Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Community-level changes in Banksia woodland following plant pathogen invasion in the Southwest Australian Floristic Region

Question: Does the introduced pathogen Phytophthora cinnamomi change Banksia woodland α- or β-diversity and what are the implications for species re-colonization? Location: High rainfall zone of the Southwest Australian Floristic Region (SWAFR). Methods: We measured pathogen-induced floristic change along a disease chronosequence, and re-sampled historic quadrats in Banksia attenuata woodlands of the SWAFR. The chronosequence represents three disease stages: (1) healthy vegetation with no disease expression; (2) the active disease front; and (3) diseased vegetation infected for at least 15 years. Comparative data were obtained by resampling diseased plots that were historically disease-free when established in 1990. Results: β-diversity differed substantially for both chronosequence and historic data, while α-diversity was maintained, as measured by plot species richness and Simpson's reciprocal index. Species of known pathogen susceptibility were significantly reduced in cover-abundance, including the structurally dominant species; Banksia attenuata, B. ilicifolia and Allocasuarina fraseriana. Although these species remained present on diseased sites, there were overall reductions in canopy closure, leaf litter and basal area. These declines were coupled with an increase of species with unknown susceptibility, suggesting potential resistance and capacity to take advantage of altered site conditions. Conclusions: This study highlights the ability of an introduced plant pathogen to alter community floristics and associated stand variables. Species cover-abundances are unlikely to recover due to a reduced seed source, altered site conditions and pathogen persistence at the landscape level. However, maintenance of α-diversity suggests continued biological significance of Phytophthora-affected sites and the formation of novel ecosystems, themselves worthy of conservation.
Morphodynamics of downstream fining in rivers with unimodal sand-gravel feed

: Rivers often show a downstream decrease in both the bed slope (long profile upward concavity) and bed surface characteristic grain size (downstream fining). Downstream fining is gradual, except at the gravel-sand transition, where bed grain size changes over short downstream distances, often only a few channel widths. A gravel-sand transition can be expected to arise when the sediment in transport is bimodal, with sand and gravel modes but a paucity of 1-10 mm gravel range. However, it has also been suggested that gravel-sand tran­ sitions may be generated autogenically, as decreasing bed slope in the downstream direction drives sand abruptly out of suspension and buries gravel which might be well under the thresh­ old of motion. To study the problem of autogenic gravel-sand transitions, we propose a river morphodynamic model which erases any explicit distinction between gravel and sand trans­ port. Such a distinction between gravel and sand is generally implemented in previous models of sediment transport and river morphodynamics. A unimodal mixture of sand and gravel is used in the present simulation to exclude the effect of bimodality of sediment on the gravel-sand transition. Upward concavity in the profile is forced through basin subsidence. We con­ sider a river channel from a mountain valley to a subsiding foreland basin by implementing a spatially varying width of floodplain where sediment can deposit. Simulation results show that downstream fining is manifested throughout the entire reach, with an abrupt grain size transition occurring immediately downstream of where the floodplain width increases dramat­ ically and gravel deposits as the river comes into the foreland basin.
Effects of molasses and ground wheat additions on the quality of groundnut, sweet potato, and Jerusalem artichoke tops silages

In this study, the effects of molasses (M) and ground wheat (GW) additions on the quality of groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) (GN), sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas L.) (SP) and Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus L.) (JA) tops silages were investigated. GW and M were added in the silages at 0, 2, 4 and 6% in fresh matter basis (W0, W2, W4, W6 and M0, M2, M4, M6). Additions of the silage additives increased the DM of the silages (P 0.05), M and GW decreased pH in the GN and SW tops silages (P < 0.01). The ADF, NDF and ADL contents were significantly decreased (P < 0.001) by increased level of GW and M. The lactic acid contents of the GN silages with 2 and 4% GW and SP silage with 6 % GW were lower than the desired level (2%). Flieg scores of all silages were excellent, except GN silages added with 0, 2 and 4% GW which had good score.
The I-Ab mutant B6.C-H-2bm12 allows definition of multiple T cell epitopes on I-A molecules

The experiments presented in this study demonstrate that there exist at least two functional epitopes on an I-A molecule that can be recognized by T cell clones. By comparing the abilities of spleen cells from C57BL/6 mice and the congenic I-A mutant line B6.C-H-2bm12 to stimulate alloreactive T cell clones specific for the I-Ab molecule, we have discriminated two sets of clones, those recognizing the I-Ab and I- Abm12 molecule equally well and those able to recognize only the I-Ab molecule. These results imply that the two sets of clones have different receptors for I-A and that they therefore recognize separate epitopes on the I-A molecule. We have similarly been able to separate T cell clones, both alloreactive and L-glutamic acid60-L-alanine30-L- tyrosine10-reactive, specific for the Ab alpha Ak beta hybrid molecule into two groups based on their ability to recognize bm 12 spleen cells. Although the recognition of bm 12 spleen cells by these clones was unexpected since none of them responds to B6 spleen cells, these data again allow us to conclude that these groups of clones have different receptors for the same I-A molecule and therefore that they recognize distinct epitopes on the molecule. Additional studies, in which monoclonal anti-I-A antibodies were used to block the stimulation of T cells by stimulator or antigen-presenting cells, have demonstrated that this blockade can be a steric effect and therefore is not necessarily indicative of direct competition between the antibody and the T cell for the same site on an I-A molecule. Although this study does not reveal the physical nature of an I region-controlled "antigen- restriction site," we can suggest that increasing the number of possible functional Ia restriction sites either through combinatorial association of alpha and beta chains or by using more than one site per molecule will increase the number of configurations the ternary complex of Ia, antigen and T cell receptor(s) can form.
Assessment of Insulin and Insulin Resistance in Dairy Cattle with Displaced Abomasum Pre and Post-Surgery

Displacement of the abomasum (DA) in dairy cattle is a multifactorial disease, with the majority of cases being diagnosed within the first week postpartum. The study aimed to describe the changes in clinical findings, serum levels of insulin, glucose and non-esterified fatty acids (NEFAs) as well as assess insulin resistance in Holstein dairy cattle with DA throughout a long term study from day 0 until day 30 post surgery. The study was conducted on DA cattle (n = 25) belonged to dairy farms in Hokkaido area, Japan. Cows were examined and sampled at days 0 (surgery), 7 and 30. They were clinically and biochemically examined to estimate Body Condition Score (BCS) and serum insulin, glucose and NEFAs. Insulin resistance was measured by using Quantitative Insulin Sensitivity Check Index (RQUICKI). Based on blood â-hydroxybutyric acid All copyright reserved to Mr.Scholar To Cite This Article: Khalphallah, A. , A.A. Aamer, T. AbdelAll, H. Katoh, S. Oikawa, K. Nakada and E. Elmeligy, 2015. Assessment of insulin and insulin resistance in Dairy cattle with displaced abomasum pre and post-surgery.Scholar’s Adv. Anim. Vet. Res., 2(3): 162-176.
Crop Raiding by Elephants Adjacent to Two National Parks in Lampung Province, Sumatra, Indonesia

Human-elephant conflict is one of the major issues in elephant conservation in Africa and Asia (Sukumar 1989; Hoare 2001). The conflict has become more widespread due to large scale habitat loss. Rapid human population growth and development throughout most of elephant distribution has caused a dramatic decline in the population (Thouless 1994; Hoare 1999; Zhang & Wang 2003). Extensive forest conversion to agriculture has meant that elephants are now frequently in contact with humans in many areas. As a consequence, humans and elephants compete for space and other resources, and conflict between them is unavoidable. One of the important issues that arise in human-elephant conflict “discussions” by the Asian and African Elephant Specialist Group in IUCN (World Conservation Union) is inadequate government policies to specifically address the problem (Dublin et al. 2006). Furthermore, even if the overall impact of human elephant conflict is relatively low; its effect can be significant to individual farmers (Naughton et al. 1998). As a result, rural communities have negative attitudes towards elephants (de Boer & Baquete 1998).
Semi-supervised audio tagging with deep co-training and augmentations

In this work, we explored the task of audio tagging in a semi-supervised context. The recently proposed Deep Co-Training (DCT) algorithm has shown impressive results in visual object recognition and outperformed other semi-supervised state-of-the-art methods such as Mean Teacher and GANs. DCT uses two or more deep neural networks and adversarial examples to enforce complementarity between the models trained on the same data. We adapted DCT to audio tagging, and we report experiments on the publicly available UrbanSound8K dataset. We compare models trained with 10% of labeled data using supervised training and using DCT, which may beneﬁt from the remaining 90% unlabeled data. To go further than the original DCT proposal, we propose to artiﬁcially increase the 10% of labeled ﬁles by simply duplicating them in the mini-batches during learning, and transforming them with audio data augmentations. If standard DCT already showed performance gains against supervised learning (17% relative gain), the use of duplication combined with data augmentations on the labeled examples lead to additional signiﬁcant performance improvements (26% gain) 1 .
PETRI BÖCKERMAN PERCEPTION OF JOB INSTABILITY IN EUROPE

The perception of job instability is an important measure of subjective wellbeing of individuals, because most people derive their income from selling their labour services. The study explores the determination of perception of job instability in Europe. The study is based on a large-scale survey from the year 1998. There are evidently large differences in the amount of perceived job instability from country to country. The lowest level of perceived job instability is in Denmark (9%). In contrast, the highest level of perceived job instability is in Spain (63%). Perceived job instability increases with age and an earlier unemployment episode. An increase in educational level, on the other hand, leads to a decline in the perception of job instability. In addition, a temporary contract as such does not yield an additional increase to the perception of job instability. The perception of job instability is more common within manufacturing industries and there is some evidence for the view that it increases according to the size of the firm.
POSTNATAL DEVELOPMENT OF VOCALIZATIONS AND HEARING IN THE PHYLLOSTOMID BAT, CAROLLIA PERSPICILLATA

Abstract Postnatal development of vocalizations and audiograms was investigated in 19 juvenile Carollia perspicillata from the day of birth (age 0 days) to 7 weeks. In both juvenile isolation calls and adult social calls the 1st harmonic (fundamental) contained the most energy. Two types of isolation calls could be separated in young bats: “single notes” with 1 pulse and “double notes” with 2 pulses. Young bats 1st emitted echolocation pulses when they started to fly at age 17–22 days. Duration of these pulses was on average 1.8 ± 0.6 ms (mean ± SD; n = 11) and decreased during development to an adult-like duration of 0.9 ± 0.1 ms (n = 15) at 7 weeks. Frequency ranges of harmonics of the calls did not change significantly with age, but energy distribution of the harmonics was altered. Higher harmonics became successively emphasized. Newborn C. perspicillata hears 68% of the adult frequency range. During postnatal development the auditory range expanded upward. The upper limit of hearing, based on characteristic frequencies of multineuron clusters within the auditory midbrain (inferior colliculus), shifted from 77 kHz at birth to 110 kHz at day 50. Neural thresholds decreased most for frequencies of 60–110 kHz, which are most important for echolocation. However, from birth on, bats were most sensitive to low frequencies of 10–30 kHz.
Sediment phosphorus forms and levels in two tropical floodplain wetlands

Inorganic phosphorus is one of the critical nutrients determining trophic state and freshwater productivity. Sediment may act as a sink or source of phosphorus to the overlying water depending on its pH, redox state, various forms of phosphorus present, etc. To examine potential sorption or mobilization of sediment phosphorus in floodplain wetlands, the amount and distribution of phosphorus fractions were evaluated using a sequential chemical extraction procedure. Exceedingly high levels of total phosphorus (mean: 6040 ± 344, 5470 ± 363 mg kg−1), consisting largely of organic and refractory fraction (70 – 98%), followed by calcium-phosphorus (mean: 584 ± 31.3, 143 ± 8.42 mg kg−1) and iron-phosphorus (mean: 108 ± 10.1, 91.0 ± 7.68 mg kg−1) were recorded respectively in Bhomra and Akaipur wetlands of West Bengal, India. The inorganic phosphorus, comprising the loosely sorbed phosphorus and all the mineral bound forms contributed only about 6–14% to the total phosphorus indicating their less significance in phosphorus sorption or desorption in these tropical wetlands. Although the loosely sorbed phosphorus was in moderate level (2.69 ± 0.69, 1.54 ± 0.53 mg kg−1), water dissolved phosphorus was recorded at higher concentrations (mean: 0.16 ± 0.02 mg l−1 in Akaipur and 1.08 ± 0.12 mg l−1 in Bhomra). However, the higher level of water available phosphorus was not reflected in plankton production since the dominance of weeds suppresses their growth. This study recorded large accumulation of organic matter and nutrients in the form of detritus in these wetlands which may be channelized for fish production through stocking of suitable detritivorous fishes and/or reducing macrophyte coverage that would give space and nutrients for phytoplankton growth.
Chromosome numbers of some shrubs and trees from the Bulgarian flora

The chromosome numbers of nine species of shrubs and trees from the Bulgarian flora are reported: Acer negundo, Corothamnus procumbens, Cotoneaster nebrodensis, Fraxinus excelsior, F. oxycarpa, Lembotropis nigricans, Pyrus pyraster, Ulmus laevis, and Viburnum lantana. For seven species, the chromosome numbers are reported for the first time from Bulgarian populations. For the species F. oxycarpa, this is the first record of the chromosome number; for L. nigricans and V. lantana, the chromosome numbers reported here confirm the earlier reports of Bulgarian origin.
Wi-Fi Direct Performance Evaluation for V2P Communications

The high cost of IEEE 802.11p-compliant devices and the lack of a widely adopted standard motivate the search for alternative methods for vehicular communication. As a consequence, and due to the ubiquity of smartphones, we see an increasing number of proposals based on Wi-Fi Direct, especially related to the integration of pedestrians in VANETs. Nevertheless, given the complexity of real experimentation, it is difficult to assess the ability of Wi-Fi Direct to offer connectivity in the vehicular environment on a large scale, leading to the evaluation through simulation. In order to verify the ability of a simulation model of reproducing the Wi-Fi Direct behavior, we analyze the performance of a safety application based on the communication range, packet delivery rate, and packet inter-reception time. In V2P scenarios, with and without line of sight, with varying vehicle speed, measurements using smartphones are performed and their results compared with those of OMNeT++ simulator. The results indicate, apart from the simulator’s accuracy, that the connection establishment time hinders the use of Wi-Fi Direct as a replacement to 802.11p. As an outcome of this observation, we evaluate a new transmission method for Wi-Fi Direct based on beacon stuffing, which mitigates the long connection establishment issue.
Feeding Practices and Nutritional Status of Children (Aged 2-5 Years) in Food Secure and Insecure Households in Kuyu Woreda, Oromia, Ethiopia

Malnutrition, poor child feeding practices and low dietary diversity are common in low income households, where food insecurity is prevalent. Therefore, this study was designed to assess and compare nutritional status, feeding practices and dietary diversity scores of children (aged 2-5 years) in food secure and insecure households of Kuyu woreda. A community based comparative, cross sectional study was conducted in March, 2016. Multi stages sampling methods were employed to select 612 children, out of which 304 children were from food secure and 308 from insecure households. Dietary diversity score was assessed using a 24 hrs recall method. Anthropometric measurements of children were taken and nutritional status was generated using WHO Anthro v.3. 2.2. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20.0 was used to perform descriptive statistics, independent samples T test and chi-square test analyses. P value <0.05 was considered as statistically significant. The prevalence of stunting, underweight and wasting was 48.7%, 36.7% and 20.5% respectively for children in food insecure households. While the prevalence of stunting was 43%, underweight 30.9% and wasting 16.8% for children in food secure households. Daily meal frequency; having breakfast, midmorning, afternoon and bedtime snack among children in food secure households were significantly higher than food insecure households (p<0.05). In addition, children restriction and pressure during meal were significantly (p<0.05) higher in food insecure households compared to their counterparts. Moreover, this study found that food secure and insecure households were significantly different in children's dietary diversity scores (x2=13.1, p<0.001), child feeding practices (x2=11.2, p= 0.001), consumption of dairy products (x2=15.44, p<0.001) and vitamin A rich fruits and vegetables (x2=8.37, p=0.004). Most importantly, the study revealed that nutritional statuses of children from food secure households were significantly better compared to those from their counterparts. Therefore, all responsible bodies should support poor communities through providing foods or cash money to improve the nutritional status, child feeding practices and dietary diversity scores of children in the study area.
Effects of fat reduction and fat replacer addition on some quality characteristics of frankfurter‐type sausages

Summary Some quality characteristics of frankfurters manufactured in three different fat levels (20%, 10% and 5%) and added citrus fibre (CF) and soy protein concentrate (SPC) were investigated. While moisture content of frankfurters increased with decreasing fat levels, protein contents increased. Lower fat levels resulted in lower water-holding capacity (WHC), cooking losses and penetrometer values. Lower L* values and higher a* values were obtained in low fat frankfurters. SPC significantly increased the cooking losses in the sausages with 5% and 20% fat, but decreased in the sausages with 10% fat. The lower cooking loss values were obtained in sausages added CF for all fat levels. Addition of fat replacers decreased the L values but did not affect the a and b values. Addition of fat replacers increased hardness in case of low fat levels. The softer product was obtained with high-fat formulation than low-fat formulation. Lower taste scores were observed with addition of fat replacers.
Suplemento de 1,25 dihidroxicolecalciferol e redução de cálcio e fósforo disponível para frangos de corte

Avaliaram-se o desempenho e o rendimento de carcaca e cortes nobres de frangos de corte machos com suplemento nas racoes de 1,25 dihidroxicolecalciferol e reducao de calcio e fosforo disponivel. Foi utilizado um delineamento em blocos ao acaso, com seis tratamentos: 0,0; 1,0; 2,0; 3,0; 4,0 e 5,0µg de vitamina D3 ativa/kg de racao, e seis repeticoes com 17 aves cada. Aos 8 e 42 dias de idade cada unidade experimental foi pesada para avaliacao do desempenho. Posteriormente, quatro aves/repeticao foram retiradas e abatidas para mensuracao do rendimento de carcaca e de cortes nobres. A inclusao da vitamina D3 ativa influenciou positivamente (P<0,05) o ganho de peso e a conversao alimentar com as suplementacoes de 1,0 e 2,0µg/kg. O consumo de racao nao apresentou diferenca significativa para os niveis estudados. O rendimento de carcaca e de cortes nobres de frangos de corte machos aos 42 dias nao foram influenciados pelo suplemento de 1,25 dihidroxicolecalciferol e reducao de calcio e fosforo disponivel nas racoes. Recomenda-se o fornecimento suplementar de 1,0 a 2,0µg/kg de vitamina D3 ativa nas racoes para frangos de corte machos de 8 a 42 dias de idade.
The influence of post‐emergence weed harrowing on selectivity, crop recovery and crop yield in different growth stages of winter wheat

Crop tolerance and weed control in winter wheat were investigated to evaluate the influence of post-emergence weed harrowing at different crop growth stages on selectivity, crop recovery and crop yield. The importance of growth stage was investigated in autumn (Denmark) and spring (Germany). Selectivity was chosen as a measure of the relationship between weed control and crop soil cover, with crop recovery as a measure of how crop yield was affected by soil cover in the absence of weeds. Selectivity was unaffected by crop growth stage in autumn and spring. In autumn, 80% weed control was associated with 6% crop soil cover, whereas in spring, 80% weed control corresponded to 26% crop soil cover. Crop recovery was higher in late growth stages in autumn and spring. With 25% crop soil cover, crop yield losses occurred in the ranges of 1–4% in autumn and 0.3–0.8% in spring. Weed control experiments revealed that the maximum crop yield response to harrowing was comparable with herbicide treatment. The average yield gain was 13% in autumn (Denmark) and 27% in spring (Germany). This study contributes parameter estimates that can be used in future models to evaluate optimum harrowing intensity.