Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Preliminary study of hot mix asphalt containing water treatment and sewage sludge

Throughout the world, considerable quantities of water treatment sludge (WTS) and sewage sludge (SS) are produced as waste. This study assessed in the laboratory, the possibility to use both waste products when they are incorporated as filler at 1% with relation to the total mass of a hot mix asphalt HMA. To this end, both waste products were initially reduced to ash through a calcination process. Resistance tests under monotonic load (Marshall and indirect tension tests), and cyclic load (resilient modulus test) were applied on mixes that contained WTS and SS. Besides, moisture damage (modified Lotmman test), and abrasion (Cantabro) resistance were assessed. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) test was performed in order to verify if the results are statically equal or not to those of the control HMA. As a general conclusion, it is reported that both materials show a resistance increase under monotonic load and higher stiffness under cyclic load (cohesion) when they are incorporated into the mix as filler despite the fact that the asphalt content used was less than the control mix. However, some problems are observed associated with moisture damage resistance, and friction wear (adherence).
radio-wave imaging: a new modality for breast imaging

Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer in women, with approximately 1.7m new cases worldwide in 2012. It is the leading cause of death from cancer for women in many countries. According to the American Cancer Society, 2017 estimates, worldwide breast cancer causes over 500,000 deaths each year [1] with an estimated economic impact of $88 billion each year. It is the most common cause of death in the EU for women aged between 35 and 55, with 1 in 8 contracting the disease in their lifetime. Around 80% of women will be the first in family to have been diagnosed with breast cancer. Since the 1970s, incidence has increased by 64% and in the UK is predicted to rise by a further 2% between 2014 and 2035 [2] where it is the most frequently occurring cancer in women with approximately 55,000 new cases diagnosed, and over 11,000 deaths in 2014.
The Effects of Akkermansia Munciniphila on Serotonin and Fetuin-A Hormone Levels and Some Biometric Parameters in Obese Patients

The objective of the present study is to determine the anti-obesity effects of Akkermansia munciniphila on some biometric measurements. 40 patients were divided into two groups, each with 20 patients; G1 group consumed the probiotic of A. munciphila and G2 consumed placebo capsules. The results showed significant effects on the body weight (pâ‰¤ 0.001), which was reduced by a range of -2.29 to -0.7, whereas non-significant differences were observed in the Waist circumferance . The study also showed significant differences (pâ‰¤0.001) between the two groups in the levels of cholesterol (287 vs. 285 mg/dl) , whereas the level of Triglyceride significantly decreased in the treated patients (pâ‰¤0.001). No significant differences were observed in the concentration of fat. There were also significant differences in the levels of fetuin-A (pâ‰¤0.020) and serotonin ( pâ‰¤ 0.039 ). The consumption of the probiotic of A. muciniphila was proved to be beneficial for human health, while further studies are needed to explore more effects.
Oral Intake of Semi-refined Carrageenan by Rats Affects Apoptosis of Lymphocytes

Introduction. The safety of generally recognized as safe food additives E407 and E407a is under rigorous debate. The aim of our research was to evaluate the effects of the orally administered food additive E407a (semi-refined carrageenan) on the viability of lymphocytes and their cell death modes. Methods. Totally, 16 adult WAG rats were divided into two equal groups (experimental – oral intake of 140 mg/kg of E407a during 2 weeks; control – oral consumption of drinking water instead). Blood samples were used to obtain leukocyte suspensions stained with Annexin V-FITC and 7-aminoactinomycin D (7-AAD). The region of lymphocytes was analyzed after collecting data using a BD FACSCanto™ II flow cytometer. Results. Oral administration of E407a led to a decrease in the amount of viable (Annexin V-, 7-AAD-) circulating lymphocytes. Furthermore, exposure to semi-refined carrageenan resulted in an elevated number of early apoptotic (Annexin V+, 7-AAD-) lymphocytes. Their percentage was approximately 4 times higher in rats exposed to E407a compared with the control group. Conclusion. Our findings indicate that dietary intake of E407a promotes apoptosis of circulating lymphocytes. Keywords: processed Eucheuma seaweed, annexin V, 7-aminoactinomycin D, flow cytometry.
A Greener Approach for Measuring Colligative Properties

As a first step towards the greening of instructional laboratories, we present a new greener version of a laboratory procedure designed to measure colligative properties. The greener procedure substitutes the nontoxic, noncarcinogenic compounds stearic, myristic, lauric, and palmitic acids for the less benign aromatic compounds p-dichlorobenzene, benzil, biphenyl, naphthalene, and nitrotoluene. Achieving educational goals without the concomitant generation of chlorinated and aromatic wastes is shown here to be both possible and practical. Furthermore, utilization of the benign fatty acid waste stream for other purposes, such as making soap, wax, or biodiesel, allows this laboratory to approach the zero waste benchmark.
TNet: Transmission Network Inference Using Within-Host Strain Diversity and its Application to Geographical Tracking of COVID-19 Spread

The inference of disease transmission networks is an important problem in epidemiology. One popular approach for building transmission networks is to reconstruct a phylogenetic tree using sequences from disease strains sampled from infected hosts and infer transmissions based on this tree. However, most existing phylogenetic approaches for transmission network inference are highly computationally intensive and cannot take within-host strain diversity into account. Here, we introduce a new phylogenetic approach for inferring transmission networks, TNet, that addresses these limitations. TNet uses multiple strain sequences from each sampled host to infer transmissions and is simpler and more accurate than existing approaches. Furthermore, TNet is highly scalable and able to distinguish between ambiguous and unambiguous transmission inferences. We evaluated TNet on a large collection of 560 simulated transmission networks of various sizes and diverse host, sequence, and transmission characteristics, as well as on 10 real transmission datasets with known transmission histories. Our results show that TNet outperforms two other recently developed methods, phyloscanner and SharpTNI, that also consider within-host strain diversity. We also applied TNet to a large collection of SARS-CoV-2 genomes sampled from infected individuals in many countries around the world, demonstrating how our inference framework can be adapted to accurately infer geographical transmission networks. TNet is freely available from https://compbio.engr. uconn.edu/software/TNet/.
Squish This: Force Input on Soft Surfacesfor Visual Targeting Tasks

Today’s typical input device is flat, rigid and made of glass. However, advances in sensing technology and interaction design suggest thinking about input on other surface, including soft materials. While touching rigid and soft materials might feel similar, they clearly feel different when pressure is applied to them. Yet, to date, studies only investigated force input on rigid surfaces. We present a first systematic evaluation of the effects of compliance on force input. Results of a visual targeting task for three levels of softness indicate that high force levels appear more demanding for soft surfaces, but that performance is otherwise similar. Performance remained very high (∼ 5% for 20 force levels) regardless of the compliance, suggesting force input was underestimated so far. We infer implications for the design of force input on soft surfaces and conclude that interaction models used on rigid surfaces might be used on soft surfaces.
Highly Concurrent Latency-tolerant Register Files for GPUs

Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) employ large register files to accommodate all active threads and accelerate context switching. Unfortunately, register files are a scalability bottleneck for future GPUs due to long access latency, high power consumption, and large silicon area provisioning. Prior work proposes hierarchical register file to reduce the register file power consumption by caching registers in a smaller register file cache. Unfortunately, this approach does not improve register access latency due to the low hit rate in the register file cache. In this article, we propose the Latency-Tolerant Register File (LTRF) architecture to achieve low latency in a two-level hierarchical structure while keeping power consumption low. We observe that compile-time interval analysis enables us to divide GPU program execution into intervals with an accurate estimate of a warp’s aggregate register working-set within each interval. The key idea of LTRF is to prefetch the estimated register working-set from the main register file to the register file cache under software control, at the beginning of each interval, and overlap the prefetch latency with the execution of other warps. We observe that register bank conflicts while prefetching the registers could greatly reduce the effectiveness of LTRF. Therefore, we devise a compile-time register renumbering technique to reduce the likelihood of register bank conflicts. Our experimental results show that LTRF enables high-capacity yet long-latency main GPU register files, paving the way for various optimizations. As an example optimization, we implement the main register file with emerging high-density high-latency memory technologies, enabling 8× larger capacity and improving overall GPU performance by 34%.
MAGNETIC INDUCTION BASED COMMUNICATION ON THE AGRICULTURAL FIELD USING WIRELESS UNDERGROUND SENSOR NETWORKS

Abstract: This paper introduces the concept of wireless Underground Sensor Network (WUSN). WUSNs are widely used to observe the conditions of soil such as properties of soil, toxic substances of environment monitoring, landslide monitoring, etc. Dissimilar existing technique of observing underground condition, which demands on buried sensors connected through wire to the soil, the wireless communication produce efficient values whereas the wired communication does not, due to some leakage in the system. Each and every device holds sensor, transmitter, receiver and a power source. This builds their deployment much simple as compared to other existing methods. Wireless communication is challenging as the communication medium is no longer air as the underground consists of heavy substances like rock, soil etc. In this proposed system advance channel models were created to characterize the underground wireless channel considering the characteristic of the propagation of EM waves in soil and their relation with the frequency of these waves, soil moistures are obtained and is sent to the centralized server. It is based on EM propagating principle.
The effects of two calcium supplementation regimens on growth and health traits of juvenile mountain chicken frogs (Leptodactylus fallax)

The mountain chicken frog (Leptodactylus fallax) is among the 42 % of amphibians threatened with extinction and is dependent upon ex situ populations to recover in the wild. Amphibian captive husbandry is not fully understood and empirical data are required to optimise protocols for each species in captivity. Calcium metabolism and homeostasis are areas of importance in captive husbandry research and have been identified as a challenge in maintaining ex situ populations of L. fallax. We trialled two frequencies (twice and seven times weekly) of calcium supplementation via dusting of feeder insects in two groups of L. fallax juveniles and measured growth and health effects through morphometrics, radiography, ultrasonography and blood and faecal analysis over 167 days, followed by a further 230 days of monitoring on an intermediate diet informed by the initial dataset. We showed that supplementation treatment did not affect growth or health status as measured through blood analysis, radiography and ultrasonography. More frequent supplementation resulted in significantly more radiopaque endolymphatic sacs and broader skulls. Frogs fed more calcium excreted twice as much calcium in their faeces. The intermediate diet resulted in previously lower supplementation frogs approximating the higher supplementation frogs in morphometrics and calcium stores. Comparison with radiographic data from wild frogs showed that both treatments may still have had narrower skulls than wild animals, but mismatching age class may limit this comparison. Our data may be used to inform dietary supplementation of captive L. fallax as well as other amphibians.
Complementary and alternative medicine use among hypertensive patients receiving biomedical treatment: a cross-sectional survey at the LEKMA General Hospital in Accra, Ghana.

Background: Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use is on the increase globally and there is an increased rate of usage among hypertensive patients. Objective: This study was designed to describe CAM use among hypertensive patients at a municipal hospital. Methods: A cross-sectional survey of hypertensive patients at a Municipal Assembly Hospital was conducted. Respondents were made up of 209 (99 CAM users and 110 non-Cam users) selected randomly from patients attending the hypertension clinic. The pattern of CAM use, clinical profiles of respondents, and their attitudes toward CAM were examined. Descriptive statistics and the Chi Square test were used for data analysis. Results: Out of the 209 patients interviewed, 99 (47.36%) had used at least one type of CAM mostly herbal products (72.72%, n =72). The CAM users demonstrated poorer adherence to antihypertensive medications (30.30%, n =30) as compared to non-CAM users (8.08%, n = 80). We observed a positive association between non-CAM use and medication adherence (p = 0.001). The majority (72.72%, n = 72) of the CAM users claimed to have obtained the expected effect, however,89.89% (n = 89) did not disclose their CAM use to their physician. They cited lack of inquiry by physicians as the main reason for non-disclosure. Conclusion: A considerable proportion of hypertensive patients receiving conventional treatment at a municipal hospital also use CAM therapies. Physicians should be encouraged to inquire about the history of CAM use among their patients to be able to advise patients concerning the possible adverse reactions and drug interactions.
RESPONSE OF TAGETES PATULA PLANTS TO FOLIAR APPLICATION OF POTASSIUM SILICATE AND SEAWEED EXTRACT UNDER VARIOUS IRRIGATION INTERVALS

This study was carried out during the two successive seasons of 2018 and 2019 at Somosta, Beni-Suef Governorate, Egypt, to evaluate the effect of irrigation intervals, foliar application of potassium silicate and seaweed extract on vegetative and flowering growth parameters and essential oil percentage of Tagetes patula plants. Plant height (cm), number of branches, stem diameter (mm),leaf area (cm2), plantfresh and dry weights (g), flowering date, number of inflorescences/plant, inflorescence diameter (cm), inflorescence fresh and dry weights/plant (g) and vase life/days were significantly decreased with rising intervals of irrigation. Irrigation regime of four days interval gave the earliest flowering. The results cleared that, foliar applications of seaweeds extract at 3 ml/l and 5 ml/l, potassium silicate at 3 ml/l and 5 ml/l significantly affected all studied parameters compared with control. The magnitude of increase is more pronounced by applying combination between potassium silicate and seaweed extract treatments at the high concentration. The most pronounced effect for the interaction was that found between potassium silicate at 5 ml/l plus seaweeds extract at 5 ml/l when plants irrigated every one or two days where the highest vegetative and flowering growth parameters and essential oil percentage were recorded in both seasons. So, it is advisable, to reduce the effect of drought stress, treating tagetes plants with high concentration of potassium silicate and/or seaweed extract each at 5 ml/l
Product or sum: comparative tests of Voigt, and product or sum of Gaussian and Lorentzian functions in the fitting of synthetic Voigt‐based X‐ray photoelectron spectra

A comparative study for the fitting of X‐ray photoelectron spectra (XPS) using different model functions is presented. Synthetically generated test spectra using Gaussian/Lorentzian convolution and a real measured spectrum are fitted with the three commonly used models: product, sum and Gaussian/Lorentzian convolution functions. In these limited tests, it was found that the sum function is superior to the product function, particularly for low‐noise spectra. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Isolation and Biochemical Characterization of Extracellular Microbial Proteases

Proteases are a broad family of hydrolytic enzymes with various applications in chemical, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical industries. Owing to their physiological necessity, proteases are found in diverse sources including microorganisms. Our objective study was to search for a high quality and inexpensive source for the production of microbial proteases under different culture and growth conditions. Also, we aimed to characterize microbial proteases. Proteases-producing bacteria were isolated from soil samples collected from a poultry waste site. Soil samples were inoculated in skimmed agar media and 48 h later, colonies producing clear zones were selected as the source of microorganisms producing enzyme. The isolates were used to inoculate liquid media and the clear supernatant was taken as a crude for enzyme preparation. The enzyme was isolated and purified with ammonium sulfate at 60-80% saturation followed by dialysis. Subsequently, characterization of the enzyme fraction with the highest activity was carried out. The results indicated that the isolated enzyme with (60-80%) fractionation of ammonium sulfate exhibited the highest specific activity. In addition, the optimal temperature for enzyme activity was determined at 70oC at pH values of 0.05M of acetate buffer 3.6 and 0.05M of glycine-NaOH buffer 10.0. Finally, the kinetic parameters (Michaelis–Menten mole of n 4 constant, Km and maximal reaction velocity, Vmax) were calculated as 0.11 μmole/ml and 0.5x10 tyrosine/ml/hour, respectively. In conclusion, our findings provide evidence that the isolated bacteria represent a rich source of thermostable proteases. Indeed, more studies are still required to obtain such proteases in a purified form suitable for studying their applications.
Distribution of alien tetrapods in the Iberian Peninsula

We present a dataset that assembles occurrence records of alien tetrapods (amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals) in the Iberian Peninsula, a coherent biogeographically unit where introductions of alien species have occurred for millennia. These data have important potential applications for ecological research and management, including the assessment of invasion risks, formulation of preventive and management plans, and research at the biological community level on alien species. This dataset summarizes inventories and data sources on the taxonomy and distribution of alien tetrapods in the Iberia Peninsula, comprising known locations from published literature, expert knowledge and citizen science platforms. An expert-based assessment process allowed the identification of unreliable records (misclassification or natural dispersion from native range), and the classification of species according to their status of reproduction in the wild. Distributional data was harmonized into a common area unit, the 10 × 10 km Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) system (n = 6,152 cells). The year of observation and/or year of publication were also assigned to the records. In total, we assembled 35,940 unique distribution records (UTM × species × Year) for 253 species (6 amphibians, 16 reptiles, 218 birds and 13 mammals), spanning between 1912 and 2020. The species with highest number of distribution records were the Mediterranean painted frog Discoglossus pictus (n = 59 UTM), the pond slider Trachemys scripta (n = 471), the common waxbill Estrilda astrild (n = 1,275) and the house mouse Mus musculus (n = 4,043), for amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, respectively. Most alien species recorded are native to Africa (33%), followed by South America (21%), Asia (19%), North America (12%) and Oceania (10%). Thirty-six species are classified by IUCN as threatened in their native range, namely 2 Critically Endangered (CR), 6 Endangered (EN), 8 Vulnerable (VU), and 20 species Near Threatened (NT). Species maps are provided in DataSet1, as well R code and GIS layers to update them as new records are obtained.
Factors affecting consumers ́ preferences for products from aquaculture

Article history: Received: July 3, 2020 Accepted: August 10, 2020 Fish is an essential component of a balanced and healthy diet and the present demand for fish cannot be sustained by capture fisheries. Consequently, aquaculture is currently the fastest growing food production industry in the world, contributing to more than half of the global fish production intended for human consumption. Although the image of aquaculture is not necessarily negative per se, consumers around the world still have a greater preference for wild fish. Therefore, the aim of this review is to critically evaluate some of the factors which may affect consumer preferences: socio-demographic characteristics of consumers, quality and safety perception of products from aquaculture, price of aquaculture products and socio-economic aspects of aquaculture, and concerns about the negative impact of aquaculture on the environment and about the sustainability of the production method. A literature review confirmed that age is the most influential sociodemographic variable. Being younger, female or having higher income and a higher education level can result in greater preference for aquaculture products. The image of farmed fish suffers from a perception of lower quality in terms of taste, health and nutritional value and, in some cases, even from low safety perceptions. On the other hand, farmed fish is believed to have lower prices and greater availability. Additionally, economic benefits are one of the main advantages of aquaculture. Mixed results emerge, however, with regard to the environmental impact of aquaculture, but sustainable production may compensate for possible environmental concerns and drive preference for farmed fish. Depending on how consumers weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of both aquaculture and its products, this will result in a preference for wild or farmed fish.
Phosphorus Removal Processes in a Wetland after a Decade of Receiving a Sewage Effluent

A study was made of the process leading to phosphorus (P) removal in a wetland that received a high load of sewage-P for over a decade. The amounts of P accounted for by sediment deposition, sorption to detrital materials, and uptake by above ground biomass were compared with the mass of P entering and leaving the wetland system. phosphorus deposition was shown to be the most important sink for P with rates of up to 30 g P m -2 d -1 being recorded.