Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Year‐round observations of carbon biomass and flux variability in the Southern Ocean

Three Carbon Explorer (CE) floats profiling to kilometer depths in the Southern Ocean tracked dawn‐dusk variations of mixing and stratification, particulate organic carbon, and light scattering and sedimentation at 100, 250, and 800 m continuously from January 2002 to April 2003. Data were analyzed in conjunction with contemporaneous satellite winds and chlorophyll and derived subsurface light fields. The CE deployed at 66°S, 172°W operated in the ice edge zone in absence of light. Two CEs deployed at 55°S, 172°W recorded wintertime mixing to ∼400 m yet observed very different bloom dynamics and sedimentation the following spring. Four hypotheses are explored. The strongest hypothesis is that shallow transient stratification of the deep winter mixed layer to shallower than photosynthetic critical depth occurred more frequently in the nonbloom, higher‐sedimentation case. The lower particle export to 800 m under the bloom was hypothesized to be due to higher interception of sinking carbon by a relatively starved overwintering zooplankton population. In the Southern Ocean, surface phytoplankton biomass may counterindicate particle flux at kilometer depths.
Nondestructive evaluation techniques for development and characterization of carbon nanotube based superstructures

Recently, multiple commercial vendors have developed capability for the production of large-scale quantities of high-quality carbon nanotube sheets and yarns [1]. While the materials have found use in electrical shielding applications, development of structural systems composed of a high volume fraction of carbon nanotubes is still lacking [2]. A recent NASA program seeks to address this by prototyping a structural nanotube composite with strength-to-weight ratio exceeding current state-of-the-art carbon fiber composites. Commercially available carbon nanotube sheets, tapes, and yarns are being processed into high volume fraction carbon nanotube-polymer nanocomposites. Nondestructive evaluation techniques have been applied throughout this development effort for material characterization and process control. This paper will report on the progress of these efforts, including magnetic characterization of residual catalyst content, Raman scattering characterization of nanotube diameter and nanotube strain, an.
Evaluation of Inhaled Corticosteroid Efficacy by Electron Microscopy in Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Objective: Inhaled corticosteroids definitely alleviate bronchial mucosal inflammation in patients with asthma. Nevertheless, the data regarding their anti-inflammatory effects in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is controversial. The aim of the present study is to assess the efficacy of inhaled corticosteroids in reduction of inflammatory response in patients with COPD. Methods: A total of 14 subjects with the new diagnosis of mild to moderate COPD (forced expiratory volume in one second [FEV 1 ] >50% of predicted value) were prospectively enrolled. Endobronchial sampling with bronchoscopic intervention was performed before and after three months of treatment with inhaled fluticasone propionate (FP) (500 μg twice daily). Histopathological evaluations were performed with electron microscopy and the anti-inflammatory effects of the medicine were evaluated. Differences in arterial blood gas analysis and pulmonary functions were also investigated. Results: Three months treatment with FP revealed regression of the epithelial edema, decrease in the thickness of basal lamina, augmentation of the cilliary structures, reduction in the number of macrophages and lymphocytes in biopsy samples. Significant improvement of pulmonary functions was remarkable in spirometric test results. The difference in arterial blood gas analyses was not significant. Conclusion: Treatment with FP provided significant anti-inflammatory effects on endobronchial tissue samples and remarkable improvement in pulmonary functions in patients with COPD.
Insulin resistance and cardiovascular function - Observational, translational and interventional studies

Background: Microvascular disease is now recognized as an important driver for cardiovascular mortality and morbidity. Diabetic patients are known to suffer from this condition, leading to e.g. coronary ischemia as well as kidney dysfunction. Accumulating evidences indicate that the vascular pathological alterations may be a direct consequence of impaired glucose homeostasis and may occur long before diabetes is diagnosed. Early risk identification and a better understanding of associated mechanisms could be of great importance in disease management. Thus, the overall hypothesis of this thesis was that impaired glucose homeostasis already in the non-diabetic stage is associated with coronary and peripheral microvascular dysfunction and an unfavorable systemic risk profile, possibly facilitating progression of cardiovascular disease. For translational understanding, we hypothesized that obese insulin resistant leptin-deficient (ob/ob) mice could be a potential model for microvascular dysfunction and associated mechanisms. Finally, we hypothesized that short-term personalized lifestyle intervention may improve coronary microcirculation in healthy subjects. Summary of results: My thesis shows that high insulin resistance assessed by the Homeostatic model assessment for insulin resistance (HOMAIR) added independent prognostic value in patients with chest pain without myocardial perfusion defects. HOMA-IR was inversely associated with decreased peripheral vascular function, increased systemic pro-inflammatory state and decreased levels of pro-angiogenic vascular growth factors (Paper I). Also, impaired coronary flow reserve (CFR) predicted cardiovascular outcome in these patients and HOMA-IR was the strongest biochemical marker associated with decreased CFR. Interestingly, upon gender specific analysis, HOMA-IR seemed to be the strongest predictor of decreased CFR in men while systolic blood pressure was the strongest predictor in women (Paper II). Furthermore, impaired CFR and increased renal vascular resistance were observed in the ob/ob mice compared to lean controls. Possible mechanisms behind these observations were an impaired nitric oxide pathway as well as decreased renal vascular density (Paper III). Finally, CFR was improved with a personalized and supervised exercise and diet program in healthy volunteers (Paper IV). Conclusions: This thesis suggests that insulin resistance measured by HOMA-IR confers independent prognostic information in non-diabetic patients with chest pain without myocardial perfusion defects. Furthermore, increased HOMA-IR is associated with poor cardiovascular status and there seems to be gender specific mechanisms associated with coronary microvascular dysfunction. In addition, the ob/ob mice may be a useful translational model for interventional studies to improve understanding of microvascular complications in impaired glucose homeostasis. Finally, three months of personalized life style intervention can enhance cardiovascular function in
OBSERVATIONAL SIGNATURES OF A MASSIVE DISTANT PLANET ON THE SCATTERING DISK

The orbital element distribution of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) with large pericenters has been suggested to be influenced by the presence of an undetected, large planet at >200 au from the Sun. To find additional observables caused by this scenario, we present here the first detailed emplacement simulation in the presence of a massive ninth planet on the distant Kuiper Belt. We perform 4 Gyr N-body simulations with the currently known solar system planetary architecture, plus a 10 M⊕ planet with similar orbital parameters to those suggested by Trujillo & Sheppard or Batygin & Brown, and 105 test particles in an initial planetesimal disk. We find that including a distant super-Earth-mass planet produces a substantially different orbital distribution for the scattering and detached TNOs, raising the pericenters and inclinations of moderate semimajor axis (50 < a < 500 au) objects. We test whether this signature is detectable via a simulator with the observational characteristics of four precisely characterized TNO surveys. We find that the qualitatively very distinct solar system models that include a ninth planet are essentially observationally indistinguishable from an outer solar system produced solely by the four giant planets. We also find that the mass of the Kuiper Belt’s current scattering and detached populations is required to be 3–10 times larger in the presence of an additional planet. We do not find any evidence for clustering of orbital angles in our simulated TNO population. Wide-field, deep surveys targeting inclined high-pericenter objects will be required to distinguish between these different scenarios.
Nocturnal isoprene oxidation over the Northeast United States in summer and its impact on reactive nitrogen partitioning and secondary organic aerosol

Isoprene is the largest single VOC emission to the atmosphere. Although it is primarily oxidized photochemi- cally during daylight hours, late-day emissions that remain in the atmosphere at sunset undergo oxidation by NO3 in regionally polluted areas with large NOx levels. A recent aircraft study examined isoprene and its nocturnal oxidants in a series of night flights across the Northeast US, a re- gion with large emissions of both isoprene and NOx. Sub- stantial amounts of isoprene that were observed after dark were strongly anticorrelated with measured NO3 and were the most important factor determining the lifetime of this rad- ical. The products of photochemical oxidation of isoprene, methyl vinyl ketone and methacrolein, were more uniformly distributed, and served as tracers for the presence of isoprene at sunset, prior to its oxidation by NO3. A determination of the mass of isoprene oxidized in darkness showed it to be a large fraction (>20%) of emitted isoprene. Organic ni- trates produced from the NO3+isoprene reaction, though not directly measured, were estimated to account for 2-9% of to- tal reactive nitrogen. The mass of isoprene oxidized by NO3 was comparable to and correlated with the organic aerosol loading for flights with relatively low organic aerosol back- ground. The contribution of nocturnal isoprene oxidation to secondary organic aerosol was determined in the range 1- 17%, and isoprene SOA mass derived from NO3 was calcu- lated to exceed that due to OH by approximately 50%.
Changes in temperature profile, texture and color of pork loin chop during pan-frying.

The aim of this work was to investigate changes in thermal profile, meat texture and color of pork chop during pan-frying with or without one turnover. Pork chops (1.2 cm thick) were individually pan-fried at 175 oC for 75 s without turnover or 150 s with one turnover. Internal temperature, meat color and texture at 11 designated positions were tracked. During frying, temperature and cooking loss significantly increased (P<0.001), accompanied by a significant increase (P<0.001) in hardness, gumminess, chewiness and L* value, together with a significant decrease (P<0.05) in springiness, cohesiveness, resilience and a* value. Positions close to the periphery generally showed significantly higher (P<0.05) final temperatures, and significantly lower (P<0.05) hardness, gumminess, chewiness, L* and a* values than those close to the center. These results could explain variation in tenderness within the same sample when evaluating eating quality of cooked meat.
OF BURGLARS IN TURKEY AND SOME FACTORS IN THE

The topic of this study is people who committed the crime of burglary. The goal of the research is to determine the profiles of people who committed the crime of burglary and to present some factors that affect the emergence of individuals’ criminal tendencies. The research was carried out on 50 criminals in Diyarbakır closed prison because of the crime of burglary. The research is based on the interpretation of data and findings obtained from the survey forms conducted on the prisoners in scope of the study and detailed interviews that were held with them. The obtained findings show that some effects, such as having low socioeconomic position, existence of some family problems, working on streets at early ages, contacting with children on streets that commit crime and have delinquent actions, existence of the potential of associating with criminals, using drugs, leaving school and imitating older criminals, are effective in individuals’ becoming criminals.
Automatic Inter-Phoneme Similarity Calculation Method Using PAM Matrix Model

Determining the similarity between two strings can be applied various area such as information retrieval, spell checker and spam filtering. Similarity calculation between Korean strings based on dynamic programming methods firstly requires a definition of the similarity between phonemes. However, existing methods have a limitation that they use manually set similarity scores. In this paper, we propose a method to automatically calculate inter-phoneme similarity from a given set of variant words using a PAM-like probabilistic model. Our proposed method first finds the pairs of similar words from a given word set, and derives derivation rules from text alignment results among the similar word pairs. Then, similarity scores are calculated from the frequencies of variations between different phonemes. As an experimental result, we show an improvement of 10.1%~14.1% and 8.1%~11.8% in terms of sensitivity compared with the simple match-mismatch scoring scheme and the manually set inter-phoneme similarity scheme, respectively, with a specificity of 77.2%~80.4%.
Loughborough University Institutional Repository Comparing content-filter techniques for stopping spam

There are many new theoretical techniques for detecting spam e-mail based upon the message contents. Although Bayesian methods are the most wellknown, there are other approaches for classifying information. This paper establishes some criteria for measuring spam filter effectiveness and compares the Boosting and Support Vector Machine approaches with some well-known existing filter software. It also examines ways of transforming e-mail messages into a form which is more readily processable by such algorithms.
Potential genetic causes for sexual dimorphism in immune response of Drosphila melanogaster in respose to infection with the fungal pathogen Beauberia bassinan

The innate immune response is an organism’s first line of defense against disease, be it bacterial, viral, or fungal infection, and it is an integral part of the evolutionary survival of any species. A well-studied model of innate immunity is the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, which has advanced our understanding of many immune signaling pathways that are homologous to mammals. D. melanogaster immune defense responds in a sexually dimorphic manner to infection with various pathogens, including infection with the fungus Beauveria bassiana. Specifically, females die much faster after initial infection compared to males, but the underlying genetic causes responsible are unknown. I examined potential genetic causes of the observed sexual dimorphism by testing for the presence or absence of sexual dimorphism in response to sprayed doses of B. bassiana in various fly strains, with mutations in Toll and IMD signaling pathways. I hypothesized that genes involved in the Toll pathway are responsible for the sexual dimorphism. The results of the experiment showed that mutations in either the Toll or IMD pathways both eliminated the sexual dimorphism. The data suggests that both pathways play important roles in the innate immune response to fungal infection in Drosophila, and that both pathways are required for sexual dimorphism in immune response.
Bat Optimization for a Dual-Source Energy Management in an Electric Vehicle Energy Storage Strategy

This paper presents a new strategy of dual source management using Bat-optimization for an electric vehicle energy storage strategy. The power distribution between fuel cell and super-capacitor modules for obtain a good performance is an essential problem in dual-source electric vehicles. Traditional numerical optimization for energy management relies too much on the expert experience, and it's easy to get the sub-optimal performance. In order to overcome this drawback, a new intelligent method metaheuristic of Bat optimization is introduced for energy management in dual-source propelled electric vehicle. This work, based on the systemic power analysis in the energy storage strategy, the vehicle power propulsion system encounters and the constraints the energy storage strategy should obey. Then, dierent operation modes of dual-source systemic power analysis in energy storage strategy are presented. Finally, the results show the validity of the proposed technique.
Bayesian Model Selection in the Analysis of Cointegration

In this paper we present the Bayesian model selection procedure within the class of cointegrated processes. In order to make inference about the cointegration space we use the class of Matrix Angular Central Gaussian distributions. To carry out posterior simulations we use an alorithm based on the collapsed Gibbs sampler. The presented methods are applied to the analysis of the price - wage mechanism in the Polish economy.
INHIBITING WILDFIRE AND INDUCING DEFENSE-RELATED GENE EXPRESSION BY LED TREATMENT ON NICOTIANA BENTHAMIANA

Light plays an important role in the induction of resistance responses in various plants against diseases. In this study, the inhibition was investigated of wildfire disease caused by Pseudomonas syringae pv. tabaci in Nicotiana benthamiana in response to irradiation with light emitting diodes (LEDs) To identify the effects of various wavelengths on the induction of defense responses, N. benthamiana plants were irradiated for three days with various LEDs (380, 440, 470, and 660 nm) before and after inoculation. Symptom development showed greater suppression in response to irradiation with blue (440 nm) and red (660 nm) light than fluorescent lights. Additionally, fewer bacterial cells were recovered from the lesions of LEDtreated leaves than those of fluorescent light-treated leaves. Simple LED irradiation induced the expression of defense-related genes including catalase (CAT), chalcone synthase (CHS), gluthatione-S-transferase (GST), pathogenesis-related protein (PR Q), proteinase inhibitor II (PinII), and thaumatin-like protein (TLP). Taken together, these data suggest that irradiation by LEDs could inhibit wildfire development by inducing defense responses in N. benthamiana plants.
Does Better Nutrition Raise Farm Productivity?

Household-level data from Sierra Leone are used to test whether higher caloric intake enhances family farm labor productivity. This is the notion behind the efficiency wages hypothesis, which has found only weak empirical support. A farm production function is estimated, accounting for the simultaneity in input and calorie choice. Instruments include prices, household demographic characteristics, and farm assets. The latter two sets of instruments are later dropped to explore the robustness of the results to different specifications of exogeneity. The exercise shows a highly significant effect of caloric intake on labor productivity, providing solid support for the nutrition-productivity hypothesis. The marginal effect on productivity falls drastically as calorie consumption rises but remains positive at moderately high levels of intake. One result is a fall in the effective price of food, a decline that is larger for households that consumer fewer calories.
Sensing behaviour in healthcare design

We are entering an era of distributed healthcare that should fit and respond to individual needs, behaviour and lifestyles. Designing such systems is a challenging task that requires continuous information about human behaviour on a large scale, for which pervasive sensing (e.g. using smartphones and wearables) presents exciting opportunities. While mobile sensing approaches are fuelling research in many areas, their use in engineering design remains limited. In this work, we present a collection of common behavioural measures from literature that can be used for a broad range of applications. We focus specifically on activity and location data that can easily be obtained from smartphones or wearables. We further demonstrate how these are applied in healthcare design using an example from dementia care. Comparing a current and proposed scenario exemplifies how integrating sensor-derived information about user behaviour can support the healthcare design goals of personalisation, adaptability and scalability, while emphasising patient quality of life.
PROSPECTIVE TEACHERS OF SCIENCE IN HIMACHAL PRADESH

This paper reports on mental health as a predictor of emotional competence of prospective teachers of science. The present investigation is descriptive in nature. The study was carried on 120 prospective teachers of science from four districts of Himachal Pradesh. The investigator used Scale of Emotional Competence (SEC) developed by Sharma and Bhardwaj (1998) to measure emotional competence while Mental Health Inventory developed by Jagdish and Srivastava (1996) was used to study the mental health of prospective teachers of science. The findings of the study revealed that prospective teachers of science belonging to general and reserved categories were significantly different in their emotional competence. No significant difference was found in the emotional competence of high and low mentally healthy prospective teachers of science. The study also reported that no significant interactional effects were found between the variables. The researchers have suggested the means to improve the mental health and emotional competence of the prospective teachers of science.
Obesity, fat distribution and large artery wall properties

SUMMARY Large artery wall properties - compliance (CC) and distensibility (DC)- may play a role in cardiovascular disease. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relation between obesity - an independent cardiovascular risk factor - and large artery wall properties. In a population sample of 250 men and 243 women, 20-79 years, diameter, DC and CC of the elastic aorta and common carotid artery (CCA) and muscular brachial (BA) and femoral arteries (FA) were measured with an echo-tracking device. The effects of body mass index (BMI), waist-to-hip ratio (W-H ratio) and skinfold thickness were assessed and adjusted for confounding factors. BMI was positively (p<0.01) related to arterial diameter. Obesity was not significantly related to aortic stiffness. Except for carotid artery DC in women, BMI was negatively (p<0.05) related to DC of CCA, BA and FA in men and women. BMI was also negatively related to CC of the BA (p<0.05) and FA (p<0.05) only in men. An increased waist-to-hip ratio was negatively related to FA DC and CC (p<0.01) in men. Skinfold thickness was negatively related to BA DC in women (p<0.001). Associations between obesity and arterial wall properties depend on the index of obesity, gender and the vascular territory. BMIbased effects on arterial wall properties are more important than those of W-H ratio or skinfold thickness. BMI-based obese subjects have a larger arterial diameter and stiffer arteries, which may be compatible with flowdependent vasodilation. The effects of W-H ratio on arterial wall properties are restricted to men, those of skinfold thickness to women.