Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Contrasting seasonal patterns of carbon gain in evergreen and deciduous trees of ancient polar forests

Abstract Polar deciduous forests were an important biome during much of the Mesozoic and Paleogene, occupying upwards of 40% of the total land surface. Little is known about their physiological ecology, however, because these types of forests do not exist for study today. Furthermore, the role of high atmospheric CO2 levels in modulating the physiological response of ancient polar forests is poorly known. Here we report detailed measurements of whole-tree net carbon uptake over a full annual cycle for five tree species whose close ancestors were components of Cretaceous and Paleogene polar forests. Measurements were made on both evergreen and deciduous species after two years growth in a simulated Mesozoic polar (69°N) environment at either ambient (400 ppmv) or elevated (800 ppmv) levels of CO2. The deciduous species exhibited a significant pulse in carbon uptake during the late summer and early autumn (August to mid-October) that enabled them to achieve annual carbon budgets similar to those of evergreen trees, despite incurring higher carbon losses through annual leaf shedding. Area-based photosynthetic rates dropped progressively in all species during the polar summer (June to mid-July), resulting in decreases in whole-tree carbon uptake late in the polar summer. The high-CO2-grown trees were more strongly affected by this polar summer depression than the low-CO2-grown trees. Our results indicate that, from a carbon balance perspective, deciduous taxa have no clear advantage over evergreens. Moreover, the seasonal patterns reported here suggest that at latitudes poleward of 69°, evergreens will be even more strongly favored. The consideration of factors not directly related to carbon budgeting is probably therefore required to fully understand the adaptive significance of the deciduous leaf habit in ancient polar forests.
An Interpersonal Model of Depression: A Psychophysiological Perspective

This study examined whether parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) activity predicts depression risk through excessive reassurance seeking (ERS) which subsequently erodes social support and generates stress. Recent theories suggest that the PNS evolved to regulate social interaction and that the PNS is associated with depression and interpersonal deficits. Therefore, PNS deficits may be associated to ERS, given its interpersonal function. Participants (N = 65) completed measures of ERS, interpersonal stressors, social support quality, depression symptoms, and a protocol that measured indices of the PNS (i.e., respiratory sinus arrhythmia; RSA) at rest and during a paced breathing task. Multiple mediator models were used to examine the mediation of PNS activity on depression via ERS, interpersonal stress, and social support quality. Results suggest that PNS activity predicts ERS behavior that, in turn, predicts depression symptoms via interpersonal stress. High PNS activity, a purported marker of adaptive functioning, was related to greater use of a maladaptive interpersonal response (ERS), which subsequently predicted greater social support at a trend level. Findings provide new evidence of PNS activity in relation to interpersonal behavior and depression, and suggest the need to consider psychophysiology as a context for understanding depression risk and interpersonal processes.
Precision and accuracy in quantifying herbivory

1. Tissue removal by herbivores (i.e. herbivory) is a dominant interaction in most communities which has important impacts on natural and managed ecosystems. Despite the importance of herbivory, we lack a quantitative comparison of the efficacy of the most commonly used methods used to quantify herbivore damage.
Chapter 10 Persistence of the Uncanny Valley

In recent years, the uncanny valley theory has been heavily investigated by researchers from various fields. However, the videos and images used in these studies do not permit any human interaction with the uncanny objects. Therefore, in the field of human–robot interaction, it is still unclear what impact, if any, an uncannylooking robot will have in the context of an interaction. In this paper, we describe an exploratory empirical study using a live interaction paradigm that involves repeated interactions with robots that differ in embodiment and their attitude toward humans. We find that both components of uncanniness investigated here (likeability and eeriness) can be affected by an interaction with a robot. The likeability of a robot is mainly affected by its attitude, and this effect is especially prominent for a machinelike robot. Merely repeating interactions is sufficient to reduce the degree of eeriness, irrespective of a robot’s embodiment. As a result, we urge other researchers to investigate the uncanny valley theory in studies that involve actual human–robot interactions in order to fully understand the changing nature of this phenomenon.
Effects of insecticide treated bed nets on prevalence of malaria among pregnant women in Bumula Division of Bungoma County, Kenya

Insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) for personal protection against mosquito bites have proven to be practical, highly effective, and cost effective intervention against malaria infection. Bungoma South District records malaria as the most frequently diagnosed condition in outpatients at health facilities and is the principal cause of death at the district hospital. Despite the report that ITNs have high impact on reduction of vectors of malaria, sporozoite rates, morbidity and mortality in pregnancy, there are known barriers to bed net ownership and use during pregnancy. The main objective of the study was to determine the prevalence of malaria, establish factors associated with ITN use and the level of adherence to ITN use by pregnant women during different seasons in Bumula Division, of Bungoma County. This research work adopted a longitudinal study design and was conducted at Bumula sub-District hospital. The sample size was 228 pregnant women attending antenatal clinic at the hospital. Data on net ownership verses usage, parity, and socioeconomic background was collected using a structured questionnaire. Parasitological tests for malaria parasites were carried out using peripheral blood samples obtained from finger pricks of the pregnant women. Field’s stain was used for microscopic determination of malaria parasites. Relationship between net ownership and malaria infection rates was determined using a Chi-square test. A t-test was used to show the difference in infection rates during the rainy and dry season among pregnant women. Interaction between age and village of residence significantly determined malaria infection rates (P< 0.05). There was significantly higher level of longlasting net ownership in the sampled population (P< 0.05). In the study population, 60.5% of pregnant women possessed nets and had significantly less malaria infection rates than those who did not own nets, (P < 0.05). The highest percentage of the women acquired bed nets from the antenatal clinic (80.9%). Malaria infection rates were significantly higher during the rainy season than in the dry season (P < 0.05). Among the population that possessed nets 89.9% adhered to sleeping under them while 16.9% of them experienced problems of sweating and hotness. The findings indicate that increased access to insecticide treated nets is required to lower the risk of pregnant women being infected with malaria. The Bungoma county Government should carry out free ITNs distribution campaigns during the rainy season and enhance health education to families within the villages to destroy breeding and hiding habitats of mosquitoes during the rainy season.
Ethanol Production form Biodiesel-derived Crude Glycerol by Enterobacter Aerogenes

Glycerol is an inevitable byproduct of biodiesel production that has become an attractive carbon source for fermentation processes due to its availability, low price and high degree of reduction. This study demonstratedthe potential of utilising the glycerol surplus through conversion to ethanol. In this work, glycerol was used as a feedstock for ethanol batch fermentation process by Enterobacter aerogenes, under pH 7.0 and 30oC. E aerogenes favored oxidative- over reductive pathways and yielded the ethanol as a main fermentativeproduct. The profiles of glycerol utilization rate, ethanol production rate, and specific growth with respect to the glycerol concentration and the ethanol production were similar for both types of the glycerol. Substrate inhibitory effect was found at 40 g L-1 initial glycerol concentration. Impurities in the crude glycerol posed nonegative impact to E aerogenes, and apparently raised the ethanol concentration and yield by 32 and 21% compared those with the pure glycerol fermentation at the optimum glycerol concentration. The highest ethanol production was 204 mM on 25 g L-1 crude glycerol. The current findings showed the potentialapplication of E aerogenes in a large scale ethanol production from the crude glycerol.
A Finite Element Model for Recognizing Breast Cancer

Breast cancer recognition is an important issue in elastography diagnostic imaging. Breast tumor biopsy has been for many years the reference procedure to assess histological definition for breast diseases. But biopsy measurement is an invasive method besides it takes larger time. So, fast and improved methods are needed. Using elastography technology, a digital image correlation technique can be used to calculate the displacement of breast tissue after it has suffered a compression force. This displacement is related to tissue stiffness, and breast cancer can be classified into benign or malignant according to that displacement. The value of compression force affects the displacement of tissue, and then affects the results of the breast cancer recognition. Finite element method was being used to simulate a model for the breast cancer as a phantom to be used in measurements and study of breast cancer diagnosis. The breast cancer using this phantom can be recognized within a short time. The proposed work succeeded in recognizing breast tumor phantom by an average correct recognition ratio CRR of about 94.25% on a simulation environment. The strain ratio SR for benign and malignant models is also computed. The result of the simulated breast tumor model is compared with real data of 10 lesion cases (6 benign and 4 malignant). The coefficient of variation CV between the simulated SR and the SR using real data reaches to about 5% for benign lesions and 4.78% for malignant lesions. The results of CRR and CV in this proposed work assure that the proposed breast cancer model using finite element modeling is a robust technique for breast tumor simulation where the behavior of real data of breast cancer can be predicted.
Self-Compassion in Relation to Self-Esteem, Self-Efficacy and Demographical Aspects

O presente estudo teve por objetivo investigar as relacoesentre autocompaixao, autoestima e autoeficacia e diferencas de sexo, idade e de outras variaveis sociodemograficas na autocompaixao. Participaram 432 adultos (50% mulheres), de 24 estados brasileiros, preenchendo dados sociodemograficos e um conjunto de tres escalas: autocompaixao, autoestima e autoeficacia. Comparacoes de medias da autocompaixao por grupos compostos a partir dos dados sociodemograficos permitiram observar maior autocompaixao em: homens, com idade entre 31 e 66 anos, sem uso de medicacao psiquiatrica, sem atividade remunerada e com filhos. Os resultados tambem mostraram que autocompaixao apresenta correlacoes elevadas com autoeficacia e autoestima. Salienta-se que os resultados sao atinentes a esta amostra e que mais estudos precisam ser conduzidos no Brasil sobre autocompaixao.
Resonant Photon-Exciton Coupling in All-Semiconductor Heterostructures Composed of Silicon Nanosphere and Monolayer WS2

Tailoring and enhancing the interaction between light and matter is of great importance for both fundamental researches and future photonic and optoelectronic applications. Due to their high exciton oscillator strength and large exciton binding energy, two-dimensional atomic semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides have recently emerged as an excellent platform for the strong photon-exciton interaction by integrating with optically resonant cavities. Here, we propose an all-semiconductor system composed of individual silicon nanospheres and monolayer WS2 and investigate the resonance coupling between these two constituents. By coating the silicon nanospheres with monolayer WS2, we demonstrate the strong resonance coupling between the magnetic dipole mode and A-exciton, evidenced by an anticrossing behavior in the scattering energy diagram with a Rabi splitting of 77 meV. Compared with the plasmonic analogues, the resonance coupling in all-semiconductor heterostructure is much stronger and less sensitive to the spacing between the silicon nanosphere core and WS2 shell. When the silicon nanospheres are placed onto the WS2 monolayer with a point contact, resonance coupling manifested by the quenching dips in the scattering spectra can also be observed at ambient conditions, which involves only a few excitons. Finally, resonance coupling in the all-semiconductor heterostructure can be active controlled by temperature scanning. Our findings suggest that this all-semiconductor heterostructure can be exploited for future on-chip nanophotonics associated with strong light-matter interactions.
Evaluation of oral toxicity level of ethyl acetate extract, from garlic (allium sativum) in onorrh dawleys rats as per OECD guidelines 423.

This study was undertaken to evaluate toxicological effects of garlic ethyl acetate extract and subsequently determine the LD50 to establish the safety of the extract in Sprague Dawleys’ Rats as per OECD guidelines 423. All rats, three per set, were sequentially administered with garlic ethyl acetate extract, first in a single dose of 300mg/kg, 2000mg/kg and 5000mg/kg of body weight, in that order respectively, to determine acute toxicity. Extra virgin oil acted as a control. The following parameters were observed keenly for any changes after 30min, 4h, 24h, 48h, 1wk and 2wks for each dose: body weight, skin color, eyes, Mucous membrane, salivation, lethargy, sleep, coma, convulsion, tremor, diarrhea, morbidity and mortality. All animals were subjected to gross necropsy and microscopic examination using standard pathological procedures and the following parts were observed; parts of the liver, lungs, heart, kidney, spleen and intestines (GIT). Dose increase from 300mg/kg, 2000mg/kg and 5000mg/kg body weight did not result to any death of the rats. No significant change was observed in all parameters used for gross necropsy and pathological change. Garlic contains compounds that are antibacterial, antiviral and antifungal. Garlic ethyl acetate extract is safe for human consumption.
Species richness, temporal variability and resistance of biomass production in a Mediterranean grassland

We studied the temporal variability and resistance to perturbation of the biomass production of grassland communities from an experimental diversity gradient (the Portuguese BIODEPTH project site). With increasing species richness relative temporal variability (CV) of plant populations increased but that of communities decreased, supporting the insurance hypothesis and related theory. Species-rich communities were more productive than species-poor communities in all three years although a natural climatic perturbation in the third year (frequent frost and low precipitation) caused an overall decrease in biomass production. Resistance to this perturbation was constant across the experimental species richness gradient in relative terms, supporting a similar response from the Swiss BIODEPTH experiment. The positive biomass response was generated by different combinations of the complementarity and selection effects in different years. Complementarity effects were positive across mixtures on average in all three years and positively related to diversity in one season. The complementarity effect declined following perturbation in line with total biomass but, counter to predictions, in relative terms overyielding was maintained in all years. Selection effects were positively related to diversity in one year and negative overall in the other two years. The response to perturbation varied among species and for the same species growing in monoculture and mixture, but following the frost communities were more strongly dominated by species with lower monoculture biomass and the selection effect was more negative. In total, our results support previous findings of a positive relationship between diversity and productivity and between diversity and the temporal stability of production, but of no effect of diversity on the resistance to perturbation. We demonstrate for the first time that the relative strength of overyielding remained constant during an exceptional natural environmental perturbation.
Scalable network analytics for characterization of outbreak influence in voluminous epidemiology datasets

Planning for large‐scale epidemiological outbreaks in livestock populations often involves executing compute‐intensive disease spread simulations. To capture the probabilities of various outcomes, these simulations are executed several times over a collection of representative input scenarios, producing voluminous data. The resulting datasets contain valuable insights, including sequences of events that lead to extreme outbreaks. However, discovering and leveraging such information is also computationally expensive. In this study, we set out to achieve two goals, ie, (1) providing a distributed framework for modeling disease transmission at scale using Spark, including improvements to the default GraphX partitioning strategy, and (2) giving planners and epidemiologists a means to analyze interactions between entities (herds) during simulated disease outbreaks. Using our disease transmission network (DTN), planners or analysts can isolate herds that have a disproportionate effect on epidemiological outcomes, enabling effective allocation of limited resources such as vaccinations and field personnel. We use a representative dataset to verify our approach and optimized the underlying graph partitioning algorithm to ensure the system will scale with increases in the dataset size or number of participating machines. Our analysis includes identification of influential herds as well as the creation of machine learning models for accurate classifications that generalize to other datasets.
Effect of enzyme supplementation of broiler diets containing varying level of sunflower meal and crude fiber.

An experiment was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of multi enzyme in broiler diets containing varying levels of sunflower meal and crude fiber. Sixteen isonitrogenous experimental diets were prepared using 0, 5, 10 and 15% SFM and 4, 5, 6 and 7% CF, respectively with and without enzyme supplementation and fed to 480 day old broiler chicks. Data on feed consumption, weight gain, feed conversion ratio and dressing percentage was collected. Results showed significant differences (p 0.05) either by dietary SFM and CF level or enzyme supplementation. However, maximum feed was consumed by birds fed diet containing 5% SFM and 5% CF without enzyme supplementation. While the minimum feed intake was observed on diet formulated with 15% SFM and 7% CF without addition of any enzyme. Dressing percentage was calculated as carcass weight excluding skin including internal organs viz., heart, liver, gizzard and kidneys of the birds. No differences (p>0.05) were observed for dressing percentages on different experimental diets. Results from this experiment suggest that enzyme supplementation can improve nutritive value of high fiber broiler diets. Broiler chicks can grow faster and more efficiently on a diet containing fiber degrading enzymes than on a diet without enzymes.
AValidated HPLC Method for the Determination of Linagliptin in Rat Plasma . Application to a Pharmacokinetic Study

A sensitive and reproducible HPLC method for the determination of linagliptin (LNG) in rat plasma was developed and validated using pindolol (PIN) as the internal standard. Both LNG and PIN were separated on a Zorbax Eclipse XDB C18 column kept at ambient temperature using asmobile phase a combination of 75%methanol: 25% formic acid 0.1% pH 4.1 at a flow rate of 1.0 mL min. UV detection was performed at 254 nm. The method was validated in compliance with ICH guidelines and found to be linear in the range of 5–1,000 ng mL. The limit of quantification (LOQ) was found to be 5 ng mL based on 100 μL of plasma. The variations for intraand inter-assay precision were <10%, and the accuracy values were ranged between 93.3 and 102.5%. The extraction recovery (R%) was >83%. The assay was successfully applied to an in vivo pharmacokinetic study of LNG in rats that were administered a single oral dose of 10 mg kg LNG. The maximum concentration (Cmax) and the area under the plasma concentration–time curve (AUC0–72) were 927.5 ± 23.9 and 18,285.02 ± 605.76 ng mL, respectively.
Evaluation of Feeding a Fibrolytic Enzyme to Lactating Dairy Cows on Their Lactational Performance during Early Lactation

Twenty eight multiparous lactating cows were utilized in an experiment to evaluate the response to an exogenous fibrolytic enzyme on their lactational performance during early lactation period (in terms of milk production, milk composition, feed intake, milking efficiency, body weight change) and the exact time of this response. Cows were randomized into two groups (14 each) with similar parities and were fed a concentrate ration of barley, ground corn, soybean meal, and wheat bran and roughage ration of alfalfa hay. One of the two groups was supplemented with the fibrolytic enzyme immediately after parturition up to 100 post partum. The experiment was of two phases with 50 days each. The enzyme, which has a cellulase/hemicellulase activity (derived from Trichoderma group), was added to the concentrate part of the ration in a dry powder form. Milk production, 3.5% fat corrected milk, energy corrected milk were higher (p<0.05) for cows fed treated diet. At the same time, No differences were observed in percentages of milk components, feed intake, body weight, body weight change, or rectal temperature for the whole experimental period or during any of the two phases. Efficiency of milk production was higher (p<0.05) for treatment group cows than for that of the control ones. However, efficiency was better during the second phase than during the first phase. Feeding enzyme treated diets to dairy cows improved lactational performance during early 100 day of the lactation period. However, the first 50 days of lactation looked to be the critical. (Asian-Aust. J. Anim. Sci. 2003. Vol 16, No. 5 :677-684)
Identity and intimacy as predictors of adolescent adjustment

OF THE THESIS IDENTITY AND INTIMACY AS PREDICTORS OF ADOLESCENT ADJUSTMENT by Melissa L. Adams Florida International University, 2003 Miami, Florida Professor Jonathan G. Tubman, Major Professor Stressful developmental transitions related to identity and intimacy may have significant implications for adjustment in adolescence that last into young adulthood. Social and economic barriers experienced by minority adolescents have attracted attention as significant influences on normative developmental processes and psychosocial adjustment. The primary aim of this study was to describe significant relations among identity, intimacy, and adjustment in a sample of adolescents in an alternative school who were at elevated risk for problem behaviors. A sample of 120 multi-ethnic high school students responded to five self-administered questionnaires. In addition to describing significant gender differences in identity, and internalizing problems, this study documented that measures of identity accounted for significant variance in standard measures of internalizing problems using hierarchical multiple regression. The implications of these results for future research and practice are