Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of the metabolic properties of plastids isolated from developing leaves or embryos of Brassica napus L.

Plastids isolated from developing leaves and embryos of oilseed rape (Brassica napus L.) were incubated with substrates in the light or the dark, with or without exogenous ATP. Incorporation of HCO 3-, and carbon from a range of substrates into fatty acids and/or starch by leaf chloroplasts was absolutely light-dependent and was unaffected by provision of ATP. Incorporation of HCO 3- into fatty acids and/or starch by embryo plastids was also light-dependent. However, the light-dependent rates attained, when expressed on a comparable basis, were less than 32% of those from Glc6P (plus ATP), which was the most effective substrate for starch and fatty acid synthesis. In the light alone the rates of carbon incorporation from Glc6P, pyruvate and acetate into fatty acids, and from Glc6P into starch by embryo plastids were less than 27% of the respective ATP-dependent (dark) rates. Light had no effect on these ATP-dependent rates of synthesis by embryo plastids. While transporter activities for both glucose and Glc6P were present in embryo plastids, leaf chloroplasts did not have the latter activity. It is concluded that light at in vivo levels can contribute energy to carbon metabolism in embryo plastids. However, this contribution is likely to be small and these plastids are therefore largely dependent upon interaction with the cytosol for the ATP, reducing power and carbon precursors that are required for maximal rates of starch and fatty acid synthesis.
The Harm of Salmonella to Pig Industry and Its Control Measures

Salmonella is a zoonotic disease widely spread in the environment, causing serious economic losses to the world. Objective: To improve people's understanding of Salmonella disease and reduce economic losses. Methods: Based on the recent research progress, the biochemical characteristics, clinical manifestations, laboratory detection methods and preventive measures of bacteria were discussed in this paper. Conclusion: Salmonella infection in China is becoming more and more serious, which has caused great harm to pig industry and even human beings.
Limitations of regulatory risk assessments of chemicals

The purpose of prospective risk assessment for chemicals is to identify potential risks prior to the use of substances. We challenged the environmental risk assessment, which is conducted under the European Biocidal Products Regulation 528/2012, and evaluated whether it covers all possible emissions of biocidal active substances from households into wastewater. Around 64 % of the observed applications of biocidal active substances do not fall its scope. Results show that gaps exist in the environmental risk assessment. An important approach to reduce possible risks by these substances in general would be to limit their use to in fact essential usages.
Mathematical modeling and statistical inference to better understand arbovirus dynamics

Arboviruses such as the dengue and Zika viruses are expanding worldwide and mo- deling their dynamics can help to better understand and predict their propagation, as well as experiment control scenarios. These mosquito-borne diseases are influenced by a multiplicity of human and environmental factors that are complex to include in parsimonious epidemiological models. In parallel, statistical and computational tools are nowadays available to confront theore- tical models to the observed data. The objective of this PhD work is therefore to study arbovirus propagation models in the light of data. Firstly, in order to identify the most important elements to incorporate in models for dengue dynamics in a rural setting, several dengue models are com- pared using data from the Kampong Cham region in Cambodia. Models incorporate increasing complexity both in the details of disease life history and in the account for several forms of sto- chasticity. In the deterministic framework, including serotype interactions proved decisive, whereas explicit modeling of mosquito vectors and asymptomatic infections had limited added value, when seasonality and underreporting are already accounted for. Moreover, including several forms of un- certainties highlighted that a large part of the disease dynamics is only captured by stochasticity and not by the elements of the deterministic skeleton. Therefore, secondly, we explore other aspects of transmission, such as seasonality and spatial structure, in the case of dengue epidemics in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). Finally, the models and estimation methods are applied to study an emerging arbovirus, the Zika virus. Using data from epidemics in the Pacific, we estimate the key parameters of disease propagation in the stochastic framework and explore their variability in terms of geogra- phic setting and model formulation by comparing four islands and two models with vector-borne transmission. In addition, potential interactions with the dengue virus are explored.
A General Continuous Time Markov Chain Approximation for Multi-Asset Option Pricing With Systems of Correlated Diffusions

Abstract Continuous time Markov Chain (CTMC) approximation techniques have received increasing attention in the option pricing literature, due to their ability to solve complex pricing problems, although existing approaches are mostly limited to one or two dimensions. This paper develops a general methodology for modeling and pricing financial derivatives which depend on systems of stochastic diffusion processes. This is accomplished with a general decorrelation procedure, which reduces the system of correlated diffusions to an uncorrelated system. This enables simple and efficient approximation of the driving processes by univariate CTMC approximations. Weak convergence of the approximation is demonstrated, with second order convergence in space. Numerical experiments demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the method for various European and early-exercise options in two and three dimensions.
Bt Cotton's Place in Integrated Pest Management in West Africa

Cotton crops in western and central Africa have to contend with a wide variety of parasites, predominantly the bollworms Helicoverpa armigera Hubn. , Diparopsis watersi Roth. , Earias insulana Boisd. and Pectinophora gossypiella Saund. In coastal countries, E. biplaga and Cryptophlebia leucotreta Meyr are also encountered. These are not the only harmful lepidopterous insects, since the phyllophage species Anomis flava and Syllepte derogata Fab. , along with some species of the genus Sodoptera, are also found. Lepidopterous insects have long been considered to be the main pests, but in fact share their status as harmful insects with a whole host of biting insects, more diverse in the south than in the north, where Homoptera (the aphid Aphis gossypii Glov.; the Aleyrodidae, especially Bemisia tabaci Genn.; Typhlocibidae, commonly called “jassids”—Jacobi’s Jacobiella fascialis and Bergevin and Zanon’s Austroasca lybica)) and Heteroptera (specifically Miridae at the beginning of the season, and Pentatomidae and Pyrrhocoridae during the boll maturation phase) are found. Alongside these insects are found acarids, Tetranychidae in the dry regions and Tarsonemidae in wet regions.
American Heart Association’s Workplace Health Achievement Index

Roemer, in creating this issue. In this issue, we feature 4 of the most widely used tools evident in published health promotion research: the American Heart Association’s Workplace Health Achievement Index, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Worksite Health ScoreCard, the Health Enhancement Research Organization’s Health and Well-being Best Practices Scorecard in Collaboration with Mercer, and the Wellness Council of America’s Well Workplace Checklist. The contributors each provide a short history of the development of their respective instruments, the administrative process, benchmarking features, and validation research. They also offer some resources and guidance to using their scorecard. In conclusion, Dr Roemer discusses the evolution of organizational health scorecards since the 2013 issue on this topic, offers a summary comparing and contrasting the featured tools, and provides guidance on how to select the best tool to fit an organization’s needs. As someone who transitioned from health promotion practitioner to outcomes researcher out of a desire to improve the effectiveness of health promotion efforts in the field, I highly recommend any one of these scorecards for like-minded professionals. Although some organizations balk at the effort involved in completing these scorecards, the relatively small investment of time is worth the effort to ensure the resources devoted to health promotion is money well spent.
Vascular and Pericardiac Pressures in Ascidiella Aspersa (Urochordata: Ascidiacea)

INTRODUCTION The heart of tunicates is of physiological interest for several reasons: it is a simple peristaltic tube; it lacks valves; and the direction of the contractions changes periodically thus reversing the direction of blood flow. The phylogenetic importance of tunicates, being invertebrate chordates, also make physiological details of interest.
Computer Vision Based Early Intraocular Pressure Assessment From Frontal Eye Images

Intraocular Pressure (IOP) in general, refers to the pressure in the eyes. Gradual increase of IOP and high IOP are conditions or symptoms that may lead to certain diseases such as glaucoma, and therefore, must be closely monitored. While the pressure in the eye increases, different parts of the eye may become affected until the eye parts are damaged. An effective way to prevent rise in eye pressure is by early detection. Exiting IOP monitoring tools include eye tests at clinical facilities and computer-aided techniques from fundus and optic nerves images. In this work, a new computer vision-based smart healthcare framework is presented to evaluate the intraocular pressure risk from frontal eye images early-on. The framework determines the status of IOP by analyzing frontal eye images using image processing and machine learning techniques. A database of images from the Princess Basma Hospital was used in this work. The database contains 400 eye images; 200 images with normal IOP and 200 high eye pressure case images. This study proposes novel features for IOP determination from two experiments. The first experiment extracts the sclera using circular hough transform, after which four features are extracted from the whole sclera.
Comprehensive Assessment and Investigation of Knee Joint Functionality in ACL Reconstructed Subjects - Course of performance capacities from Pre- to Six Months Post-ACL Reconstruction

Bernard M, Hertel P, Hornung H & Cierpinski T. (1997). Femoral insertion of the ACL. Radiographic quadrant method. Am J Knee Surg, 10(1), 14-21. Boden BP, Griffin LY & Garrett Jr. WE. (2000). Etiology and prevention of noncontact ACL injury. Phys Sportsmed, 28(4), 53-60. Cascio BM, Culp L & Cosgarea AJ. (2004). Return to play after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction. Clin Sports Med, 23(3), 395-408. Engström B. (1994). Treatment of anterior cruciate ligament deficiency. Acta Orthop Scand, 65(sup256), 114-114. Fithian DC, Paxton LW & Goltz DH. (2002). Fate of the anterior cruciate ligament-injured knee. Orthop Clin North Am, 33(4), 621-636. Frank CB & Jackson DW. (1997). The science of reconstruction of the anterior cruciate ligament. J Bone Joint Surg Am, 79(10), 1556-1576. Hopkins JT & Ingersoll CD. (2000). Arthrogenic muscle inhibition: A limiting factor in joint rehabilitation. J Sport Rehabil, 9(2), 135-159. Matsumoto H, Suda Y, Otani T, Niki Y, Seedhom BB & Fujikawa K. (2001). Roles of the anterior cruciate ligament and the medial collateral ligament in preventing valgus instability. J Orthop Sci, 6(1), 28-32.
Évaluation comparative par la technique d’IRM de perfusion de l’atteinte microcirculatoire cardiaque du patient diabétique en fonction de l’existence d’une coronaropathie ou d’une atteinte microcirculatoire périphérique

Contexte : l’etude de la circulation cardiaque est souvent limitee a l’exploration des vaisseaux epicardiques. Pourtant, la microcirculation represente 80-90 % des resistances coronaires et semble etre impliquee dans de nombreuses pathologies. Le diabete est un modele pertinent associant macro et microangiopathie. Objectif : l’objectif principal etait de caracteriser la microcirculation cardiaque en IRM de perfusion chez le sujet diabetique, en fonction de l’existence d’une microangiopathie extra- cardiaque ou d’une coronaropathie associee. Methodes : il s’agit d’une etude monocentrique portant sur une cohorte retrospective de patients diabetiques bien documentes en terme de microangiopathie extra cardiaque ou de coronaropathie epicardique. Les patients ont ete inclus entre Janvier 2014 et Juin 2018. Nous avons mesure le MPRI en analyse semi-quantitative (Myocardial Perfusion Reserve Index, rapport entre le signal myocardique sous adenosine sur celui au repos) des segments myocardiques a l’exclusion des territoires infarcis ou vascularises par une coronaire stenosee. Resultats : le MPRI a ete calcule notamment par le rapport : pente maximale du signal myocardique pendant le stress / pente maximale du signal myocardique au repos. Il etait significativement plus bas (alteration de la reserve myocardique) pour les 183 segments myocardiques de patients diabetiques atteints de microangiopathie extra-cardiaque, par rapport aux 289 segments sans microangiopathie extra-cardiaque (moyenne : 2 ± 0,81 versus 2,3 ± 0,94 respectivement, p < 0,001). Le MPRI n’etait pas significativement different entre les patients diabetiques avec (130 segments) ou sans (342 segments) coronaropathie epicardique. Conclusion : les sujets diabetiques atteints de microangiopathie extra-cardiaque ont une alteration de la perfusion myocardique en IRM, liee potentiellement a une authentique microangiopathie cardiaque diabetique. L’analyse semi-quantitative de la perfusion myocardique est utilisable en routine clinique.
Epidemiologic Characteristics, Clinical Behavior, and Outcome of the Giant Cell Tumor of the Bone: A Retrospective Single-center Study.

Background Giant cell tumor of bone (GCTB) is a locally aggressive lesion with an unpredictable behavior. Herein, the aim of this study was to evaluate the epidemiological characteristics, as well as clinical and functional outcomes of GCTB in a relatively large series of patients. Methods Patients with the diagnosis of GCTB were included in this retrospective study. Whenever the preservation of the articular surface was possible, surgical options included extended curettage; otherwise, wide resection was implemented. In case of extended curettage, the cavity was filled with cement or bone graft. In addition, the functional and oncologic outcomes of these surgical strategies were compared. The functional outcome of the patients was assessed using the Musculoskeletal Tumor Society (MSTS) scoring system. Results A total of 120 GCTB patients, including 55 males (45.8%) and 65 females (54.2%), were evaluated. The three involved locations with highest frequency included distal femur (26%), distal radius (22%), and proximal tibia (19%). At a mean follow-up of 125.5±49.2 months, two pulmonary metastases (1.6%) and 12 (10%) local recurrences were observed. In addition, 6 out of 12 (50%) local recurrences occurred in distal radius (P=0.04). The recurrence rate was significantly higher in extended curettage than in wide resection (P=0.05), and the same pattern was observed for allograft, compared to cement filling (P=0.05). The mean MSTS scores for extended curettage and wide resection were 94.7 and 89.1, respectively (P=0.04). Furthermore, the mean MSTS scores for bone graft filling and cement augmentation were obtained as 96 and 93.1, respectively (P=0.07). Conclusion Based on the findings, wide resection of GCTB was associated with superior oncologic outcome, as well as inferior functional outcome. In extended curettage, cement augmentation resulted in superior oncologic outcome when compared with allograft filling.
An Alternating Optimization Algorithm for Energy Efficiency in Heterogeneous Networks

This paper studies the problems of precoding designs to achieve the energy efficiency (EE) in the uplink heterogeneous networks in which the multiple small cells are deployed in a macro-cell. We consider two design problems which maximize either the total system energy efficiency (SEE) or the minimum energy efficiency (MinEE) among users subject to the transmit power constraints at each user and interference constraints caused to the macro base station. Since the optimization problems are non-convex fractional programming in matrix variables, it cannot be straightforward to obtain the optimal solutions. To tackle with the non-convexity challenges of the design problems, we adopt the relationships between the minimum mean square error (MMSE) and achievable data rate to recast the EE problems into ones more amenable. Then, we employ the block coordinate ascent (BCA) and the Dinkelbach methods to develop efficient iterative algorithms in which the closed form solutions are obtained or the semi-definite programming (SDP) problems are solved at each iteration. Simulation results are provided to investigate the EE performance of the EE optimization as compared to those of the spectral efficiency (SE) optimization.
Algorithmic Trading of Bitcoin Using Wikipedia and Google Search Volume

Trading and speculating on Bitcoin is diﬃcult. With large daily price movements and frequent price crashes, implementing quantitative trading strategies can be challenging. This paper presents a simple trading algorithm which uses the volume of Wikipedia and Google Trends search terms to generate trading signals for buying or selling Bitcoin. By exploiting the collective interest in Bitcoin as measured by search volume, ﬁndings suggest that highly proﬁtable trading strategies can be constructed that avoid market crashes. The strategy based on the“Bitcoin” Google and Wikipedia search terms generates a cumulative return of 9418.04% and 3549.05% respectively.
Speech and Language Outcomes in Patients with Ankyloglossia Undergoing Frenulectomy: A Retrospective Pilot Study

Ankyloglossia is a controversial topic with no standardized treatment guidelines. A retrospective chart review was conducted to identify children who underwent lingual frenulectomy for speech and language impairment. Impairment severity was recorded pre- and postoperatively as mild, mild to moderate, moderate, moderate to severe, or severe. Variables were tested with chi-square analysis for their statistical relationship to improvements in speech and language. Children with preoperative moderate and moderate-to-severe speech and language impairment attained better speech and language outcomes after frenulectomy as compared with children with mild and mild-to-moderate impairment (100% vs 82%, P = .015). Sutured closure after frenulectomy was associated with better speech and language improvements (100% vs 83%, P = .033). One could consider observation of patients with mild and mild-to-moderate speech and language impairments. Sutured closure might result in better improvements in speech and language impairments. This pilot study sheds light on the potential impact of a larger study currently underway.
The missing piece of the concussion discussion: primary prevention of mild traumatic brain injury in student athletes

The majority of concussion research has focused on timely diagnosis and treatment, yet little has been reported on primary prevention. The goal of this study is to examine the use of core training as a preventative tool. We performed a non-randomized prospective study involving high school athletes. They participated in a 10-week training session with exercises focused on increasing core strength [mobility, agility, stability, strength and flexibility (MASSf)]. Logs were kept of all concussions diagnosed using ImPACT concussion testing. Statistical analysis was done using Chi-square to calculate expected/observed frequency and Chi-squared test statistic, χ 2 . Test significance was accepted at a P 2 =9.84, corresponds to a P value of 0.0017. The MASSf program was repeated in the 2015 season with 2 concussions in 121 participants. Our study showed a statistically significant decrease in concussion rates after participating in MASSf training. This program shows a promise as a primary prevention method to reduce sports related concussions.
Fuzzy Evaluation of Service Quality in The Banking

The measurement of banking service quality was done by Fuzzy servqual method. Service quality used five dimensions contained in servqual was tangible, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, emphaty. The results of this study indicated that the gap value of the five dimensions had a negative value. It means that the quality of service got was not in accordance with the expectation of the customer. The highest gap value was the dimension of responsiveness and the lowest gap was the dimension of reliability. Thus it can be seen that the dimensions of responsiveness were a concern to improve service quality. One variable that had a positive value was Customer Service variable who helps customer need. Keywords—fuzzy servqual; service quality; responsiveness; reliability
Sodium Valproate as a Probable Cause of Gut Gangrene: Report of Two Unusual Cases

Background : Gangrenous gut is a highly fatal condition most often caused by mesenteric ischemia or intestinal obstruction and requires emergency surgical intervention. There is no definite evidence about role of anti-epileptics as a cause of gut gangrene. Case Report : We encountered two patients who presented with gangrenous bowel and both patients had history of treatment of sodium valproate. There was no other evident cause for gut gangrene in these patients. Conclusion : Hence, with this case report we discuss and emphasize that sodium valproate can be a probable cause for gut gangrene in patients who are undergoing treatment with this agent.
FACTORS LIMITING THE ADOPTION OF IPM PRACTICES BY COTTON FARMERS IN BENIN: A PARTICIPATORY APPROACH

Smallholders' acceptance of innovations depends largely on the approach used to take their needs and constraints into account. The adoption of integrated pest management (IPM) strategies by smallholders can lead to a reduction in pesticide use in cotton, as soon as the recommended cropping practices are adapted to local conditions and associated with a threshold-based use of chemicals. To achieve this goal, farmers need to be trained on the biological basis of IPM. To ensure effective and rational implementation of IPM by farmers, it is essential to overcome constraints associated with pest scouting, identifying and preserving beneficial insects, and gaining access to the right inputs on time. In the current African context, where the extension system is sometimes in very poor shape, participatory methods fostered by the ‘farmer field school’ concept could enable farmers to implement an integrated approach to pest management, while keeping researchers informed about farmers' needs and constraints. Our paper is an attempt to use such a participatory method as a tool to explore farmers' needs and constraints when smallholders are asked to adopt an integrated approach to cotton pest management.