Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of different levels of n-3 HUFA on larvae culture performances of Beluga (Huso huso) fish

The effects of n-3 highly unsaturated fatty acids (n-3 HUFA) were studied on Beluga (Huso huso) fish larvae by feeding fish larvae with live food enriched with 4 different oils (ICES 30/4, tuna eye oil, flaxseed oil and cottonseed oil) containing different levels of n-3 HUFA including 27.19, 20.33, 12.71 and 0.39 mg g -1 dry weight of oil, respectively. Fish larvae weighing 30.00±2.00 mg were randomly divided into 12 groups of 150 fish each and triplicates fed the 4 experimental diets for 3 weeks. There were no differences in survival rates, but significant differences were found in growth rates and fatty acid composition of the fish larvae after 30 days. Fish fed low levels of dietary n-3 HUFA (0.39 mg g -1 DW) showed poor n-3 HUFA contents but these fatty acids improved with the elevation of the n-3 HUFA levels in the diet up to 20 mg g -1 DW. Fish fed the flaxseed oil showed the highest level of crude lipid 15.00±3.01). Results showed that tuna eye oil and ICES30/4-enriched live food (4.83 ±1.29 and 4.61 ±0.99 mg g -1 DW, respectively) showed the highest n-3 HUFA content for sturgeon fish larvae.
Postharvest quality of mango (Mangifera indica L.) fruit as affected by chitosan coating

The effect of coating with irradiated Crab and Shrimp chitosan (CHIirr, Mv = 5.14 × 104) and un-irradiated Crab chitosan (CHIun, Mv = 2.61 × 105) on postharvest preservation of mango (Mangifera indica L.) fruit was studied. Irradiation at 100 kGy and 200 kGy of both Crab chitosan and Shrimp chitosan were used and the fruits were stored at 15°C ± 1°C and 85% relative humidity for 6 weeks. The effect of various chitosan coatings on fruit ripening behaviour, biochemical and organoleptic characteristics were evaluated during storage. The incidence of disease attack was also observed. The overall results showed the superiority of irradiated Crab chitosan (200 kGy) in extending the shelf-life of mango fruit as compared to control. The irradiated Crab chitosan (200 kGy) treated fruits also maintained their eating quality up to 4 weeks of storage. Only 6% disease incidence was observed in fruits coated with irradiated Crab chitosan (200 kGy) as compared to control (25%) after 4 weeks of storage. The results of this study showed that irradiated chitosan coatings have an excellent potential to be used on fresh produce to maintain quality and extending shelf-life.
Hydrogen peroxide plays a critical role in the defence response of tomato to Cladosporium fulvum

Abstract The presence and localization of hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ) in compatible and incompatible interactions of Cladosporium fulvum and tomato were studied by light microscopy using the histochemical stain 3, 3′-diaminobenzidine (DAB). To obtain synchronous development of the fungus, inoculation of tomato was by injection of conidia into the intercellular area of the spongy mesophyll. Conidia were suspended in scavengers of reactive oxygen species (ROS), i.e., catalase (CAT), superoxide dismutase (SOD), and mannitol, or the nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH) oxidase inhibitor, diphenylene iodonium (DPI), at the time of inoculation. Conidia and initial germ tubes in compatible and incompatible interactions caused a localized host reaction characterized by H 2 O 2 production and a variety of plant responses which included protein cross-linking, callose deposition, and accumulation of phenolic compounds. Further growth of an avirulent race was restricted by similar host responses whereas, hyphae of a virulent race grew as in a normal compatible interaction. In the incompatible interaction, treatment with CAT, SOD, or DPI generally resulted in increased fungal length and a decrease in the percentage of sites with host responses. These results support previous suggestions for this host–pathogen system of a critical role for ROS in limiting colonization, and this appears to be partly as a signal molecule for plant defence responses.
Role of Escherichia coli curli in relation with intestinal components - mucin, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Enterococcus faecalis

Bacteria in nature mostly exist in biofilms, which are structured adherent communities encased in polymeric matrices. In the human body, most biofilms are composed of commensal microorganisms with the gastrointestinal tract being the most heavily colonized site. Bacterial attachment to the overlying mucus gel layer of the intestinal epithelium is fundamental to the establishment of a stable commensal microflora. However the interaction of bacteria with the complex mucus gel is poorly described. Moreover, the complexity and diversity of the gut microbiota is itself an obstacle to studying its biology. Microbiota functions are the product of communities of bacteria and interactions between multiple species. New approaches are needed to study this aspect of even the most well-studied member of the human gut microbiota, Escherichia coli. This thesis was devoted to the exploration of the transcriptional response of E. coli facing different elements of human gut following 3 main objectives. First, the initial part of my work was related to the conception and optimization of appropriate genetic tools to both track E. coli within the multispecies context that constitute human gut commensals, and survey the expression of genes of interest. Use of the Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) genes allowing enhanced fluorescence and shortened half-life has permitted significant progress both in whole cell tagging as well as transcriptional reporting, while the red fluorescent counterparts were disappointing. Second, using the subset of tools that has been validated to be reliable, influence of mucin on the biofilm formation ability of E. coli has subsequently been studied. I have shown that mucin promotes E. coli biofilm formation through transcriptional modulation of surface adhesion structures such as curli and type 1 pili. Third, concurrently, E. coli’s population relationship to commensal bacteria (K. pneumoniae and E. faecalis) was investigated and demonstrated, with the possible influence of surface adhesion structures such as curli as the biological focus. The results suggest that curli production in biofilm increases the fitness of E. coli when co-cultured with K. pneumoniae while promoting synergistic interaction between E. coli and E. faecalis. The implication based on the data is discussed. This work improves the understanding of E. coli response to the gut environment, and provides foundations to build more powerful tools for further investigations.
Seedling growth of white oats submitted to salt stress.

O cultivo de aveia branca em sucessao a cultura do arroz-irrigado e uma alternativa bastante viavel, principalmente devido ao seu valor agregado e por suas caracteristicas restauradoras do solo, entretanto seu potencial produtivo pode ser amplamente reduzido devido a salinizacao dos solos, sendo de grande importância determinar a concentracao salina tolerada por diferentes cultivares de aveia branca. Objetivou-se com este trabalho avaliar cultivares de aveia branca, recomendadas para o estado do Rio Grande do Sul, submetidas a diferentes concentracoes salinas na fase de germinacao e crescimento inicial. O delineamento experimental utilizado foi inteiramente casualizado em esquema fatorial 2 X 5, com quatro repeticoes (cultivares: Barbarasul e Chiarasul, e concentracao salina nos niveis: 0, 25, 50, 75 e 100 mM de NaCl por litro de agua). A qualidade fisiologica das sementes foi avaliada em laboratorio pelos testes de germinacao, primeira contagem da germinacao, comprimento de parte aerea e raiz, massa seca de parte aerea e raiz. Com base nos resultados obtidos pode-se concluir que: a germinacao e o crescimento das plântulas de aveia branca das cultivares Barbarasul e Chiarasul sao reduzidos com o aumento da concentracao de NaCl. Alem disso, a resposta e mais acentuada sobre a parte aerea do que no sistema radicular. A concentracao de 100 mM de NaCl L-1 impossibilita a germinacao das sementes de ambas cultivares estudadas.
Study on effect of different botanicals against rice leaf folders (Cnaphalocrocis medinalis Guen. and Pelopidas mathias Fb.).

Received : October, 2010 Revised : December, 2010 Accepted : January, 2011 Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is the staple food of more than sixty per cent of the world’s population and known as a king of cereals. The total area of the world under rice cult ivation is 153.33 million hectares producing 588.56 million tonnes of grain with an average productivity of 3.37 MT/ha (Anonymous, 2004). The total area under rice cultivation in India was 44.6 million hectares with a production of 90 million tonnes (Sharma, 2005). India has the largest growing area (42.7 million hectares) with production of 86.30 metric tonnes in 2000-2001 and 78.64 MT in 2002-2003 (Anonymous, 2004). In Gujarat, rice occupied about 5 to 7 lakh ha area with a total production of 9 to 10.5 lakh tonnes (Vashi et al., 2005). Rice crop is attacked by a several hundred species of insect pests during its different stages of crop period. Adult of rice leaf roller, Cnaphalocrocis medinalis Guenee (Pyraustidae : Lepidoptera) is small with yellowish brown wings and dark wavy lines on fore and hind wings. Eggs are laid singly on the under surface of tender leaf blade. Larvae are active, yellowish green and remain inside the leaf rolls. It folds the leaf longitudinally by fastening the two edges of
Building the Coleoptera tree‐of‐life for >8000 species: composition of public DNA data and fit with Linnaean classification

The species representation of public databases is growing rapidly and permits increasingly detailed phylogenetic inferences. We present a supermatrix based on all gene sequences of Coleoptera available in Genbank for two nuclear (18S and 28S rRNA) and two mitochondrial (rrnL and cox1) genes. After filtering for unique species names and the addition of ˜2000 unpublished sequences for cox1 and 18S rRNA, the resulting data matrix included 8441 species‐level terminals and 6600 aligned nucleotide positions. The concatenated matrix represents the equivalent of 2.17% of the 390 000 described species of Coleoptera and includes 152 beetle families. The remaining 29 families constitute small lineages with ˜250 known species in total. Taxonomic coverage remains low for several major lineages, including Buprestidae (0.16% of described species), Staphylinidae (1.03%), Tenebrionidae (0.90%) and Cerambycidae (0.58%). The current taxon sampling was strongly biased towards the Northern Hemisphere. Phylogenetic trees obtained from the supermatrix were in very good agreement with the Linnaean classification, in particular at the family level, but lower for the subfamily and lowest for the genus level. The topology supports the basal split of Derodontidae and Scirtoidea from the remaining Polyphaga, and the broad paraphyly of Cucujoidea. The data extraction pipeline and detailed tree provide a framework for placement of any new sequences, including environmental samples, into a DNA‐based classification system of Coleoptera.
Modification of the "gold standard"? leadership selection from an attachment lens: a critical analysis.

The demands of corporate America are placing increased pressures on supervisors and executives to create and manage optimal organizational cultures. Relational capabilities and emotional intelligence have come to the fore as an essential component of effective and successful business leadership. When leaders are unable to create positive relationships with their working teams and navigate the day-to-day stressors of the workplace, the costs can be significant. In addition to losses in productivity, absenteeism, stress, burnout, and demoralization all take a heavy toll. From the perspective of attachment theory, the ability to connect with others, cope with stress, and engage in productive behavior all stem from positive early relationships with caregivers. It is thought that early experiences create attachment schema, which continue to organize the way we relate at home and in the workplace. Preliminary research suggests that leaders with secure attachment styles are able to drive optimal employee behaviors and performance outcomes. Similarly, leaders with neglectful, dismissive, and critical interpersonal styles grounded in insecure attachment schema lead to more undesirable and less productive employee behaviors. There is an abundance of research utilizing self-report measures to assess attachment and leadership behaviors in the workplace and the potential to use attachment behavior as an additional criterion for leadership selection. The current study will explore the following questions: 1. What does the research say about the integration of adult attachment, assessment, and leadership? 2. Can the well-established Adult Attachment Interview be modified for the purpose of leadership selection? As such, the goal is to apply attachment research to selecting more effective leaders capable of creating healthier and more productive working cultures.
Comparative incidence of mastitis in relation to certain factors in cattle and buffaloes

Tne cows that calved in summer and the buffaloes calved in rainy season had highest incidence of mastitis. Season of infection followed similar trend as that of season of calving. The season of calving and season of infection had significant effect on the incidence of mastitis. The incidence of mastitis was highest in early lactation in Sahiwal cows and buffaloes, and late lactation in crossbreds (KS and KF). The incidence of mastitis was highest in Karan Swiss, Karan Fries and Sahiwal cows among high, medium and low level of production respectively. The machine-milked cows had highest incidence of mastitis than hand-milked cows.
Automated tracking and collective behaviour in locusts and humans

The understanding of the motion of animal groups, such as birds, fish and insects, has been greatly advanced by applying principles of self-organisation – the emergence of global patterns from simple, local, interactions between individuals. The desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria, provides a useful model system for the experimental study of collective behaviour. During plague years, the desert locust can form aggregations extending over hundreds of km. Before developing wings, juvenile locusts form marching ‘bands’ which can maintain group cohesion as they migrate over large distances. In this thesis I investigate locust aggregation, group motion and individual interactions. I also apply the same principles to a study of human behaviour. In Chapter 2, I describe the automated tracking methods that I developed and used to collect the data for the rest of the thesis. In the experiments described in Chapter 3, the relative strengths of the attraction to conspecifics and environmental heterogeneities were explored by presenting groups of locusts with two aggregation sites. I found that locusts had a preference to enter the site with the higher population. The locusts formed dynamic aggregations on the sites; no site was consistently more populated than the other, but individuals were significantly more attracted to the site with the higher current population. In Chapter 4, I consider the effect of marching experience on locust behaviour. Groups of locusts that had experience of directed marching, followed by a sudden reduction in density, behaved indistinguishably from those that had only experienced the lower density throughout, indicating a lack of hysteresis effects in collective responses to change in local population density. In Chapter 5, I investigate a locust’s response to its nearest neighbour. I quantified a locust’s propensity to start or stop moving according to the relative position, orientation and movement of its nearest neighbour. In Chapter 6 the techniques developed studying the locusts were applied to human groups. The response of people to different sized groups was quantified, replicating an earlier study in New York. The response was weaker in Oxford but had the same characteristics of the previous study, showing an initially linear response which saturated. The spatial distribution of gaze copying was anisotropic, tending to occur behind the group.
Genes involved in attachment of Listeria monocytogenes to abiotic surfaces

This study investigated genes involved in attachment of Listeria monocytogenes to abiotic surfaces. L. monocytogenes has previously been shown to attach to a variety of different abiotic surfaces, including polystyrene, stainless steel and glass. Consequently biofilm formation is a significant problem in food processing industries. An existing attachment assay was modified to allow screening of transposon mutants for a deficiency in attachment of bacteria to wells of a microtitre plate. Using this assay, three mutants were identified that had previously been shown to have reduced attachment to stainless steel and glass. The location of insertion of the transposon into each of the mutants M113, B380 and M237 was mapped to the genes lmo1226, lmo0401 and lmo0501, respectively. Deletion mutants were made in these genes and the gene lmo0402 to better clarify the role of these genes in attachment. The gene lmo1226 was identified as a drug exporter of the RND superfamily, responsible for the streptomycin resistance exhibited by L. monocytogenes strain 10403s. Lmo1226 is also involved in attachment, virulence, and growth of L. monocytogenes in sodium chloride. The genes lmo0401 and lmo0501 were identified as an α-mannosidase and a BglG transcriptional antiterminator respectively, and were identified to be involved in attachment alongside another transcriptional antiterminator (lmo0402). The transcriptional antiterminators were shown to be involved with transcription of the Bgl operon which encodes genes required for phosphoenolpyruvate phosphate transferase systems in L. monocytogenes. The results from these experiments have helped to elucidate the processes involved in L. monocytogenes attachment to surfaces, and have identified targets for future antimicrobials against this bacterium.
The immune response in Influenza A-S. pneumoniae coinfection

Streptococcus pneumoniae coinfection is a major cause of influenza-associated mortality. In this thesis the underlying disease mechanisms and the role of the immune response are investigated in a mouse model. Coinfection with otherwise mild influenza and S. pneumoniae strains is shown to synergistically cause mortality and severe disease. Loss of bacterial but not viral control, and subsequent outgrowth, is identified as the main driver of mortality. Influenza-mediated immune impairment and lung damage have been proposed as mechanisms of coinfection. Here the aspects of the immune response profiled are not impaired; in contrast, coinfection induces a strong proinflammatory cytokine response and an influx of functional neutrophils. Depletion of neutrophils or TNF-α blockade exacerbates disease and bacterial outgrowth, showing these aspects of the immune response are protective. In addition to profiling the downstream response to bacterial outgrowth, the upstream causes of bacterial colonization are investigated. CCR2-/- mice are shown to be more resistant to coinfection. Influenza-infected CCR2-/- lungs lack inflammatory monocytes and exhibit reduced damage prior to coinfection. How inflammatory monocyte derived damage is mediated is investigated. Blockade of TRAIL - a cell-death inducing ligand - during the viral phase prior to coinfection ameliorates disease. Inflammatory monocytes are shown to comprise the majority of TRAIL-expressing cells during influenza infection, and TRAIL expression is largely absent in CCR2-/- mice. Therefore a mechanism is proposed for coinfection where influenza-induced TRAIL-expressing inflammatory monocytes cause lung damage, allowing bacterial colonization, while neutrophils and TNF-α counter subsequent bacterial outgrowth. Other aspects of coinfection, such as bacterial spread to the brain and other facets of the immune response, are also investigated.
Effect of aqueous leaf extract of cloves (Syzygium aromaticum) on growth and development of tobacco caterpillar (Spodoptera litura)

A study was conducted during 2008-09 to assess the biological activity of aqueous leaf extracts of cloves [Syzygium aromaticum (L.) Merr. Perry L. ] against tobacco caterpillar (Spodoptera litura Fabricius) under laboratory conditions using 'leaf dip method'. Syzygium aromaticum extracts possess the insecticidal and juvenomimetic properties against S. litura, as total growth and development was reduced which will ultimately affect the future generation of the test insect. Leaf extracts of S. aromaticum inhibited the growth and development and affected the larval and pupal survival and adult emergence in a dose-dependent manner. It is clearly indicated that due to S. aromaticum extracts intoxicated food (20%) larvae died at early instars, hence the larval population could not reach the crucial late instar stage, which is actually responsible for crop damage. Consequently, the survival of the test insect (12.22%) was reduced in 15% concentration, whereas in control it was high (76.5%). Larval growth index and total development index of the test insect were drastically reduced 1.12 and 0.28 in S. aromaticum intoxication (15% concentration), whereas in control it was as high as 5.2 and 2.7, respectively. The leaf extracts of this plant also affected the fecundity and fertility of the test insect adversely as there was very less chance of the future generation.
Do Class I Myosins Exert Their Functions through Regulation of Actin Dynamics

Since the discoveries of class I myosins, the first non-muscle myosins, about 30 years ago, their history has been linked both to the organization and working of actin filaments and to their connection to membranes, especially the plasmalemma. Indeed, the early biochemical characterization highlighted the capacity of these mechanochemical enzymes to crosslink actin filaments and to bind phospholipids. Recent findings shed new light on these relationships and reveal a more active role of class I myosins in regulating the spatial and temporal nucleation and elongation of actin filament in close proximity of membrane sites determined by signalling and cell polarity mechanisms. The understanding of the role of the actin cytoskeleton in cell motility has recently made a giant leap forward with the discovery and dissection of the major actin nucleator, the Arp2/3 complex, and some of its activators. To investigate the molecular and cellular bases of the integration of myosin motor activity and actin dynamics in cortical management and cell motility, we make use of a genetically and biochemically tractable model organism, Dictyostelium discoideum. As the components of these complex machineries are evolutionarily conserved, their molecular and cellular dissection in D. discoideum is directly relevant to unravel their functional importance in higher organisms.