Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Heavy metal pollution: Toxic eﬀects on bacterial cells

Increased urbanization and technological advancement in recent years has resulted in increased discharge of heavy metals in the environment which has become a major menace all over the world. Due to their inert nature, metals can build up in the environment and have a negative impact on the living biota present. Bacteria play a crucial role in determining the environmental fate of metals by altering their structure and dispersal. Their contribution to the transformation and elimination of toxic metals is crucial. Despite the various roles played by bacteria in processing and detoxifying heavy metals in the environment, they are also vulnerable to metal toxicity. Heavy metals can cause adverse eﬀects on bacterial cells depending on their bio-availability and the absorbed dose. This review discussed some of the various ways that heavy metals exert their toxic eﬀects on bacteria cells and the likely factors that can aid their toxic eﬀects to bacteria cells
The center problem for the class of Λ − Ω diﬀerential systems

The center problem, i.e. distinguish between a focus and a center is a classical problem in the qualitative theory of planar diﬀerential equations which go back to Darboux, Poincar´e and Liapunov. Here we solve the center problem for the class of planar analytic or polynomial diﬀerential systems
Comparison between AATSR and MODIS AOD and assimilation in a regional chemistry transport model

An intercomparison study shows a large bias in MODIS total AOD in summer as compared to the AERONET data. Inclusion of MODIS AOD_fine appears to largely solve this bias problem for the assimilation study. Assimilation studies show that the system is able to assimilate AOD. Innovations are significant, mostly due to the underestimation of AOD by the model. Improvements are seen especially in timing and spatial patterns. Assimilation not effective near domain edge. PM2.5 levels are increased by about 2-3 μg in central Europe.
Water demand and allocation in the Mara River Basin, Kenya/Tanzania in the face of land use dynamics and climate variability

The impact and uncertainty of climate change on the hydrology of the Mara River Basin (MRB) was assessed. Sixteen Global Circulation Models (GCMs) were evaluated and five were selected for the assessment of future climate scenarios in the basin. Observed rainfall and temperature data for the control period (1961 – 1990) were combined with expected GCMs output using the delta and direct statistical downscaling methods and three greenhouse gas emission scenarios (A1B, A2 and B1). Uncertainties of climate change were addressed through compare and contrast of results across diverse GCMs, future climate scenarios and the two downscaling methods. Both methods produced a relatively similar annual rainfall amount but their monthly and daily pattern showed considerable differences. The relative advantages and disadvantages of implementing one over the other were also explored. The hydrologic impact of climate change in the basin was assessed using Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). The model was calibrated and validated with observed data in the control period with (NashSutcliff-Efficiency, Coefficient of determination) results of (calibration: 0.68, 0.69) and (validation: 0.43, 0.44) at Mara Mines. Results have shown a statistically significant increase in flow volume of the Mara River flow at Mara Mines for the year 2046-2065 and 2081-2100. With due attention to the limitations, findings of this study have a wider
Degradation Behavior of Scalable Nonfullerene Organic Solar Cells Assessed by Outdoor and Indoor ISOS Stability Protocols

the scalable NFA OPV exhibit completely reversible degradation when assessed in ISOS - O - 1 outdoor conditions, which is in contrast to the lab - scale devices assessed via the indoor ISOS - L - 2 protocol. Results from transient photovoltage (TPV) indicate the presence of charge trap formation, and a number of potential mechanisms are proposed for the selective occurrence of this in lab - scale devices tested in ISOS - L lab conditions – ultimately concluding that it has its origins in the different device architectures used. The study points at the risk of assessing active layer stability from laboratory scale devices and degradation studies alone
A robust classification of acute lymphocytic leukemia‐based microscopic images with supervised Hilbert‐Huang transform

Acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) is a malignant condition characterized by the development of blast cells in the bone marrow and their quick dissemination into the bloodstream. It primarily affects children and individuals over the age of 60. Manual blood testing, which has been around for a long time, may be slow. The likelihood of recognizing ALL in its early stages was increased by automating the diagnosis. This research developed an improved criterion for classifying ALL microscopic images into two categories: normal images and blast images. First, to save processing time, innovative image preprocessing techniques were employed to gather data for data augmentation, enhancement, and conversion. The K‐means clustering technique was also utilized to effectively segment the relevant nuclei from the background. Furthermore, the most salient features were extracted using an empirical mode decomposition (EMD) based on the Hilbert‐Huang transform. MATLAB functions such as principal component analysis, gray level co‐occurrence matrix, local binary pattern, shape features, discrete cosine transform, discrete Fourier transform, discrete wavelet transform, and independent component analysis have been used and compared with EMD. The Bayesian regularization (BR) method has been implemented in the neural networks (NNs) classifier. Along with NNs, other classifiers such as support vector machine, K‐nearest neighbors, random forest, naive Bayes, logistic regression, and decision tree have been used, evaluated, and contrasted with NNs. According to experimental findings, the ALL‐IDB2 (Image Database 2) dataset's NNs‐based‐EMD model classified objects with an accuracy of 98.7%, sensitivity of 99.3%, and specificity of 98.1%.
Caspase-8 and c-FLIPL Associate in Lipid Rafts with NF-κB Adaptors during T Cell Activation*

Humans and mice lacking functional caspase-8 in T cells manifest a profound immunodeficiency syndrome due to defective T cell antigen receptor (TCR)-induced NF-κB signaling and proliferation. It is unknown how caspase-8 is activated following T cell stimulation, and what is the caspase-8 substrate(s) that is necessary to initiate T cell cycling. We observe that following TCR ligation, a small portion of total cellular caspase-8 and c-FLIPL rapidly migrate to lipid rafts where they associate in an active caspase complex. Activation of caspase-8 in lipid rafts is followed by rapid cleavage of c-FLIPL at a known caspase-8 cleavage site. The active caspase·c-FLIP complex forms in the absence of Fas (CD95/APO1) and associates with the NF-κB signaling molecules RIP1, TRAF2, and TRAF6, as well as upstream NF-κB regulators PKCθ, CARMA1, Bcl-10, and MALT1, which connect to the TCR. The lack of caspase-8 results in the absence of MALT1 and Bcl-10 in the active caspase complex. Consistent with this observation, inhibition of caspase activity attenuates NF-κB activation. The current findings define a link among TCR, caspases, and the NF-κB pathway that occurs in a sequestered lipid raft environment in T cells.
Medical Malpractice and Black-Box Medicine

The explosive proliferation of health data has combined with the rapid development of machine-learning algorithms to enable a new form of medicine: black-box medicine. In this phenomenon, algorithms troll through tremendous databases of health data to find patterns that can be used to guide care, whether by predicting unknown patient risks, selecting the right drug, suggesting a new use of an old drug, or triaging patients to preserve health resources. These decisions differ in kind from previous data-based decisions because black-box medicine is, by its nature, opaque; that is, the bases for black-box decisions are unknown and unknowable. Black-box medicine raises a number of legal questions, ranging from how to shape incentives for its development to how to regulate its growth and quality. One key question is how black-box medicine will influence the medical malpractice liability of health-care providers. How should tort liability apply to providers who cannot know the mechanistic underpinnings of the treatment they recommend? Must they learn as much as they can about the way algorithms are developed and verified? Or can they rely on the assurances of the developer without more knowledge? And how can they obtain the informed consent of patients? This chapter explores the medical malpractice implications of black-box medicine. It briefly introduces the phenomenon and then considers how the tort system does, can, and should regulate the behavior of providers and health-care facilities using black-box medical techniques. It concludes that while providers and facilities are ill-suited to evaluate the substantive accuracy of black-box medical algorithms, they can and should be required to exercise due care to evaluate procedural quality — the expertise of the developer and the availability of independent external validation — when implementing black-box algorithms in a health-care facility or using them to care for patients.
PIER Working Paper 06-002

We examine an economy in which the cost of consuming some goods can be reduced by making commitments that reduce ﬂexibility. We show that such consumption commitments can induce consumers with risk-neutral underlying utility functions to be risk averse over small variations in income, but sometimes to seek risk over large variations. As a result, optimal employment contracts will smooth wages conditional on being employed, but may incorporate a possibility of unemployment.
Ghost Towns of Kansas: A Traveler's Guide

As soon as the Kansas Territory was opened for settlement in 1854, towns sprang up like mushrooms first along the Missouri border, then steadily westward along trail routes, rivers, and railroad lines. Many of them barely got beyond the drawing board and hundreds of them flowered briefly and died, victims of the "boom or bust" economy of the frontier and the vagaries of weather, finance, mining, agriculture, railroad construction, and politics. "Ghost Towns of Kansas" is a practical guide to these forsaken settlements and a chronicle of their role in the history of Kansas. It focuses on 100 towns that have either disappeared without a trace or are only "a shadowy remnant of what they once were," telling the story of each town's settlement, politics, colorful figures and legends, and eventual abandonment or decline. The culmination of more than ten years of research, this new book is a distillation of the author's immensely popular three-volume work on the state's ghost towns, now out of print. Condensed and redesigned as a traveler's guide, it is organized by region and features ten maps and detailed instructions for finding each site. Twenty of the towns included are discussed for the first time in this volume. The book also contains more than 100 black-and-white photographs of town scenes. With this new guide in hand, travelers and armchair adventurers alike can journey back to the Kansas frontier to places like Octagon City, where settlers signed a pledge not to consume liquor, tobacco, or "the flesh of animals" in order to purchase land at $1.25 per acre from the Vegetarian Settlement Company. Or to Sheridan, a tough, end-of-the-line railroad town where, according to the Kansas Commonwealth, "the scum of creation have congregated and assumed control of municipal and social affairs. " At least thirty men were hanged and a hundred killed either in gunfights or by Indians during Sheridan's tumultuous two-year life span. Today the only remainder of Octagon City is a stream named Vegetarian Creek, and "wild and woolly" Sheridan is again a pasture. "
Permanent Neonatal diabetes-causing Insulin mutations have dominant negative effects on beta cell identity

Heterozygous coding sequence mutations of the INS gene are a cause of permanent neonatal diabetes (PNDM) that results from beta cell failure. We explored the causes of beta cell failure in two PNDM patients with two distinct INS mutations. Using b and mutated hESCs, we detected accumulation of misfolded proinsulin and impaired proinsulin processing in vitro, and a dominant-negative effect of these mutations on the in vivo performance of patient-derived SC-beta cells after transplantation into NSG mice. These insulin mutations derange endoplasmic reticulum (ER) homeostasis, and result in the loss of beta-cell mass and function. In addition to anticipated apoptosis, we found evidence of beta-cell dedifferentiation, characterized by an increase of cells expressing both Nkx6.1 and ALDH1A3, but negative for insulin and glucagon. These results highlight both known and novel mechanisms contributing to the loss and functional failure of human beta cells with specific insulin gene mutations.
Beyond stereotypes Understanding the identities of Hindustani women and girls in Suriname between 1873 and 1921

The sources available on Hindustani women and girls in Suriname were rarely produced by the women and girls themselves, but for or by British or Dutch colonial officers, European travel writers, Christian missionaries, and in some cases, by Hindustani men. In these sources, women and girls primarily figure in stereotypical roles as ‘ prostitutes ’ , ‘ unfaithful wives ’ , or ‘ female slaves ’ . This article sheds light on the ways in which Hindustani women and girls positioned themselves in relation to these stereotyped identities. Records produced by the Dutch colonial government are read both along and against the grain in order to identify contradictions, interruptions, and meaningful silences. The risk of reproducing stereotypes is thus reduced and alternative interpretations of women ’ s acts and views are highlighted. It is argued that the historiography on Hindustani women in Suriname, as well as the wider historiography on Indo-Caribbean women, can and should use this methodology to move away from a focus on the ‘ reality ’ of these stereotypes towards an analysis of the active involvement of Hindustani women in the construction of family and community. It is shown how forms of coexistence between men and women, concepts of family, and financial responsibility were shaped by the norms of marriage, monogamy, and the nuclear family that were imposed, but also adapted and used by women to achieve their personal ends.
Perencanaan Lanskap Wisata Gampong Suka Tani Berbasis Partisipasi Masyarakat

Gampong Suka Tani is a village in Jantho, Aceh Besar. This village has the potential for tourism development because it has several natural tourist attractions, such as rivers and hills, and the potential for historical tourist attractions related to the Aceh conflict theme in the past. The tourism landscape planning for Suka Tani village is conducted using the general landscape planning method, which consists of a site survey, data collection, research, analysis, concept, and planning stages combined with a participatory approach that provides access for residents in data collection and planning stages through participatory mapping and Focus Group Discussion (FGD). The results of the landscape planning are three major tourism themes represented in the zoning plan, space program, site plan, and tourism facilities in Suka Tani village.
Climate and Morphology Drive Breeding Periods in Frogs

Aim Climate can have profound effects on reproductive behavior and physiology, especially in ectothermic animals. Breeding periods in amphibians have received little attention despite amphibian reliance on climate and water due to their reproductive biology and ecological diversity. The aim of this study is to determine how global climate impacts breeding periods in ectothermic animals through physiology, body size, and microhabitat. Location All continents, except Antarctica. Time period Breeding periods and climate both dating as far back as 1970. Major taxa studied 497 (7%) anuran species of 41 (76%) families. Methods We used phylogenetic comparative methods to analyze a global dataset of frog breeding periods, climate, body size, and microhabitat for 497 species. Results We found support for a global latitudinal gradient of breeding periods which are longer in the warmer, wetter tropics while shorter in the colder, dryer temperate zone. Latitudinal and non-latitudinal global patterns of breeding period were composites of the same patterns in the temperate and tropical zones. However, the effect of climate and body size in each zone is unique. Breeding periods displayed weak phylogenetic signal and were similar across microhabitats. Main conclusions Breeding periods show a global latitudinal gradient but this concept breaks down within the tropical zone. Our results are consistent with the importance of physiology in driving breeding periods and we describe how breeding period and body size may exhibit trade-offs which make latitudinal gradients context-dependent. Our results set within an ecophysiological framework have broad implications for understanding reproductive diversity in other ectothermic organisms.
Algebraic & Geometric Topology

We define the Wirtinger width of a knot and prove that this equals its Gabai width. This leads to an efficient technique for establishing upper bounds on Gabai width. We demonstrate an application of this technique by calculating the Gabai width of 54 756 tabulated prime 4 –bridge knots. This is done by writing code for a special category of prime 4 –bridge tabulated knots to get upper bounds on Gabai width via the Wirtinger width, then comparing with the theoretical lower bound on Gabai width for prime 4 –bridge knots. We also provide results showing the advantages our methods have over the obvious method of obtaining upper bounds on Gabai width via planar projections.
Data-based large-scale models provide a window into the organization of cortical computations

The neocortex of the brain is one of the most powerful computing devices that exists, but it remains largely open how its computations are organized. Since the neocortex is a 2D tapestry consisting of repeating stereotypical local cortical microcircuits, a key step for solving this problem is to understand how cortical microcircuits compute. We know by now a lot about their connectivity structure and their neuron types, but we are lacking tools for elucidating causal relations between this structure and their computational function. We present a new tool for elucidating this relation: We train large-scale models of cortical microcircuits, which integrate most current knowledge about their structure, for carrying out similar computational tasks as in the brain. We show that the trained model achieves a similar computational performance as the brain, and that it reproduces experimentally found traits of cortical computation and coding that do not appear in neural network models from AI. Furthermore, we reverse-engineer how computations are organized in the model, thereby producing specific hypotheses that can be tested in experimental neuroscience. Altogether we show that cortical microcircuits provide a distinct new neural network paradigm that is of particular interest for neuromorphic engineering because it computes with highly energy-efficient sparse activity. Teaser Reverse engineering of cortical computations
N ° 2008-32 Competition , R & D and the cost of innovation

This paper proposes a model in the spirit of Aghion et al. (2005) that relates the magnitude of the impact of competition on R&D to the cost of innovation. The effect of competition on R&D is an inverted U-shape. However, the shape is flatter and competition policy is therefore less relevant for innovation when innovations are relatively costly. Intuitively, if innovations are costly for a firm, competitive shocks have to be significant to alter its innovation decisions. Empirical investigations using a unique panel dataset from the Banque de France show that an inverted U-shaped relationship can be clearly evidenced for the largest firms, but the curve becomes flatter when the relative cost of R&D increases. For large costs, the relationship even vanishes.
Autonomous Control of Current- and Voltage-Controlled DG Interface Inverters for Reactive Power Sharing and Harmonics Compensation in Islanded Microgrids

In microgrids, voltage-source inverters interfacing distributed generation units can be operated in voltage- or current-controlled modes (VCMs/CCMs). In this paper, a coordinated control of CCM and VCM units for reactive power sharing and voltage harmonics compensation is proposed. This decentralized control scheme is based on the local measurement of signals. In this way, the need for communication links is removed which results in a simpler and more reliable structure compared to the communication-based control structures. To be more exact, the VCM units contribute to harmonics compensation by using capacitive virtual impedance which can fully compensate the effect of output inductance of the LCL filters. Furthermore, an adaptive virtual admittance regulated based on remaining capacity of the CCM units is implemented for the CCM units. For reactive power sharing, modified droop and reverse droop control methods are used for VCM and CCM units, respectively. The related droop coefficients are set by taking the limited capacity of the inverters and the distorted power into account. An experimental prototype is developed to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme. Experimental and simulation studies show that the harmonics compensation is achieved by using only local measurements in the presence of virtual admittance/impedance schemes of CCM/VCM units. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the reactive power sharing among the CCM and VCM units is obtained based on their remaining capacities.
Forest rehabilitation in Indonesia: where to after three decades?

Rehabilitation activities in Indonesia have a long-history of more than three decades, implemented in more than 400 locations. Successful projects are characterised by the active involvement of local people, and the technical intervention used tailored to address the specific ecological causes of degradation that concern local people. However, sustaining the positive impacts beyond the project time is still the biggest challenge. Rehabilitation efforts have been lagging behind the increasing rates of deforestation and land degradation. This has been largely due to the complexities of the driving factors causing the degradation, which neither projects nor have other government programmes been able to simultaneously address. Currently, there are more complex driving factors of deforestation to be dealt with, such as illegal logging and forest encroachment. Therefore, addressing the causes of deforestation and land degradation, which usually are also the continuing disturbances threatening sustainable rehabilitation activities, should be part of the project's priorities. Designing the right economic and social incentives is important to stimulate greater community roles in rehabilitation initiatives. Project derived economic and livelihood benefits, generated from ecological improvements, tend to sustain in the long-term more than the benefits from project-based economic opportunities.
Oak silviculture, management, and defoliation effects in France and Germany

A study tour of four areas of France and Germany (two in each country) was conducted to examine oak silvicultural and managerial practices and the influence of insect defoliators on the ecology and management of oak forests. The French and German situations may provide useful information for managing oak forests and gypsy moth in the United States, especially the central hardwood region.