Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Do lianas shape ant communities in an early successional tropical forest?

Almost half of lowland tropical forests are at various stages of regeneration following deforestation or fragmentation. Changes in tree communities along successional gradients have predictable bottom‐up effects on consumers. Liana (woody vine) assemblages also change with succession, but their effects on animal succession remain unexplored. Here we used a large‐scale liana removal experiment across a forest successional chronosequence (7–31 years) to determine the importance of lianas to ant community structure. We conducted 1,088 surveys of ants foraging on and living in trees using tree trunk baiting and hand‐collecting techniques at 34 paired forest plots, half of which had all lianas removed. Ant species composition, β‐diversity, and species richness were not affected by liana removal; however, ant species co‐occurrence (the coexistence of two or more species in a single tree) was more frequent in control plots, where lianas were present, versus removal plots. Forest stand age had a larger effect on ant community structure than the presence of lianas. Mean ant species richness in a forest plot increased by ca. 10% with increasing forest age across the 31‐year chronosequence. Ant surveys from forest >20 years old included more canopy specialists and fewer ground‐nesting ant species versus those from forests <20 years old. Consequently, lianas had a minimal effect on arboreal ant communities in this early successional forest, where rapidly changing tree community structure was more important to ant species richness and composition.
Losing Control: Sleep Deprivation Impairs the Suppression of Unwanted Thoughts

Unwanted memories often enter conscious awareness when individuals confront reminders. People vary widely in their talents at suppressing such memory intrusions; however, the factors that govern suppression ability are poorly understood. We tested the hypothesis that successful memory control requires sleep. Following overnight sleep or total sleep deprivation, participants attempted to suppress intrusions of emotionally negative and neutral scenes when confronted with reminders. The sleep-deprived group experienced significantly more intrusions (unsuccessful suppressions) than the sleep group. Deficient control over intrusive thoughts had consequences: Whereas in rested participants suppression reduced behavioral and psychophysiological indices of negative affect for aversive memories, it had no such salutary effect for sleep-deprived participants. Our findings raise the possibility that sleep deprivation disrupts prefrontal control over medial temporal lobe structures that support memory and emotion. These data point to an important role of sleep disturbance in maintaining and exacerbating psychiatric conditions characterized by persistent, unwanted thoughts.
The Role of Transient Outward Current in Regulating Cardiomyocytes Electrical and Mechanical Functions

ii Acknowledgements . v Table of contents . vii List of abbreviations . xv List of figures . xix List of tables . xxi Chapter I: Introduction . 1 1. Cardiac ventricular action potential and underlying ionic currents. 1 1.1. Cardiac conductive system and ventricular action potential (AP) . 1 1.2. Effective refractory period (ERP) and relative refractory period (RRP) . 5 1.3. The cardiac Na+ current (INa). 5 1.4. Late sodium current (INaL) . 7 1.5. The transient outward potassium current (Ito) . 7 1.6. Cardiac L-type Ca2+ current (ICa-L) . 8 1.7. Na+-Ca2+ exchanger (NCX) . 9 1.8. Other major cardiac K+ currents . 11 1.8. 1. Delayed rectifier potassium current IKr and IKs . 11 1.8. 2. Inward rectifier IK1 . 12 1.9. Action potential duration (APD) . 12
Thetaburst TMS to the posterior superior temporal sulcus decreases resting-state fMRI connectivity across the face processing network

Humans recognize faces using a network of face-selective regions distributed across the brain. Neuropsychological patient studies demonstrate that focal damage to nodes in this network can impair face recognition, but such patients are rare. We simulated the effects of damage to the face network in neurologically normal human participants using thetaburst transcranial magnetic stimulation (TBS). Multi-echo functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were collected pre and post TBS delivery over the face-selective right superior temporal sulcus (rpSTS), or a control site in the right motor cortex. Results showed that TBS delivered over the rpSTS reduced resting-state connectivity across the extended face-processing network. This connectivity reduction was observed not only between the rpSTS and other face-selective areas, but also between non-stimulated face-selective areas across the ventral, medial and lateral brain surfaces (e.g. between the right amygdala and bilateral fusiform face areas and occipital face areas). TBS delivered over the motor cortex did not produce significant changes in resting-state connectivity across the face-processing network. These results demonstrate that disrupting a single node in a brain network can decrease the functional connectivity between the distributed nodes of that network that have not been directly stimulated.
Genetic and non genetic factors affecting some udder measurements in Nili Ravi buffaloes of Pakistan

Udder length, width and height are very important parameters to identify good dairy animals. Udder measurements including length, width and height on 437 Nili Ravi buffaloes were recorded before and after miking with 1180 records at 6 Experimental Stations in Punjab, Pakistan. Heritabilities were estimated using Best Linear Unbiased Prediction techniques. Environmental factors viz age of the buffalo at scoring, stage of lactation, parity, herd and season were included in the model. Least square means for udder length, width and height before milking were found as 52.65±6.87, 53.52±6.19 and 54.34±4.99 cm and after milking as 47.08±6.57, 48.15±5.79 and 55.39±5.15 cm, respectively. Heritability estimates for udder length, width and height before milking were found as 0.08±0.07, 0.22±0.08 and 0.22±0.09, while after milking as 0.14±0.07, 0.20±0.08 and 0.09±0.08, respectively. All the factors significantly affected before milking udder length. A significant effect of herd, parity, season of scoring and age on udder width before milking was observed. Herd, stage of lactation, parity and age of the buffalo at scoring significantly affected udder height before milking. Significant efect of herd, parity, stage of lactation and age of the buffaloes at classification on most of the traits suggest that managemental factors are important. Moderate heritability estimates for these udder traits provide a fair scope for improvement through selection and breeding which will help to increase milk yield in Nili Ravi buffaloes.
Stress, challenge, and impression management among sports officials

This study examined the stressors (threats and challenges) and impression management issues experienced by sports officials, as well as the links between the two. Twelve Rugby League officials attended semi-structured interviews which were analysed using content analysis procedures. Consistent with Lazarus and Folkman’s (1984) transactional model of stress, the same stressor was perceived as a threat by some individuals and as a challenge by others. Impression management was salient for these officials and more so for challenges (career development, others’ expectations, and match importance) than threats (expectations and evaluation and self-presentation), was linked with experienced stressors for some respondents. Cognitive restructuring may assist officials to reappraise threats as challenges and diminish concerns about impression management.
Personality is associated with dominance in a social feeding context in the great tit

Despite the growing interest in consistent individual differences in behaviour (animal personality), the influence of social context on different behavioural types remains poorly understood. The suite of correlated behaviours within and across contexts is called behavioural syndromes. Most personality studies have investigated consistent individual behavioural types and their consequences in a asocial context, however few studies have considered the influence of social context on individual behaviour. In addition, the evolutionary and ecological consequences of personality differences in social context remain unknown. In the present study, we confirm individual personality in Great tits (Parus major) using room exploration and neophobia tests. As a result of these two tests, repeatability and correlational structure of two personality traits were investigated. Additionally we assessed the extent to which personality influences dominance in a social feeding context. Great tits remained consistent in their personality traits (exploration and neophobia). Individuals who explored a novel environment faster also approached a novel object faster, while those who spent more time exploring a novel environment were also slower to approach a novel object. In a social feeding context personality was linked to dominance: with proactive individuals being more likely to be dominant. Our result provides evidence of the importance of social context in a wild population of birds and may have fitness consequence, both for focal individuals and their conspecifics.
Prevalence and anthelmintic resistance of strongyle infection of donkeys in El-Wadi El-Gadid, Egypt.

Strongyle species infestation considered the main parasitic problem in equines specially donkeys. Veterinarians and owners used to depend on the affordable drugs, which led to development of resistance. A total number of 215 donkeys of different sexes, ages and in different locations at El Kharga city (El Wadi El Gadid Governorate, Egypt) were examined for detection of strongyle species infection. Fecal samples were collected and examined using floatation test and egg count was done using McMaster technique. The overall prevalence of strongyle species was 73.02% of examined donkeys. 35.03% of infested donkeys showed mild infection, 20.38% showed moderate infection and 44.59% showed severe infection. Prevalence of strongyle species was 75.56% in female donkeys and 71.2% in males. The highest prevalence rate was recorded at Al-Sherka55 (100%) followed by Al-Thawra areas (84.62%). Animals under 3 years old had a slightly higher prevalence than animals 3 – 8 years old, and donkeys > 8 years old showed no infection rate. The therapeutic efficacy of ivermectin, doramectin and pyrantel at the manufacturers recommended dose were evaluated in a controlled experiment, which involved 28 donkeys naturally infected with strongyle species worms. Doramectin was highly efficient against strongyle species worm infection than ivermectin and pyrantel. In ivermectin treated group, the mean FECR% reduced on day 28 to be 91.6%. Also, it has been found that small strongyle EPG counts are returned much quicker than when the drug was first marketed. Mean FECR % in pyrantel treated animals was less than 90% for the whole 28 days of treatment. In conclusion, this was the first study to report prevalence of strongyle species infection in donkeys in El-Kharga city, El-Wadi El-Gadid governorate, Egypt. Additionally, it was the first to report ivermectin resistance in infested donkeys in that area. Donkey’s owners are recommended to use doramectin for treatment of parasitic infection.
Inferring low-dimensional latent descriptions of animal vocalizations

Vocalization is an essential medium for social and sexual signaling in most birds and mammals. Consequently, the analysis of vocal behavior is of great interest to fields such as neuroscience and linguistics. A standard approach to analyzing vocalization involves segmenting the sound stream into discrete vocal elements, calculating a number of handpicked acoustic features, and then using the feature values for subsequent quantitative analysis. While this approach has proven powerful, it suffers from several crucial limitations: First, handpicked acoustic features may miss important dimensions of variability that are important for communicative function. Second, many analyses assume vocalizations fall into discrete vocal categories, often without rigorous justification. Third, a syllable-level analysis requires a consistent definition of syllable boundaries, which is often difficult to maintain in practice and limits the sorts of structure one can find in the data. To address these shortcomings, we apply a data-driven approach based on the variational autoencoder (VAE), an unsupervised learning method, to the task of characterizing vocalizations in two model species: the laboratory mouse (Mus musculus) and the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata). We find that the VAE converges on a parsimonious representation of vocal behavior that outperforms handpicked acoustic features on a variety of common analysis tasks, including representing acoustic similarity and recovering a known effect of social context on birdsong. Additionally, we use our learned acoustic features to argue against the widespread view that mouse ultrasonic vocalizations form discrete syllable categories. Lastly, we present a novel “shotgun VAE” that can quantify moment-by-moment variability in vocalizations. In all, we show that data-derived acoustic features confirm and extend existing approaches while offering distinct advantages in several critical applications.
Mechanisms of seed dormancy in Cardiocrinum cordatum var. glehnii (Liliaceae)

Using integrated method of seed under different temperature regimes and in vitro culture of isolated embryos, the presence of the physiological mechanism of inhibition (PhMI) of embryo postdevelopment and two PhMI of seed germination was proven. The PhMI of postdevelopment was established to be localized in the seed structures surrounding the embryo (firstly alive endo -sperm). It is overcome under the influence of the temperature factor, and probably the illumination. Embryo grew at 9–20ºС due to cotyledon expansion. One of the PhMI of germination is localized in the embryo, and the other one in the seed structures. The removal of both mechanisms occurs under the influence of low temperatures stepwise. The root started to grow only after prolong cold stratifica - tion of the seeds with completely developed embryo. A detailed analysis of the results obtained manifested the temperature not to be the only factor in removing the PhMI, but the duration of its exposure as well. If periods of different temperatures treatment alternate, the total duration of exposure to specific temperature matters.
DeepCINAC: A Deep-Learning-Based Python Toolbox for Inferring Calcium Imaging Neuronal Activity Based on Movie Visualization

Two-photon calcium imaging is now widely used to indirectly infer multi neuronal dynamics from changes in fluorescence of an indicator. However, state of the art computational tools are not optimized for the analysis of highly active neurons in densely packed regions such as the CA1 pyramidal layer of the hippocampus during early postnatal stages of development. Indeed, the reliable inference of single cell activity is not achieved by the latest analytical tools that often lack proper benchmark measurements. To meet this challenge, we first developed a graphical user interface allowing for a precise manual detection of all calcium transients from detected neurons based on the visualization of the calcium imaging movie. Then, we analyzed our movies using a convolutional neural network with an attention process and a bidirectional long-short term memory network. This method reaches human performance and offers a better F1 score than CaImAn to infer neural activity in the developing CA1 without any user intervention. Overall, DeepCINAC offers a simple, fast and flexible open-source toolbox for processing a wide variety of calcium imaging datasets while providing the tools to evaluate its performance. Highlights - A user-friendly GUI allows experimentalists to label easily cell activity from the visualization of calcium imaging movies - A neural network trained on labeled calcium imaging data can faithfully infer neuronal activity of few hundreds of neurons. - The toolbox offers a simple, fast and flexible method for processing a wide variety of calcium imaging data.
Single Cell Transcriptional Profiling of Phox2b-Expressing Geniculate Ganglion Neurons

The sense of taste is fundamental for survival as harmful substances can be discriminated and prevented from entering the body. Taste buds act as chemosensory sentinels and detect bitter, salty, sweet, sour, and umami substances. Taste receptor cells within taste buds detect these sapid molecules and transmit signals to afferent nerve fibers. Whether a single gustatory nerve fiber selectively is responsive to a single taste modality (through taste receptor cell activation) is a point of contention in the field. Two studies have attempted to molecularly classify individual gustatory neurons using single cell RNA sequencing and two others have attempted to classify neurons based on physiological properties, with some conflicting results. In the present study, we present a method for single cell RNA sequencing of gustatory geniculate ganglion neurons and compare the results obtained to prior published works. We find multiple classes of ganglion neurons, but in conjunction with published works, the only clusters that can be clearly attributed to specific taste modalities are those involved in sweet or sour detection.
Changes in sugar contents and invertase activity during low temperature storage of various chipping potato cultivars

Storage of tubers is vital for uninterrupted supply to potato chips/fries industry. Cold storage is preferred to maintain tuber quality. However, prolonged storage at low temperature results in cold induced sweetening (COS) leading to sugar accumulation and browning of chips. Slowing down the COS is of economic importance for potato industry. Screening of potatoes after cold storage for low sugar and invertase activity with exploration of best frying color was the aim of current study. Reducing sugars (RS), invertase activity and chips color were estimated after subjecting the tubers at 3°C and 7°C storage. Analytical techniques were adopted for quantification of RS and invertase activity while nine-point Hedonic scale was used for chips color evaluation. Highest invertase activity with maximum RS (mg 100 -1 g) and dark brown chips were observed in Kuroda following the Santé (247.83), Asterix (216.73), Crozo (193.42), Hermes (171.57) and Lady Rosetta (134.07) after storage at 3°C. Low RS were found in tubers stored at 7°C with good frying color in Lady Rosetta (98.23) followed by Hermes (104.31) and Crozo (113.27). Conclusively storage temperatures have significant effect on quality of tubers in which 7°C proved best with less RS and invertase activity having good frying color.
Forest Understorey Vegetation: Colonization and the Availability and Heterogeneity of Resources

Understorey vegetation comprises a major portion of plant diversity and contributes greatly to nutrient cycling and energy flow. This review examines the mechanisms involved in the response of understorey vegetation to stand development and the overstorey canopy following disturbances. The overall abundance and diversity of the understorey is enhanced with the availability and heterogeneity of light, soil nutrients, soil moisture, and substrates. Vascular plants are positively impacted by the availability and heterogeneity of light and soil nutrients, whereas non-vascular vegetation is more strongly influenced by colonization time, soil moisture, and substrates, and is decreased with a higher proportion of broadleaf overstorey. The availability of resources is a prominent driver toward the abundance and diversity of understorey vegetation, from the stand initiation to stem exclusion stage under a single-species dominated overstorey. However, resource heterogeneity dominates at the later stages of succession under a mixed overstorey. Climate and site conditions modify resource availability and heterogeneity in the understorey layer, but the extent of their influences requires more investigation. Forest management practices (clearcutting and partial harvesting) tend to increase light availability and heterogeneity, which facilitates the abundance and diversity of understorey vascular plants; however, these factors reduce the occurrence of non-vascular plants. Nevertheless, in the landscape context, anthropogenic disturbances homogenize environmental conditions and reduce beta-diversity, as well, the long-term effects of anthropogenic disturbances on understorey vegetation remain unclear, particularly compared with those in primary forests.
Management of early blight of tomato

Field experiment was conducted for the management of early blight of tomato through a number of fungicides viz., Mancozeb 75 WP (Indofil M-45, 75%), Difenoconazole 25 EC (Score, 25%), Copper Oxychloride 50 WP (Blue Copper, 50%), Ridomyl MZ 72 WP (Metalaxyl, 8% + Mancozeb, 64%), Chlorothalonil 75WP (Kavach, 75%) and biocontrol agent viz. Trichoderma viride. It was found that all the treatments were effective to reduce the severity of the disease. Among the treatments, seed treatment with Mancozeb followed by foliar spraying of the same fungicide was found most effective in both the years and was closely followed by foliar spraying with Difenoconazole. Percent disease control in two years pooled mean revealed that the maximum disease control was noticed in seed treatment with Mancozeb followed by foliar spraying of the same fungicide. A maximum increase of yield was also achieved with the same treatment.
Inheritance of Plant and Ear Height in Maize (Zea Mays L.)

Plant and ear height are very important characters not only for describing new varieties of maize (Zea mays L.), but for green and dry matter production, and even for grain yield. Significant positive correlations have been reported by various authors between plant height and stover yield, plant height and dry matter yield, and plant height and grain yield. The height of the main ear is also correlated to plant height. It depends on the variety or the environment, but is likely to be the same height within a population. Many environmental and agronomical factors (e.g. plant density, fertilization, pests and diseases) influence the expression of these characters, which are not quality traits. Their expression is controlled by many genes and by the interactions between these genes. The heritability of these traits is high and they show significant genotypic variability and positive heterosis, as reported in many research publications.
Morphological and phylogenetic characterization of novel Metarhizium species in Guizhou, China

Two new species, Metarhizium lepidopterorum and Metarhizium rongjiangense, which are both parasitic on lepidopteran pupae, are reported. Both the morphological characteristics and DNA-based phylogenies from a multigene dataset-based analysis supported the identification of two new species. Both species can be distinguished from other species of Metarhizium by their lecanicillium-like conidiophores, longer phialides and the presence of only one type of conidium, which is smaller and fusiform in M. lepidopterorum and smaller and of subwedge shape in M. rongjiangense. The combined dataset (ITS, RPB1, RPB2 and TEF) was analysed phylogenetically in Metarhizium spp. The new species described herein are clearly distinct from other Metarhizium species.