Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Preliminary immunomodulatory activity of aqueous and ethanolic leaves extracts of Ocimum basilicum Linn in mice.

OBJECTIVE: To study the immunomodulatory activity of aqueous and ethanolic extracts of leaves of Ocimum basilicum Linn. (Family: Lamiaceae) in mice. METHODS: The aqueous and ethanolic extract of leaves of Ocimum basilicum was administered orally at the dosage levels of 400 mg/kg/day body weight in mice. The assessment of immunomodulatory activity on specific and nonspecific immunity were studied by haemagglutination antibody (HA) titer, delayed type hypersensitivity (DTH), neutrophil adhesion test and carbon clearance test. In order to induced immunosuppresion in mice by using cyclophosphamide (100 mg/kg/day, p.o.) and levamisole (50 mg/kg/day, p.o.) used as immunostimulating agents. RESULTS: Oral administration of Ocimum basilicum (OB) showed a significant increase in the production of circulating antibody titer in response to sheep red blood cells (SRBCs). A significant (p<0.01) increase in both primary and secondary HA titer was observed while compared to control group, whereas in cyclophosphamide treated group OB showed significant (p<0.01) increase in HA titer. OB showed significantly (p<0.01) potentiated the DTH reaction by facilitating the footpad thickness response to SRBCs in sensitized mice. Also OB evoked a significant (p<0.01) increase in percentage neutrophil adhesion to nylon fibres and phagocytic activity. CONCLUSION: The study demonstrates that OB triggers both specific and non-specific responses to a greater extent. The study comprised the acute toxicity and preliminary phytochemical screening of OB. From the results obtained and phytochemical studies the immunostimulant effect of OB could be attributed to the flavonoid content.
An Improved Method for Estimating the a Priori Probability of Speech Absence for Enhancement of Speech

The efficiency of many noise suppression filters relied on an accurate estimation of their parameters such as the power spectral density of the noise (PSD) and the a priori speech absence probability (SAP). This work addresses the problem of estimation of the a priori SAP. The proposed method relied on the conditional probabilities of the noisy speech magnitude, assuming that speech is absent or present and by dynamically computed parameters of the a priori SAP using two factors: a smoothing-update factor and a factor related to the kth spectral component. The smoothing-update factor, which is based on a decision made in frequency band whether speech is present or absent, is computed by recursively averaging past spectral values of the a priori SAP. The factor related to the kth spectral component is computed using the a priori signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The efficiency of the proposed algorithm over competitive ones, both in terms of background noise suppression and speech distortion, is assessed by the use of an objective measure namely average segmental signal-to-noise ratio (segSNR) plus a study of speech spectrograms.
COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVES OF REPRESENTATION

The paper introduces the cognitive conception of poly-representation or multievidence applied to information retrieval, in particular associated with representation of information objects. Various types of aboutness are described and discussed, i.e. author and indexer aboutness, as well as other forms of document features of representative nature. The assumption that highly relevant objects are found in the retrieval overlaps of cognitively and functionally different origin is discussed and the utility of clustering of objects by complex representations for navigation or visualisation purposes is briefly analysed.
Exploring of Water Distillation by Single Solar Still Basins

The lack of potable water poses a big problem in Syria. The underground water, where exists, is usually brackish and cannot be used as it is for drinking purposes. Syria lies in high solar isolation band and the vast solar potential can be exploited to convert saline water to potable water. The most economical and easy way to accomplish this objective is using solar still. The purpose of the project is to evaluate the potential of using a solar still basin. To implement this goal three similarly solar still basins have been designed, manufactured and tested in selected day for saline water in month of November, 2010. Each solar still consists of insulated metal box with channels. Pyramidal glass covers attached to the basin at an angle (α = 45°). The three basins have divided into three models (M1, M2 and M3). Before taking the measurement of the distilled water three different amount of water used, so for the (model M1) 3 liter of water, (model M2) 6 liter and (model M3) 9 liter, to study and evaluate the effect of water depth in the basin. The average daily output was found to be (3.924) liters/day for model (M1), (3.116) liters/day for model (M2) and 2.408 liters/day for model (M3) for basin area of 1 m2 based on data of selected day.
Offspring sensitivity to ocean acidification changes seasonally in a coastal marine fish

Experimental assessments of species vul- nerabilities to ocean acidification are rapidly increasing in number, yet the potential for short- and long-term adaptation to high CO2 by contemporary marine or- ganisms remains poorly understood. We used a novel experimental approach that combined bi-weekly sam- pling of a wild, spawning fish population (Atlantic sil- verside Menidia menidia) with standardized offspring CO2 exposure experiments and parallel pH monitoring of a coastal ecosystem. We assessed whether offspring produced at different times of the spawning season (April to July) would be similarly susceptible to elevated (~1100 µatm, pHNIST = 7.77) and high CO2 levels (~2300 µatm, pHNIST = 7.47). Early in the season (April), high CO2 levels significantly (p < 0.05) reduced fish survival by 54% (2012) and 33% (2013) and reduced 1 to 10 d post-hatch growth by 17% relative to ambient condi- tions. However, offspring from parents collected later in the season became increasingly CO2-tolerant until, by mid-May, offspring survival was equally high at all CO2 levels. This interannually consistent plasticity co- incided with the rapid annual pH decline in the species' spawning habitat (mean pH: 1 April/31 May = 8.05/7.67). It suggests that parents can condition their offspring to seasonally acidifying environments, either via changes in maternal provisioning and/or epi genetic transgener- ational plasticity (TGP). TGP to increasing CO2 has been shown in the laboratory but never before in a wild population. Our novel findings of direct CO2-related survival reductions in wild fish offspring and seasonally plastic responses imply that realistic assessments of spe - cies CO2-sensitivities must control for parental environ- ments that are seasonally variable in coastal habitats.
Association between Admission Hyperglycemia and Outcome in Acute Ischemic Stroke Cases: an Observational Study

Stroke is one of the leading causes of death and disability worldwide and more so in underdeveloped countries like Bangladesh where health support system including rehabilitation is not expectedly available. At least 50% of the neurological disorder in a general hospital is of stroke. World Health Organizasion (WHO) defined Stroke as rapidly developiong clinical signs of focal or global disturbance of cerebral function, with symptoms lasting 24 hours or longer or leading to death, with no apparent cause other than vascular origin 1 .
Effects of amino acids and metabolizable energy on egg characteristics and broiler breeder performance

A study was conducted to determine the effects of diet formulation type on egg characteristics and reproductive performance of broiler breeder (50 to 64 weeks of age). 140 female and 20 male breeders in four treatments with five replicates (7 females : 1 male) were used in the randomized 2 × 2 factorial design. Four experimental diets were formulated based on two factors: two levels of apparent and true metabolizable energy corrected for nitrogen of feedstuffs (AMEn and TMEn) and two levels of total amino acids (TAAF) and digestible (DAAF) feedstuffs. The results show that egg weight, egg production, fertility and hatchability were significantly different and affected by diet formulation based on energy (P<0.05). Diet formulation based on digestible amino acids of feedstuffs significantly increased albumen height and Haugh unit (HU). Hens on treatment 2 (AMEn + DAAF) were significantly different in egg weight (69.17 g), egg production (62.45%) and chicks/hen (40.23) (P<0.05). This study shows that the diets formulations for AMEn, TMEn, TAAF and DAAF have significant effects on egg characteristics and broiler breeders reproductive performance. Key words: Broiler breeders, reproduction, amino acids, fertility, chickens.
Building Age-Friendly Community: Notes from the Field

Building age-friendly communities is a global as well as a national concern. The purpose of this paper is to explore fundamental tensions underlying the formulation of age-friendly goals and their implementation, based on a review of age-friendly projects and reflections on the journey towards age friendliness in one state (Rhode Island). The authors conducted a comprehensive investigation of the relevant literature on previous age-friendly initiatives, which included case studies of individual projects, meta-analyses of age-friendly work, and educational toolkits for promoting age-friendly community. They also collected original data from ten focus groups with older adults, interviews with key informant service providers, surveys of older adults and observational environmental audits. Through this multi-faceted approach, they identified recurrent questions often not overtly addressed in building livable communities, despite their being central to decisions made in age-friendly projects. This paper focuses on six questions: Age friendliness for whom? Older adults viewed as a burden or a benefit? Age friendliness by or for older adults? Is age friendliness affordable? Should the target be the aged overall or the needy aged in particular? Should interventions aim to change people or places? The Aging in Community Report, (prepared by the authors and submitted to Rhode Island’s General Assembly), reflected decisions made—albeit sometimes inadvertently—in response to these questions. It showed that priority was given to age friendliness over livability, assistance to vulnerable, older adults was given precedence over helping the entire older population, and top-down interventions were emphasized more than grass-roots endeavors. Its recommendations were geared to leveraging or modestly increasing existing resources to better serve older adults and enhancing opportunities for older adults to contribute to their community. Following the release of the report, the focus shifted from modifications of the environment to facilitating changes in individual behavior to optimize person-environment fit.
Detecting hands in video images using scale invariant local descriptors

In this paper, we describe our approach on hand detection in cluttered images using scale invariant features. We claim that, while modelling hands as a whole is bound to fail because of their strongly articulated nature, treating them as a collection of weakly connected characteristic regions seems promising. Different approaches to finding and robustly modelling such regions - or local object descriptors - invariantly to scale and orientation of the object in question have been proposed. As an example, we demonstrate our approach using the well-known scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT), combined with a region-based postprocessing to eliminate false positives. We present detailed results on a large set of images from a realistic interaction scenario with a smart room.
Flexibility of multiword expressions and Corpus Pattern Analysis

This chapter is set in the context of Corpus Pattern Analysis (CPA), a technique developed by Patrick Hanks to map meaning onto word patterns found in corpora. The main output of CPA is the Pattern Dictionary of English Verbs (PDEV), currently describing patterns for over 1,600 verbs, many of which are acknowledged to be multiword expressions (MWEs) such as phrasal verbs or idioms. PDEV entries are manually produced by lexicographers, based on the analysis of a substantial sample of concordance lines from the corpus, so the construction of the resource is very time-consuming. The motivation for the work presented in this chapter is to speed up the discovery of these word patterns, using methods which can be transferred to other languages. This chapter explores the benefits of a detailed contrastive analysis of MWEs found in English and French corpora with a view on English-French translation. The comparative analysis is conducted through a case study of the pair ( bite , mordre ), to illustrate both CPA and the application of statistical measures for the automatic extraction of MWEs. The approach taken in this chapter takes its point of departure from the use of statistics developed initially by Church & Hanks (1989). Here we look at statistical measures which have not yet been tested for their ability to discover new collocates, but are useful for characterizing verbal MWEs already found. In particular we propose measures to characterize the mean span, rigidity, diversity, and idiomaticity of a given MWE.
An investigation of the effects of anthropomorphism in collective human-machine decision-making

Anthropomorphism describes the attribution of human-like physical or non-physical features, behavior, emotions, characteristics and attributes to a non-human (Epley et al. 2007). The human tendency to humanize (socio-)technical systems can be used in the development of anthropomorphic information systems (IS) to reduce emotional distance to the IS and to create a natural connection between human beings and (socio-)technical systems or its components (Epley et al. 2007; Pfeuffer et al. 2018). In particular, new technologies make it possible to implement increasingly human-like features that further increase familiarization with IS. Increasing cognitive and emotional intelligence, contemporary and avant-garde interface design contribute to perceived human-likeness and anthropomorphism.
Nostalgia counteracts self‐discontinuity and restores self‐continuity

Nostalgia is a resource that functions, in part, as a response to self-discontinuity and a source of self-continuity. We tested and supported this regulatory role of nostalgia in the tradition of establishing a causal chain. In Study 1, we examined the naturalistic association between events precipitating self-discontinuity and nostalgia. Self-discontinuity, especially when stemming from negative life events, was associated with higher proneness to nostalgia. In Study 2, we experimentally induced negative self-discontinuity (i.e. relatively disruptive), positive self-discontinuity (i.e. relatively non-disruptive) or self-continuity (i.e. neutral non-disruptiveness) and subsequently assessed state levels of nostalgia. Only negative self-discontinuity evoked heightened nostalgia. In Study 3, we experimentally induced nostalgia (versus ordinary autobiographical recollection) and assessed selfcontinuity. Nostalgia augmented self-continuity. In Study 4, we experimentally induced nostalgia (versus ordinary autobiographical recollection versus positive autobiographical recollection) and assessed self-continuity. Again, nostalgia augmented self-continuity and did so above and beyond positive affect. Here, we ruled out demand characteristics as a rival hypothesis. Taken together, the findings clarify the role of nostalgia in the dynamic between self-discontinuity and self-continuity and elucidate the restorative properties of nostalgia for the self-system. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
How to define the Riesz transform for Fourier-Neumann expansions?

Resumen. Consideramos un operador diferencial autoadjunto L con autovalores positivos. En este art́ıculo damos una visión general del método que se sigue para definir de manera espectral el semigrupo del calor e−tL, el de Poisson e−t √ L y los potenciales de Riesz L−a, hasta llegar a la descomposición L = δ∗δ (con δ y δ∗ dos operadores diferenciales de primer orden adjuntos), y aśı definir la transformada de Riesz R = δL−1/2. En particular, para el operador diferencial Lα que se corresponde con los desarrollos de Fourier-Neumann de orden α > −1, con la ayuda de un sistema de álgebra computacional hemos encontrado una pléyade de descomposiciones Lα = δ∗δ (o similares). Pero ninguna de ellas parece ser útil para definir la transformada de Riesz, puesto que los operadores δ y δ∗ son demasiado “raros”: las expresiones de δ y δ∗ contienen funciones con una cantidad infinita de polos, luego al aplicar δ no obtenemos funciones integrables.
Hybrid algorithms for 3-SAT optimisation using MapReduce on clouds

This article presents the advances on applying a MapReduce approach for solving optimisation problems using Hadoop on cloud computing systems. The main advantages and limitations of the proposed strategy are presented and commented. A concrete case study is reported, analysing several algorithmic approaches to solve the 3-SAT, a well-known version of the Boolean satisfiability problem. Several variants of the MapReduce 3-SAT solver are designed and evaluated to demonstrate that the collaborative approach is a promising option for solving optimisation problems in the cloud.
Root Effects on Soil Organic Matter Decomposition

Roots of higher plants, a key functional component of belowground systems and one of the main soil-forming agents (Jenny, 1941), interact with virtually all soil components. Processes that are largely controlled or directly influenced by roots and often occur in the vicinity of the root surface are often referred to as rhizosphere processes. These processes may include root production through growth and death (root turnover), rhizodeposition, root respiration, and rhizosphere microbial respiration that is a result of microbial utilization of rhizodeposits. Rhizosphere processes play an important role in the global C cycle (Fig. 7–1). Terrestrial ecosystems are intimately connected to atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels through photosynthetic fixation of CO2, sequestration of CO2 into biomass and soils, and the subsequent release of C through respiration and decomposition of organic matter. Considering all the pools and fluxes of C within ecosystems, C cycling belowground is increasingly being recognized as one of the most significant components (Jackson et al., 1997; Zak and Pregitzer, 1998). Globally, the input of C to the soil has been estimated to be as great as 60 ( 10−5 g yr−1 (Post et al., 1990). Thus, small changes in the equilibrium between inputs and decomposition could have a significant impact on atmospheric CO2 concentrations, which may either exacerbate or reduce the consequence of burning of fossil fuels (Schimel, 1995). Carbon dioxide efflux from the soil is a combination of two distinct processes: (i) rhizosphere respiration, including root respiration and microbial respiration from the metabolism of rhizodeposits and (ii) microbial decomposition of soil organic matter (SOM). The substrates for rhizosphere respiration come from C recently fixed through photosynthesis, whereas SOM decomposition is primarily a function of soil heterotrophic activities using soil C. The two processes act simultaneously and are also linked through rhizosphere interactions, which 7
Aalborg Universitet Bayesian based Prognostic Model for Predictive Maintenance of Offshore Wind Farms

The operation and maintenance costs of offshore wind farms can be significantly reduced if existing corrective actions are performed as efficient as possible and if future corrective actions are avoided by performing sufficient preventive actions. In this paper a prognostic model for degradation monitoring, fault prediction and predictive maintenance of offshore wind components is defined. The diagnostic model defined in this paper is based on degradation, remaining useful lifetime and hybrid inspection threshold models. The defined degradation model is based on an exponential distribution with stochastic scale factor modelled by a normal distribution. Once based on failures, inspection or condition monitoring data sufficient observations on the degradation level of a component are available, using Bayes’ rule and Normal-Normal model prior exponential parameters of the degradation model can be updated. The components of the diagnostic model defined in this paper are further explained within several illustrative examples. At the end, conclusions are given and recommendations for future studies on this topic are discussed.
The importance of left atrial volume assessment in identifying the cause of ischemic stroke

Separating cardioembolic from large artery stroke has important treatment implications. We investigated whether echocardiography could improve Cardioembolic Stroke (CES) prediction compared with traditional measures and cholesterol biomarkers. Data from 40 consecutive patients presenting with acute ischemic stroke which included brain and carotid imaging, ECG, echo, serum cholesterol and apolipoproteins were independently reviewed. Patients were classified into two groups: a) CES, defined by sustained or paroxysmal atrial fibrillation and <50% stenosis of a perfusing cerebral artery; b) Large artery stroke (LAS) defined as > 50% stenosis of an ipsilateral perfusing cerebral artery, with no evidence of AF on monitoring or evidence of small artery disease on neuroimaging and confirmed by an independent neurologist. Other than the CES group being older, the baseline characteristics of the two groups were similar. Left Atrial Volume (indexed for body surface area, LAVi) was significantly larger in CES (57.9 +/19.4 vs 31.1 +/8.3ml/m2, p<0.01), with a simple equation that utilised age, LAVi and E wave accurately predicting 90% of CES. The difference in LAVi for CES was beyond that anticipated from the presence of AF alone. No differences in any of the lipid biomarkers were observed. These finding indicate that LAVi is the most important predictor of CES due to atrial fibrillation and is highly predictive of patients with CES due to atrial fibrillation. Cholesterol biomarkers offered no additional discriminatory value.
A generalized bivariate copula for flood analysis in Peninsular Malaysia

This study generalized the best copula to characterize the joint probability distribution between rainfall severity and duration in Peninsular Malaysia using two dimensional copulas. Specifically, to construct copulas, Inference Function for Margins (IFM) and Canonical Maximum Likelihood (CML) methods were specially exploited. For the purpose of achieving copula fitting, the derived rainfall variables by making use of the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) were fitted into several distributions. Five copulas, namely Gaussian, Clayton, Frank, Joe and Gumbel were put to the tests to establish the best data fitted copula. The tests produced acknowledged and satisfactory results of copula fitting for rainfall severity and duration. Surveying the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) and the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC), only three copulas produced a better fit for parametric and semi parametric approaches. Finally, two consistency tests were conducted and the results shown that Frank Copula produced consistent results.