Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The role of PLGA/TPGS nanoparticle on xylazine-ketamine anesthetic activity in male albino rabbits

Department of Surgery and Theriogenology, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Mosul, Mosul, Department of Physiology, Pharmacology and Biochemistry, College of Veterinary Medicine, Al-Qasim Green University, Babylon, Department of Physiology, Pharmacology and Biochemistry, College of Veterinary Medicine, Karbala University, Karbala, Department of Surgery and Obstetrics, College of Veterinary Medicine, Al-Qasim Green University, Babylon, Iraq
Phospho-Smad3 signaling is predictive biomarker for hepatocellular carcinoma risk assessment in primary biliary cholangitis patients.

INTRODUCTION Patients with primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) are at increased risk for development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), particularly in the presence of comorbidities such as excessive alcohol consumption. Although liver fibrosis is an important risk factor for HCC development, earlier predictors of future HCC development in livers with little fibrosis are needed but not well defined. The transforming growth factor (TGF)-β/Smad signaling pathway participates importantly in hepatic carcinogenesis. Phosphorylated forms (phospho-isoforms) in Smad-related pathways can transmit opposing signals: cytostatic C-terminally-phosphorylated Smad3 (pSmad3C) and carcinogenic linker-phosphorylated Smad3 (pSmad3L) signals. METHODS AND RESULTS To assess the balance between Smad signals as a biomarker of risk, we immunohistochemically compared Smad domain-specific Smad3 phosphorylation patterns among 52 PBC patients with various stages of fibrosis and 25 non-PBC patients with chronic hepatitis C virus infection. HCC developed in 7 of 11 PBC patients showing high pSmad3L immunoreactivity, but in only 2 of 41 PBC patients with low pSmad3L. In contrast, 9 of 20 PBC patients with minimal Smad3C phosphorylation developed HCC, while HCC did not occur during follow-up in 32 patients who retained hepatic tumor-suppressive pSmad3C. Further, PBC patients whose liver specimens showed high pSmad3L positivity were relatively likely to develop HCC even when little fibrosis was evident. CONCLUSION In this study, Smad phospho-isoform status showed promise as a biomarker predicting likelihood of HCC occurrence in PBC. Eventually, therapies to shift favorably Smad phospho-isoforms might decrease likelihood of PBC-related HCC.
An estimation of the evapotranspiration of typical steppe areas using Landsat images and the METRIC model

Remote sensing excels in estimating regional evapotranspiration (ET). However, most remote sensing energy balance models require researchers to subjectively extract the characteristic parameters of the dry and wet limits of the underlying surfaces. The regional ET accuracy is affected by wrong determined ideal pixels. This study used Landsat images and the METRIC model to evaluate the effects of different dry and wet pixel combinations on the ET in the typical steppe areas. The ET spatiotemporal changes of the different land cover types were discussed. The results show that the surface temperature and leaf area index could determine the dry and wet limits recognition schemes in grassland areas. The water vapor flux data of an eddy covariance system verified that the relative error between the ETd,METRIC and ETd,GES of eight DOYs (day of the year) was 18.8% on average. The ETMETRIC values of the crop growth season and the ETIMS of eight silage maize irrigation monitoring stations were found to have a relative error of 11.1% on average. The spatial distribution of the ET of the different land cover types in the study area was as follows: ETwater > ETarable land > ETforest land > ETunutilized land > ETgrassland > ETurban land.
Effects of third-language learning on inhibitory control with consideration of task complexity and language proficiency

Aims and Objectives: The present study explores the question of whether learning a third language (L3) in an English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom setting induces improved inhibitory control compared with that found in bilinguals, considering task complexity and language proficiency. Methodology: Thirty-six Chinese–English second language (L2) young adult learners and 121 Chinese–English–Japanese/French/Russian/German L3 young adult learners with three levels of L3 proficiency participated in the study. Simon arrow tasks were employed to measure two types of inhibitory control: response inhibition (the less complex task with univalent stimuli) and interference suppression (the more complex task with bivalent stimuli). Data and Analysis: Statistics using ANOVAs and multiple comparisons were employed to analyze the effects of L3 learning on the reaction time and accuracy for response inhibition and interference suppression, respectively. Findings: The results demonstrated that L3 learners did not outperform L2 learners in the two types of inhibitory control: response inhibition (less complex) and interference suppression (more complex). Moreover, L3 learners with a higher proficiency did not display better inhibitory control than those with a lower proficiency in response inhibition and interference suppression. However, as the L3 proficiency increased, some specific aspects of inhibitory control did improve and exhibited a nonlinear pattern. Originality: The present study extends bilingual advantage in inhibitory control to formal L3 learning, exploring whether bilingual advantage in inhibitory control also appears in L3 learners, considering task complexity and language proficiency. Significance/implications: The present study contributes to the theory of the relationship between multilingualism and inhibitory control by showing that this relationship may be more complex than it is understood currently. Learning an additional language to L2, particularly short-term learning, may not lead to an incremental advantage in overall inhibitory control. However, as learning time increases, changes may appear in specific aspects of inhibitory control, and may be a nonlinear one.
Deep learning improves utility of tau PET in the study of Alzheimer's disease

Positron emission tomography (PET) imaging targeting neurofibrillary tau tangles is increasingly used in the study of Alzheimer's disease (AD), but its utility may be limited by conventional quantitative or qualitative evaluation techniques in earlier disease states. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are effective in learning spatial patterns for image classification.
Lipid Metabolism in the Cattle in Different Stages of Reproductive Cycle

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of feeding dairy cows in different stages of reproductive cycle on biochemical parameters and oxidative stress. To evaluate the effect of oxidative stress on lipids and lipid metabolism and to determine the impact of nutrition and energy balance on oxidative stress in peripartum period and in early lactation. Concentrations of different biochemical parameters were measured but for this paper the most important ones were indicators of oxidative stress, cholesterol and triglycerides and also albumin. Factors associated with oxidative stress were period 3 weeks before calving and related to that negative energy balance and also content of nonfiber carbohydrates in the diet in peripartum period. However, further studies will be needed to more precisely determine the specific effects of diet and energy balance on oxidative stress in cows and to establish normal ranges for these biomarkers of oxidative stress.
Effect of massage and pseudo massage on acute performance and self-perceived recovery: a study placebo-controlled

The aim of this study was to verify the effect of massage or pseudo massage on vertical jump performance. Fifteen participants were randomly subjected to three experimental conditions: massage, pseudo massage and rest. The massage condition required three unipodal vertical jumps followed by two minutes of manual massage on plantar flexor muscles and, before performing another three jumps, the Total Quality Recover Scale (TQR) was applied. The two following conditions were structured with the same procedures, although participants were submitted either at pseudo massage (single-blinded) or two minutes of rest. Results showed no statistical differences on jump height between pre and post analysis nor between experimental conditions (massage 18.7 ± 4.1 vs 18.2 ± 4.1; pseudo massage 19.1 ± 4.0 vs 8.3 ± 3.8; rest 19.0 ± 4.0 vs 18.7 ± 3.9 cm). There were also no statistical differences in the TQR results between experimental conditions (massage 16.2 ± 4.3; pseudo massage 16.4 ± 3.9; rest 15.9 ± 2.6 ua). Both massage and pseudo massage did not affect performance on vertical jump and TQR.
Effect of Dust Storm Intensity Variations on Total Path Attenuation Prediction

This paper proposes a novel dust-storm total path attenuation prediction model. This model is formulated as a function of specific attenuation (dB/km) and the effective distance, which considers the non-uniform dust storm intensity variations throughout the link. The effective distance is obtained as a combination of the total link distance and the reduction factor. The reduction factor is developed based on the modeled 2-D structure of the observed dust storm characteristics. A measurement campaign of atmospheric characteristics, their properties, and effects on several microwave links operated in Khartoum-Sudan was conducted. In an earlier report, an empirical dust storm attenuation prediction model was proposed based on short-distance links by assuming uniform dust storm intensity variations. However, it was observed that the dust intensity varies with the distance, which affects total attenuation, and this issue is not addressed yet. One year measurement on the 6.2 km and 7.6 km long microwave links operating at 21.2 GHz and 14.5 GHz are used to validate the proposed dust storm total path attenuation model.
Internationalization of Higher Education: Performance Assessment and Indicators

This paper provides a conceptual overview of the internation‑ alization of higher education and presents a set of performance indicators for assessing internationalization. It begins by locating internationalization within the context of globalization and dis‑ cussing the impact of globalization on tertiary education. The paper continues with overviews of the concepts of performance assessment performance indicators and a performance assess‑ ment model. It then presents a review of the global literature on internationalization at the higher education level. The center‑ piece of the paper is the author's internationalization model consisting of ten key performance categories and the related performance indicators. The paper concludes with the observa‑ tion that the internationalization of higher education is a com‑ plex process and represents a major educational reform.
Transport and Toxicity of Methylmercury-Cysteine in Cultured BeWo Cells

Mercury is a heavy metal toxicant that is prevalent throughout the environment. Organic forms of mercury, such as methylmercury (MeHg), can cross the placenta and can lead to lasting detrimental effects in the fetus. The toxicological effects of MeHg on the placenta itself have not been clearly defined. Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to assess the transport of MeHg into placental syncytiotrophoblasts and to characterize the mechanisms by which MeHg exerts its toxic effects. Cultured placental syncytiotrophoblasts (BeWo) were used for these studies. The transport of radioactive MeHg was measured to identify potential mechanisms involved in the uptake of this compound. The toxicological effects of MeHg on BeWo cells were determined by assessing visible pathological change, autophagy, mitochondrial viability, and oxidative stress. The findings of this study suggest that MeHg compounds are transported into BeWo cells primarily by sodium-independent amino acid carriers and organic anion transporters. The MeHg altered mitochondrial function and viability, decreased mitophagy and autophagy, and increased oxidative stress. Exposure to higher concentrations of MeHg inhibited the ability of cells to protect against MeHg-induced injury. The findings show that MeHg is directly toxic to syncytiotrophoblasts and may lead to disruptions in the fetal/maternal transfer of nutrients and wastes.
A Bibliometric Overview of IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems (2000–2021)

The IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transport Systems was founded in 2000 to enhance the sharing of international research on theoretical and practical technology developments in the ITS field. Since then, it has become a leading journal in the field and has attracted a high caliber of multi-disciplinary authors and publications. In recognition of twenty plus years of contributions to the field, this paper analyses the evolution of the journal over its lifetime for the period 2000–2021. A bibliometric analysis is conducted on 3,428 peer-reviewed publications (articles and reviews) using data collected from Core Collection Database of Web of Science. The paper identifies the most influential and cited articles and their impacts on the development of research in the ITS field. The analysis also includes detailed information on top leading authors, their organizations and countries where the research was funded and developed. The analysis shows how the growing interest and diversity of transport technology topics has led to an increase in the number and quality of publications in journal over the past twenty plus years. A visualization of bibliographic coupling, co-authorship and keywords analysis is also presented using the VOSviewer software leading to insightful findings regarding the journal’s impact and standing in this field of research.
Effects of Image Processing Operations on Adversarial Noise and Their Use in Detecting and Correcting Adversarial Images

SUMMARY Deep neural networks (DNNs) have achieved excellent performance on several tasks and have been widely applied in both academia and industry. However, DNNs are vulnerable to adversarial machine learning attacks in which noise is added to the input to change the networks’ output. Consequently, DNN-based mission-critical applications such as those used in self-driving vehicles have reduced reliability and could cause severe accidents and damage. Moreover, adversarial examples could be used to poison DNN training data, resulting in corruptions of trained models. Besides the need for detecting adversarial examples, correcting them is important for restoring data and system functionality to normal. We have developed methods for detecting and correcting adversarial images that use multiple image processing operations with multiple parameter values. For detection, we devised a statistical-based method that outperforms the feature squeezing method. For correction, we devised a method that uses for the ﬁrst time two levels of correction. The ﬁrst level is label correction, with the focus on restoring the adversarial images’ original predicted labels (for use in the current task). The second level is image correction, with the focus on both the correctness and quality of the corrected images (for use in the current and other tasks). Our experiments demonstrated that the correction method could correct nearly 90% of the adversarial images created by classical adversarial attacks and a ﬀ ected only about 2% of the normal images.
Dune(s): Fiction, history, and science on the Oregon coast

What connects the sci-fi book Dune with coastal dunes and geoengineering? The answer lies in humans and their world-making activities. This paper proposes an innovative approach to coastal dunes as hybrid environments by analyzing the dunes stabilization programs developed on the US Pacific Coast. It looks into the shifting sands of the Oregon coast and how they influenced Frank Herbert to write his novel, why local communities and federal authorities were interested in fixing the moving dunes and how these works ended up having unexpected consequences. It explores how human features acting as forcing mechanisms on beach-dune systems caused changes that turned into controlling influences in their own right, creating new environments and concerns. The paper ends with a reflection on how fiction and the history of dunes can be used to critically think about the anthropocentric hubris of building futures by geoengineering the planet for environmental repair.
Calibration Method of Accelerometer Based on Rotation Principle Using Double Turntable Centrifuge

For linear accelerometers, calibration with a precision centrifuge is a key technology, and the input acceleration imposed on the accelerometer should be accurately obtained in the calibration. However, there are often errors in the installation of sample that make the calibration inaccurate. To solve installation errors and obtain the input acceleration in the calibration of the accelerometer, a calibration method based on the rotation principle using a double turntable centrifuge is proposed in this work. The key operation is that the sub-turntable is rotated to make the input axis of the accelerometer perpendicular to the direction of the centripetal acceleration vector. Models of installation errors of angle and radius were built. Based on these models, the static radius and input acceleration can be obtained accurately, and the calibration of the scale factor, nonlinearity and asymmetry can be implemented. Using this method, measurements of the MEMS accelerometer with a range of ±30 g were carried out. The results show that the discrepancy of performance obtained from different installation positions was smaller than 100 ppm after calibrating the input acceleration. Moreover, the results using this method were consistent with those using the back-calculation method. These results demonstrate that the effectiveness of our proposed method was confirmed. This method can measure the static radius directly eliminating the installation errors of angle and radius, and it simplifies the accelerometer calibration procedure.
Investigation of Chemical Constituents of Eranthis longistipitata (Ranunculaceae): Coumarins and Furochromones

Aqueous-ethanol extracts (70%) from the leaves of Eranthis longistipitata Regel. (Ranunculaceae Juss.)—collected from natural populations of Kyrgyzstan—were studied by liquid chromatography with high-resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS). There was no variation of the metabolic profiles among plants that were collected from different populations. More than 160 compounds were found in the leaves, of which 72 were identified to the class level and 58 to the individual-compound level. The class of flavonoids proved to be the most widely represented (19 compounds), including six aglycones [quercetin, kaempferol, aromadendrin, 6-methoxytaxifolin, phloretin, and (+)-catechin] and mono- and diglycosides (the other 13 compounds). In the analyzed samples of E. longistipitata, 14 fatty acid–related compounds were identified, but coumarins and furochromones that were found in E. longistipitata were the most interesting result; furochromones khelloside, khellin, visnagin, and cimifugin were found in E. longistipitata for the first time. Coumarins 5,7-dihydroxy-4-methylcoumarin, scoparone, fraxetin, and luvangetin and furochromones methoxsalen, 5-O-methylvisammioside, and visamminol-3′-O-glucoside were detected for the first time in the genus Eranthis Salisb. For all the above compounds, the structural formulas are given. Furthermore, detailed information (with structural formulas) is provided on the diversity of chromones and furochromones in other representatives of Eranthis. The presence of chromones in plants of the genus Eranthis confirms its closeness to the genus Actaea L. because chromones are synthesized by normal physiological processes only in these members of the Ranunculaceae family.
Characterizing the Alteration in Rumen Microbiome and Carbohydrate-Active Enzymes Profile with Forage of Muskoxen Rumen through Comparative Metatranscriptomics

Muskox (Ovibos moschatus), as the biggest herbivore in the High Arctic, has been enduring the austere arctic nutritional conditions and has evolved to ingest and digest scarce and high lignified forages to support the growth and reproduce, implying probably harbor a distinct microbial reservoir for the deconstruction of plant biomass. Therefore, metagenomics approach was applied to characterize the rumen microbial community and understand the alteration in rumen microbiome of muskoxen fed either triticale straw or brome hay. The difference in the structure of microbial communities including bacteria, archaea, fungi, and protozoa between the two forages was observed at the taxonomic level of genus. Further, although the highly abundant phylotypes in muskoxen rumen fed either triticale straw or brome hay were almost the same, the selective enrichment different phylotypes for fiber degrading, soluble substrates fermenting, electron and hydrogen scavenging through methanogenesis, acetogenesis, propionogenesis, and sulfur-reducing was also noticed. Specifically, triticale straw with higher content of fiber, cellulose selectively enriched more lignocellulolytic taxa and electron transferring taxa, while brome hay with higher nitrogen content selectively enriched more families and genera for degradable substrates-digesting. Intriguingly, the carbohydrate-active enzyme profile suggested an over representation and diversity of putative glycoside hydrolases (GHs) in the animals fed on triticale straw. The majority of the cellulases belonged to fiver GH families (i.e., GH5, GH6, GH9, GH45, and GH48) and were primarily synthesized by Ruminococcus, Piromyces, Neocallimastix, and Fibrobacter. Abundance of major genes coding for hemicellulose digestion was higher than cellulose mainly including GH8, GH10, GH16, GH26, and GH30, and these enzymes were produced by members of the genera Fibrobacter, Ruminococcus, and Clostridium. Oligosaccharides were mainly of the GH1, GH2, GH3, and GH31 types and were associated with the genera Prevotella and Piromyces. Our results strengthen metatranscriptomic evidence in support of the understanding of the microbial community and plant polysaccharide response to changes in the feed type and host animal. The study also establishes these specific microbial consortia procured from triticale straw group can be used further for efficient plant biomass hydrolysis.
Majority-Minority Boards of Directors and Decision Making: The Effects of Homophily on Lending Decisions

In this study, I examine the role racial minorities in the boardroom can play in reducing social injustice by promoting more equal access to mortgage credit to minority households. I develop a simple theoretical model that posits directors who are racial minorities provide the credit unions they govern with a perspective that shapes lenders’ trust of minority applicants. This trust is shaped by homophily and the tendency of individuals to prefer interactions with similar individuals. Using mortgage loan data from a cross-section of credit unions in the United States from 185,446 applications, I find that credit unions where the majority of board members are minorities are less likely to reject a similarly qualified minority applicant than their counterparts. Governance by minority directors significantly reduces the effects of discrimination faced by minority applicants. The board’s effect is strongest in minority neighborhoods and where the homophily is stronger between directors and applicants.