Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ligand complex of copper (II) supported on superparamagnetic Fe3O4@SiO2 nanoparticles: an efficient and magnetically separable catalyst for N-arylation of nitrogen-containing heterocycles with aryl halides

Abstract In this study, we introduce the ligand complex of copper (II) supported on superparamagnetic Fe3O4@SiO2 nanoparticles as a highly intriguing magnetic catalyst in N-arylation of nitrogen heterocycles with aryl halides. The present methodology offers several advantages such as; low catalyst loading, the use of magnetically recoverable and reusable catalyst, high to excellent yields without using any external ligands or additives, short reaction times and simplicity of operation. Also, the magnetic catalyst could be easily separated from the final product by an external magnet and reused up to seven times without any significant loss of activity. Therefore, this separation strategy with negligible leaching makes Fe3O4@SiO2/ligand/Cu(II) an economical catalyst to perform this transformation.
REGULATION AND VOICE IN RESIDENTIAL AGED CARE IN NEW ZEALAND

This paper seeks to explain why employment conditions have persistently remained low in this sector. It does this through examining employee voice (representative and direct) in residential aged care. This paper presents findings on the role of employee voice in four case studies of four New Zealand residential aged care facilities. It examines voice at both the organisational and national level and identifies key barriers to improved conditions for employees in residential aged care.
The Effect of Diet Coke and Monosodium Glutamate on the Cerebellar Cortex of Adult Male Albino Rats. Histological and Immuno-histochemical Study

Background: The consumption of fast- food is increasing among children, adolescents and adults. Carbonated drinks as Diet Coke are widely consumed with fast food. One of the thousands of chemicals used in our new high-tech foods is the monosodium glutamate (MSG). Aim of the study: This study was conducted to investigate the effect of Diet Coke and monosodium glutamate salt either separately or in combination on the cerebellar cortex of adult male albino rats.Materials and Methods: Forty adult male albino rats were divided into four groups. Group I: control group. Group II (Diet Coke group) which was subdivided into: subgroup IIA: each rat received 2.5 ml of Diet Coke twice daily by oral gavage and subgroup IIB: rats received Diet Coke instead of water throughout the day. Group III (MSG group): rats received MSG salt solution (3 gm MSG / kgm) by oral gavage once daily. Group IV (combination group) rats received combination of MSG solution and Diet Coke. This group was subdivided into two subgroups. Subgroup IVA: rats received MSG salt solution in the same dose as group III and 2.5 ml of Diet Coke twice daily, by oral gavage. Subgroup IVB: rats received MSG salt solution in the same dose as group III and Diet Coke instead of water throughout the day. At the end of the experiment (21 days) cerebella were dissected out and processed for histological, immunohistochemical and morphometric studies. Results: Histological examination of the cerebellar cortex revealed that both Diet Coke and MSG either separately or in combination resulted in degenerative changes that were more significant in the combination group.Conclusion: Diet Coke and MSG induced degenerative changes in the cerebellar cortex that was more significant in their combination.
Workbook of Epidemiology

This text deals with the design and accuracy of epidemiologic studies. It will give students a clear understanding of the research strategies used in experimental and non-experimental studies to ask the right questions, select the study population and follow-up period, obtain information on exposures, follow up disease occurrence, etc. Each step in the planning or critical evaluation of a study is illustrated by exercises based on actual studies. These exercises cover a wide range of exposures (including dietary factors, tobacco, alcohol, drugs, and radiation and occupational hazards) and diseases.
The Potential of Dark Immersive Theatre Experiences as a Tourism Product

In the light of the exponential growth of tourism activity in the city of Lisbon, which is evidenced by several indicators, we face ourselves with a scenario of concentration in the city, not benefiting the whole region of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA). On the other hand, a unique opportunity of innovation of tourism supply emerges, seizing an increasing and plural demand. The chapter intends to explore the potential of dark immersive theatre experiences (DITE) as a tourism product. By doing so, it is suggested that DITE can innovate the tourism supply of the LMA, contributing to the deconcentration and diversification of tourism, on a themed and territorial perspective, as well as to the mitigation of the impacts of over tourism. The Potential of Dark Immersive Theatre Experiences as a Tourism Product: The Case of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area
At least one-third of poor countries disease burden is due to malnutrition.

The portion of the global burden of disease (mortality and morbidity 1990 figures) in developing countries that would be removed by eliminating malnutrition is estimated as 32%. This includes the effects of malnutrition on the most vulnerable groups burden of mortality and morbidity from infectious diseases only. This is therefore a conservative figure but nonetheless much higher than previous estimates mainly due to now including micronutrient malnutrition. The larger part (20%) is from malnutrition acting as a risk factor in synergy with infectious diseases modifying their effect on health and survival. About 10% of the burden is the direct effect of deficiencies with very high prevalences primarily of iron (e.g. anemia affects 40 - 55% of women B non-pregnant and pregnant) and iodine (over 600 million people with goiter) causing disability. In children of 0-4 years reducing underweight (an index of general malnutrition) would lower their disease burden by 35% mostly by reducing mortality. Vitamin A deficiency also primarily acts as a risk factor in infant and child mortality and eliminating it would save 16% of the burden in children. The mortality risk associated with iodine deficiency is the least well known; a few results indicate a possible 8% benefit in child mortality reduction. Eliminating severe anemia in pregnancy is estimated to reduce maternal disease burden by some 13%. The countries with the worst health and nutrition conditions -- Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa -- would gain most from the broad public health benefits of better nutrition. Seen in relation to the overall burden (all population groups all causes all developing countries) eliminating child underweight would save 15% and eliminating micronutrient malnutrition (in children plus anemia in reproductive age women) an additional 18%. (authors)
Constructing a Lightweight Key-Value Store Based on the Windows Native Features

In this paper, we propose a method to construct a lightweight key-value store based on the Windows native features. The main idea is providing a thin wrapper for the key-value store on top of a built-in storage in Windows, called Windows registry. First, we define a mapping of the components in the key-value store onto the components in the Windows registry. Then, we present a hash-based multi-level registry index so as to distribute the key-value data balanced and to efficiently access them. Third, we implement basic operations of the key-value store (i.e., Get, Put, and Delete) by manipulating the Windows registry using the Windows native APIs. We call the proposed key-value store WR-Store. Finally, we propose an efficient ETL (Extract-Transform-Load) method to migrate data stored in WR-Store into any other environments that support existing key-value stores. Because the performance of the Windows registry has not been studied much, we perform the empirical study to understand the characteristics of WR-Store, and then, tune the performance of WR-Store to find the best parameter setting. Through extensive experiments using synthetic and real data sets, we show that the performance of WR-Store is comparable to or even better than the state-of-the-art systems (i.e., RocksDB, BerkeleyDB, and LevelDB). Especially, we show the scalability of WR-Store. That is, WR-Store becomes much more efficient than the other key-value stores as the size of data set increases. In addition, we show that the performance of WR-Store is maintained even in the case of intensive registry workloads where 1000 processes accessing to the registry actively are concurrently running.
Growth, nutrient uptake and yield parameters of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) enhance by Rhizobium and Azotobacter inoculations in saline soil

Abstract A field experiment was conducted during two consecutive growing seasons (2013 and 2014) to evaluate the effects of inoculations with Rhizobium and Azotobacter on the growth and yield of two chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) varieties under saline (5.8 dS m−1) arid condition. The single treatment of either Rhizobium or Azotobacter exhibited to promote the growth of chickpea to some level, however, co-inoculation produced more effects and increased the shoot dry weight (30.3 and 26.4%), root dry weight (17.5 and 26.3%), nodule number (79.1 and 43.8 piece per plant), nitrogen content in roots (9.62 and 10.9%), in shoots (12.6 and 8.3%) and seed protein (7.1 and 4.3%) in both Flip06-102 and Uzbekistan-32 chickpea varieties compared to the control. Our studies showed that the highest yield response of 429 (27.9%) and 538 (23.9%) kg ha−1 over the control was revealed by the co-inoculation with Rhizobium and Azotobacter inoculants in Flip 06-102 and Uzbekistan-32, respectively. A new introduced Flip 06-102 chickpea variety was more salt tolerant and had higher root nodulation than the local Uzbekistan-32 chickpea variety. Nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) contents in the shoots and roots were significantly (p < 0.05) higher in the co-inoculated treatment, while plant sodium (Na+) concentration was the lowest for both chickpea varieties exhibiting co-inoculation alleviated the detrimental effects of salinity. Therefore, the co-inoculation of Rhizobium plus Azotobacter could be applied to improve the vegetative growth and yield of chickpea and to alleviate the effects of salt stress.
Dynamic Rupture Simulations of the 2008 Mw 7.9 Wenchuan Earthquake by the Curved Grid Finite‐Difference Method

Enough investigations and observations have been undertaken to suggest that the great 2008 Mw 7.9 Wenchuan earthquake of China ruptured in a highly complex pattern. The causative fault of the Wenchuan earthquake has a complex geometry, divided into several segments with offsets of a few kilometers. Modeling the dynamic rupture of this earthquake with geometrical complexity is a challenge. In this work, we simulated the dynamic rupture on the geometrically complex fault of the 2008 Mw 7.9 Wenchuan earthquake of China by the curved grid finite‐difference method. In our modeling, a uniform background tectonic stress field with tapering at shallow depth and slip‐weakening law with homogeneous friction coefficients are utilized. We found that the typical heterogeneous spatial distribution of the final seismic slip on the fault can be generated by the nonplanar complex geometry of the fault plane. Moreover, we discussed the geometrical effects of the Wenchuan earthquake on the rupture dynamics and strong ground motion. We found that the complexity of fault geometry results in the rupture complexity of the great Wenchuan earthquake. This work provides us with a new insight into the rupture dynamics of the Wenchuan earthquake.
ℓp-STFT: A Robust Parameter Estimator of a Frequency Hopping Signal for Impulsive Noise

Impulsive noise is commonly present in many applications of actual communication networks, leading to algorithms based on the Gaussian model no longer being applicable. A robust parameter estimator of frequency-hopping (FH) signals suitable for various impulsive noise environments, referred to as ℓp-STFT, is proposed. The ℓp-STFT estimator replaces the ℓ2-norm by using the generalized version ℓp-norm where 1 < p < 2 for the derivation of the short-time Fourier transform (STFT) as an objective function. It combines impulsive noise processing with any time-frequency analysis algorithm based on STFT. Considering the accuracy of parameter estimation, the double-window spectrogram difference (DWSD) algorithm is used to illustrate the suitability of ℓp-STFT. Computer simulations are mainly conducted in α-stable noise to compare the performance of ℓp-STFT with STFT and fractional low-order STFT (FLOSTFT), Cauchy noise, and Gaussian mixture noise as supplements of different background noises to better demonstrate the robustness and accuracy of ℓp-STFT.
Spatiotemporal Controls and Scaling of Stream Water Quality across the East Coast of U.S.A

Spatiotemporal Controls and Scaling of Stream Water Quality across the East Coast of U.S.A. Shakil Ahmed Stream water quality and ecosystem health are controlled by a multitude of complex, interacting anthropogenic and natural processes. A generalized understanding of stream water quality dynamics under diverse hydro-climatic and biogeochemical conditions therefore still remains elusive, particularly in the context of coastal urban/natural environments. This dissertation focuses to investigate the major spatiotemporal controls of stream water quality, and leverages the knowledge to investigate stream biogeochemical-ecological similitude (parametric reduction), scaling, and emergent patterns across the East Coast of U.S.A. Total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP), chlorophyll-a (Chla), and dissolved oxygen (DO) were used to represent the stream water quality. Pearson correlation matrix, principal component analysis, and factor analysis were used to analyze the interrelations and groupings among the environmental drivers alongside tracking their individual linkages with the stream water quality. Partial least squares regression models were then developed to directly estimate the linkages by appropriately resolving multicollinearity among the predictor variables. Spatial analytics on 6 major streams in southeast Florida indicated the external sources (e.g., Everglades) and draining watershed’s agricultural lands as the major drivers of in-stream TN, TP, and Chla. However, stream DO was most strongly influenced by the adjacent groundwater depth and watershed (agricultural and built-up) land uses. Spatio-temporal analytics on 50 stream sites across the East Coast showed strong controls of climatic (stream temperature) and biogeochemical (pH and salinity) drivers on stream DO. The dominant drivers were then involved in dimensional analysis to formulate mechanistically meaningful dimensionless numbers, which represented the contrasting as well as the collective influence of different hydro-climatic and biogeochemical drivers on stream water quality. A graphical exploration of the driver (predictor) numbers and stream DO number unraveled emergent patterns by collapsing observations from diverse environmental conditions into single dimensionless curves. Two environmental regimes (‘climatic’ versus ‘metabolic’ controls) were identified based on the critical threshold of the driver dimensionless number. The dimensionless numbers and emergent patterns led to the estimation of a scaling relationship, which was robust across the different environmental regimes. The scaling relationship was then utilized as a nonlinear empirical model to successfully predict DO from numerous streams across the East Coast of U.S.A. (Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency = 0.82). The research findings and insights are expected to guide effective water resources management for maintaining healthy stream water quality across the U.S. East Coast and similar regions around the world.
A Fast and Accurate Planar-Feature-Based Global Scan Registration Method

Scan registration is the basis of LiDAR-based mapping and localization. When a good initial guess is available, classical local registration algorithms such as iterative closet point (ICP) and normal distributions transform (NDT) can be utilized. However, scan registration without odometer or inertial measurement unit (IMU) is still an open problem. After reviewing the existing methods, we summarize a modular planar-feature-based registration framework. Based on the idea of modular design, we present a novel global scan registration method based on planar features. A modified renormalization-based algorithm considering the sensor noise model is derived and used for accurate plane fitting and covariance computing. An efficient adaptive plane segmentation algorithm is employed to extract planar patches which is based on voxel growing. A novel projected-image-based method is utilized for fast plane attribute calculation. The attributes of individual planes and relation constrains between the planes are employed to robustly build plane correspondences. The plane-plane singular value decomposition (SVD) method is used to estimate the transform, and normalization of the point coordinates is adopted to further improve accuracy. A consensus metric is introduced to determine plane correspondences and transform solution updating, and to select the optimal solution using the distance from the centroid of one plane to its conjugate plane. Extensive comparative experiments were performed on four datasets covering different structured scenarios to evaluate the performance of the proposed registration method. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves a better balance between accuracy and efficiency, and has more stable and robust performance across different scenarios compared to all tested state-of-the-art algorithms.
Helix-Based RNA Landscape Partition and Alternative Secondary Structure Determination

RNA is a versatile macromolecule with the ability to fold into and interconvert between multiple functional conformations. The elucidation of the RNA folding landscape, especially the knowledge of alternative structures, is critical to uncover the physical mechanism of RNA functions. Here, we introduce a helix-based strategy for RNA folding landscape partition and alternative secondary structure determination. The benchmark test of 27 RNAs involving alternative stable structures shows that the model has the ability to divide the whole landscape into distinct partitions at the secondary structure level and predict the representative structures for each partition. Furthermore, the predicted structures and equilibrium populations of metastable conformations for the 2′dG-sensing riboswitch reveal the allosteric conformational switch on transcript length, which is consistent with the experimental study, indicating the importance of metastable states for RNA-based gene regulation. The model delivers a starting point for the landscape-based strategy toward the RNA folding mechanism and functions.
A statistical solution for cost estimation in oil well drilling

Drilling operations must be preceded by adequate planning, fulfilling the path to produce hydrocarbons at low and competitive costs. Conventional well planning is based on the personal experience of project engineers, which use information from offset wells to estimate the performances in future wells. This article reviews and discusses a published statistical methodology for planning upcoming oil wells. The statistical approach incorporates uncertainties of the process, reducing the relevance of personal decisions and supporting the staff with more realistic cost estimations. A reliable project can reduce unexpected expenditures in a long-term campaign and shorten the learning time, resulting in improved cost prediction and a better-fitted calendar. An expressive database, containing information from an onshore field in Brazil, yields a case study to demonstrate the benefits of this approach for the development of new drilling projects. The solution presented supports a more precise planning of costs, the improvement of technical limits and the development of different technologies in drilling operations in future wells.
Pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of antimalarial drugs in pregnant women

Malaria is the most important parasitic disease in man and it kills approximately 2,000 people each day. Pregnant women are especially vulnerable to malaria with increased incidence and mortality rates. There are indications that pregnancy alters the pharmacokinetic properties of many antimalarial drugs. This is worrisome as lower drug exposures might result in lowered efficacy and lower drug exposures can also accelerate the development and spread of resistant parasites. The aim of this research was to study the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of the most commonly used drugs for the treatment of uncomplicated Plasmodium falciparum malaria during the second and third trimester of pregnancy using a pharmacometric approach. This thesis presents a number of important findings that increase the current knowledge of antimalarial drug pharmacology and that may have an impact in terms of drug efficacy and resistance. (1) Lower lumefantrine plasma concentrations at day 7 were evident in pregnant women compared to that in non-pregnant patients. Subsequent in-silico simulations with the final pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic lumefantrine/desbutyl-lumefantrine model showed a decreased treatment failure rate after a proposed extended artemether-lumefantrine treatment. (2) Dihydroartemisinin exposure (after intravenous and oral administration of artesunate) was lower during pregnancy compared to that in women 3 months post-partum (same women without malaria). Consecutive in-silico simulations with the final model showed that the underexposure of dihydroartemisinin during pregnancy could be compensated by a 25% dose increase. (3) Artemether/dihydroartemisinin exposure in pregnant women was also lower compared to literature values in non-pregnant patients. This further supports the urgent need for a study in pregnant women with a non-pregnant control group. (4) Quinine pharmacokinetics was not affected by pregnancy trimester within the study population and a study with a non-pregnant control group is needed to evaluate the absolute effects of pregnancy. (5) Finally, a data-dependent power calculation methodology using the log likelihood ratio test was successfully used for sample size calculations of mixed pharmacokinetic study designs (i.e. sparsely and densely sampled patients). Such sample size calculations can contribute to a better design of future pharmacokinetic studies. In conclusion, this thesis showed lower exposures for drugs used to treat uncomplicated Plasmodium falciparum malaria during the second and third trimester of pregnancy. More pharmacokinetic studies in pregnant women with a non-pregnant control group are urgently needed to confirm the current findings and to enable an evidence-based dose optimisation. The data-dependent power calculation methodology using the log likelihood ratio test can contribute to an effective design of these future pharmacokinetic studies.