Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antibacterial Activities of the Combined Leaf Extract of Phyllanthus muellerianus and Ciprofloxacin against Urogenital Isolates of Staphylococcus aureus

Infectious diseases caused by multi-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus are on the increase and fighting them with natural products may be more efficacious. The aim of this study was to investigate the in vitro antibacterial activity of methanol leaf extract and the solvent fractions of Phyllanthus muellerianus (Kuntze) Excell as well as their combinations with ciprofloxacin against various isolates of Staphylococcus aureus. Phytochemical screening was done following established method while the in vitro antimicrobial properties of the extract and fractions of the extract were investigated by the agar diffusion method. Agar diffusion Checkerboard and Overlay Inoculum susceptibility disc methods were further employed to study the interaction of the extract, fraction and ciprofloxacin against eight (8) isolates of S. aureus. Results showed that the extract and the fractions contain glycosides, flavonoids, saponins and alkaloids. N- Hexane and methylene chloride fractions showed no activity against the test microorganisms, while methanol fraction and methanol crude extract produced a concentration dependent antibacterial activity against the organisms. Result of interaction study revealed synergism in some of the combination ratios but the predominant effects were indifference and antagonism. The study has demonstrated that the leaf extract and the polar fraction of the plant, P. muellerianus, possess potent antibacterial effect against various strains of S. aureus. Combination of the extract or the fraction with ciprofloxacin could be beneficial in treating infections caused by S. aureus.
Comparative Molecular Field Analysis of Pyrrolopyrimidines as LRRK2 Kinase Inhibitors

Leucine rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) is a highly promising target for Parkinson's disease (PD) that affects millions of people worldwide. A three-dimensional quantitative structure-activity relationship (3D-QSAR) analysis was performed on a series of pyrrolopyrimidine-based selective LRRK2 kinase inhibitors. This study was performed to rationalize the structural requirements responsible for the inhibitory activity of these compounds. A reliable 3D-QSAR model was developed using comparative molecular field analysis (CoMFA) technique. The model produced statistically acceptable results with a cross-validated correlation coefficient () of 0.539 and a non-cross-validated correlation coefficient () of 0.871. Robustness of the model was further evaluated by bootstrapping and progressive scrambling analysis. This work could assist in designing more potent LRRK2 inhibitors.
Characterization of transgenic mouse lines for selectively targeting satellite glial cells and macrophages in dorsal root ganglia

The importance of glial cells in the modulation of neuronal processes is now generally accepted. In particular, enormous progress in our understanding of astrocytes and microglia physiology in the central nervous system (CNS) has been made in recent years, due to the development of genetic and molecular toolkits. However, the roles of satellite glial cells (SGCs) and macrophages–the peripheral counterparts of astrocytes and microglia–remain poorly studied despite their involvement in debilitating conditions, such as pain. Here, we characterized in dorsal root ganglia (DRGs), different genetically-modified mouse lines previously used for studying astrocytes and microglia, with the goal to implement them for investigating DRG SGC and macrophage functions. Although SGCs and astrocytes share some molecular properties, most tested transgenic lines were found to not be suitable for studying selectively a large number of SGCs within DRGs. Nevertheless, we identified and validated two mouse lines: (i) a CreERT2 recombinase-based mouse line allowing transgene expression almost exclusively in SGCs and in the vast majority of SGCs, and (ii) a GFP-expressing line allowing the selective visualization of macrophages. In conclusion, among the tools available for exploring astrocyte functions, a few can be used for studying selectively a great proportion of SGCs. Thus, efforts remain to be made to characterize other available mouse lines as well as to develop, rigorously characterize and validate new molecular tools to investigate the roles of DRG SGCs, but also macrophages, in health and disease.
Is a Central Sediment Sample Sufficient? Exploring Spatial and Temporal Microbial Diversity in a Small Lake

(1) Background: Paleolimnological studies use sediment cores to explore long-term changes in lake ecology, including occurrences of harmful cyanobacterial blooms. Most studies are based on single cores, assuming this is representative of the whole lake, but data on small-scale spatial variability of microbial communities in lake sediment are scarce. (2) Methods: Surface sediments (top 0.5 cm) from 12 sites (n = 36) and two sediment cores were collected in Lake Rotorua (New Zealand). Bacterial community (16S rRNA metabarcoding), Microcystis specific 16S rRNA, microcystin synthetase gene E (mcyE) and microcystins (MCs) were assessed. Radionuclide measurements (210Pb, 137Cs) were used to date sediments. (3) Results: Bacterial community, based on relative abundances, differed significantly between surface sediment sites (p < 0.001) but the majority of bacterial amplicon sequence variants (88.8%) were shared. Despite intense MC producing Microcystis blooms in the past, no Microcystis specific 16S rRNA, mcyE and MCs were found in surface sediments but occurred deeper in sediment cores (approximately 1950′s). 210Pb measurements showed a disturbed profile, similar to patterns previously observed, as a result of earthquakes. (4) Conclusions: A single sediment core can capture dominant microbial communities. Toxin producing Microcystis blooms are a recent phenomenon in Lake Rotorua. We posit that the absence of Microcystis from the surface sediments is a consequence of the Kaikoura earthquake two years prior to our sampling.
Bacteriophages as antibiotic resistance genes carriers in agro‐food systems

Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) are a global health concern. Antibiotic resistance occurs naturally, but misuse of antibiotics in humans and animals is accelerating the process of antibiotic resistance emergency, which has been aggravated by exposure to molecules of antibiotics present in clinical and agricultural settings and the engagement of many countries in water reuse especially in Middle East and North Africa region. Bacteriophages have the potential to be significant actors in ARGs transmission through the transduction process. These viruses have been detected along with ARGs in non impacted habitats and in anthropogenic impacted environments like wastewater, reclaimed water and manure amended soil as well as minimally processed food and ready to eat vegetables. The ubiquity of bacteriophages and their persistence in the environment raises concern about their involvement in ARGs transmission among different biomes and the generation of pathogenic‐resistant bacteria that pose a great threat to human health. The aim of this review is to give an overview of the potential role of bacteriophages in the dissemination and the transfer of ARGs to pathogens in food production and processing and the consequent contribution to antibiotic resistance transmission through faecal oral route carrying ARGs to our dishes.
Mosaicism in Human Health and Disease.

Mosaicism refers to the occurrence of two or more genomes in an individual derived from a single zygote. Germline mosaicism is a mutation that is limited to the gonads and can be transmitted to offspring. Somatic mosaicism is a postzygotic mutation that occurs in the soma, and it may occur at any developmental stage or in adult tissues. Mosaic variation may be classified in six ways: (a) germline or somatic origin, (b) class of DNA mutation (ranging in scale from single base pairs to multiple chromosomes), (c) developmental context, (d) body location(s), (e) functional consequence (including deleterious, neutral, or advantageous), and ( f ) additional sources of mosaicism, including mitochondrial heteroplasmy, exogenous DNA sources such as vectors, and epigenetic changes such as imprinting and X-chromosome inactivation. Technological advances, including single-cell and other next-generation sequencing, have facilitated improved sensitivity and specificity to detect mosaicism in a variety of biological contexts. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Genetics, Volume 54 is November 23, 2020. Please see http://www.annualreviews. org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
The Misuse of Measurement in Economics

Some years ago, Friedrich Hayek [11] complained about the tendency he observed in economics to disregard as unimportant and irrelevant that which, at the time of inquiry, did not appear to be amenable to measurement. Economists seemed to believe that, in confluence with Kelvin ’s famous but dubious dictum,2 the only way to live up to the scientific requirements of economic analysis was to work with numerical measures even when knowing they only captured a small portion, if that, of the important facets of the issue at hand. By this standard, wrote Hayek [11, p. 3], “… there … may well exist better ‘scientific’ evidence for a false theory, which will be accepted because it is more ‘scientific,’ than for a valid explanation, which is rejected because there is no[t] sufficient quantitative evidence for it. ” He then went on to say [11, p. 5], “I prefer true but imperfect knowledge … to a pretence of exact knowledge that is likely to be false. The credit which the apparent conformity with recognized scientific satandards can gain for seemingly simple but fasle theories may … have grave consequences. ”
OfficeBP: noninvasive continuous blood pressure monitoring based on PPT in office environment

Blood pressure (BP), as a crucial vital sign of human beings, reflects the physical state of the cardiovascular system. Currently, blood pressure is mainly measured by collecting the changes in pressure in the vessel using cuff-sensors. It is a manual operation and cannot achieve continuous BP monitoring. In this work, we developed OfficeBP, a novel non-intrusive BP monitoring system for a typical office environment. OfficeBP relies on measuring the pulse transit time (PTT) between the pulse propagate from arterial proximal to the distal site on once heartbeat. For calculating the PTT, the user's face and thumb fingertip are regarded as the start and end points respectively. A twin-channel PPG sensing system is presented, that is, the fingertip pulse recording photoplethysmography (PPG) is obtained by a low-cost photoelectric sensor integrated with a mouse. Using image processing the face pulse is acquired by remote-PPG (rPPG) that based on a commercial off-the-shelf camera collecting facial video frames. OfficeBP was evaluated on 11 participants in different working conditions including the external illumination factor and personal internal factors, and achieved RMSE result of diastolic blood pressure 4.81 mmHg, systolic blood pressure 5.35 mmHg, demonstrate the feasibility of the system in an office environment.
Estimating symptoms caused by CIPN using mobile and wearable devices

Chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) is a common side effect of anticancer drugs that causes muscle weakness in the cancer patients, causing them to fall. Therefore, we constructed "FD-AWARE", a system to understand the users' fall context and users' CIPN symptoms as the first step in preventing these falls. This system can collect the various sensor data from the iPhone and the Apple Watch, self-reported fall information data, self-reported user status data of CIPN symptoms, and their physical condition. We conducted a 2-week in-the-wild experiment with 8 patients who were actually suffering from CIPN. We constructed the machine learning models for estimating the users' status of CIPN symptoms and successfully achieved high accuracy of performance for several estimating models.
UbiTtention 2020: 5th International Workshop on Smart & Ambient Notification and Attention Management

Users are increasingly confronted with a tremendous amount of information proactively and without explicit consent through notifications from a variety of applications and services. This information load is increased due to the ubiquity of end-user (mobile) devices. Novel computing paradigms such as IoT and smart cities may further overload end-users, despite the clear indication from literature that human attention is limited. To counter this challenge, "attention management", including attention representation, sensing, prediction, analysis, personalization, and adaptive behavior is needed in our computing systems. Following the successful UbiTtention workshop series as organised from 2016 on-wards, the UbiTtention 2020 workshop brings together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to explore the management of human attention and notifications across versatile devices and contexts. UbiTtention presents and elicits research to overcome information overload and overchoice - tailoring device or application behavior to user needs.
Rule-based Word Equation Solving

We present a transformation-system-based technique in the framework of string solving, by reformulating a classical combinatorics on words result, the Lemma of Levi. We further enrich the induced rules by simplification steps based on results from the combinatorial theory of word equations, as well as by the addition of linear length constraints. This transformation-system approach cannot solve all equations efficiently by itself. To improve the efficiency of our transformation-system approach we integrate existing successful string solvers, which are called based on several heuristics. The experimental evaluation we performed shows that integrating our technique as an inprocessing step improves in general the performance of existing solvers.
Comparing speech recognition services for HCI applications in behavioral health

Behavioral health conditions such as depression and anxiety are a global concern, and there is growing interest in employing speech technology to screen and monitor patients remotely. Language modeling approaches require automatic speech recognition (ASR) and multiple privacy-compliant ASR services are commercially available. We use a corpus of over 60 hours of speech from a behavioral health task, and compare ASR performance for four commercial vendors. We expected similar performance, but found large differences between the top and next-best performer, for both mobile (48% relative WER increase) and laptop (67% relative WER increase) data. Results suggest the importance of benchmarking ASR systems in this domain. Additionally we find that WER is not systematically related to depression itself. Performance is however affected by diverse audio quality from users' personal devices, and possibly from the overall style of speech in this domain.
MCoMat: a new performance metric for imbalanced multi-layer activity recognition dataset

Existing performance metrics assess classifiers on single granularity layer. Having multi-layer labels is also possible such as activity recognition datasets. Semantic annotations could be given with multiple granularity layers in these datasets e.g., activity and the current step within that activity like: cooking and taking ingredients from fridge. Recognizing both layers is important i.e., remote monitoring of patients with dementia. To evaluate a classifier for both layers concurrently, a new performance metric is required. However, it is not easy to design as there are many underlying issues: the relation between the layers and the impact of class imbalance. This work proposes a new metric for evaluating multi-layer labeled dataset considering the mentioned factors and is applied on two datasets. It is found that it can assess the performance of a model classifying activities at two different granularity layers and give more insightful results i.e. reflecting performance for each layer.
When Are Smells Indicators of Architectural Refactoring Opportunities? A Study of 50 Software Projects

Refactoring is a widely adopted practice for improving code comprehension and for removing severe structural problems in a project. When refactorings affect the system architecture, they are called architectural refactorings. Unfortunately, developers usually do not know when and how they should apply refactorings to remove architectural problems. Nevertheless, they might be more susceptible to applying architectural refactoring if they rely on code smells and code refactoring - two concepts that they usually deal with through their routine programming activities. To investigate if smells can serve as indicators of architectural refactoring opportunities, we conducted a retrospective study over the commit history of 50 software projects. We analyzed 52,667 refactored elements to investigate if they had architectural problems that could have been indicated by automatically-detected smells. We considered purely structural refactorings to identify elements that were likely to have architectural problems. We found that the proportion of refactored elements without smells is much lower than those refactored with smells. By analyzing the latter, we concluded that smells can be used as indicators of architectural refactoring opportunities when the affected source code is deteriorated, i.e., the code hosting two or more smells. For example, when God Class or Complex Class appear together with other smells, they are indicators of architectural refactoring opportunities. In general, smells that often co-occurred with other smells (67.53%) are indicators of architectural refactoring opportunities in most cases (88.53% of refactored elements). Our study also enables us to derive a catalog with patterns of smells that indicate refactoring opportunities to remove specific types of architectural problems. These patterns can guide developers and make them more susceptible to apply architectural refactorings.
Gamified navigation system: enhancing resident user experience in city exploration

A memorable city exploration experience requires some unexpected surprises. For pedestrians exploring in city blocks, ordinary route planning and navigation system cannot meet the need of interesting exploration and would even miss the possible surprises on the way. In order to enhance resident user experience in city exploration, we designed a gamified exploratory navigation system. Our system would engage the user when they are close to a point of interest (POI) by proposing interactive activities and "conversing" with them. We conducted preliminary field experiment with 5 participants to evaluate our system and observe how mobile technology and navigation system are practical used in city exploration. We hope our study could provide some reflecting for the further design of these kinds of services and systems which would engage residents in exploring the city and strengthen the connection with the city.
I. DNA HELICASE AND DNA EXONUCLEASE RESIDE ON THE SAME POLYPEPTIDE

Werner Syndrome (WS) is a human progeroid disorder characterized by genomic instability. The gene defective in WS encodes a 3*3 5* DNA helicase (Gray, M. D., Shen, J.-C., Kamath-Loeb, A. S., Blank, A., Sopher, B. L., Martin, G. M., Oshima, J., and Loeb, L. A.(1997) Nat. Genet. 17, 100 ‐103). Sequence alignment analysis identified an N-terminal motif in WRN that is homologous to several exonucleases. Using combined molecular genetic, biochemical, and immunochemical approaches, we demonstrate that WRN also exhibits an integral DNA exonuclease activity. First, whereas wild-type recombinant WRN possesses both helicase and exonuclease activities, mutant WRN lacking the nuclease domain does not display exonucleolytic activity. In contrast, WRN proteins with defective helicase activity are active in exonucleolytic digestion of DNA. Second, the exonuclease co-purifies with the 160-kDa WRN protein and its associated DNA helicase and ATPase activities through successive steps of ion exchange and affinity chromatography, suggesting that all three activities are physically associated. Lastly, anti-WRN antiserum specifically coprecipitates the WRN helicase and exonuclease activities indicating that both activities reside on the same antigenic WRN polypeptide. The association of an exonuclease with WRN distinguishes it from other RecQ homologs and raises the possibility that the distinct phenotypic characteristics of WS may be due in part to a defective exonuclease.
THE USE OF CASSAVA ROOT MEAL AS A PARTIAL REPLACEMENT FOR CORN IN DIETS FOR ALBINO RATS

The experiment was carried out to determine if partial replacement of maize with cassava root meal (CRM) in diets for albino rats will have an effect on performance, organ characteristics and blood parameters. Twenty five Sprague Dawley albino rats (F344 strain), initial body weight (216 ± 8g) were randomly assigned to five treatments (T1 to T5) in a completely randomized (CRD) arrangement. T1 was the control and contained zero CRM. T2 and T3 contained 30% CRM, while T4 and T5 contained 45% CRM. These levels of inclusion represented 50 and 75% replacement of corn in the diets respectively. T2 and T4 had 0.15% methionine (Met) while T3 and T5 had 0.3% Met. The rats were each fed a single diet for 28d. Average daily feed intake (ADFI) of rats on T1 was lower (P<0.05) than that for rats on T4 and T5 (12.12g vs. 12.77 and 12.64g) respectively. For diets with the same level of CRM, those with 0.3% Met had a lower consumption than those with 0.15% Met. There were no differences (P > 0.05) in average daily gain (ADG) and feed conversion efficiency (FCE). Similarly there were no differences (P>0.05) in carcass, viscera and other internal organ weights. Results of this trial indicate that albino rats can tolerate diets with added CRM (45% of the diet) with no adverse effects on growth and internal organ characteristics. Future work will need to look at the possibility of using CRM at similar or higher levels in diets for growing pigs.
Toward a paradigm in personality: Comment on Eysenck's (1997) view.

The relation of taxonomy and theory in the development of a paradigmatic, scientific knowledge of personality is discussed. Successful taxonomies in chemistry, biology and psychology are briefly cited to illustrate the relation of taxonomy (description) and scientific theory (explanation). From this perspective, it is argued that a descriptive typology can develop without clear knowledge of the causal relation of things, but the proof of the validity of the structure does rest on that theoretical basis, as Eysenck claimed. The greater sensitivity of introverts than extraverts to punctate, physical stimulation is promoted as an effect that may be featured in the explanation of individual differences in the extraversion trait.