Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Finite Element Modeling of Vasoreactivity Using COMSOL Multiphysics® Software

Regulation of vascular tone is a complex process that remains poorly understood. Here we present our recent efforts for the development of physiologically realistic model of an arteriole for the analysis of vasoreactivity in health and in disease. Our goal is to describe function at a macro scale level by integrating mechanisms at the subcellular/molecular level. The behavior of a cell component (i.e. current-voltage relationship of an ion channel) or a signaling pathway is described through mathematical formulations. Modeling integrates intracellular and cell membrane components into whole-cell models of calcium and membrane potential dynamics. Cellular models are coupled (i.e. through diffusion of ions and second messengers) and multicellular models of the vascular wall are generated, capable of investigating intercellular communication and signaling. We implemented individual endothelial (EC) and smooth muscle (SMC) cell models as 2 D rectangular domains using COMSOL Multiphysics® software. Electro-diffusion for the ionic species was taken into account. This allows implementation of voltage and concentration dependent membrane currents as boundary equations. The continuum models allows introduction of spatial distribution of cellular components and microdomains. EC and SMC models were coupled through homocellular and heterocellular gap junctions and the diffusion of NO (Figure 1) to form multi cellular vessel model. High-throughput gene expression data inform the model of changes in activity of a component (i.e. conductance of an ion channel, concentration of a protein, density of pumps and receptors) in hypertension, to appropriately modify model parameters. Thus, the outlined approach can be used to investigate cellular mechanisms underlying altered peripheral vascular resistance in hypertension. Figures used in the abstract
The Northern High Time Resolution Universe pulsar survey - I. Setup and initial discoveries

We report on the setup and initial discoveries of the Northern High Time Resolution Universe survey for pulsars and fast transients, the first major pulsar survey conducted with the 100-m Effelsberg radio telescope and the first in 20 years to observe the whole northern sky at high radio frequencies. Using a newly developed 7-beam receiver system combined with a state-of-the-art polyphase filterbank, we record an effective bandwidth of 240 MHz in 410 channels centred on 1.36 GHz with a time resolution of 54 $\mu$s. Such fine time and frequency resolution increases our sensitivity to millisecond pulsars and fast transients, especially deep inside the Galaxy, where previous surveys have been limited due to intra-channel dispersive smearing. To optimise observing time, the survey is split into three integration regimes dependent on Galactic latitude, with 1500-s, 180-s and 90-s integrations for latitude ranges $|b| 15^{\circ}$, respectively. The survey has so far resulted in the discovery of 15 radio pulsars, including a pulsar with a characteristic age of $\sim18$ kyr, {PSR J2004+3429}, and a highly eccentric, binary millisecond pulsar, {PSR J1946+3417}. All newly discovered pulsars are timed using the 76-m Lovell radio telescope at the Jodrell Bank Observatory and the Effelsberg radio telescope. We present timing solutions for all newly discovered pulsars and discuss potential supernova remnant associations for {PSR J2004+3429}.
Environmental control of living symbiotic and asymbiotic foraminifera of the California Current

Plankton tows from the northern California Current constrain biological and physical influences on living planktonic foraminifera. In this region, the dominant factors controlling the size and distribution of symbiotic and asymbiotic species are light and food. Food decreases off- shore. Light, needed for symbiont photosynthesis, increases offshore as water turbidity lessens. Asymbiotic foraminifera (e.g., right-coiling Neogloboquadrina pachyderma, Globigerina quinqueloba, and Globigerina bulloides), which survive by grazing, dominate the coastal fauna. The most abundant of these species, right-coiling Neogloboquadrina pachyderma, did not change in size in response to increasing food. Species that benefit from symbiont photosynthesis (OrbMina universa, Neogloboquadrina dutertrei, Globigerinoides ruber, and Globigerinita glutinata) dominate the offshore fauna. Individuals of these species are rare and have smaller shells in turbid waters where light is limited. G. ruber, which is near its thermal tolerance limit of --14oC, is the only species to demonstrate a clear temperature response. Although temperature may control a foraminiferal species' distribution near the limits of its thermal tolerance, food and light appear to provide the primary control under more favorable thermal conditions. We infer that gradients in food and light can result in quantifiable sedimentary patterns related to oceanic productivity through changes in plankton biomass and turbidity.
VETERINARSKI ARHIV 88 ( 4 ) , 535-557 , 2018 Bovine mastitis : a persistent and evolving problem requiring novel approaches for its controla review

Mastitis in dairy cows is the inflammation of the mammary gland, and is the most important cause of economic losses in the modern dairy industry. Bovine mastitis is often infectious and can be caused by some 150 microbial species. The environment of the dairy cow is heavily colonized by microbiota, while milk is an ideal medium for propagation of the bacteria and causative agents. Staphylococcus aureus is the most common pathogen isolated from the mammary gland capable of causing health disorders in humans. Milk from an infected mammary gland has a different chemical composition compared to milk from healthy cows. Certain differences, such as protein components specific to inflamed tissue, are currently being considered in *Corresponding author: Prof. Dr. Marko Samardžija, Clinic for Reproduction and Obstetrics, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Zagreb, Heinzelova 55, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia; Phone: +385 1 239
Improving Top-N Recommendation Performance Using Missing Data

Recommender systems become increasingly significant in solving the information explosion problem. Data sparse is a main challenge in this area. Massive unrated items constitute missing data with only a few observed ratings. Most studies consider missing data as unknown information and only use observed data to learn models and generate recommendations. However, data are missing not at random. Part of missing data is due to the fact that users choose not to rate them. This part of missing data is negative examples of user preferences. Utilizing this information is expected to leverage the performance of recommendation algorithms. Unfortunately, negative examples are mixed with unlabeled positive examples in missing data, and they are hard to be distinguished. In this paper, we propose three schemes to utilize the negative examples in missing data. The schemes are then adapted with SVD
The Effect of Height on Earnings: Is Stature Just a Proxy for Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Skills?

While taller workers are regularly observed to earn more, there is debate concerning the independent contribution of stature to labor earnings. This study investigates the degree to which the association of height and earnings in Pakistan is independent of other cognitive and socio-emotional skills. Next, the relationship between height and earnings is explored when measures of cognitive ability and an index of socio-emotional capacity are included separately. The paper finds only a modest attenuation in the contribution of height to earnings after controlling for additional dimensions of human capital, suggesting that height provides independent information on labor productivity. This result is robust to treating height as endogenous. The paper also examines non-linearities in the relationship between height and earnings. In contrast to results from relatively few other contributions to research on this non-linear relationship, height is associated with earnings only when an individual is taller than the median height. This lends some support to the role of status and confidence in the yet unresolved question as to the relative contribution of direct and indirect influence of height on earnings.
RURAL GROWTH IN U.S. HEARTLAND

This study identifies factors that explain growth in rural areas using data from 618 counties in the U.S. rural heartland. We evaluate many of the growth hypotheses in the context of sectoral employment growth for counties in Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota. Separate estimates for rural and urban counties provide insight into factors that are important in explaining employment growth. The results support the importance of human capital as a factor contributing to sectoral employment growth and show that increased concentration and specialization of employment within a county lead to slower growth in the rural heartland counties.
Intergranular fracture in nanocrystalline metals

Crack propagation studies in nanocrystalline Ni samples with mean grain sizes ranging from 5 to 12 nm are reported using atomistic simulations. For all grain sizes pure intergranular fracture is observed. Intergranular fracture is shown to proceed by the coalescence of microvoids formed at the grain boundaries ahead of the crack. The energy released during propagation is higher than the Griffith value, indicating an additional grain-boundary accommodation mechanism.
Technical Note: Effect of Epoxy Embedment on Micromechanical Properties of Brown-Rot-Decayed Wood Cell Walls Assessed with Nanoindentation

Mechanical properties of brown-rot-decayed wood cell walls were evaluated using a nanoindentation technique. Epoxy resin is a typical medium for the sample embedding process in nanoindentation. It is assumed that the embedding process does not affect cell wall properties or that any effects are similar for different samples. As part of an investigation of microscale mechanical effects of brown-rot in wood, we applied nanoindentation to cell walls of decayed and nondecayed pine wood samples. For epoxy-embedded samples, there were no differences in modulus and hardness for control and decayed samples. However, for unembedded samples, significant differences were found between control and decayed samples. These results indicate that the epoxy-embedding process may confound micromechanical testing results. We speculate that in this case, epoxy resin penetrated and reinforced the cell wall of decayed samples.
Age Segregation and Hiring of Older Employees: Low Mobility Revisited

We analyse age segregation in hirings and separations using linked employer-employee data from Finland in the period 1990-2004. This allows us to identify at the firm level employees in different age groups that have been hired during the previous year, and employees who have exited the firms. We analyze firm-level age segregation using segregation curves and Gini indices. The hirings of older employees have clearly been more segregated than exits or the stock of old employees even though hirings have become slightly less segregated towards the end of the period in question. At the same time age segregation in exits and stocks has increased and these trends are not sensitive to small unit bias in measurement. We also examine trends in hiring and exit rates using aggregate data. According to our results the oldest age group is again underrepresented in hirings. There is a positive upward trend in their recruitments related to the increasing cohort size, but it is much weaker than the trend in the relative share of older workers in employment. The exit rate of the older employees indicates cyclical variation while the small number of hirings seems to be insensitive to changing labour demand. We present a decomposition of employment change by age group and with that decomposition we disentangle the role of hirings and exits from factors related to demographics and cohort effects. The latter factors include the effect of the large baby boom generation entering the age group of older employees with higher employment rates than earlier cohorts. Finally, our regression analysis shows that larger firms are more likely to hire older employees, but their hiring rates are lower.
Perturbing phytoplankton : a tale of isotopic fractionation in two coccolithophore species

No two species of coccolithophore appear to respond to perturbations of carbonate chemistry in the same way. Here, we show that the degree of malformation, growth rate and stable isotopic composition of organic matter and carbonate produced by two contrasting species of coccolithophore ( Gephyrocapsa oceanica and Coccolithus pelagicus ssp. braarudii ) are indicative of differences between their photosynthetic and calcification response to changing dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) levels (ranging from ~1100 to ~7800 μmol kg⁻¹) at constant pH (8.13±0.02). G.oceanica thrived under all conditions of DIC, showing evidence of increased growth rates at higher DIC, but C. braarudii was detrimentally affected at high DIC showing signs of malformation, and decreased growth rates. The carbon isotopic fractionation into organic matter and the coccoliths suggests that C. braarudii utilises a common internal pool of carbon for calcification and photosynthesis but G. oceanica relies on independent supplies for each process. All coccolithophores appear to utilize bicarbonate as their ultimate source of carbon for calcification resulting in the release of a proton. But, we suggest that this proton can be harnessed to enhance the supply of aqueous dissolved carbon dioxide (CO₂(ag)) for photosynthesis either from a large internal bicarbonate ion (HCO₃⁻) pool which acts as a PH buffer ( C. braarudii ), or pumped externally to aid the diffusive supply of CO₂ across the membrane from the abundant HCO₃⁻ ( G. oceanica ), likely mediated by an internal and external carbonic anhydrase, respectively. Our simplified hypothetical spectrum of physiologies may provide a context to understand different species response to changing pH and DIC, the species-species e p and calcite "vital effects", as well as accounting for geological trends in coccolithophore cell size.
Interplanetary and solar surface properties of coronal holes

[1] Data from the Solar Wind Ion Composition Spectrometer (SWICS) on board the Ulysses spacecraft and synoptic maps from Kitt Peak are used to analyze the relatively short-lived coronal holes which exist during the maximum phase of the solar activity cycle 23. They are compared with the persistent polar coronal holes which prevail around solar minimum. A solar wind velocity increase coinciding with a shift of the ionic charge composition toward lower charge states serves as a robust criterion for identifying solar wind streams emanating from solar maximum holes. This allows an unambiguous association of every stream identified in interplanetary space with a coronal hole on the solar surface with consistent magnetic polarity. Solar wind streams emanating from the solar maximum holes generally show lower velocities of 400 to 600 km/s compared to the polar hole stream velocities of 700 to 800 km/s. However, the SWICS O7+/O6+ charge-state ratios, which are a proxy for coronal temperatures, do not reveal a consistent difference. Though a number of solar maximum holes have a significantly, up to three times, higher temperature compared to the polar coronal holes, the majority of the investigated holes and specifically those with new cycle polarity have a coronal temperature within the range of polar hole temperatures. Likewise, the magnetic flux density in the solar maximum holes and in the polar coronal holes, as derived from the synoptic maps, is not strikingly different. Therefore any intrinsic difference between solar maximum holes and polar coronal holes is small. The striking discrepancy in their kinetic properties, namely the slower velocity of the solar wind streams emanating from solar maximum holes, may partly be attributed to deceleration of the solar wind during propagation to the spacecraft. The discrepancy may also be influenced by active regions in close proximity to the coronal holes, which presumably is more likely for smaller holes. There may, however, be a tendency for the faster wind streams to emanate from cooler holes.
Analysis of TCP Performance in 5G mm-Wave Mobile Networks

Millimeter-wave (mm-wave) bands will play an essential role in 5G mobile networks in supporting the increasing demand for higher data rates. Communications at mm-wave frequencies pose unique challenges. The high propagation loss and unfavorable atmospheric absorption make the channel quality highly variable — short communication ranges and blockage through obstacles may prevent communication altogether. The use of directional antennas helps to achieve higher communication ranges and provides better spatial reuse and lower interference compared to omni-directional communications. At the same time, this introduces the problem of beam misalignment. Mm-wave research has primarily focused on the PHY and MAC layers, whereas the transport layer aspects of mm-wave systems require further attention. In this article, we analyze the behavior of TCP in mm-wave networks and study its impact on system-level performance. Through extensive simulations, we show the effect of different types of blockages on the behavior of the congestion control in the presence of handovers, and when small, medium and long flows coexist. Protocols like CUBIC that target high throughput benefit significantly when jointly optimizing link layers buffers and timeouts. While the optimization fosters prompt reaction to short-term blockages, the performance of such protocols significantly decreases when obstacles degrade the channel quality for longer time periods. Hybrid-designs like TCP YeAH are more robust to blockage, but fail to recover quickly and to ramp up to the link capacity after timeouts.
Impact of Brand Extension and Brand Image on Brand Equity

The purpose of this study was to find out factors influencing on the brand equity. How the brand image and line extension impact on brand equity. The study statistical population was including different commercial market, Education sector and industrial sector. For the response of such research we distributed 150 questionnaires with the 25 different questions. By use of the SPSS the correlation and regression tests were applied for interpreting the result. The research results identified that there is positive significant relationship between the dependent and independent variables. The regression result showed that the model is fit and can predict future results of the research. The research will helpful for the commercial markets, related industries and specially for the managers to review their business strategies in order to attract maximum potential customers. Keywords: brand extension, images, brand equity
The Effects of Financial Strategies on the Performance of Public Universities

Financial strategies are important aspects of an organization. Some of them are profit distribution strategies, investment strategies and financing strategy. However in academic institutions some financial strategies are specialized. The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of financial strategies on the performance of public universities in Kenya. The study employed a case study research design since it was an in depth investigation of an individual group of employees or firm. The study was conducted in Moi University, Eldoret. The study targeted the senior management, at the upper level management and the financial manager, accounts manager, in the middle level management. The study used a percentage of 30% of the target population to get a sample size of respondents. Purposive sampling was used to sample first level management while stratified random sampling was used to sample middle level management. The study used questionnaire and interview schedules. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyze the data collected from the field. Inferential and descriptive statistics specifically played an important role in the presentation and interpretation of analyzed data both qualitative and quantitative. The key findings of the study indicated that financial management strategies had a great impact on the students’ enrolment with the investment strategy being identified as most effective strategy for enhancing the performance of the financial institutions. The study therefore concluded that it was important for the institution to focus on the key influences of each strategies identified to enhance the performance of the institution. The study recommended more effective use of the profit distribution strategies to support the investment strategies to better enhance performance.
A study on the thermal effect on quality characteristics of tomato purée

Total antioxidant activity, levels of bioactive co mpound groups and colour of tomato puree subjected to thermal treatment (70°C/2 min) were measured. The method applied to the dosage of ascorbic acid was with 2,6�diclorophenolindophenol. Total phenols (TP) in puree were determined using the FolinCiocalteau method and antioxidant activity by the use of DPPH free radical method. The colour of the samples was measured using a HunterLab colour meter. Heat trea tment caused a rapid decrease in ascorbic acid. Phenolic contents were in general unaffected by thermal treatment. Colour parameters were significantly affected by thermal treatment. This provides a helpful tool for understanding the effect of thermal treatment on colour variation of tomato puree in a broader spectrum. This research paper provides scientific evidence of the influence of thermal treatments in retaining important bioactive compounds.
Developing an Ontology of Concepts in the Qur'an

In recent years, there is growing interest in IT for Islamic Knowledge. Researchers in religious studies have started to use ontologies to improve knowledge construction and extraction from religious texts such as the Qur’an and Hadith. An ontology can be used to describe a logical domain theory with very expressive, complex, and meaningful information. Recent research has been done in Arabic language ontology and on holy Qur'an ontology but they are still incomplete. Also there are some other issues including the process used to extract and construct an ontology that needs extra work. This paper describes our actual and ongoing work in developing an ontology. Our approach is to investigate the applicability of ontology methods of formal Knowledge Representation from Artificial Intelligence and Text Analytics research to capture and represent abstract concepts in the Qur'an. We will implement three ontology methods. The first one is to elicit or extract the abstract concepts from experts in the domain. Another approach is to semi-automatically extract concepts from text sources from the domain. The last approach is to find existing partial ontologies for the domain, and try to unify and re-use them. Finally to evaluate our general Qur'an ontology, we will investigate practical use of the ontology in a semantic search application. We have implemented the third approach, merging of existing ontologies, The experimental verification result reveals that our proposed merging methods work well, as checked by human expert. A similarity measure was applied for ontology merging, and we report a high accuracy and recall through experiments.