Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
In vitro regeneration protocol through direct organogenesis for Jatropha curcas L. (Euphorbiaceae) accessions in Ethiopia

Jatropha curcas L. is among important tree crops in the world with a potential for biofuel production. In Ethiopia, there is a soaring investors’ interest to produce Jatropha in the country for biodiesel production. However, insufficient good quality propagation material is a major production constraint. A study was undertaken to establish a protocol for in vitro mass propagation of three Ethiopian Jatropha accessions viz. Metema, Adami Tulu and Shewa Robit through direct organogenesis from nodal explant. The result revealed that the highest percentage of shoot induction (86-90%) was achieved on MS medium with BAP (1 mg/L) and IBA (0.5 mg/L) for all the three accessions. The maximum number of shoots (6) was obtained for Metema when BAP (0.5 mg/L) with Kn (0.5 mg/L) was used. Whereas, the maximum (3.2 cm) shoot length was recorded for Shewa Robit on media with 0.5 mg/L Kn. The highest rooting percentage (84.8-88%) and maximum root number (5.43) were recorded on media supplemented with 0.25 mg/L IBA. Shewa Robit and Metema had longer roots on media with 0.25 mg/L IBA. Finally, the plantlets were successfully established in greenhouse with survival rate of 86.67% for Shewa Robit followed by 73.33 and 66.67% for Metema and Adami Tulu, respectively. This study provided optimal protocol for micro-propagation of Jatropha accessions through direct organogenesis to boost its production. Key words: Jatropha curcas, biofuel, organogenesis, plant growth regulators.
Regional influence of ocean–atmosphere teleconnections on the timing and duration of MODIS-derived snow cover in British Columbia, Canada

Abstract. We use the twice-daily Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) snow cover product to study the regional influence of the Oceanic Niño Index (ONI) and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) on snow cover in British Columbia (BC). We apply a locally weighted regression (LOWESS) interpolation to the MODIS normalized difference snow index (NDSI) time series to detect the timing and duration of snow. We confirm the general consensus from many previous in situ studies that both ONI and PDO have significant impacts on snow cover in BC. We add to this knowledge by performing seasonal and regional analysis using established hydrozones and explore variation in our results by elevation bins of 500 m. We calibrated our method with in situ snow water equivalent (SWE) data and found an optimal NDSI threshold of 30 for detecting continuous snow cover. We separate automatic snow weather station data into calibration (75 %) and validation (25 %) subsets and obtain mean absolute errors between the MODIS and in situ observations for the start, end, and duration of 8.7, 8.9, and 13.1 d for the calibration data and 12.7, 12.6, and 16.6 d for the validation data, respectively. In general, the start date of snow is poorly correlated with both ONI and PDO, whereas the end date and duration are strongly negatively correlated. Regional patterns emerge wherein northern and southern BC are most correlated with the PDO and the ONI, respectively. These relationships are generally stronger at lower elevations and vary spatially. This study demonstrates that the suitability of ocean–atmosphere teleconnections as predictors of the timing and duration of snow varies throughout BC.
Consumer Perceived Value in Understanding Herbal Medicine Consumption: A Conceptual Model

Introduction: Facing extensive competition, the marketers and producers of herbal medicine products (HMP) should pay more concern to maintaining repeat purchases and keeping customers loyal with their products. Purpose: This study aims to (1) propose the dimensions of consumer perceived value (CPV) for HMP; and (2) propose a conceptual framework to test CPV influences on consumption behavior, repurchase intention and customer loyalty. Methodology: The value dimensions of HMP included functional value (price), functional value (quality), social value, emotional value (feeling), and conditional value (holistic treatment value). CPV was proposed as an antecedent of repurchase intention and customer loyalty. Implications: A conceptual framework with a second-order multi-dimensional CPV as the antecedent of repurchase intention and customer loyalty was proposed. This article proposed a conceptual framework to analyze the influence of value dimensions on HMP. This could provide useful theoretical insights into the values perceived in HMP consumption behavior.
Personalisation of therapy in advanced colorectal cancer

Personalisation of therapy is an important goal in modern oncology, however routes for biomarker discovery and validation are challenging with a high level of evidence required prior to application into routine care. Whilst cancer care is stratified by biomarker status in some tumour sites, less progress is evident in advanced colorectal cancer (aCRC). In this thesis candidate clinical and molecular biomarkers have been tested within the datasets and biobanks of randomised controlled trials in aCRC (FOCUS, PICCOLO and COIN). Specifically, the utility of routine clinical information as biomarkers, the mechanisms of the poor prognosis of BRAF-mutant aCRC, predictive markers of efficacy for anti-EGFR agents in RAS-wt patients, and testing of pharmacogenomic markers of toxicity and efficacy for irinotecan have been tested. Routinely measured markers of the systemic inflammatory response, the derived neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio and platelet count, were validated as independent adverse prognostic markers in aCRC and may help identify patients who are not disadvantaged more conservative upfront treatment approach. It has been demonstrated that the poor prognosis conferred by BRAF-mutation is mainly driven by rapid progression following first-line therapy, rather than chemo-resistance. Knowledge of BRAF-mutation status therefore provides useful clinical information beyond the context of prognostication and selection for anti-EGFR therapy, with particular implications for treatment sequencing. mRNA overexpression of EGFR ligands and HER3 were both shown to be promising positive predictive markers for anti-EGFR therapy in aCRC in RAS-wt patients. In both studies a population of RAS-wt patients who fail to benefit from anti-EGFR agents were clearly identified. Both markers warrant urgent further validation and clinical development. Therefore further clinical and molecular biomarkers have shown potential clinical utility in aCRC, which all hold promise for routine application and to further personalise treatment in aCRC.
Expression profiling, phylogenetic, and structural analyses of a laccase gene from the red palm weevil, Rhynchophorus ferrugineus

Laccases, member of multicopper oxidase (MCO) family enzymes, play crucial roles in insects’ cuticle tanning and pigmentation. The purpose of this study was to identify and characterize a laccase gene from the red palm weevil (RPW), Rhynchophorus ferrugineus. The isolated RPW laccase gene sequence was 3,389 bp, including a 2,163 bp open reading frame that encodes 720 amino acids. The RPW laccase gene conserved the MCO functional motifs Type-3, Type-1, and Type-2, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis categorized this protein into the functional cluster 2 of insect laccases (Lac2). The primary transcripts for R. ferrugineus laccase 2 (RfeLac2) were highly expressed in the adult’s cuticle, elytra, and hindwings, and in the larval cuticles four days before molting. Then, the transcripts were declined drastically in the larval cuticles three days before molting. This implies that the suppression of RfeLac2 in the larvae occurs earlier than expected. RfeLac2 transcripts were very low in the gut and adipose tissues of larvae and adults, irrespective to the span to undergo molting. This suggests that RfeLac2 is not active in the tissues that do not undergo heavy sclerotization. Three-dimensional (3-D) structure modeling of RfeLac2 predicted eight histidines, one glycine, and one phenylalanine, as copper-binding ligands on the laccase active center. The study finding indicates that the pattern of the RPW RfeLac2 expression varies from other coleopteran insects, a phenomenon that requires further investigation. Key words: Cuticle, expression, laccase, phylogeny, Red palm weevil.
Self-compatibility in some apricot (Prunus armeniaca L.) genotypes

Self-incompatibility is believed to be a common attribute among the most of apricot (Prunus armeniaca L.) cultivars. This research was conducted during 2015 and 2016 growing seasons to explore the self-compatibility of 22 apricot genotypes (18 Iranian and four European) based on the field and microscopic examinations. Final fruit set following self-pollination in the field ranged from 1.16% in ‘Aybatan’ to 62.0% in ‘San Castrese’ cultivars which showed significant differences among evaluated apricots. The results revealed self-compatibility in the new Iranian promising apricot hybrid, ‘AD731’, as well as reconfirmed self-compatibility in the European cultivars; ‘Canino’, ‘San Castrese’, ‘Palumella’ and ‘Cafona’. In all cases, fluorescence microscopy information supported the self-compatibility results obtained from the field, when at least one pollen tube entered the ovary by 96 hours after the controlled pollination. In addition, all other 17 apricot genotypes showed self-incompatibility feature. The hybrid ‘AD731’ showed self-compatibility attribute, therefore further research on this genotype will warrant its future use in apricot breeding programs as well as to be considered as promising genotype for being released as a new cultivar.
Enhancing BERT for Lexical Normalization

Language model-based pre-trained representations have become ubiquitous in natural language processing. They have been shown to significantly improve the performance of neural models on a great variety of tasks. However, it remains unclear how useful those general models can be in handling non-canonical text. In this article, focusing on User Generated Content (UGC), we study the ability of BERT to perform lexical normalisation. Our contribution is simple: by framing lexical normalisation as a token prediction task, by enhancing its architecture and by carefully fine-tuning it, we show that BERT can be a competitive lexical normalisation model without the need of any UGC resources aside from 3,000 training sentences. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first work done in adapting and analysing the ability of this model to handle noisy UGC data.
The Birth of Semantics

We attempt here to trace the evolution of Frege’s thought about truth. What most frames the way we approach the problem is a recognition that hardly any of Frege’s most familiar claims about truth appear in his earliest work. We argue that Frege’s mature views about truth emerge from a fundamental re-thinking of the nature of logic instigated, in large part, with a sustained engagement with the work of George Boole and his followers, after the publication of Begriffsschrift and the appearance of critical reviews by members of the Boolean school. There could hardly be more disagreement about the role that the notion of truth does or does not play in Gottlob Frege’s philosophy. According to the influential interpretation developed by Sir Michael Dummett (1981), Frege’s contribution to modern logic was not simply the introduction of the notion of quantification and, with it, a formal language adequate for the purposes of mathematics. Frege also provided a semantic theory for his formal language, one that was similar in spirit (and in places in detail) to the theories of truth developed by Alfred Tarski (1958) in the 1930s. Such now familiar doctrines as that the meaning of a sentence is its truth-condition are central to Frege’s work and justify our regarding him as the founding father (or, at least, grandfather) of formal semantics and philosophy of language, as well as of mathematical logic. On the other side, defenders of the so-called universalist interpretation of Frege, such as Thomas Ricketts (1997), hold that deep features of Frege’s philosophy precluded him from even attempting to give a semantic theory for his formal language. In a similar vein, many philosophers have supposed that Frege is some sort of deflationist, in light of his remark in “On Sense and Reference” that “the sentence ‘The thought that 5 is a prime number is true’ contains. the same thought as the simple ‘5 is a prime number’ ” (SM, op. 34; cf. MBLI, p. 251).
EFFECT OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF MOLE DRAINS COMPOSITION ON SOME CLAY SOIL PROPERTIES AND WHEAT YIELD

The effects of different types of mole drains on some clay soil properties and wheat yield were tested in this study. The experimental studies were conducted in heavy clay soil. Moles were composed of 3 different materials; compost, sand and mixture of compost with sand (1:1). Two depths of moles (0.3 and 0.5 m) and three distances among moles (10, 15 and 20 m) were investigated in this work. The results indicated that: The Piezometric head increases as the distance among moles increases and vice versa. At each mole spacing, the Piezometric head decreases as the time advances after irrigations. However, the 10 m mole spacing achieved the best significant results over the 15 and 20 m spacing. The highest yield (2737 kg/fed) was obtained by using compost, 10 m distance among moles and 0.5 m moles' depth. Decreasing distance among moles, increases yield, penetration resistance (PR), hydraulic conductivity (Kh) and infiltration rate. Increasing mole depth, increases yield, (Kh) and infiltration rate while decreases (PR).
Retaining Novices to Become Expert Child Protection Practitioners: Creating Career Pathways in Direct Practice

In many post-industrial countries, concerns have been raised about high turnover of professional staff and the high proportion of novice practitioners on the frontline in child protection agencies. High turnover imposes costs on individual practitioners, employing organizations, service users (particularly vulnerable children) and society more broadly. We analyze the views of employers, policy makers and researchers in Australia, England and Sweden about factors contributing to high turnover at the frontline. We find that a combination of retention disincentives (push factors) and alternative career opportunities (pull factors) contributes to high turnover among frontline practitioners. Based on these findings, we propose a strategy for enhancing workforce retention at the frontline in child protection. The strategy involves creation of a career pathway that enables, and encourages, novice child protection workers to become advanced practitioners.
Evolution in dust lane ellipticals : detection of accreted molecular gas

The detection of moderately large quantities of molecular gas in three minor axis dust lane elliptical galaxies is reported. Masses of H 2 between 4×10 8 and 2×10 9 M ○. have been observed in NGC 1316, NGC 1947, and NGC 5266. The distribution of the molecular gas follows the dust, which is patchy in NGC 1316, around the nucleus in NGC 1947, and in a ring in NGC 5266. The velocities and directions of motion for the CO agree with those of the ionized gas, which rotates perpendicularly to the stars. Based upon dynamical studies of interacting systems, and following related work on the origin of the H I and ionized gas, we suggest that the H 2 comes from gas acquired from an external source, probably through the ingestion of a gas-rich dwarf galaxy
TAX AGGRESSIVENESS AND CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY IN BRAZIL

The present research aims to observe whether the participation of companies in the Corporate Sustainability Index (ISE) listed in BM & FBovespa defines behavior regarding tax aggressiveness. The companies listed or not in ISE were evaluated in the period from 2010 to 2014 through two measures of tax aggressiveness: the effective tax rate ETR (Effective tax Rate) and the difference between Book Tax Differences BTD). By hypothesis, it was speculated that the companies listed in the index would be less tax aggressive to signal a behavior consistent with a social concern. However, a rational theory was not found to justify this anticipated relationship, and in fact, corporate sustainability, to a certain extent, could even be related to more efficient tax planning. Fiscal aggressiveness involves the use of techniques that privilege tax planning to reduce its explicit taxation, and in certain circumstances legal techniques (elision) and other illegal techniques are used, either because of their abusiveness in form or even because they have character to reduce the tax burden. The results documented in the research indicated that the companies that make up the ISE tend to be less tax aggressive those that do not participate in the ISE. This finding serves to anticipate the tax behavior of a company in function of the values that it prestige.
On the representation of precipi- tation in high-resolution regional climate models

Weather and climate models applied with sufficiently fine mesh grids to enable a large part of atmospheric deep convection to be explicitly resolved have shown a significantly improved representation of local, short-duration and intense precipitation events compared to coarser scale models. In this thesis, two studies are presented aimed at exploring the dependence of horizontal resolution and of parameterization of convection on the simulation of precipitation. The first examined the ability of HARMONIE Climate (HCLIM) regional climate model to reproduce the recent climate in Europe with two different horizontal resolutions, 15 and 6.25 km. The latter is part of the ”grey-zone” resolution interval corresponding to approximately 3-10 km. Particular focus has been given to rainfall and its spatial and temporal variability and other characteristics, for example intensity distributions. The model configuration with the higher resolution is much better at simulating days of large accumulated precipitation amounts, most evident when the comparison is made against highresolution observations. Otherwise, the two simulations show similar skill, including the representation of the spatial structure of individual rainfall areas of primarily convective origin. The results suggest a ”scale-awareness” in HCLIM, which supports a central feature of the model’s description of deep convection as it is designed to operate independently of the horizontal resolution. In the second study, summer season precipitation over the Alps region, as simulated by HCLIM at different resolutions, is investigated. Similar model configurations as in the previous study were used, but in addition a simulation at the ”convection-permitting” 2 km resolution has been made over Central Europe. The latter considerably increases the realism compared to the former regarding the distribution and intensities of precipitation, as well as other important characteristics including the duration of rain spells, particularly on sub-daily time scales and for extreme events. The simulations with cumulus parameterization active underestimate short-duration heavy rainfall, and rain spells with low peak intensities are too persistent. Furthermore, even though the 6.25 km simulation generally reduces the biases seen in the 15 km run, definitive conclusions of the benefit of ”grey-zone” resolution is difficult to establish in context of the increased requirement of computer resources for the higher-resolution simulation.
SJOVS, July 2019, Vol. 12, No. 1

Ocular toxoplasmosis is an infection in the eye caused by the parasite Toxoplasma Gondii. A common retinal finding in its inactive stages is pigmented retinochoroidal scarring. The retinal function in the affected area assumingly reflects the amount of retinal involvement. In this manuscript, we report the case of a 48-year-old woman who has a long-standing large retinochoroidal scar in the temporal posterior pole of her left eye. She had not experienced any visual symptoms, and no recurrent infections had occurred as far as she knew. She had a scotoma in her nasal visual field that her optometrist detected by a coincidence when she was in her twenties. The corresponding visual field defect is smaller and less deep than what may be expected from the structural appearance of the scar. The reported case demonstrates that the visual function may be preserved in the visual field corresponding to a retinochoroidal scarred area due to toxoplasmosis, in spite of loss of structures in the outer retinal layers as seenwith optical coherence tomography (OCT).
Influence of seasonal factors on carp fish immune reactivity

The article presents data about influence of seasonal factors on immune reactivity in carp scaly, carp framey, and carp. We studied the blood that was taken from the heart of fish in different seasons: spring (May), summer (August) and autumn (October). The research was carried out at the Lviv department of the Institute of Fisheries of the National Academy of Agrarian Science, Velykyj Ljubin in three groups of two-year-old fish. The received data give reason to think that the number of T- and B-lymphocytes in the blood of carp fish and their functional activity to a large extent depends on the influence of seasonal factors (temperature of the medium, oxygen concentration, duration of light day). This is points to the probable increase in the number of T-lymphocytes (common, active, theophylline-sensitive and theophylline-resistant) and a decrease in B-lymphocytes in the blood of investigated fish in the summer and, especially in the autumn period of research. In this case, an increase in the functional activity of T-lymphocytes was revealed due to the redistribution of the receptor apparatus of the immunocompetent cells. In particular, a reduction in the number of blood of inactive T-lymphocytes in functionally and an increase in cells with low and medium receptor density. Regarding the degree of differentiation of B-lymphocytes, the decrease in their amount in the blood of the studied individuals occurred due to the increase of “zero” and low-conductivity EAS-RUL and reduction of the subpopulation with average receptor density. We suggested that the abiotic factors can modulate the immune response of carp fish.
Machine Translation for Under-resourced Languages

Phrase-based statistical machine translation performance suffers when models are trained on a small amount of parallel data and/or on morphologically rich languages. Under-resourced languages do not have a large amount of parallel data and some of them are morphologically rich, which makes machine translation even more difficult. In this paper, a research proposal is presented that aims to generate an acceptable quality translation for languages, which suffer from lack of resources.