Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Impact of In Ovo Injection with Different Levels of DL- Methionine on Carcass Characteristics and Blood Parameters of Day-Old Broiler Chicks

Methionine is the first limiting amino acid in poultry which has a primary role in stimulating protein synthesis and growth. This study was designed to investigate the effect of dietary intake of different levels of DL-methionine on hatchability, carcass characteristics, and blood parameters of day-old Ross 308 broiler chicks. For this purpose, 240 fertile broiler breeder eggs were used in a completely randomized design with eight treatments and 30 eggs per treatment. The experimental treatments included injection of different levels of DL-methionine (0.19, 0.38, 0.57, 0.76, 0.95, and 1.14 %) dissolved in 1 ml sterile distilled water, along with a sham-control group (sterile water injection) and a control group (non- injected). After hatching, the chickens were weighed and blood samples were taken and slaughtered to measure carcass characteristics. In ovo injection of different levels of DL-methionine caused a reduction in hatchability (P<0.01), especially by 1.14 % DL-methionine treatment. Based on the results, in ovo injection of DL-methionine increased carcass weight, carcass yield, thigh weight, relative thigh weight, proventriculus weight, liver weight, and relative liver weight (P<0.05). In ovo feeding of DL-methionine increased serum protein concentration (P<0.01), whilst decreased serum glucose and urea concentration (P<0.01). Hatchling weight, serum cholesterol and triglyceride oncentrations, and also immune system organs weight were not affected by treatments (P>0.05). The overall results of the present study indicated that regardless of low hatchability in methionine treatments, in ovo injection of 0.76% DL-methionine had the best growth response and then, is an advisable level of this experiment.
Development of a Japanese version of the Advance Care Planning Engagement Survey: Examination of its reliability and validity

Abstract Objectives The importance of supporting advance care planning (ACP) by healthcare professionals is recognized worldwide, and assessing the outcomes, such as people's understanding and readiness for ACP, using an appropriate instrument is essential. We, therefore, developed a Japanese version of the Advance Care Planning Engagement Survey (ACP Engagement Survey; 15 items, 9 items, and 4 items), an international scale for assessing the progress of the ACP, and examined its validity and reliability. Methods The ACP Engagement Survey was translated into Japanese, back-translated, and culturally adapted, and the final version was reviewed by the author of the original version. Data on basic demographic information and ACP-related experiences were simultaneously collected as external criteria in an online survey of older adults with chronic diseases. The Cronbach's alpha was calculated to assess its internal consistency, and a retest was performed three days later to calculate the intra-class correlation coefficients (ICCs). Results A total of 200 respondents (mean age 70; 9.5% female) were included in the analysis. None of the items showed a ceiling effect, but several items did exhibit a floor effect. The factor structure was the same 2-factor structure as the original version, and both factors exhibited a high cumulative contribution rate. The Cronbach's alphas were 0.94 (15-item version), 0.91 (9-item version), and 0.95 (4-item version), and ICCs were of 0.88 (15-item version), 0.9 (9-item version), and 0.84 (4-item version). Significance of results The Japanese version of the ACP Engagement Survey was confirmed to have very good reliability regarding both internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Together with the result of the item analysis, we can conclude that the Japanese version of the ACP Engagement Survey is sufficiently reliable to be utilized in interventional studies, and it has acceptable content validity, construct validity, and criterion-related validity.
Comparison of Dietary Oils with Different Polyunsaturated Fatty Acid n-3 and n-6 Content in the Rat Model of Cutaneous Wound Healing

Dietary supplementation with polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) n-3 can affect cutaneous wound healing; however, recent findings demonstrate the variable extent of their influence on the quality of healing. Here, we compare the effect of several dietary oils, containing different levels of PUFA n-3 and PUFA n-6, on wound healing in the rat model. Rats were fed the feed mixture with 8% palm oil (P), safflower oil (S), fish oil (F) or Schizochytrium microalga extract (Sch) and compared to the animals fed by control feed mixture (C). Dorsal full-thickness cutaneous excisions were performed after 52 days of feeding and skin was left to heal for an additional 12 days. Histopathological analysis of skin wounds was performed, including immune cells immunolabeling and the determination of hydroxyproline amount as well as gene expression analyses of molecules contributing to different steps of the healing. Matrix-assisted-laser-desorption-ionization mass-spectrometry-imaging (MALDI-MSI) was used to determine the amount of collagen α-1(III) chain fragment in healing samples. Treatment by Schizochytrium extract resulted in decrease in the total wound area, in contrast to the safflower oil group where the size of the wound was larger when comparing to control animals. Diet with Schizochytrium extract and safflower oils displayed a tendency to increase the number of new vessels. The number of MPO-positive cells was diminished following any of oil treatment in comparison to the control, but their highest amount was found in animals with a fish oil diet. On the other hand, the number of CD68-positive macrophages was increased, with the most significant enhancement in the fish oil and safflower oil group. Hydroxyproline concentration was the highest in the safflower oil group but it was also enhanced in all other analyzed treatments in comparison to the control. MALDI-MSI signal intensity of a collagen III fragment decreased in the sequence C > S > Sch > P > F treatment. In conclusion, we observed differences in tissue response during healing between dietary oils, with the activation of inflammation observed following the treatment with oil containing high eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) level (fish oil) and enhanced healing features were induced by the diet with high content of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA, Schizochytrium extract).
Identification of Rice Genotypes Resistant To Bacterial Leaf Blight Disease Using Ssr Markers

Bacterial blight disease of rice is a growing and challenging concern in Nepal. Since bacterial pathogen (Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae) is difficult to manage by other means effectively, development of host plant resistance is the most effective mean to control this disease. This study was carried out to identify the bacterial leaf blight resistant genotypes of rice by using of molecular markers linked with bacterial blight resistant genes. Sixty genotypes of rice were screened at glass house for BB resistance and they were tested for the presence of Xa4, Xa5, Xa7 and Xa21 genes using markers MP, RM122, M5 and pTA248 respectively. IRBB 60 and Jumli Marshi were used as resistant and susceptible check respectively. Twenty five genotypes of rice were detected with presence of Xa4 gene, 24 genotypes with Xa5 gene and fourteen genotypes with Xa7 gene. Twenty four genotypes did not showed presence of any gene. Twenty four genotypes showed the presence of more than one gene with the specific molecular markers. Almost all genotypes that did not show presence of any gene were found highly susceptible in greenhouse conditions with both inoculums. Genotypes having more than one BB resistance gene were found resistant in greenhouse conditions with both inoculums suggesting combination of BB resistance gene through gene pyramiding will provide BB resistant varieties in rice breeding.
Fisher Hypothesis in the Stock Market: An Alternative Specification

The stock market plays a pivotal role in the sustainable development of an economy. Fisher’s hypothesis in the stock market specifies that stock returns are directly linked to the rate of inflation. The objective of this paper is to explore this relationship using panel dataset for 56 countries from 1950-2018 and applying general to a specific technique for above-average Money Supply/GDP countries and below-average Money Supply/GDP countries separately and for different income group countries i.e. high-income countries, upper-middle-income countries, and lower-middle-income countries. Our analysis indicates that the Fisher hypothesis holds in the world economies except for lower-middle-income countries but it holds in its weak form.
Understanding teaching practices for inclusive participation of students with autism in Saudi Arabian primary schools

ABSTRACT Research indicates that students with autism tend to show more levels of non-engagement compared to their peers with other types of disabilities, and teachers struggle to enhance their participation in mainstream classrooms. The aim of this paper was to understand how teachers arrive at their teaching decisions to promote the participation of students with autism in inclusive classrooms by illustrating and analysing the phenomenon across several cases. This study adopted a longitudinal multiple case study design with four participating teachers from primary schools in Saudi Arabia using a combination of methods (observations, interviews and teaching efficacy scale). The findings indicated that teachers arrived at their teaching decisions regarding the participation of students with autism in a complex way of thinking involving attitudes towards the inclusion of students with autism, levels of teaching efficacy, perceived causes of the students’ needs and expectations of students’ learning progress in their classrooms. A model grounded in the data was developed to show how these factors interact. Teachers who perceived students with autism as having intellectual difficulties, had lower expectations of their learning progress, lower level of teaching efficacy and less positive attitudes towards their inclusion, which set limits on their participation in the class.
Paradoxical Psoriasis Induced by Anti-TNFα Treatment: Evaluation of Disease-Specific Clinical and Genetic Markers

Paradoxical psoriasis (PP) may occur during treatment with anti-tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) drugs in various chronic immune-mediated diseases, mainly inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) and psoriasis. In this study, clinical and genetic characteristics of PP arising in IBD and psoriatic patients were investigated to identify disease-specific markers of the paradoxical effect. A total of 161 IBD and psoriatic patients treated with anti-TNF-α drugs were included in the study. Of these patients, 39 developed PP. All patients were characterized for the main clinical–pathologic characteristics and genotyped for six candidate single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) selected for their possible role in PP susceptibility. In IBD patients, the onset of PP was associated with female sex, presence of comorbidities, and use of adalimumab. IBD patients with PP had a higher frequency of the TNF-α rs1799964 rare allele (p = 0.006) compared with cases without the paradoxical effect, and a lower frequency of the human leucocyte antigen (HLA)-Cw06 rs10484554 rare allele (p = 0.03) compared with psoriatic patients with PP. Overall, these findings point to specific clinical and genetic characteristics of IBD patients with PP and provide data showing that genetic variability may be related to the paradoxical effect of anti-TNF-α drugs with possible implications into clinical practice.
Mapping Powdery Mildew (Blumeria graminis f. sp. tritici) Resistance in Wild and Cultivated Tetraploid Wheats

Wheat is the most widely grown crop and represents the staple food for one third of the world’s population. Wheat is attacked by a large variety of pathogens and the use of resistant cultivars is an effective and environmentally safe strategy for controlling diseases and eliminating the use of fungicides. In this study, a collection of wild and cultivated tetraploid wheats (Triticum turgidum) were evaluated for seedling resistance (SR) and adult plant resistance (APR) to powdery mildew (Blumeria graminis) and genotyped with a 90K single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array to identify new sources of resistance genes. The genome-wide association mapping detected 18 quantitative trait loci (QTL) for APR and 8 QTL for SR, four of which were identical or at least closely linked to four QTL for APR. Thirteen candidate genes, containing nucleotide binding sites and leucine-rich repeats, were localized in the confidence intervals of the QTL-tagging SNPs. The marker IWB6155, associated to QPm.mgb-1AS, was located within the gene TRITD1Av1G004560 coding for a disease resistance protein. While most of the identified QTL were described previously, five QTL for APR (QPm.mgb-1AS, QPm.mgb-2BS, QPm.mgb-3BL.1, QPm.mgb-4BL, QPm.mgb-7BS.1) and three QTL for SR (QPm.mgb-3BL.3, QPm.mgb-5AL.2, QPm.mgb-7BS.2) were mapped on chromosome regions where no resistance gene was reported before. The novel QTL/genes can contribute to enriching the resistance sources available to breeders.
Vritti: Guarantees for Mix Flows in Inter-Datacenter Networks.

GANDHI, SHRUTI. Vritti: Guarantees for Mix Flows in Inter-Datacenter Networks. (Under the direction of Ioannis Viniotis.) Inter-datacenter networks connect the geo-distributed datacenters of cloud provider(s), and many times also encompass the internet to provide connectivity. The nature of traffic on these networks is dependent on the cloud applications running in these datacenters. Hence the traffic is generally a mix of flows with and without deadlines, with known and unknown volume. The underlying wide area network (WAN) used to transfer these mix-flows is an expensive and congested resource. The providers today do not provide any guarantees to the traffic traversing the inter-datacenter WAN. In the literature, there has been little work done in guaranteeing deadlines to the traffic traversing the inter-datacenter WAN, while there has been no work done to provide tailor-made guarantees depending on the nature of traffic requirement while ensuring fairness among different flow types served in the inter-datacenter WAN environment. In this work, we propose the problem of identifying admission control, scheduling and routing decisions to provide deadline guarantees and fairness to mix-flows in an inter-datacenter WAN environment. We use linear programming (LP) to mathematically formulate the problem with the objective of maximizing utility that is a function of revenue generating ability of the flow types and fairness among all flow types. We propose a spatial-temporal traffic engineering system ‘Vritti’, that can provide these guarantees. We propose and solve the static version of the problem where the future requests are known to the system in advance. We then propose a more realistic dynamic problem where the future requests are not known in advance. We propose four algorithms, namely, greedy, greedy-fair, selective-rescheduling and selective-rescheduling-fair to provide guarantees to mix-flows. We evaluate the effectiveness of these algorithms using extensive simulations. With selective-rescheduling, we achieve close to 69% acceptance rate of hard deadline requests at arrival rate of 10, and close to 100% acceptance rate for lower arrival rates. Using greedy-fair algorithm, we achieve close to 50% acceptance rate for hard deadline requests and close to 100% fraction of non-deadline requests allocated at arrival rate of 10. With selective-rescheduling-fair algorithm we strike a nice balance between the aggressive deadline traffic oriented approach taken by selective-rescheduling algorithm and fairness oriented approach taken by the greedy-fair algorithm. We also propose problem variations in the context of business models such as federated-cloud and multi-cloud. We solve the problems in these models by modifying greedy, greedy-fair, selective-rescheduling and selective-rescheduling-fair algorithms and evaluate the algorithms comprehensively using simulations. © Copyright 2020 by Shruti Gandhi
The complete mitogenome of wild honeybee Apis dorsata (Hymenoptera: Apidae) from South-Western China

Abstract We sequenced almost complete mitochondrial genome of Apis dorsata (Insecta: Hymenoptera: Apocrita: Apidae) with a length of 15,933 bp. The mitogenome sequenced harbours 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 21 transfer RNA genes (tRNA), two ribosomal RNA genes (rRNA), and one control region (D-loop) with very high AT-base content. The genome has similar codon usage and gene organization to those of mitogenome reported for other Hymenoptera. Phylogenetic analyses showed that Apis dorsata and (Apis cerana+Apis mellifera) are the sister taxa, and more original, which is widely accepted view.
Cytogenetic Tools to Study the Biodiversity of Neotropical Fish: From the Classic to the Advent of Cell Culture

Neotropical Ichthyofauna is considered the richest and most diverse in the world. All this biodiversity has attracted attention from researchers from different areas of study, including the cytogenetics. Many cytogenetics studies have search to understand the evolution of macro and micro karyotype structure of these different groups of fish, and classical and molecular cytogenetics techniques have contributed significantly for all knowledge of this karyotypic diversity. Recently, the use of cell cultures as an alternative to obtaining mitotic chromosomes opening up new opportunities to study groups that have not been explored or have not yet been cytogenetically investigated. In this work, we take a chronological overview of the advances of different cytogenetic techniques (“in vivo” and “in vitro” methods to obtain the chromosome, C-banding, the detection of nucleolar organizer regions (Ag-RON), fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) with several repetitive probes and paint chromosome) over the decades and how these techniques helped elucidate questions of the organization and function of the fish genome.
Inside the decentralised casino: A longitudinal study of actual cryptocurrency gambling transactions

Decentralised gambling applications are a new way for people to gamble online. Decentralised gambling applications are distinguished from traditional online casinos in that players use cryptocurrency as a stake. Also, rather than being stored on a single centralised server, decentralised gambling applications are stored on a cryptocurrency’s blockchain. Previous work in the player behaviour tracking literature has examined the spending profiles of gamblers on traditional online casinos. However, similar work has not taken place in the decentralised gambling domain. The profile of gamblers on decentralised gambling applications are therefore unknown. This paper explores 2,232,741 transactions from 24,234 unique addresses to three such applications operating atop the Ethereum cryptocurrency network over 583 days. We present spending profiles across these applications, providing the first detailed summary of spending behaviours in this technologically advanced domain. We find that the typical player spends approximately $110 equivalent across a median of 6 bets in a single day, although heavily involved bettors spend approximately $100,000 equivalent over a median of 644 bets across 35 days. Our findings suggest that the average decentralised gambling application player spends less than in other online casinos overall, but that the most heavily involved players in this new domain spend substantially more. This study also demonstrates the use of these applications as a research platform, specifically for large scale longitudinal in-vivo data analysis.
A global perspective on management of bacterial infections in pregnancy: a systematic review of international guidelines

Abstract Introduction Maternal sepsis is a leading cause of maternal and neonatal mortality. Despite the availability of management protocols, there is disparity in case fatality rates for pregnancy-related sepsis compared to other maternity-related complications. The main aim of this systematic review was to assess concordance between international evidence-based guidelines for the prevention and management of childbirth-related bacterial infections. Material and methods The PRISMA statement was followed during the conduct and reporting of this review. PubMed was searched electronically from 2009 to November 2019 for clinical guidelines covering the topic of childbirth-related infections and specific searches for relevant guidelines on the websites of the top five international professional bodies most commonly identified by our searches. We did not apply any language restrictions. Guidelines were included if they provided any information about the prevention or management of childbirth-related bacterial infections irrespective of whether the guideline stated a recommendation or not. Two independent reviewers undertook study selection, decisions about inclusion of selected guidelines and data extraction. Extracted information was synthesized under the following topics: Asymptomatic bacteriuria; group B streptococcal infection (GBS); preterm premature rupture of membranes (P-PROM); intrauterine infection; procedures; maternal sepsis; miscellaneous. Concordance was defined as absence of contradictory information between the different guidelines with regards to a specific topic, subtopic or recommendation. Quality of included guidelines was assessed against the AGREE II guideline reporting domains. Results A total of 43 guidelines were selected of which 11 were excluded leaving 32 guidelines that fulfilled our inclusion criteria. None of the guidelines fulfilled all the quality assessment domains and 11 (34%) of the guidelines satisfied 1−2 of domains only. Two guidelines covered the topic of asymptomatic bacteriuria, nine for GBS, five for P-PROM and three covered each of intra-amniotic infections maternal sepsis, obstetric procedures and interventions topics. The remaining guidelines covered miscellaneous topics. Conclusions There was concordance between guidelines with regards to several aspects in the prophylaxis and treatment of bacteriological infections in pregnancy. Nevertheless, there were several areas of discordance, some of which reached the extent of contradictory information as in the case of antenatal screening for GBS.
Evaluation of a performic acid oxidation method for quantifying amino acids in freshwater species

Thiol amino acids in proteins store metals like mercury, but established methods for their quantitation in freshwater species have had limited application and evaluation. As such, literature on the amino acid composition of aquatic species often lacks the thiols cysteine and methionine. Here, we evaluated a performic acid (PFA) oxidation method to determine its suitability to measure cysteine and methionine, as well as 15 other amino acids, in novel matrices (zooplankton, benthic invertebrates, fishes, and algae). Protein‐bound amino acids were oxidized with PFA, hydrolyzed in hydrochloric acid, derivatized with AccQ·Tagultra (Waters), and separated by ultra‐high performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection. PFA oxidation was successful in determining precise results for 15 amino acids, including the sulfur amino acids, with the complete loss of tyrosine (TYR) and poor precision of phenylalanine (PHE). The overall variability of the method was 11% (excluding TYR and PHE), or 6% when reported as relative percentages, comparable to methods without PFA oxidation in other matrices. Except for TYR and thiols, PFA oxidation did not affect the amino acid composition of these biota. Overall, the findings were reproducible and comparable to other approaches and suggest this is a rigorous method for measuring sulfur amino acids and the overall amino acid composition for aquatic biota, both of which are rare in the literature.