Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Monitoring the redox status in dairy cows by using plasma dROMs, PAT, and OSI biomarkers

The aim of this work was to determine the changes of redox indicators such as reactive oxygen metabolites (dROMs), plasma antioxidant test (PAT) and the oxidative stress index (OSI) in dairy cows at different stages of lactation using a diagnostic equipment which is suitable for in vivo oxidative stress (OS) monitoring procedures. In total, 628 dairy cows were examined in the pre-parturient period (days in milk [DIM]: -21 to -1 day; n = 117), in the calving and maternity period (DIM: 0 to 7; n = 137), in the early lactation period (DIM: 8 to 30; n = 139), and the in the peak lactation (DIM: 31 to 150; n = 235). The dROMs and OSI values were significantly different (P < 0.05) when comparing the 1st and 2nd+ lactation cows in each group. The highest mean value of dROMs was detected at the calving and maternity stage in 1st lactation cows (141 ± 25 U. Carr) and the lowest (103 ± 29 U. Carr) was found in peak lactation. The OSI developed similarly, with the highest value of 5.58 ± 0.94 in the calving and maternity period in the 1st lactation cows and the lowest value of 4.05 ± 1.21 in peak lactation and significant differences were found in many cases. Based on the results, the measurement of dROMs and OSI may be suitable for detecting oxidative stress in different lactation stages.
The Spectrum of Fungal Colonization and Their Attributable Effects on Cystic Fibrosis Patients with Rare CFTR Genetic Mutations

Chronic airway colonization by bacteria and fungi is very common in CF patients, causing irreversible lung damage. It is known that rates of fungal infections are much lower than those of bacterial infections, however they can worsen the medical condition of CF patients. In this study, we identify the most common fungal species isolated from 31 adult CF patients in Qatar and analyze their correlation with lung function, pulmonary exacerbations, bronchial asthma, and pancreatic insufficiency. Mycological evaluation, as well as medical records, were reviewed for the patients regularly under the adult CF service at Hamad General Hospital in the period between 2017–2019. All CF patients included in this study carry rare CFTR mutations. The majority of those patients (n = 25) carried the c.3700A>G; I1234V mutation, whereas three patients carried the heterozygous mutation (c.1657C>T and c.1115A>T) and the remaining three carried the homozygous mutation (c.920G>A). Twenty-two of the adult CF participants (70.9%) were colonized with fungal species regardless of the type of the CFTR mutation. Candida and Aspergillus species were the most common, colonizing 81% and 45% of the patients, respectively. For Candida colonized patients, Candida dubliniensis was the most frequently reported species (55.6%), whereas Aspergillus fumigatus colonization was the most common (50.0%) among Aspergillus colonized patients. These identified fungal pathogens were associated with poor lung function, pancreatic insufficiency, and asthma in this cohort. Such colonization could possibly aggravate the most known CF complications, notably pulmonary exacerbations, asthma, and pancreatic insufficiency.
Seasonal Trends in Pediatric Respiratory Illnesses

Objectives Google Trends is an emerging tool that allows users to analyze search queries, showing when certain topics are searched most often. Multiple studies have compared Google Trends to epidemiological data of health conditions, but pediatric specific illnesses have not yet been investigated. An association between disease incidence and Google Trends data may help facilitate precision outreach in the form of digital resources and promotion. We sought to examine the relationship between Google Trends data and measured incidence of bronchiolitis and croup. Methods We carried out a Google Trends search using the terms “bronchiolitis” and “croup” on July 24, 2019. The number of positive respiratory syncytial virus and parainfluenza tests published by the Public Health Agency of Canada was used to estimate incidence of bronchiolitis and croup, respectively. Emergency department discharge data were used to measure the number of patients with bronchiolitis and croup presenting to a Canadian pediatric hospital. Data from January 1, 2015, to December 31, 2018, were used for analysis. Results Google Trends revealed clear seasonal variation in search volume for both bronchiolitis and croup in keeping with known epidemiological data for these conditions. For data on bronchiolitis, Google Trends correlated strongly with Canadian Public Health and our hospital data. A positive correlation was also found with croup. Conclusions Google Trends correlates with both laboratory-based and hospital incidence of respiratory viral diagnoses. This novel data source has implications for tracking disease epidemiology, tailoring health information, and providing precision outreach tools to patients and their families.
International Scientific Research on Venture Capital: a Bibliometric and Mapping Analysis from the Period 1978–2020

The aim of this study is to explore the relevance of scientific production on venture capital using bibliometric and mapping tools.We performed a search in Scopus, involving any document published between 1978 and 2020. We used bibliometric indicators to explore documents production, dispersion, distribution, time of duplication, and annual growth, as Price’s law of scientific literature growth, Lotka’s law, the transient index, and the Bradford model. We also calculated the participation index of the different countries and institutions. Finally, we explored the co-occurrence and thematic networks for the most frequently used terms in venture capital research through bibliometric mapping.A total of 1,230 original articles were collected from the timeframe 1978–2020. The model confirms that Price’s law is not fulfilled. Scientific production was better adjusted to linear growth (r = 0.9290) than exponential (r = 0.9161). Literature on venture capital research has increased its growth in the last 43 years at a rate of 7.9% per year, with a production that doubles its size every 9.1 years. The transience index was 79.91%, which indicates that most of the scientific production is due to a lot of authors with a small number of publications on the research topic. Bradford´s law shows that the scientific production in this area is widely distributed in multiple journals, and Lotka’s law indicates that the author’s distribution is heavily concentrated on small producers. The United States of America (USA) and the University of Pennsylvania present the highest production, contributing 31.22% and 1.63% of the total production of research on venture capital.The venture capital task has undergone a linear growth, with a very high rate of transience, which indicates the presence of numerous authors who sporadically publish on this topic. No evidence of a saturation point was observed in the scientific production analyzed, which makes it possible to conclude that the research in venture capital will continue to be in demand by the scientific community.
Global optimal model selection for high-dimensional survival analysis

With the popularity of high-dimensional data, model selection is of great importance in recent survival analysis. In a model selection context, an important research question is how to define the best model. To answer this, various model selection criteria have been proposed for defining the best model. The existing methods commonly use the -norm penalization in order to measure the model complexity based on the number of parameters. However, due to the nonconvexity of the -penalty, finding the best model via global optimization has been a challenging research subject in statistics and machine learning. In this paper, we propose a global optimization algorithm using a modification of the simulated annealing, which is a probabilistic search algorithm for the global optimum in statistical mechanics. The performance of the proposed method is examined via simulation study and real data analysis.
Toward a reliable assessment of potential ecological impacts of deep‐sea polymetallic nodule mining on abyssal infauna

The increasing demand for metals is pushing forward the progress of deep‐sea mining industry. The abyss between the Clarion and Clipperton Fracture Zones (CCFZ), a region holding a higher concentration of minerals than land deposits, is the most targeted area for the exploration of polymetallic nodules worldwide, which may likely disturb the seafloor across large areas and over many years. Effects from nodule extraction cause acute biodiversity loss of organisms inhabiting sediments and polymetallic nodules. Attention to deep‐sea ecosystems and their services has to be considered before mining starts but the lack of basic scientific knowledge on the methodologies for the ecological surveys of fauna in the context of deep‐sea mining impacts is still scarce. We review the methodology to sample, process and investigate metazoan infauna both inhabiting sediments and nodules dwelling on these polymetallic‐nodule areas. We suggest effective procedures for sampling designs, devices and methods involving gear types, sediment processing, morphological and genetic identification including metabarcoding and proteomic fingerprinting, the assessment of biomass, functional traits, fatty acids, and stable isotope studies within the CCFZ based on both first‐hand experiences and literature. We recommend multi‐ and boxcorers for the quantitative assessments of meio‐ and macrofauna, respectively. The assessment of biodiversity at species level should be focused and/or the combination of morphological with metabarcoding or proteomic fingerprinting techniques. We highlight that biomass, functional traits, and trophic markers may provide critical insights for biodiversity assessments and how statistical modeling facilitates predicting patterns spatially across point‐source data and is essential for conservation management.
Experimental Characterization of the Capacitively Coupled RF-Plasma Thruster

A novel design of a neutralizer-free plasma thruster is proposed. This setup features a capacitively coupled RF discharge for plasma generation combined with a magnetic nozzle configuration for acceleration. Characteristics of the plasma plume and ions flux are investigated with the help of emissive probes and retarding potential analyzers (RPA). Essential parameters of the thruster like ions energy, ions flux, utilization efficiencies, and thrust are estimated. The investigated system produces a beam of ions accelerated to an energy of 10 eV when operated at power levels of ~20 W and a mass flow of 1.2 mg/s. The ion energy coincides with the potential drop in the plasma plume indicating that the acceleration takes place due the formation of an ambipolar electric field in the expanding plasma. The design is compared to the data available of other similar thrusters.
Destination brand equity and tourist's revisit intention towards health tourism: an empirical study

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the relationship between destination brand equity and tourist's revisit intention towards health tourism destinations. The study also examines the mediating effect of destination brand association between destination-based brand equity and travellers' revisit intention for health tourism destinations.Design/methodology/approachA survey instrument is used to examine the relationships in the proposed model using the co-variance-based structural equation modelling (SEM) technique. The collected primary data from two hundred forty-six respondents (n = 246) are analysed to test the relationship amongst exogenous, mediating, moderating and endogenous constructs articulated in the proposed structural model.FindingsEmpirical findings reveal that destination brand equity influences the revisit intention of a traveller for health tourism via destination brand association. The perceived trust, reliability and soft issues of a traveller moderate the relationship between destination brand equity and destination brand association. Enduring travel involvement also proves a significant moderation effect on the relationship between destination brand association and the revisit intention of a traveller for a health tourism destination.Practical implicationsThis paper is an initial attempt to develop and empirically examine a conceptual model of the intention of a traveller to revisit a health tourism destination in a dynamic process of information search using the data collected from current travellers after medical tourism-related trips. Results suggest that stakeholders must focus on hedonic and utilitarian factors of the destination that are recognised by travellers to encourage revisit for medical tourism.Originality/valueAlthough there have been numerous studies on health tourism. However, to the best of the authors' knowledge, this research is a pioneer in the healthcare tourism literature that links destination brand equity, brand association and revisit intention of a traveller for health tourism. These findings extend the knowledge of how healthcare tourism that is embedded with destination brand equity and destination brand association. The study findings potentially benefit the marketers for gaining competitive advantages through considering the experience of a traveller.
A Novel Atmospheric Removal Technique for TES Spectra Applied to Olivine and Carbonate‐Rich Bedrock in the Nili Fossae Region, Mars

Spectra from the Mars Global Surveyor Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) display a combination of features attributable to surface and atmospheric components. In order to fully recognize and interpret surface spectral features, the atmospheric spectral features must be removed through some form of surface‐atmosphere separation (SAS). Multiple SAS techniques are available representing a range of complexity and accuracy. A ratio between spectra from a region of interest and a relatively spectrally bland, dusty location is an effective SAS technique, but the resulting ratio spectrum contains spectral features of surface dust (SD) from the dusty location. We exploit the uniform spectral character of SD across Mars to produce dust‐removed ratio spectra (DRRS). This simple and robust technique allows TES spectra to be compared directly to laboratory spectra and to Miniature‐TES spectra from the Mars Exploration Rovers. Although previous SAS techniques yield atmospherically corrected spectra that can serve this purpose, they are more challenging to implement, retain fewer data points, and are less accurate in some cases. The DRRS technique provides an option that is well suited to both quick‐look assessments of TES spectra and in‐depth analyses using follow‐on spectral modeling techniques. We show that DRRS of olivine‐rich bedrock in the Nili Fossae region display spectral features that match olivine with a composition ranging from ∼Fo50 to
The Complete Chloroplast Genome of a Variety of Lagenaria siceraria var. microcarpa (Naud.) Hara

Small gourd ( Lagenaria siceraria var . microcarpa (Naud.) Hara), a cultivar of Lagenaria family, is an important medicinal and ornamental plants. However, there are few studies on its chloroplast (cp) genome. In this study, we characterized its complete chloroplast (cp) genome with high throughput sequencing. The circular cp genome is determined to be 157, 121 bp in length, with a long sing-copy and a small sing-copy separated by a pair of inverted repeat regions. A total of 132 genes were annotated, including 86 protein-coding genes, 37 tRNA genes, 8 rRNA genes, and 1 pseudo gene. The overall GC content of cp genome was 37.09%. The maximum likelihood tree suggested that small gourd was closely related to Lagenaria siceraria. These results provided an understanding of small gourd cp genome and might be useful for future genetic studies.
Spinal Muscular Atrophy - The disease and its treatments

Less than a decade ago, patients diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) had no treatments other than pulmonary, gastrointestinal, and orthopedic care. These palliative treatments were focused on managing symptoms and did not address the cause of the disease itself. Now, there are several FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) approved drugs to treat SMA, which can stop or slow disease progression. In order to discuss the development of treatments for patients with SMA, the disease must first be explained in detail.
Impact of Long-Term Manure and Sewage Sludge Application to Soil as Organic Fertilizer on the Incidence of Pathogenic Microorganisms and Antibiotic Resistance Genes

The reuse of stabilized (under thermophilic conditions) sewage sludge and manure on agricultural soils is a common practice. The aim of this study was to evaluate the risks associated with their repeated applications on the spread of pathogenic bacteria and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) that encode resistance to tetracycline (tetA and tetW), sulphonamide (sul1 and sul2), erythromycin (ermB), vancomycin (vanA) and integron genetic element (intI1). The trial fields has been regularly fertilized every 3rd year since 1996 with manure (MF; 330 kg N/ha) and sewage sludge (SF; 330 kg N/ha and SF3; 990 kg N/ha). Unfertilized soil (CF) served as a control. Samples were collected at different time points: (i) right before fertilization (which was also 3 years after the last fertilization), (ii) 5 months after fertilization, and (iii) 11 months after fertilization. The relative abundance of amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) assigned to potentially pathogenic bacteria was low (0.3% and 0.25% in sludge and manure, respectively), and no association with the application of these fertilizers was found. On the other hand, our data indicate that an increased relative abundance of the ARGs sul1 and tetW was significantly associated with these fertilizer applications, and sul1 was increased in all treatments regardless of the time. It is suggested that sul1 should be monitored in organically fertilized soils to prevent its spread and possible further accumulation in crops.
Intelligent Life Prediction of Thermal Barrier Coating for Aero Engine Blades

The existing methods for thermal barrier coating (TBC) life prediction rely mainly on experience and formula derivation and are inefficient and inaccurate. By introducing deep learning into TBC life analyses, a convolutional neural network (CNN) is used to extract the TBC interface morphology and analyze its life information, which can achieve a high-efficiency accurate judgment of the TBC life. In this thesis, an Adap–Alex algorithm is proposed to overcome the problems related to the large training time, over-fitting, and low accuracy in the existing CNN training of TBC images with complex tissue morphologies. The method adjusts the receptive field size, stride length, and other parameter settings and combines training epochs with a sigmoid function to realize adaptive pooling. TBC data are obtained by thermal vibration experiments, a TBC dataset is constructed, and then the Adap–Alex algorithm is used to analyze the generated TBC dataset. The average training time of the Adap–Alex method is significantly smaller than those of VGG-Net and Alex-Net by 125 and 685 s, respectively. For a fixed number of thermal vibrations, the test accuracy of the Adap–Alex algorithm is higher than those of Alex-Net and VGG-Net, which facilitates the TBC identification. When the number of thermal vibrations is 300, the accuracy reaches 93%, and the performance is highest.
Pathogenicity, anastomosis groups, host range, and genetic diversity of Rhizoctonia species isolated from soybean, pea, and other crops in Alberta and Manitoba, Canada

Abstract: Root rot is a common disease in soybean (Glycine max) and field pea (Pisum sativum), which restrain increased production in Canada. Sixty-seven isolates of Rhizoctonia were recovered from various diseased plants in Alberta, Canada along with three isolates from diseased soybean plants in Manitoba, Canada. According to their anastomosis behavior, 23 (32.9%) of the isolates were identified as anastomosis group (AG) 4 (AG4), 7 (10.0%) were AG2-1, 10 (14.3%) were AG2-2, 7 (10.0%) were AG5, 3 (4.3%) were AG-E and the AGs of the remaining 20 (28.6%) isolates could not be determined. Isolates belonging to AG4 produced typical symptoms of stem rot and root rot on seedlings of soybean and pea and were more aggressive than the AG2-1, AG2-2, AG5 and AG-E isolates. Selected isolates of AG4, AG2-1, AG2-2, AG5 and AG-E were to some degree able to infect common crops in Alberta, which included barley, canola, corn, faba bean, flax, lupin, lentil, pea, potato, soybean, and wheat. The genetic variability among these isolates was evaluated using phylogenetic analysis based on the rDNA ITS sequences and inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers. For the ITS sequence analysis, a neighbour-joining tree was constructed using the PAUP program, which clustered the Rhizoctonia isolates into five groups (Groups I to V). However, no correlation was observed between AGs, locations, aggressiveness or host origins. For the ISSR analysis, 54 polymorphic ISSR patterns were identified, indicating a high level of diversity among the isolates.
Role of double vs triple shot intra articular platelet rich plasma in early osteoarthrosis of knee

To Compare The Functional Outcome Of Patients With Osteoarthrosis Of Knee (KL Grade 2), Receiving Intra-Articular Injections Of Platelet Rich Plasma. A Prospective Study Of 120 Patients (Aged Above 30 Years) With Clinical And Radiological Diagnosis Of Osteoarthrosis Of Knee Joint (Unilateral/ Bilateral) Was Conducted During The Period Between January2016 To November 2017 In The Department Of Orthopaedics, Nri Academy Of Sciences, Chinakakani, Guntur (Dt), Andhra pradesh. Patients with Primary OA of Knee Were Divided Into Two Groups of 60 Each. One Group Was Administered IntraArticular two Injections Of PRP with post procedural oral analgesics for one week And The Other Group Was Administered Intra-Articular Three Injections Of PRP with topical analgesia without oral analgesics. Results Were Analysed Using IKDC, WOMAC, and VAS Criteria. Intra Articular PRP Is An Innovating Minimally Invasive Technique With A Low Procedure Cost. In Our Study We Conclude In Grade 2 Early Osteoarthritis Of Knee Three Shots Of Intra Articular Platelet Rich Plasma without the need for post procedural oral analgesics has given excellent results and it confirmed that three shots of prp has a significant role in getting pain relieved compared to two shots.
Does Cavitation Affect Droplet Breakup in High‐Pressure Homogenization? Insights into Local Effects

High-pressure homogenization is a popular method to produce emulsions of droplet sizes smaller than 1 mm. Regarding the role of cavitation in the process, it is still discussed controversially whether it promotes or hinders droplet breakup during high-pressure homogenization. In this study droplet breakup in a cavitating flow of an optically accessible high-pressure homogenizer orifice is visualized using a high-speed camera setup. The cavitation regime is characterized using laser light induced luminescence. Droplet deformation and breakup events are compared to a cavitation-free flow with the same specific energy input. Once the jet cavitation regime is reached, droplet breakup took place further downstream the orifice exit, and the larger droplets are measured in the final product.