Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MicroRNA as a potential diagnostic and prognostic biomarker in brain gliomas: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Introduction Brain neoplasms and central nervous system (CNS) disorders, particularly gliomas, have shown a notable increase in incidence over the last three decades, posing significant diagnostic and therapeutic challenges. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have emerged as promising biomarkers due to their regulatory role in gene expression, offering potential enhancements in glioma diagnosis and prognosis. Methods This systematic review and meta-analysis, adhering to PRISMA guidelines, included 25 studies for diagnostic accuracy and 99 for prognostic analysis, published until August 27th, 2023. Studies were identified through comprehensive searches of PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus databases. Inclusion criteria encompassed peer-reviewed original research providing sensitivity, specificity, and area under the curve (AUC) for miRNAs in glioma diagnosis, as well as survival outcomes with hazard ratios (HRs) or mean survival. Results and discussion Meta-analysis demonstrated miRNAs’ high diagnostic accuracy, with a pooled sensitivity of 0.821 (95% CI: 0.781–0.855) and specificity of 0.831 (95% CI: 0.792–0.865), yielding an AUC of 0.893. Subgroup analysis by specimen type revealed consistent accuracy across blood, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), and tissue samples. Our results also showed miRNAs can be potential prognostic biomarkers. miRNAs showed significant associations with overall survival (OS) (pooled HR: 2.0221; 95% CI: 1.8497–2.2105), progression-free survival (PFS) (pooled HR: 2.4248; 95% CI: 1.8888–3.1128), and disease-free survival (DFS) (pooled HR: 1.8973; 95% CI: 1.1637–3.0933) in tissue specimens. These findings underscore miRNAs’ potential as valuable biomarkers for improving glioma diagnosis and prognosis, offering insights for enhancing clinical decision-making and patient outcomes.
Improvements in Hazard & Life Cycle Impact Assesment Method for Metals in Freshwaters - Addressing Issues of Metal, Speciation, Fate, Exposure and Ecotoxicity

Methods of chemical hazard ranking and toxic impact assessment estimate fate and toxicity assuming the chemical exists in dissolved and particulate phases and, for metals, that all dissolved species are equally bioavailable. This treatment of metals, similar to organic chemicals, introduced a significant error in their estimates of hazard ranking since metal bioavailability and ecotoxicity are related to truly dissolved phase and specifically free metal ion within it. My thesis addressed this concern by developing a new method that introduced Bioavailability Factor (BF) to the calculation of Comparative Toxicity Potentials (CTPs) for hazard ranking of chemicals; also known as Characterization Factors for use in Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA). First, the metal speciation/complexation was incorporated into fate calculations by loosely coupling commercial geochemical metal speciation model, WHAM, with a multimedia fate model, USEtox TM , which is originally designed to calculate CTPs for organic chemicals. Second, Biotic Ligand Model (BLM) was used to calculate the bioavailability-corrected adverse toxic effects of metals.
Laminar-turbulent patterns with rough walls

Oblique large-scale laminar-turbulent patterns are found near the onset of turbulence in subcritical planar shear flows. Their robustness to the introduction of wall roughness is investigated numerically in plane Couette flow as a function of the Reynolds number and the roughness height. The effect of roughness is considered on either one or two walls and is modeled numerically using a parametric model suggested recently [Busse and Sandham, J. Fluid Mech. 712, 169 (2012)]. In the case of two rough walls, the patterns are robust for a mean roughness height up to 10% of the wall gap, but the flow shows larger turbulent fractions with increasing roughness height. In the case of one rough wall only, the trend is similar, but the onset Reynolds number decreases faster with increasing roughness height. Roughness height levels above 15% of the wall gap give rise to new coherent structures, including turbulent bands with nonoblique interfaces. The energetic efficiency of the various regimes is investigated by monitoring the friction factor versus the friction Reynolds number. The mechanisms allowing for streamwise localization of the stripe patterns are discussed, with or without roughness, in the light of various low-order models.
Correspondance entre formations et emplois : cas des diplômés de la FSHSE/ULSHB

Correspondence between training and jobs: Case of the FSHSE/ULSHB diplomas. Purpose : The main objective of this paper was to identify the factors that are likely to influence FSHSE graduates to access a job related to the initial training field. Design/methodology/approach : The data used in this study came from a personal survey of two hundred and three (203) FSHSE graduates. The methodological approach relied mainly on the construction and estimation of a multinomial logistic regression model for factor identification. Findings : The results obtained by estimating the multinomial logistic model revealed a number of factors explaining graduates’ access to jobs corresponding to their initial training. These factors are: training stream, type of diploma, age group, internship, place of residence, parents ’ social background. Originality/value : As a theoretical contribution, this study enriches the theoretical literature supported by theorists of human capital and the conclusions that have been put forward in other empirical works. From a methodological point of view, the originality of this study lies in the fact that it focuses on the problem of matching initial training to jobs in the specific case of the FSHSE. In addition to the enriching theoretical and methodological contributions, our research also enables us to make proposals to FSHSE managers and to enlighten employment decision-makers.
Pengaruh Lokasi, Persepsi Harga dan Citra Merek Terhadap Keputusan Pembelian di Toko Daging Nusantara Kranggan

The purpose of this study to examine how the influence of location, price perception and brand image on consumer purchasing decisions at Toko Daging Nusantara Kranggan. This survey was conducted on consumers who purchased Toko Daging Nusantara products during April-May 2023. In this study using quantitative methods. The primary data of this study was collected through questionnaires using the accidential sampling method, with a total of 100 respondents. The collected data is then tested for validity and reliability. Data analysis involved multiple linear regression analysis, correlation coefficients and determination coefficients using SPSS software version 25. The findings of this study show that price perception and brand image have a partial influence on purchasing decisions. However, locations have no partial influence on purchasing decisions. Overall, the study's findings suggest that these three variables simultaneously influence purchasing decision.
Use of modern contraceptive methods and associated determinants among secondary school adolescents in Ilala municipality

Background: Adolescence is a period between childhood and adulthood when young people undergo major physical, emotional and social development, with significant impact on their sexual and reproductive health, it cutters the age between 10 to 19 years. Some of them fail to overcome the challenges of this important stage and eventually miss the opportunity to realise their full potential in life. About 13% of women and 7% men have been reported to have had sex at age 15 or below. There is inadequate knowledge and use of modern family planning methods. Currently the rate of contraceptive use among in school adolescents is not known. Objectives: To determine the magnitude of use of modern family planning methods and associated determinants among secondary school Adolescents in Ilala Municipality. Methods: This was a cross sectional study design among secondary school Adolescents in Ilala Municipality of Dar es Salaam. Structured Questionnaire was used to collect data from the adolescents and a check list for assessment of health facilities youth friendliness was used. Random samples of 273 adolescents and 8 health facilities were included. Results: The overall mean age of the participants was 16 years with male significantly older then females (mean age 17.3 versus 16.6, p<0.001). Of those interviewed, 72(26.4%) reported to have had sex and only 15.8% of them reported to have used a modern contraceptive method. Appropriate knowledge about danger period for pregnancy was expressed by 42(15.4%) of adolescents. Poor access to family planning method was reported to be due to lack of awareness about their reproductive rights and afraid of meeting the elderly/older providers A total of 112(41.0%) adolescents reported to have not discussed any topic about adolescent reproductive health with parents/caregivers and only 15.4% of adolescents had appropriate knowledge about danger period for pregnancy. Determinants of family planning use were having a mother, being aware of family planning methods, being knowledgeable on issues related to reproductive health social influence particularly use of FP by friends and discussing reproductive health issues with parents. A total of 263(96.3%) said there is a need
An Information-Expanding Network for Water Body Extraction Based on U-Net

Water body extraction is an important issue in flood surveillance and environmental protection. With the development of neural network, deep learning has been widely used in the water body extraction task because of its powerful feature extraction ability. Even so, most of existing deep learning networks only take into account the translation equivariance of convolution kernel for water body extraction. Actually, in terms of water body, its orientations imaged by optical sensor are usually various. So, when the orientated images are not well contained in the training set, the networks may yield some unsatisfactory extraction results. To solve this problem, in this letter, we propose an information-expanding network IE-Unet based on the traditional network U-net, where the rotation equivariant convolution, rotation-based channel attention mechanism, and the optimized Batchnorm are adopted jointly. To quantitatively evaluate its edge extraction capability, a new edge index average offset distance (AOD) is proposed as well. The experimental results on one public dataset of water body demonstrate the effectiveness of IE-Unet. Compared with the original U-net, the intersection over union (IOU) value of IE-Unet is increased by 7%, and the AOD value is reduced by 0.76.
Origami-Inspired Haptics: A Literature Review

Origami, the art of paper folding, addresses traditionally conflicting requirements for designing both powerful and low-cost haptic interfaces. As of today, there are no comprehensive reviews that cover origami-inspired haptic actuation, sensing, design processes, and fabrication. To fill this void, this paper summarizes existing origami-inspired haptic technologies in terms of workspace, degrees of freedom (DoF), power consumption, control methods, sensing, and actuation. The paper also presents an iterative design process for pattern generation and origami-inspired haptic characterization. Using this design process, we demonstrate a case study that involves the design, development, and evaluation of a novel syringe haptic interface for dental simulation. Our main findings suggest that origami-inspired haptics need more mathematically optimized and versatile design, as well as novel materials that offer a room for embedded sensing and actuation.
The effect of ocean acidification on plant-animal interactions in a Posidonia oceanica meadow

Ocean acidification may be one of the greatest challenges facing 'Society over the next SO- 100 years. In the Mediterranean Sea, meadows of the seagrass Posidonia oceanica play a pivotal role in coastal systems, providing shelter and food for a highly diversified plant and animal community, and nursery for several commercial species of fish and bivalves. This thesis aims to provide a broad overview of the effect of acidification on P. oceanica, and its associated community, through observation of seagrass meadows associated with subtidal CO2 vents off the Castello Aragonese, Ischia, Italy. Control (mean pH 8.1) and acidified (mean pH 7.8) stations were situated in seagrass meadows on both the north and south side of the Castello Aragonese. Research was concentrated into three main objectives; to investigate the effect of acidification on 1) plant structure and function, 2) invertebrate community dynamics, and 3) macroherbivore grazing pressure. Results suggested that P. oceanica and its associated community should be robust to levels of acidification projected for the end of this century. Seagrass density, invertebrate abundance, and P. oceanica grazing pressure all increased in response to acidification. Although a slight decrease in invertebrate diversity was observed in 'acidified stations, species richness was maintained. Increased grazing by the fish Salpa salpa was most highly correlated to a decrease in epiphytic algal cover and C:N content of the [eaves, and an increase seagrass density. Whilst fish may select leaves with low algal cover and C:N content, previous research suggests that increased shoot density is a response to high grazing pressure. The abundance of many groups of invertebrate taxa was positively correlated to shoot density, whilst decapods decreased during months of reduced canopy height, suggesting changes in P. oceanica condition variables, in response to acidification, may lead to a cascade of indirect effects which have positive or negative influences on the abundance of the associated invertebrate community. One of the most striking findings of this thesis was the ability of calcifying species to persevere, and even flourish in acidified conditions. This may be due to the complex nature of the seagrass, and high levels of photosynthesis, leading to local maintenance of pH microclimates. Secondly, the high degree of pH variability that naturally occurs in these shallow water habitats may result in organisms that are be better equipped to withstand pH variation. This research suggests that highly productive, non-calcifying, biogenic habitats, such as seagrass beds, may provide a refuge from OA, and highlights the importance of their conservation.
H2O2 promotes trimming-induced tillering by regulating energy supply and redox status in bermudagrass

Tillering/branching pattern plays a significant role in determining the structure and diversity of grass, and trimming has been found to induce tillering in turfgrass. Recently, it has been reported that hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) regulates axillary bud development. However, the role of H2O2 in trimming-induced tillering in bermudagrass, a kind of turfgrass, remains unclear. Our study unveils the significant impact of trimming on promoting the sprouting and growth of tiller buds in stolon nodes, along with an increase in the number of tillers in the main stem. This effect is accompanied by spatial-temporal changes in cytokinin and sucrose content, as well as relevant gene expression in axillary buds. In addition, the partial trimming of new-born tillers results in an increase in sucrose and starch reserves in their leaves, which can be attributed to the enhanced photosynthesis capacity. Importantly, trimming promotes a rapid H2O2 burst in the leaves of new-born tillers and axillary stolon buds. Furthermore, exogenous application of H2O2 significantly increases the number of tillers after trimming by affecting the expression of cytokinin-related genes, bolstering photosynthesis potential, energy reserves and antioxidant enzyme activity. Taken together, these results indicate that both endogenous production and exogenous addition of H2O2 enhance the inductive effects of trimming on the tillering process in bermudagrass, thus helping boost energy supply and maintain the redox state in newly formed tillers.
Tibetan Plateau Impacts on Global Dust Transport in the Upper Troposphere

Dust is a major component of atmospheric aerosol worldwide, greatly affecting regional and global climate. In this study dust aerosol optical depth (DAOD) and dust mass fluxes (DMF) were evaluated at different altitudes using measurements by the Cloud–Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) and ERA-Interim data from March through May (MAM) for the period 2007–16. Significantly higher upper-tropospheric (above ~8 km) dust loads and DMF downstream of the Tibetan Plateau (TP) relative to those over other major dust sources of the Northern Hemisphere were found during spring. A DMF magnitude of 1010 g integrated across a 2°-latitude segment during spring was estimated downstream of the TP in the upper troposphere. A dust belt can be clearly seen at altitudes higher than 6 km over the downwind direction of the TP at latitudes of around 30°–40°N, crossing the Pacific Ocean and extending to North America during spring. A pathway for transporting dust aerosols into the upper troposphere is proposed, as follows. Dust is uplifted to the midtroposphere over the source regions; then, frequent, deep, dry convection prevailing over the TP during spring can cause convective overshooting that uplifts the dust aerosols to the upper troposphere. The TP thus acts as a channel for transporting dust from the lower atmosphere to the upper troposphere, enabling the long-range zonal transport of dust around the Northern Hemisphere.
Immune Evasion of Mycoplasma gallisepticum: An Overview

Mycoplasma gallisepticum is one of the smallest self-replicating organisms. It causes chronic respiratory disease, leading to significant economic losses in poultry industry. Following M. gallisepticum invasion, the pathogen can persist in the host owing to its immune evasion, resulting in long-term chronic infection. The strategies of immune evasion by mycoplasmas are very complex and recent research has unraveled these sophisticated mechanisms. The antigens of M. gallisepticum exhibit high-frequency changes in size and expression cycle, allowing them to evade the activation of the host humoral immune response. M. gallisepticum can invade non-phagocytic chicken cells and also regulate microRNAs to modulate cell proliferation, inflammation, and apoptosis in tracheal epithelial cells during the disease process. M. gallisepticum has been shown to transiently activate the inflammatory response and then inhibit it by suppressing key inflammatory mediators, avoiding being cleared. The regulation and activation of immune cells are important for host response against mycoplasma infection. However, M. gallisepticum has been shown to interfere with the functions of macrophages and lymphocytes, compromising their defense capabilities. In addition, the pathogen can cause immunological damage to organs by inducing an inflammatory response, cell apoptosis, and oxidative stress, leading to immunosuppression in the host. This review comprehensively summarizes these evasion tactics employed by M. gallisepticum, providing valuable insights into better prevention and control of mycoplasma infection.
Extracting Course Features and Learner Profiling for Course Recommendation Systems: A Comprehensive Literature Review

As education has evolved towards online learning, the availability of learning materials has expanded and consequently, learners’ behavior in choosing resources has changed. The need to offer personalized learning experiences and content has never been greater. Research has explored methods to personalize learning paths and match learning materials with learners’ profiles. Course recommendation systems have emerged as a solution to help learners select courses that suit their interests and aptitude. A comprehensive review study was required to explore the implementation of course recommender systems, with the specifics of courses and learners as the main focal points. This study provided a framework to explain and categorize data sources for course feature extraction, and described the information sources used in previous research to model learner profiles for course recommendations. This review covered articles published between 2015 and 2022 in the repositories most relevant to education and computer science. It revealed increased attention paid to combining course features from different sources. The creation of multi-dimensional learner profiles using multiple learner characteristics and implementing machine-learning-based recommenders has recently gained momentum. As well, a lack of focus on learners’ micro-behaviors and learning actions to create precise models was noted in the literature. Conclusions about recent course recommendation systems development are also discussed.
Mechanism of Mutation-Induced Effects on the Catalytic Function of TEV Protease: A Molecular Dynamics Study

Tobacco etch virus protease (TEVp) is wildly exploited for various biotechnological applications. These applications take advantage of TEVp’s ability to cleave specific substrate sequences to study protein function and interactions. A major limitation of this enzyme is its relatively slow catalytic rate. In this study, MD simulations were conducted on TEV enzymes and known highly active mutants (eTEV and uTEV3) to explore the relationship between mutation, conformation, and catalytic function. The results suggest that mutations distant from the active site can influence the substrate-binding pocket through interaction networks. MD analysis of eTEV demonstrates that, by stabilizing the orientation of the substrate at the catalytic site, mutations that appropriately enlarge the substrate-binding pocket will be beneficial for Kcat, enhancing the catalytic efficiency of the enzyme. On the contrary, mutations in uTEV3 reduced the flexibility of the active pocket and increased the hydrogen bonding between the substrate and enzyme, resulting in higher affinity. At the same time, the MD simulation demonstrates that mutations outside of the active site residues could affect the dynamic movement of the binding pocket by altering residue networks and communication pathways, thereby having a profound impact on reactivity. These findings not only provide a molecular mechanistic explanation for the excellent mutants, but also serve as a guiding framework for rational computational design.
High‐Resolution Water Footprints of Production of the United States

The United States is the largest producer of goods and services in the world. Rainfall, surface water supplies, and groundwater aquifers represent a fundamental input to economic production. Despite the importance of water resources to economic activity, we do not have consistent information on water use for specific locations and economic sectors. A national, spatially detailed database of water use by sector would provide insight into U.S. utilization and dependence on water resources for economic production. To this end, we calculate the water footprint of over 500 food, energy, mining, services, and manufacturing industries and goods produced in the United States. To do this, we employ a data intensive approach that integrates water footprint and input‐output techniques into a novel methodological framework. This approach enables us to present the most detailed and comprehensive water footprint analysis of any country to date. This study broadly contributes to our understanding of water in the U.S. economy, enables supply chain managers to assess direct and indirect water dependencies, and provides opportunities to reduce water use through benchmarking. In fact, we find that 94% of U.S. industries could reduce their total water footprint more by sourcing from more water‐efficient suppliers in their supply chain than they could by converting their own operations to be more water‐efficient.