Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Innovation through the prism of companies using direct marketing. An empirical example from Bulgaria

The current article presents empirical results on the frequency and type of innovations applied by companies in Bulgaria that are using direct marketing. The research is provoked by the dynamic and changing nature of direct marketing. As one of the main characteristics of direct marketing is the absence of intermediaries, the companies should constantly develop their knowledge and competences so they can improve their contact and communication with their customers in order to apply correctly and profitably the three approached associated with direct marketing. They are: the personalization in dealing with customers, the establishment of longterm relationships and the generation of customer’s loyalty, and they happen through different media. An appropriate application of these approaches requires collection, record and analysis of information which is being more and more executed as an automated process. The different and new types of media, in turn, require methods and understanding that further develop or eliminate existing practices, beliefs, and technologies. In this context, a theoretical analysis of innovations is being first conducted. After having a structured division of innovations by their types a brief questionnaire is being developed. As a result, the report summarizes the intersections of the theory with the established practice in 97 companies in Bulgaria.
Bayesian analysis of macroeconomic variables on national savings

Abstract Multicollinearity brings obstacle to estimation of regression models. A major stumbling block of the most classical method of estimation of regression model is that it is indeterminate in the presence of extreme perfect multicollinearity. This study examined the impact of some macroeconomic variables on National savings of the Nigerian economy. Since majority of these macroeconomic variables are highly correlated, the use of classical methods may be disastrously inappropriate. Hence, the Bayesian analysis with conjugate priors are used to explore the relationship between the national savings and these correlated macroeconomic variables of Nigerian economy in order to effectively handle the problem of multicollinearity. The Bayesian method using the Zellner’s prior handled the problem of multicollinearity efficiently.
Studying faculty members’ readiness to use Shaqra University e-learning platform

Received Jan 20, 2021 Revised Jun 6, 2021 Accepted Jun 13, 2021 In Saudi Arabia, most universities are seeking to implement e-learning to improve education access and processes. Although some universities have already implemented e-learning, most have not. Shaqra University is aiming to implement an e-learning system. Therefore, through the use of a questionnaire, this study examines faculty members’ readiness to use the elearning platform and assesses their readiness based on gender differences and user experience. Factors considered were usage self-efficacy, self-confidence in dealing with e-learning, Attitude towards e-learning and educational needs towards e-learning. The results revealed that, based on all these factors, faculty members were ready to use the platform of e-learning. There were no differences between male and female participants in self-efficacy in using information and communications technology, self-confidence in e-learning and educational needs towards e-learning. The females’ mean score was significantly higher than the males’ mean score. Between faculty members with no experience and faculty members’ who were experienced in e-learning, user experience was significantly different for self-efficacy of using information and communications technology, self-confidence in e-learning and attitude towards e-learning. These results revealed that faculty members are ready to use a platform of e-learning and these results may help decision makers in Shaqra University to successfuly adopt an e-learning platform.
Reproductive Suicide: Similar Mechanisms of Aging in C. elegans and Pacific Salmon

In some species of salmon, reproductive maturity triggers the development of massive pathology resulting from reproductive effort, leading to rapid post-reproductive death. Such reproductive death, which occurs in many semelparous organisms (with a single bout of reproduction), can be prevented by blocking reproductive maturation, and this can increase lifespan dramatically. Reproductive death is often viewed as distinct from senescence in iteroparous organisms (with multiple bouts of reproduction) such as humans. Here we review the evidence that reproductive death occurs in C. elegans and discuss what this means for its use as a model organism to study aging. Inhibiting insulin/IGF-1 signaling and germline removal suppresses reproductive death and greatly extends lifespan in C. elegans, but can also extend lifespan to a small extent in iteroparous organisms. We argue that mechanisms of senescence operative in reproductive death exist in a less catastrophic form in iteroparous organisms, particularly those that involve costly resource reallocation, and exhibit endocrine-regulated plasticity. Thus, mechanisms of senescence in semelparous organisms (including plants) and iteroparous ones form an etiological continuum. Therefore understanding mechanisms of reproductive death in C. elegans can teach us about some mechanisms of senescence that are operative in iteroparous organisms.
Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) and Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici interaction. A review

The interaction between plants and pathogens is a very dynamic and complex relationship that also includes a high degree of specifi city, and it is precisely this last characteristic which triggers such important responses in the survival of one or the other. The pathosystem formed by tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) and Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici (Fol) has been the subject of multiple studies due to the importance of the vegetable worldwide and for the economic and ecological impact of the fungus responsible for the vascular wilt disease in tomato, causing losses that go up to 100%. One way to fi nd alternatives for the management of any pathosystem is to know the actors involved and the mechanisms that govern the interaction through technological and scientifi c advances that clearly show how the interaction develops on a genetic level. This review collects the information from different scientifi c sources with focus on the knowledge of the fungus, tomato cultivation and plant defense applied to this pathosystem, as well as the molecular mechanisms.
Ketone Bodies in the Brain Beyond Fuel Metabolism: From Excitability to Gene Expression and Cell Signaling

Ketone bodies are metabolites that replace glucose as the main fuel of the brain in situations of glucose scarcity, including prolonged fasting, extenuating exercise, or pathological conditions such as diabetes. Beyond their role as an alternative fuel for the brain, the impact of ketone bodies on neuronal physiology has been highlighted by the use of the so-called “ketogenic diets,” which were proposed about a century ago to treat infantile seizures. These diets mimic fasting by reducing drastically the intake of carbohydrates and proteins and replacing them with fat, thus promoting ketogenesis. The fact that ketogenic diets have such a profound effect on epileptic seizures points to complex biological effects of ketone bodies in addition to their role as a source of ATP. In this review, we specifically focus on the ability of ketone bodies to regulate neuronal excitability and their effects on gene expression to respond to oxidative stress. Finally, we also discuss their capacity as signaling molecules in brain cells.
Clemastine Fumarate Attenuates Myocardial Ischemia Reperfusion Injury Through Inhibition of Mast Cell Degranulation

Mast cell (MC) activation is associated with myocardial ischemia reperfusion injury (MIRI). Suppression of MC degranulation might be a target of anti-MIRI. This study aimed to determine whether clemastine fumarate (CLE) could attenuate MIRI by inhibiting MC degranulation. A rat ischemia and reperfusion (I/R) model was established by ligating the left anterior descending coronary artery for 30 min followed by reperfusion for 120 min. Compound 48/80 (C48/80) was used to promote MC degranulation. The protective effect of CLE by inhibiting MC degranulation on I/R injury was detected by cardiac function, 2,3,5-triphenyl tetrazolium chloride (TTC) staining, hematoxylin-eosin (HE) staining, arrhythmia, and myocardial enzyme detection. Inflammatory factor mRNA levels, such as TNF-α, interleukin (IL)-1β, and IL-6, were detected. Cultured RBL-2H3 mast cells were pretreated with CLE and subjected to C48/80 treatment to determine whether CLE suppressed MC degranulation. Degranulation of MCs was visualized using tryptase release, Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8), and cell toluidine blue (TB) staining. RBL cells were conditionally cultured with H9C2 cells to explore whether CLE could reverse the apoptosis of cardiomyocytes induced by MC degranulation. Apoptosis of H9C2 cells was detected by CCK-8, the LDH Cytotoxicity Assay Kit (LDH), TUNEL staining, and protein expression of BAX and Bcl-2. We found that CLE pretreatment further inhibited cardiac injury manifested by decreased infarct size, histopathological changes, arrhythmias, MC degranulation, and myocardial enzyme levels, improving cardiac function compared with that in the I/R group. C48/80 combined with I/R exacerbated these changes. However, pretreatment with CLE for C48/80 combined with I/R significantly reversed these injuries. In addition, CLE pretreatment improved the vitality of RBL cells and reduced tryptase release in vitro. Similarly, the supernatant of RBL cells pretreated with CLE decreased the cytotoxicity, TUNEL-positive cell rate, and BAX expression of conditioned H9C2 cells and increased the cell vitality and expression of Bcl-2. These results suggested that pretreatment with CLE confers protection against I/R injury by inhibiting MC degranulation.
Immunopotentiation by Lymph-Node Targeting of a Malaria Transmission-Blocking Nanovaccine

A successful malaria transmission blocking vaccine (TBV) requires the induction of a high antibody titer that leads to abrogation of parasite traversal of the mosquito midgut following ingestion of an infectious bloodmeal, thereby blocking the cascade of secondary human infections. Previously, we developed an optimized construct UF6b that elicits an antigen-specific antibody response to a neutralizing epitope of Anopheline alanyl aminopeptidase N (AnAPN1), an evolutionarily conserved pan-malaria mosquito midgut-based TBV target, as well as established a size-controlled lymph node targeting biodegradable nanoparticle delivery system that leads to efficient and durable antigen-specific antibody responses using the model antigen ovalbumin. Herein, we demonstrate that co-delivery of UF6b with the adjuvant CpG oligodeoxynucleotide immunostimulatory sequence (ODN ISS) 1018 using this biodegradable nanoparticle vaccine delivery system generates an AnAPN1-specific immune response that blocks parasite transmission in a standard membrane feeding assay. Importantly, this platform allows for antigen dose-sparing, wherein lower antigen payloads elicit higher-quality antibodies, therefore less antigen-specific IgG is needed for potent transmission-reducing activity. By targeting lymph nodes directly, the resulting immunopotentiation of AnAPN1 suggests that the de facto assumption that high antibody titers are needed for a TBV to be successful needs to be re-examined. This nanovaccine formulation is stable at -20°C storage for at least 3 months, an important consideration for vaccine transport and distribution in regions with poor healthcare infrastructure. Together, these data support further development of this nanovaccine platform for malaria TBVs.
Dynamic Microbiome Changes Reveal the Effect of 1-Methylcyclopropene Treatment on Reducing Post-harvest Fruit Decay in “Doyenne du Comice” Pear

Pathogen-induced decay is one of the most common causes of fruit loss, resulting in substantial economic loss and posing a health risk to humans. As an ethylene action inhibitor, 1-methylcyclopropene (1-MCP) can significantly reduce fruit decay, but its effect on fruit pathogens remains unclear. Herein, the change in microbial community structure was analyzed using the high-throughput sequencing technology, and characteristics related to fruit quality were determined after 1-MCP (1.0 M l L–1) treatment in “Doyenne du Comiceis” pear fruit during storage at ambient temperature. Overall, 1-MCP was highly effective in reducing disease incidence and induced multiple changes of the fungal and bacterial microbiota. At day 15, the microbial diversity of fungi or bacteria was reduced significantly in the control fruit (non-treated with 1-MCP), which had the most severe decay incidence. For fungi, in addition to Alternaria being the most abundant in both 1-MCP treatment (59.89%) and control (40.18%), the abundances of Botryosphaeria (16.75%), Penicillium (8.81%), and Fusarium (6.47%) increased significantly with the extension of storage time. They became the primary pathogens to cause fruit decay in control, but they were markedly decreased in 1-MCP treatment, resulting in reduced disease incidence. For bacteria, the abundance of Gluconobacter (50.89%) increased dramatically at day 15 in the control fruit, showing that it also played a crucial role in fruit decay. In addition, Botryosphaeria, Fusarium fungi, and Massilia, Kineococcus bacteria were identified as biomarkers to distinguish 1-MCP treatment and control using Random Forest analysis. The redundancy analysis (RDA) result showed that the amount of Botryosphaeria, Penicillium, and Fusarium were positively correlated with disease incidence and respiration rate of pear fruits while negatively correlated with fruit firmness. This investigation is the first comprehensive analysis of the microbiome response to 1-MCP treatment in post-harvest pear fruit, and reveals the relationship between fruit decay and microbial composition in pear fruit.
LARGE-SCALE SUBSIDENCE GEOHAZARD MONITORING WITH SENTINEL-1 SAR INTERFEROMETRY IN CENTRAL LISHUI (CHINA)

Ground subsidence has become a serious problem along with the rapid urban expansions. Compared with traditional point-based ground survey techniques (GPS, levelling measurement and in-situ sensors), SAR Interferometry are quite appreciated for large-scale subsidence monitoring with long term and high accuracy. In this study, we focused on large-scale subsidence geohazard monitoring of central Lishui (China) and extracted subsidence velocity map of Liandu District. 57 Sentinle-1 SAR images from April 2019 to September 2020 are analysed with SBAS-InSAR technique. The overall subsidence of Liandu is significantly correlated with the distributions of construction engineering sites with displacement velocity of approximately 30-60 mm/yr. Various types of urban ground subsidence could be identified, including the overall settlement of large construction site, the slope deformation of construction excavation, significant settlement of refuse landfill and mountain crossing tunnel, and small deformation of highvoltage towers in mountainous areas. Our results indicated that the rapid urban developments are the dominant impact factors of subsidence in Lishui, China. * Corresponding author
Optimization of cereal Blend (wheat and yellow maize flours (Zea maize)) enriched 
with African walnut (Tetracarpidium conophorum) protein isolate for cookie making

Article history: Received: February 24, 2020 Accepted: October 3, 2020 This study examined the effect of African walnut protein isolate, wheat and yellow maize flours on the general acceptability of cookie production. In this study, blends of African walnut protein isolate, wheat and yellow maize flours were studied in a completely randomized design assessment of the proximate composition. The variables were wheat flour (30-50%), yellow maize flour (20-30%) and African walnut protein isolate (10-20%) to generate 20 composite blends. The proximate composition and functional properties of blends and flours were determined using standard methods. Three blends of samples 50.00 g wheat flour, 30.00 g yellow maize flour, 20.00 g African walnut protein isolate; 45.24 g wheat flour, 28.27 g yellow maize flour, 26.48 g African walnut protein isolate and 45.24 g wheat flour, 37.79 g yellow maize flour and 16.97 g African walnut protein isolate as assessed by the highest protein and fiber and low fat contents, were selected from optimization results of proximate composition for production and sensory evaluation of cookies. The proximate composition of flours revealed that African walnut protein isolate was significantly higher in protein than other flours. Fat in African walnut protein isolate was the least, while crude fiber and carbohydrate contents were not detected in African walnut protein isolate. Functional analysis revealed that yellow maize flour had the highest value in water absorption capacity; yellow maize flour and African walnut protein isolate had the highest oil absorption capacity, while African walnut protein isolate scored the least in bulk density. The sample 45.24 g wheat flour, 28.27 g yellow maize flour and 26.48 g African walnut protein isolate had the highest protein and ash, with the lowest fat content among the blends. However, cookie prepared from sample 45.24 g wheat flour, 37.79 g yellow maize flour and 16.97 g African walnut protein isolate had the best overall acceptability. However, the study recommends the flour proportion of sample 45.24 g wheat flour, 37.79 g yellow maize flour and 16.97 g African walnut protein isolate in cookie production by establishing the inclusion in Nigerian food industry and as a way of reducing or alleviate malnutrition.
SCALE-AWARENESS FOR MORE ACCURATE OBJECT DETECTION USING MODIFIED SINGLE SHOT DETECTORS

Abstract. Object detection performance is directly related to the apparent size of the object to be detected, thus most state-of-the-art algorithms dedicate different detection heads for each object size. In this work, we propose an end-to-end pipeline to adapt a single-shot object detector (SSD) to the underlying object size distribution of the target detection domain. Our contributions are the adjustments to the detector architecture and the introduction of a novel batch sampling method. To validate the effect of our method, we chose a task-specific highly specialized object detection and classification dataset of tomato fruits that apart from bounding box information, it also contains class information for three ripening stages of each tomato fruit.More specifically, the major motivation and contributions are discussed in relation to the recent bibliography. Next, an extensive analysis of our pipeline is presented, where the concept of scale alignment is thoroughly presented along with the novel sampling method. Following the results of a series of experiments, we conclude that our pipeline significantly improves over the “off-the-shelf” base single-shot detector and its detection performance is comparable to more elaborate algorithms, especially if we measure detection performance slightly disregarding box localization. Lastly, we include a stratified ablation study in the closing sections where we measure the impact of each step along our proposed SSD adaptation pipeline.
Fungal Diversity in Droppings of Spot- Billed Pelican, Pelecanus philippensis

https://doi.org/10.33745/ijzi.2021. v07i01.020 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Abstract: Birds are potential vectors of some diseases as their droppings pose public health risk and cause illness. Dust containing dry faeces after inhaling can infects humans. The prevalence of fungi from the faeces of birds in wetlands has not been previously determined. Hence, the present study was carried out to isolate and identify different fungal species present in the droppings of spot-billed pelican, Pelecanus philippensis. Among the fungal species identified Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus niger and Aspergillus fumigatus were found to be dominating.
Elementary school children’s perspectives on distributive justice in trade

Abstract Although issues of global justice are increasingly considered an important topic to include in elementary school curricula, little is known about children’s perspectives on complex distributive justice issues. This exploratory study investigated children’s understanding of a fair economic distribution between the workers involved in international trade. As part of a classroom project, in mixed-aged groups, 57 elementary school children were invited to discuss how they would fairly divide 30 coins among five workers involved in the banana trade. Results showed that half of the groups decided for equal distributions, based on arguments of strict equality, equal work, equal value, or interdependence. The other half of the groups decided for unequal distributions, based on the different contributions, and costs and profits. In each group, children generally agreed or accepted others’ ideas. Findings provide preliminary insights on how elementary school children collectively reason about distributive justice concerning a complex global issue.
Mechanical properties and microstructural characteristics of rotating arc-gas metal arc welded carbon steel joints

Abstract The main problem associated with high thickness carbon steel plate's narrow range or “V” groove welding in conventional welding processes is the sagging of the molten pool due to gravity, which in turn leads to defects formation and deteriorates mechanical properties. This problem could be overcome by the rotating arc gas metal arc welding (RA-GMAW) technique. This investigation aims to evaluate mechanical properties and metallurgical characteristics of high thickness IS2062 Gr-B carbon steel joints welded by RA-GMAW technique. The experimental results show that RA-GMAW joint exhibited higher (598 MPa) tensile strength, higher hardness (220 HV) at weld metal region, and lower impact toughness (137 J) than the unwelded base metal. This is due to the presence of fine acicular ferrite and widmanstatten ferrite matrix mixed with fine lamellar pearlite microstructure in the weld metal region.
Electron mobility dependence on neutron irradiation fluence in heavily irradiated silicon

An increase of neutron irradiation fluence caused a decrease of Si radiation detector efficiency that was exceptionally well seen at 1017 neutron/cm2 fluence when the observed I–V characteristic of p-n junction under forward bias and under reverse bias became similar. Therefore the investigation of free carrier mobility could be a key experiment to understand the change of heavily irradiated silicon. The electron mobility was investigated by magnetoresistance means in microstrip silicon samples at temperature range T = 200–276 K. The analysis included the free carrier scattering by phonons, ionized impurities, dipoles and clusters and a contribution of each process was found by fitting the mobility dependence on temperature. The analysis of experimental data clearly demonstrated that the applied model did not explain the mobility in the samples irradiated to the highest fluence. Therefore a new concept of carrier transport is needed, and, as a conclusion, it could be stated that Si irradiated above 1016 cm–2 fluence (and up to 1020 cm–2) is a disordered material with the clusters.