Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prediction of Air Pollutant Levels by Using Artificial Neural Networks and Statistical Methods

One of the environmental problems adversely affecting human health and welfare in many part of world is air pollution. Pollution monitoring data can be utilized to predict concentrations of air pollutants for short-term using artificial intelligence approaches and multivariate regression analysis. In this paper, artificial neural networks (ANNs) and multivariate regression modeling (MRM) techniques have been comparatively employed to forecast one-hour ahead concentration of particulate air pollution (PM10). An hourly based data was composed by including meteorological factors and particulate concentrations for the years 2015-2016. ANN(12-7-1) model with R2 of 0.887 and RMSE of 19.89 yielded fairly rational predictions over hourly dataset while the best MRM models produced lower scores with R2 of 0.848 and RMSE of 21.33 in general. ANN models simulating the time series data better among the models identified have been chosen in further tuning in the prediction of next hour’s concentration of PM10.
Regionally specified human pluripotent stem cell-derived astrocytes exhibit different molecular signatures and functional properties

ABSTRACT Astrocytes display diverse morphologies in different regions of the central nervous system. Whether astrocyte diversity is attributable to developmental processes and bears functional consequences, especially in humans, is unknown. RNA-seq of human pluripotent stem cell-derived regional astrocytes revealed distinct transcript profiles, suggesting differential functional properties. This was confirmed by differential calcium signaling as well as effects on neurite growth and blood-brain barrier formation. Distinct transcriptional profiles and functional properties of human astrocytes generated from regionally specified neural progenitors under the same conditions strongly implicate the developmental impact on astrocyte diversity. These findings provide a rationale for renewed examination of regional astrocytes and their role in the pathogenesis of psychiatric and neurological disorders. Summary: Astrocytes generated from hPSC-derived regional neural progenitors maintain their identity throughout their differentiation and exhibit differential gene expression and functions, suggesting developmental origins of astrocyte functional diversity.
Phenolic Profile and Antioxidant Activity of Italian Monovarietal Extra Virgin Olive Oils

In the last years, the interest in Italian monovarietal oils has increased due to their specific organoleptic qualities. Extra virgin olive oils (EVOOs) are rich in phenolic compounds, secondary metabolites well known and studied for their nutraceutical properties. However, among EVOOs, there is great variability in phenolic composition due to the origin, the production technique, and mainly, the genotype. The aim of this work was to evaluate the different phenolic profiles and the antioxidant activities of monovarietal oils. The results confirm this variability. In fact, the overall content of oleuropein varies up to four times between the different genotypes (from 33.80 to 152.32 mg/kg oil), while the oleocanthal content is significant only in two oils. The antioxidant activity, determined with 2,2-Diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) assays, is correlated with the content of total phenolic substances, with half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) values for the DPPH test ranging from 160 to 91 mg of oil, while the ORAC test shows values between 5.45 and 8.03 μmol Trolox equivalent (TE)/g oil.
Brain iron transport

Brain iron is a crucial participant and regulator of normal physiological activity. However, excess iron is involved in the formation of free radicals, and has been associated with oxidative damage to neuronal and other brain cells. Abnormally high brain iron levels have been observed in various neurodegenerative diseases, including neurodegeneration with brain iron accumulation, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease. However, the key question of why iron levels increase in the relevant regions of the brain remains to be answered. A full understanding of the homeostatic mechanisms involved in brain iron transport and metabolism is therefore critical not only for elucidating the pathophysiological mechanisms responsible for excess iron accumulation in the brain but also for developing pharmacological interventions to disrupt the chain of pathological events occurring in these neurodegenerative diseases. Numerous studies have been conducted, but to date no effort to synthesize these studies and ideas into a systematic and coherent summary has been made, especially concerning iron transport across the luminal (apical) membrane of the capillary endothelium and the membranes of different brain cell types. Herein, we review key findings on brain iron transport, highlighting the mechanisms involved in iron transport across the luminal (apical) as well as the abluminal (basal) membrane of the blood–brain barrier, the blood–cerebrospinal fluid barrier, and iron uptake and release in neurons, oligodendrocytes, astrocytes and microglia within the brain. We offer suggestions for addressing the many important gaps in our understanding of this important topic, and provide new insights into the potential causes of abnormally increased iron levels in regions of the brain in neurodegenerative disorders.
Photosynthesis and Hill Reaction - a Physiological Inquiry into a Thermosensitive Genic Male Sterile (TGMS) Rice Used in Two Line Breeding

An investigation was carried out to understand the physiological mechanisms of male sterility in rice. The critical sterility temperature and critical stage of thermosensitivity of the selected TGMS (Thermosensitive Genie Male Sterile) line, TS 29 was studied using a Phytotron. Variations in the physiological traits were analyzed at Stage VII of panicle development (Filling phase of pollen, floret and panicle reach full length and colour turns to green). High significant reductions in photosynthetic rate, transpiration rate, hill reaction, sugars and carbohydrate contents were recorded. The high temperature induced male sterility in TGMS line was associated with accumulation of starch and higher diffusive resistance. However a reverse of all the above responses was found in the TS 29 grown under fertility inducing low temperature and in the variety CO 46. The results revealed that some physiological traits play an important role by acting as signals or messengers in response to temperature leading to pollen abortion.
Consensus Control of Time-Varying Delayed Multiagent Systems with High-Order Iterative Learning Control

We address the consensus control problem of time-varying delayed multiagent systems with directed communication topology. The model of each agent includes time-varying nonlinear dynamic and external disturbance, where the time-varying nonlinear term satisfies the global Lipschitz condition and the disturbance term satisfies norm-bounded condition. An improved control protocol, that is, a high-order iterative learning control scheme, is applied to cope with consensus tracking problem, where the desired trajectory is generated by a virtual leader agent. Through theoretical analysis, the improved control protocol guarantees that the tracking errors converge asymptotically to a sufficiently small interval under the given convergence conditions. Furthermore, the bounds of initial state difference and disturbances tend to zero; the bound of tracking errors also tends to zero. In the end, some cases are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the theoretical analysis.
World corporate loan markets for raising new capital - does distance still matter: Are financial assets priced locally or globally?

Though the paper focuses on pricing, as the background I provide some evidence about loan flows across markets in the form of borrowers’ and lenders’ propensity to issue outside their natural home market. The data show that borrowers stay home when they can and that they tend to issue in Europe when they must issue abroad. That is, borrowers domiciled in one of the major markets (Europe, U.S., and Asia) almost always issue in that market, whereas borrowers in more remote locations usually issue in the European market. For example, borrowers from Latin America are overwhelmingly issuing in Europe rather than in the U.S. market.
In vitro ruminal fermentation of low-quality forages as influenced by the treatment with exogenous fibrolytic enzymes.

The effects of three fibrolytic enzymes on the in vitro ruminal fermentation of five low-quality forages (three cereal straws (barley, wheat and rice), corn stover and grass hay) were investigated using batch cultures of mixed ruminal microorganisms. Four different treatments were investigated: no additive (control; CON), cellulase from Aspergillus niger (CEL; Fluka Chemie GmbH), xylanase from ruminal microorganisms (XYL; Megazyme International Ireland Ltd), and a 1:1 mixture cellulase:xylanase (MIX). Enzymes (20 IU/g forage dry matter (DM)) were applied directly onto the forages 24 h before incubation with buffered ruminal fluid at 39oC for 24 h. The treatment with CEL increased (P 0.05) gas production for any forage. For all substrates, neutral-detergent fibre digestibility (NDFD) and NH3-N concentration were not affected (P>0.05) by the addition of enzymes. The treatment of forages with CEL increased the production of propionate for grass hay, corn stover and barley straw, and increased (P 0.05) of MIX and XYL treatments on VFA production were observed for any substrate. The results indicate that the pre-treatment of low-quality forages with fibrolytic enzymes under the conditions of the present experiment contributed little, if any, to ruminal fibrolytic activity.
The Relationship between Knee Biomechanics and Clinical Assessments in ACl Deficient Patients

Abstract The purpose of this study was to clarify the relationship between knee biomechanics and clinical assessments in ACL deficient patients. Subjects included 22 patients with unilateral ACL rupture and 22 healthy controls. Knee kinematics and kinetics during walking and running were examined using a 3-dimensional motion analysis system. The passive knee joint laxity, range of motion of knee joint, and knee muscle strength were also measured. Correlations between the knee kinematic and kinetic data and clinical assessments were evaluated. In the ACL deficient patients, there were no significant relationships between tibial translation during walking and running and passive knee joint laxity. The correlations between knee kinematics and kinetics and range of motion of knee joint were also not significant. Additionally, there were no significant correlations between knee kinematics during walking and knee muscle strength. However, there were several significant correlations between knee kinematics during running and knee muscle strength. The results demonstrate the importance of knee muscle strength for knee kinematics and kinetics during running in ACL deficient patients. Patients with stronger knee muscle strength may demonstrate more nearly normal knee joint movement during dynamic activities such as running.
Consumer preferences and willingness to pay for organic apples

Este estudio provee informacion de comercializacion, con respecto a las preferencias y disposicion a pagar por manzanas organicas. Especificamente, los objetivos de este estudio fueron determinar la disposicion a pagar de los consumidores por manzanas organicas y determinar los principales atributos que ellos buscan en las manzanas; fue realizado en la region de Maule de Chile (ciudad de Talca), en donde fueron entrevistados con un total de 400 individuos, obtenidos de una muestra probabilistica. El primer objetivo fue alcanzado, aplicando un metodo de valoracion contingente, usando una funcion logistica, con un formato dicotomico simple de eleccion. Ademas, este estudio tambien determina y compara la disposicion a pagar marginal de los consumidores para las manzanas organicas, usando analisis conjunto, con procedimientos ordenacion y calificacion. El segundo objetivo es logrado usando analisis conjunto. Los resultados muestran que la variedad Fuji, el metodo organico de produccion, las manzanas dulces y el precio bajo son preferidos. Aunque, analizando el indice de utilidad relativo, muestra que el precio y la variedad son mas importantes en la eleccion y comportamiento de los consumidores, que el metodo de produccion y el sabor. Finalmente, el estudio muestra que los consumidores tienen una disposicion a pagar adicional por kg de manzanas organicas de alrededor de 130 pesos chilenos. Estos resultados proporcionan informacion importante sobre los atributos deseados a los productores de manzanas como manera de identificar nuevos segmentos de mercado.
Modernisation and governance in UK national governing bodies of sport: how modernisation influences the way board members perceive and enact their roles

ABSTRACT Modernisation has been a key objective of many national governments for at least the last two decades. A significant element of the modernisation agenda has been the focus on improving the governance of public sector and, more recently, voluntary sector organisations. In the UK voluntary sport sector, this has involved policy statements, governance monitoring systems linked to public funding and a number of ‘good governance’ guides, aimed primarily at the boards of national governing bodies of sport (NGBs). Previous research has critically analysed modernisation and explored its effects, most often at a macro level. Very little research, to date, however, has looked at the influence of modernisation on the boards of NGBs. This article seeks to do just that, drawing on the first national survey of board-level governance in the UK and an in-depth, longitudinal case study of one UK-based NGB. It empirically examines which board roles NGBs consider most important and statistically compares large and small NGBs. It then draws on direct observation of board and committee meetings, in-depth interviews and analysis of key organisational documents to examine how modernisation influences the way board members perceive and enact their roles. In doing so, this article draws together the political science research on modernisation and the sport governance research on board roles and seeks to promote closer integration between these complementary streams of research.
[Frailty syndrome and nutritional status: assessment, prevention and treatment].

La fragilidad es un síndrome médico, multidimensional y dinámico caracterizado por una disminución de la reserva funcional y una vulnerabilidad que aumenta el riesgo de padecer eventos adversos. Es un concepto diferente al de discapacidad y comorbilidad y es potencialmente reversible. La valoración es multidimensional y las medidas de capacidad funcional, tales como la velocidad de la marcha y el Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB), pueden ser muy útiles para el diagnóstico y la monitorización del tratamiento. Como medidas más destacadas, resulta importante realizar un cribado de desnutrición, una valoración nutricional y del estado mental y revisar los fármacos. Las intervenciones son también multidimensionales, pero la combinación de una prescripción de ejercicio físico multicomponente individualizada y una adecuada intervención nutricional parecen las medidas más eficaces.
Optimising healthy and safe fish intake recommendations: a trade-off between personal preference and cost

Abstract Individuals may perceive personalised dietary advice as more relevant and motivational than national guidelines. Personal preference and food cost are factors that can affect consumer decisions. The objective of this study was to present a method for modelling and analysing the trade-off between deviation from preference and food cost for optimised personalised dietary recommendations. Quadratic programming was applied to minimise deviation from fish preference and cost simultaneously with different weights on the cost for 3016 Danish adults (whose dietary intake and body weight were recorded in a national dietary survey). Model constraints included recommendations for EPA, DHA and vitamin D and tolerable levels for methyl mercury, dioxins and dioxin-like polychlorinated biphenyls. When only minimising deviation from preference, 50 % of the study population should be recommended to increase fish intake, 48 % should be suggested to maintain current consumption and 2 % should be suggested to decrease fish consumption. When only minimising cost, the vast majority (99 %) should be recommended to only consume herring, which is the least-expensive fish species. By minimising deviation from preference and cost simultaneously with different weights on the cost, personalised optimal trade-off curves between deviation from fish intake preference and fish cost could be generated for each individual in our study population, except for twenty-two individuals (0·7 %) whose contaminant background exposure was too high. In the future, the method of this paper could be applied in the personal communication of healthy and safe food recommendations that fit the preferences of individual consumers.
A Literature Review on Text Document Clustering Algorithms used in Text Mining

An Exhaustive growth of Knowledge in the form of textual documents in almost every area of digital era needs an extensive demand for new powerful tools to filter the text documents and extract required knowledge from it. A research technology Known as ‘Text mining’ helps to discover required knowledge from a collection of text documents and design a system to provide this knowledge to support the user’s decision. The text miner program gathers the relevant documents (Textual data) together, mines the information and converts this unstructured data into structured database. Document Clustering plays an important role in Text Mining. A clustering is defined as a grouping of documents including features, which are more similar to each other than to the features of any other group. In other words, documents from one cluster share some common features, which distinguish them from the other documents. This paper gives a literature survey on different document clustering techniques. The paper briefly studies hard clustering techniques and tries to explore soft computing techniques in detail.
A New Resources Provisioning Method Based on QoS Differentiation and VM Resizing in IaaS

In order to improve the host energy efficiency in IaaS, we proposed an adaptive host resource provisioning method, CoST, which is based on QoS differentiation and VM resizing. The control model can adaptively adjust control parameters according to real time application performance, in order to cope with changes in load. CoST takes advantage of the fact that different types of applications have different sensitivity degrees to performance and cost. It places two different types of VMs on the same host and dynamically adjusts their sizes based on the load forecasting and QoS feedback. It not only guarantees the performance defined in SLA, but also keeps the host running in energy-efficient state. Real Google cluster trace and host power data are used to evaluate the proposed method. Experimental results show that CoST can provide performance-sensitive application with a steady QoS and simultaneously speed up the overall processing of performance-tolerant application by 20~66%. The host energy efficiency is significantly improved by 7~23%.
Potential etiology, prevalence of cirrhosis, and mode of detection among patients with non-B non-C hepatocellular carcinoma in Korea

Background/Aims We systematically evaluated the clinical characteristics, prevalence of cirrhosis, and mode of detection in virus-unrelated (non-B non-C, NBNC) hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients in Korea. Methods A total of 447 consecutive treatment-naïve NBNC-HCC adult patients who were registered at the Samsung Medical Center HCC registry in Korea from 2010 to 2013 were analyzed. NBNC was defined as negative hepatitis B surface antigen and negative anti-hepatitis C virus antibody. Presence of cirrhosis was determined based on histological, radiological, endoscopic, and serologic results. Mode of detection was classified as either under surveillance, incidental, or symptomatic. Results Heavy alcohol use was the most common potential etiology in NBNCHCC (NBNC-A, alcohol) (59.7%). Ten patients had other identifiable causes (NBNC-O, other identifiable cause) such as autoimmune hepatitis. The rest (38.0%) had no-identifiable cause (NBNC-NA-NO, non-alcohol, no-other identifiable cause). In NBNC-NA-NO group, 83.5% (96/115) of patients with available hepatitis B core immunoglobulin G antibody (HBcIgG) showed HBcIgG positivity, and 80.6% (137/170) had metabolic risk factors (diabetes, obesity, hypertension, and/ or dyslipidemia). Cirrhosis was present in 90.0%, 70.4%, and 60.0% of NBNC-O, NBNC-A, and NBNC-NA-NO patients, respectively. The proportion of patients diagnosed under surveillance was 25.5% across all patients, with specific proportions being 80.0%, 27.7%, and 18.8% for NBNC-O, NBNC-A, and NBNC-NA-NO, respectively. Conclusions Among NBNC-HCC patients, heavy alcohol use or any other identifiable cause was not found in 38.0%. These NBNC-NA-NO HCC patients showed a high prevalence of HBcIgG positivity and metabolic risk factors, suggesting that prior hepatitis B virus infection and metabolic risk factors may be major contributing factors in the hepatocarcinogenesis in NBNC-NA-NO patients.
Clinical Effectiveness of Maintenance Electroconvulsive Therapy in Patients with Schizophrenia: A Retrospective Cohort Study.

OBJECTIVE This study aimed to assess the clinical effectiveness and cognitive effects of maintenance electroconvulsive therapy (mECT) in patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and explore factors associated with both outcomes. METHODS In this retrospective cohort study, we examined clinical records of 47 patients with a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fourth Edition) diagnosis of schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder treated with mECT at an academic mental health hospital between April 2010 and July 2016. Sixty-two mECT courses were reviewed. We assessed clinical effectiveness and cognitive effects as well as factors associated with response to treatment, including psychiatric diagnosis, concomitant pharmacological treatment, and previous treatment response. RESULTS Maintenance electroconvulsive therapy was able to maintain clinical response in 48 (77%) treatment courses. Significant cognitive adverse effects were reported in 7 (11%) of the courses. Use of antipsychotic, antidepressant or benzodiazepine medications, psychiatric disorder, and sex were not associated with response. CONCLUSION This study shows meaningful clinical effectiveness and good tolerability of mECT in patients with resistant schizophrenia over extended periods.