Oceny Technologii Medycznych). Oceny te polegają glownie na analizie korzyści mierzonych za pomocą punktow koncowych dotyczących progresji ( progression free survival — PFS, time to progression — TTP) oraz przezywalności ( overall survival — OS). Decyzje kliniczne w onkologii w codziennej praktyce podejmuje sie najcześciej na podstawie zastepczych punktow koncowych, tzw. surogatow (PFS, TTP, odpowiedź na leczenie, cześciowa odpowiedź na leczenie itp.), w odroznieniu od istotnych dla pacjenta punktow koncowych (OS). Wynika to z faktu, iz ocena przezywalności czesto wiąze sie z koniecznością przeprowadzenia wieloletnich badan w relatywnie duzych grupach pacjentow, co nie zawsze jest praktycznie mozliwe. Wobec powyzszego pojawia sie pytanie, czy i jak bardzo surogaty są skorelowane z punktami takimi jak przezywalnośc. Rozwazane punkty koncowe mają rozne znaczenie kliniczne, rozną istotnośc dla pacjentow, a takze w roznym stopniu przyczyniają sie do decyzji o finansowaniu terapii ze środkow publicznych. Celem niniejszej pracy bylo przedstawienie podstawowych definicji związanych z najcześciej stosowanymi punktami koncowymi w onkologii, wskazanie podobienstw i roznic miedzy nimi, ktore mogą potencjalnie wplywac na wnioskowanie, a takze przeanalizowanie wplywu tych punktow koncowych na rekomendacje dotyczące finansowania terapii onkologicznych ze środkow publicznych.
Similarity in Teacher Ratings of the Externalizing Behavior of Twins: A Meta-Analysis

Valid and reliable teacher ratings serve as the foundation for screening and assessment of youth with behavioral disorders and twin studies offer an opportunity to study those ratings. We conducted a meta-analysis of 15 empirical investigations of aggressive and rule-breaking behavior using teacher ratings in the context of a twin research design. We retrieved n = 53 correlations from n = 7,885 pairs of monozygotic (MZ) twins and n = 67 correlations from n = 11,696 pairs of dizygotic (DZ) twins with two goals: (a) to test the best-fitting models for predicting similarity (correlations) in teacher ratings of MZ and DZ twin pairs and (b) to identify significant predictors in the respective models. We found that, for both MZ and DZ twins, the best-fitting model included all predictors and interactions. In the MZ model, we found a significant positive interaction between the percentage of same teachers who completed the ratings and male twins; in the DZ model, we found a significant negative interaction between the percentage of same teachers who completed the ratings and opposite sex twins. Teacher ratings converged and diverged in expected ways, advancing research in the context of the attributions-bias-context (ABC) model of informant ratings.
Tri5 gene expression analysis during postharvest storage of wheat grain from field plots treated with a triazole and a strobilurin fungicide

Abstract Fusarium head blight (FHB) and the associated mycotoxin deoxynivalenol (DON) negatively impact the wheat industry worldwide. In North America, FHB is mainly caused by Fusarium graminearum sensu stricto. The purpose of this study was to evaluate, under storage conditions, the expression of the DON biosynthetic gene trichodiene synthase (Tri5) of F. graminearum in grain of hard red winter wheat cultivars ‘Overley’ (FHB-susceptible) and ‘Overland’ (moderately resistant to FHB) from field plots treated or untreated with the triazole fungicide Prosaro and the strobilurin fungicide Headline. Infected grain was stored and periodically sampled to determine gene expression by qRT-PCR analysis. The F. graminearum housekeeping gene GAPDH was consistently detected, indicative of metabolically active fungi, and Tri5 detection was significantly higher in ‘Overley’ compared with ‘Overland’. Tri5 gene expression and DON concentrations showed little to no correlation; consequently, Tri5 expression levels did not accurately predict DON concentrations. The strobilurin did not significantly reduce Tri5 gene expression compared with untreated wheat. In the triazole treatment, a significant reduction in the relative expression of Tri5 was detected after 120 days, as well as a downregulation of Tri5 from 60 to 120 days of storage in ‘Overley’. In grain from strobilurin-treated plots of both cultivars, the expression of Tri5 increased from 0 to 30 days after tempering. Genetic expression of Tri5 that is necessary for the production of DON can increase during storage of high-moisture grain. Fusarium fungi can persist in wheat kernels for several months postharvest and may actively produce toxin during this period.
Distributed Learning Over Networks: Effect of Using Historical Observations

This article investigates the problem of distributed hypothesis testing over networks. By introducing double and triple cumulations of historical observations, two novel distributed learning algorithms are developed to solve the considered problem. Within this framework, we study the convergence rates of the proposed algorithms. More specifically: 1) It is proven that the algorithm with double cumulation of historical observations has a faster convergence rate than those of the existing algorithms. 2) Furthermore, it is proven that the algorithm with triple cumulation of historical observations can be further accelerated. Especially, based on the theoretical results, this article shows that a tradeoff among convergence rate, transient performance, and memory burden exists in the proposed algorithms. Finally, simulation examples verify the theoretical results.
Continuous cardiac index trending (ProAQT) via a radial arterial line versus standard care in general surgical patients

Introduction Several single-center studies and meta-analyses have shown that perioperative goal-directed therapy may significantly improve outcomes in general surgical patients. We hypothesized that using a treatment algorithm based on pulse pressure variation, cardiac index trending by radial artery pulse contour analysis, and mean arterial pressure in a study group, would result in reduced complications, reduced length of hospital stay and quicker return of bowel movement postoperatively in abdominal surgical patients, when compared to a control group. Methods 160 patients undergoing elective major abdominal surgery were randomized to the Study Group (79 patients) or to the Control Group (81 patients). In the Study Group hemodynamic therapy was guided by pulse pressure variation, cardiac index trending and mean arterial pressure. In the Control Group hemodynamic therapy was performed at the discretion of the treating anesthesiologist. Outcome data were recorded up to 28 days postoperatively. Results The total number of complications was significantly lower in the Study Group (72 vs. 52 complications, p = 0.038). In particular, infectious complications were significantly reduced (Study Group: 13 vs. Control Group: 26 complications, p = 0.023). There were no significant differences between the two groups for return of bowel movement (Study Group: 3 vs. Control Group: 2 days postoperatively, p = 0.316), duration of post anesthesia care unit stay (Study Group: 180 vs. Control Group: 180 minutes, p = 0.516) or length of hospital stay (Study Group: 11 vs. Control Group: 10 days, p = 0.929). Conclusions This multi-center study demonstrates that hemodynamic goal-directed therapy using pulse pressure variation, cardiac index trending and mean arterial pressure as the key parameters leads to a decrease in postoperative complications in patients undergoing major abdominal surgery.