Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Synergistic effects of methyl jasmonate treatment and propagation method on Norway spruce resistance against a bark-feeding insect

Utilizing plants with enhanced resistance traits is gaining interest in plant protection. Two strategies are especially promising for increasing resistance against a forest insect pest, the pine weevil (Hylobius abietis): exogenous application of the plant defense hormone methyl jasmonate (MeJA), and production of plants through the clonal propagation method somatic embryogenesis (SE). Here, we quantified and compared the separate and combined effects of SE and MeJA on Norway spruce resistance to pine weevil damage. Plants produced via SE (emblings) and nursery seedlings (containerized and bare-root), were treated (or not) with MeJA and exposed to pine weevils in the field (followed for 3 years) and in the lab (with a non-choice experiment). Firstly, we found that SE and MeJA independently decreased pine weevil damage to Norway spruce plants in the field by 32-33% and 53-59%, respectively, compared to untreated containerized and bare-root seedlings. Secondly, SE and MeJA together reduced damage to an even greater extent, with treated emblings receiving 86-87% less damage when compared to either untreated containerized or bare-root seedlings in the field, and by 48% in the lab. Moreover, MeJA-treated emblings experienced 98% lower mortality than untreated containerized seedlings, and this high level of survival was similar to that experienced by treated bare-root seedlings. These positive effects on survival remained for MeJA-treated emblings across the 3-year experimental period. We conclude that SE and MeJA have the potential to work synergistically to improve plants’ ability to resist damage, and can thus confer a strong plant protection advantage. The mechanisms underlying these responses merit further examination.
EBR and JA regulate aroma substance biosynthesis in ‘Ruidu Hongyu’ grapevine berries by transcriptome and metabolite combined analysis

Volatile compounds including terpenes, aldehyde, phenol, and alcohol are significantly contributed floral and fruity aromas to the Muscat variety. ‘Ruidu Hongyu’ grapevine is one of the newly developed grape varieties, and cultivation of this variety has been extended across China due to unique quality traits and taste. In this study, HS-SPME/GC−MS and transcriptome sequencing analysis were performed to evaluate the impact of exogenous 2,4-epibrassinolide (EBR), jasmonic acid (JA), and their signaling inhibitors brassinazole (Brz)/sodium diethyldithiocarbamate (DIECA) on the biosynthesis of aroma substances in ‘Ruidu Hongyu’ grapevine. According to the results, exogenous BR and JA promoted the accumulation of various aroma substances, including hexenal, 2-hexenal, nerol oxide, vanillin, hotrienol, terpineol, neral, nerol, geraniol, and geranic acid. After EBR and JA treatments, most of the genes responsible for terpene, aldehyde, and alcohol biosynthesis expressed at a higher level than the CK group. Relatively, EBR treatment could not only promote endogenous BR biosynthesis and metabolism but also elevate BR signaling transduction. JA treatment contributed to endogenous JA and MeJA accumulation, as well. Through transcriptome sequencing, a total of 3043, 903, 1470, and 607 DEGs were identified in JA vs. JD, JA vs. CK, BR vs. CK, and BR vs. Brz, respectively. There were more DEGs under both EBR and JA treatments at late fruit ripening stages. The findings of this study increase our understanding regarding aroma substances biosynthesis and endogenous BR/JA metabolism in response to exogenous EBR and JA signals.
Predicting morphological and functional variations of benign adrenal incidentalomas in relation to initial characteristics

The follow-up strategy for unresected non-functional adrenal tumors (NFAT) is a major controversial issue in endocrinological clinical practice, as the natural history of adrenal incidentalomas (AI) is partially unknown and a consensus on their adequate management is lacking. In a recent longitudinal study by Ceccato et al., a large cohort of patients with conservatively treated AI were evaluated for possible radiological variations over time and their relationship with autonomous cortisol secretion (ACS). Starting from this paper, we performed a literature review of available longitudinal studies focus on the same issue. Notwithstanding the high variability in the duration of follow-up and in the criteria used to define ACS in the included studies, our findings support the idea that there is a not negligible risk of morphological and functional changes, which may have metabolic implications, especially after 5-10 years of follow-up. Unfortunately, these variations seem to be scarcely predictable. Therefore, it may be risky to interrupt the follow-up in patients with NFAT, in particular in the presence of larger diameter of the adenoma and higher cortisol levels at diagnosis. These results should be considered in defining the optimal management of these patients.
Optimizing growth and biomass production of non-Saccharomyces wine yeast starters by overcoming sucrose consumption deficiency

The use of non-Saccharomyces yeasts as starters in winemaking has increased exponentially in the last years. For instance, non-conventional yeasts have proven useful for the improvement of the organoleptic profile and biocontrol. Active dry yeast starter production has been optimized for Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which may entail problems for the propagation of non-Saccharomyces yeasts. This work shows that the poor growth of Hanseniaspora vineae and Metschnikowia pulcherrima in molasses is related to a deficient sucrose consumption, linked to their low invertase activity. In order to address this issue, simple modifications to the cultivation media based hydrolysis and the reduction of sucrose concentration were performed. We performed biomass propagation simulations at a bench-top and bioreactor scale. The results show that cultivation in a hexose-based media improved biomass production in both species, as it solves their low invertase activity. The reduction in sugar concentration promoted a metabolic shift to a respiratory metabolism, which allowed a higher biomass yield, but did not improve total biomass production, due to the lower sugar availability. To evaluate the technological performance of these adaptations, we performed mixed grape juice fermentations with biomass produced in such conditions of M. pulcherrima and S. cerevisiae. The analysis of wines produced revealed that the different treatments we have tested did not have any negative impact on wine quality, further proving their applicability at an industrial level for the improvement of biomass production.
Elucidating the importance of the catabolic enzyme, methionine-gamma-lyase, in stresses during Arabidopsis seed development and germination

The sulfur-containing essential amino acid, methionine, is a key metabolite in plant cells since it is used as a precursor for the synthesis of vital metabolites. The transcript level of methionine’s catabolic enzyme, methionine γ-lyase (MGL), accumulates in the seeds to a high level compared to other organs. The aim of this study was to reveal the role of MGL during seed development and germination. Using [13C]S-methylmethionine (SMM), the mobile form of methionine that is used to feed flower stalks of wild-type (WT) plants, revealed that the contents of [13C]methionine in seeds were significantly reduced when the plants underwent heat and osmotic stresses. Moreover, the levels of [13C]isoleucine, a product of MGL, significantly increased. Also, using the MGL promoter and gene fused to the GUS reporter gene, it was demonstrated that the heat stress significantly increased the protein level in the seeds. Therefore, we can conclude that MGL became active under stresses apparently to produce isoleucine, which is used as an osmoprotectant and an energy source. Transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana RNAi seeds with targeted repression of AtMGL during the late developmental stages of seeds show that the seeds did not accumulate methionine when they were grown under standard growth conditions, unlike the mgl-2, a knockout mutant, which showed a three-fold higher level of methionine. Also, when the RNAi plants developed under mid-heat stress, the level of methionine significantly increased while the content of isoleucine decreased compared to the control seeds, which strengthened the assumption that MGL is active under stress. The germination efficiency of the RNAi lines and mgl seeds were similar to their controls. However, the seeds that developed during heat or salt stress showed significantly lower germination efficiency compared to the control seeds. This implies that MGL is important to maintain the ability of the seeds to germinate. The RNAi lines and mgl seeds that developed under regular conditions, but germinated during salt or osmotic stress, exhibited a lower germination rate, suggesting an essential role of MGL also during this process. The results of this study show the important role of AtMGL in seeds under stresses.
Local pointwise convergence of the 3D (cid:12)nite element

For an elliptic problem with variable coeﬃcients in three dimensions, this article discusses local pointwise convergence of the three-dimensional (3D) ﬁnite element. First, the Green’s function and the derivative Green’s function are introduced. Secondly, some relationship of norms such as L 2 -norms, W 1 ; 1 -norms, and negative-norms in locally smooth subsets of the domain Ω is derived. Finally, local pointwise convergence properties of the ﬁnite element approximation are obtained.
Keep Sensors in Check: Disentangling Country-Level Generalization Issues in Mobile Sensor-Based Models with Diversity Scores

Machine learning models trained with passive sensor data from mobile devices can be used to perform various inferences pertaining to activity recognition, context awareness, and health and well-being. Prior work has improved inference performance through the use of multimodal sensors (inertial, GPS, proximity, app usage, etc.) or improved machine learning. In this context, a few studies shed light on critical issues relating to the poor cross-country generalization of models due to distributional shifts across countries. However, these studies have largely relied on inference performance as a means of studying generalization issues, failing to investigate whether the root cause of the problem is linked to specific sensor modalities (independent variables) or the target attribute (dependent variable). In this paper, we study this issue in complex activities of daily living (ADL) inference task, involving 12 classes, by using a multimodal, multi-country dataset collected from 689 participants across eight countries. We first show that the ‘country of origin’ of data is captured by sensors and can be inferred from each modality separately, with an average accuracy of 65%. We then propose two diversity scores (DS) that measure how a country differentiates from others w.r. t. sensor modalities or activities. Using these diversity scores, we observed that both individual sensor modalities and activities have the ability to differentiate countries. However, while many activities capture country differences, only the ‘App usage’ and ‘Location’ sensors can do so. By dissecting country-level diversity across dependent and independent variables, we provide a framework to better understand model generalization issues across countries and country-level diversity of sensing modalities.
L~p Solutions to Multidimensional Backward Stochastic Differential Equations with Uniformly Continuous Generators

In 2003,Hamadene proved the existence of L~2 solutions to multidimensional backward stochastic differential equations(or BSDEs for short) with uniformly continuous generators,provided that the ith component g_i(t,y,z) of the generator g depends only on the ith row of the matrix z.The uniqueness of L~2 solutions was obtained by Fan et al.in2010. In this paper,the authors further prove the existence and uniqueness of L~p(p1)solutions to this kind of BSDEs.
A Risk-Aware Paradigm for Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning

Over the years, the increasing use of personal data for training machine learning models raises several privacy concerns, such as membership inference attacks (i.e., detecting whether a given individual is in the training data) and sensitive attribute inference attacks (i.e., predicting some sensitive information about users based on the disclosed ML model). Although privacy solutions have emerged to address individual challenges, there is not a silver-bullet solution for all privacy problems. In this opinion paper, we argue that to develop a complete solution to a multitude of privacy challenges, we need a privacy-risk aware paradigm where tools and techniques targeting individual realistic privacy threats are employed simultaneously to complement each other. To achieve this goal, we propose a generic privacy framework to reason about the optimal combination of existing privacy tools under the set of given attack models and discuss how the proposed framework could be applied in practice.
Baroclinic Instability with Cumulus Heating

Abstract We have investigated baroclinic instability with cumulus heating using a vertically discrete, linearized, quasi-geostrophic model on a β-plane. Two formulations of cumulus heating were used. The first formulation (η-model) rests on the assumption that heating at all levels is proportional to the vertical p-velocity at the top of the lowest model layer. The second formulation (AS-model) follows the cumulus parameterization proposed by Arakawa and Schubert. We present results for basic states with a constant temperature lapse rate and zonal flows linear in pressure. With both formulations, we found the Green modes for easterly shears destabilized by cumulus heating. We discuss the mechanism of this destabilization along with the vertical structure and energetics of the perturbations. We extended the analyses for basic zonal flows similar to those observed during the Indian summer monsoon season, with the AS-model. The wavelength, phase speed, growth rate and vertical structure corresponding to a pe.
Executive communication with stakeholders on sustainability: the case of Poland

Abstract Sustainability reporting is rapidly developing in the European Union – from voluntary Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) disclosure over to mandatory non-financial reporting (NFR), then over to Economic, Social and Governance (ESG) – with the ambition of becoming as important as financial reporting. This paper investigates whether executives act as change agents in this process by setting a tone at the top, and how their communication changes as time progresses. We use methods from computational corpus linguistics to analyze commentaries by companies listed at the Warsaw Stock Exchange between 2017 and 2021. Results show how top managers are not aligned with the sustainability transition. Their commentaries are bluntly positive and lack performance information. Over time, change and environmental challenges gain attention. In sum, executives appear to respond primarily to investor needs. While showing respect to stakeholders, they avoid setting goals and reporting effects. Effective regulation may bring about the necessary change.
Sustainability context and industry profile on the effect of gender diversity on firm value

The aim of this study is to test the influence of the board's gender diversity on firm value through sustainability report disclosure. The research also examines the effect of industry profile in moderating the board's gender diversity relationship with sustainability report disclosure and the moderation of sustainable investment practices in the relationship between sustainability report disclosure and firm value. The testing uses panel data regression to analyze 306 sample data from non-financial companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange that comply with the sample selection criteria. The research findings prove that board gender diversity is able to increase firm value because investors view the presence of female board members as reflecting a good corporate governance mechanism. This research also proves that the presence of women board members reduces the level of sustainability report disclosure. The effect of board gender diversity on sustainability report disclosure is reduced in high-profile companies. High-profile companies experience strong pressure to make disclosures of activities in which environmental and social impacts are transparent. Conversely, this study cannot demonstrate a mediating role of sustainability report disclosure on the effect of board gender diversity on increasing firm value. The interaction effect of sustainable investment practices is also not significant in this study. The research findings provide an understanding of board gender diversity, sustainability report disclosure, and firm value within the multi-theoretical framework of agency theory, stakeholder theory, and social role theory.
Planets of young stars: The TLS-Tautenburg radial velocity survey

The discovery and characterization of planets of young stars represents an important goal as it will allow to put much stronger observational constraints on the current theories of planet formation and orbital evolution. This thesis reports the results of an optical spectroscopic survey of a sample of 43 young (30-300 Myr), late spectral type, nearby stars. Observations have been carried out with the 2m Schmidt telescope and the Coude spectrograph at the TLS-Tautenburg Observatory, and were aimed to measure high precision radial velocities (RV). In spite of their enhanced level of photospheric activity inducing RV-jitters, the survey demonstrates that also young stars are suitable targets for the detection of planets by means of the RV-technique. In fact most of the stars in the sample show a RV-scatter 2 Mj, can be excluded for 80 % of the stars (95 % if we consider Msin(i) > 7 Mj).
Determination of 3D Cloud Ice Water Contents by Combining Multiple Data Sources from Satellite, Ground Radar, and a Numerical Model

Abstract This study aims at determining the three-dimensional distribution of ice water content over a broad area near the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Southern Great Plains site, where cloud radar and meteorological observations have been routinely conducted. Together with wind fields from other measurements, the ice water content retrievals can be used to derive the cloud ice water advective tendency terms needed for single-column model simulations. In this study, a Bayesian retrieval algorithm has been developed that combines multiple data sources from satellite high-frequency microwave radiometry, ground cloud radar observations, and mesoscale numerical model analysis. The cloud radar observations allow the characteristics of vertical ice water content structures to be inferred. The numerical model data are used to locate the cloud height. The satellite data provide information on the integrated ice water path, its horizontal distribution over a broad area, and, to a lesser extent, the ve.
Steps toward determination of the size and structure of the broad-line region in active galactic nuclei. 5: Variability of the ultraviolet continuum and emission lines of NGC 3783

We report on the results of intensive ultraviolet spectral monitoring of the Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 3783. The nucleus of NGC 3783 was observed with the International Ultraviolet Explorer satellite on a regular basis for a total of 7 months, once every 4 days for the first 172 days and once every other day for the final 50 days. Significant variability was observed in both continuum and emission-line fluxes. The light curves for the continuum fluxes exhibited two well-defined local minima or 'dips,' the first lasting is less than or approximately 20 days and the second is less than or approximately 4 days, with additional episodes of relatively rapid flickering of approximately the same amplitude. As in the case of NGC 5548 (the only other Seyfert galaxy that has been the subject of such an intensive, sustained monitoring effort), the largest continuum variations were seen at the shortest wavelengths, so that the continuum became 'harder' when brighter. The variations in the continuum occurred simultaneously at all wavelengths (delta(t) is less than 2 days). Generally, the amplitude of variability of the emission lines was lower than (or comparable to) that of the continuum. Apart from Mg II (which varied little) and N V (which is relatively weak and badly blended with Ly(alpha), the light curves of the emission lines are very similar to the continuum light curves, in each case with a small systematic delay or 'lag. ' As for NGC 5548, the highest ionization lines seem to respond with shorter lags than the lower ionization lines. The lags found for NGC 3783 are considerably shorter than those obtained for NGC 5548, with values of (formally) approximately 0 days for He II + O III), and approximately 4 days for Ly(alpha) and C IV. The data further suggest lags of approximately 4 days for Si IV + O IV) and 8-30 days for Si III + C III). Mg II lagged the 1460 A continuum by approximately 9 days, although this result depends on the method of measuring the line flux and may in fact be due to variability of the underlying Fe II lines. Correlation analysis further shows that the power density spectrum contains substantial unresolved power over timescales of is less than or approximately 2 days, and that the character of the continuum variability may change with time.
Visiting Decision Model: Products, Prices, and Digital Marketing Through Consumer Satisfaction Visiting Decision in Tourism in Solok Regency

The tourism sector is very important in the country's foreign exchange earnings, a developed tourism sector should be supported by products, prices, and how tourism carries out its digital marketing. However, due to the lack of products, prices, and marketing offered, the tourism sector in Solok Regency experienced a decrease in tourist visits. The purpose of this study is to analyze factors that are considered relevant to influence visiting decisions, namely products, prices, and digital marketing. This type of research is causal research with data collection methods through surveys and questionnaire dissemination, and with a sample of 100 respondents. The data analysis technique used is Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) using SmartPLS 3.0 software, Hypothesis Test using SmartPLS 3.0. The results stated that product variables and digital marketing had a positive and significant effect on visiting decisions. However, the price stated that it did not affect the decision to visit. The implication of this study is that tourism managers must also prioritize developments that occur in the tourism industry so that tourist attractions are not left behind in the face of competition with other tourist attractions.
Pricing american options under proportional transaction costs using a penalty approach and a finite difference scheme

In this paper we propose a penalty method combined with a finite difference scheme for the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation arising in pricing American options under proportional transaction costs. In this method, the HJB equation is approximated by a nonlinear partial differential equation with penalty terms. We prove that the viscosity solution to the penalty equation converges to that of the original HJB equation when the penalty parameter tends to positive infinity. We then present an upwind finite difference scheme for solving the penalty equation and show that the approximate solution from the scheme converges to the viscosity solution of the penalty equation. A numerical algorithm for solving the discretized nonlinear system is proposed and analyzed. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the accuracy of the method.