Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reproductive system and the spermatophoric reaction of the mesopelagic squid Octopoteuthis sicula (Rüppell 1844) (Cephalopoda: Octopoteuthidae) from southern African waters

Reproductive features of the poorly known oceanic squid Octopoteuthis sicula are described and quantified to gain insight into the reproductive biology of the species. The data are based on 39 complete and partial specimens from southern African waters, collected between 1975 and 2005. The specimens ranged in mantle length from 38 mm to 290 mm and included juveniles and mature females and males. The species shows female-biased sexual size dimorphism. Ovulation is asynchronous, indicating a repeated spawning strategy. Males transfer spermatophores presumably by using their long terminal organ. Spermatangia (discharged spermatophores) were found implanted in several parts of the body in both females and males, including in the anterior dorsal and ventral rugose, semi-gelatinous mantle tissue of maturing and mature females. This modified mantle tissue was only well developed in females. The morphologies of the spermatophore and the spermatangium of O. sicula are described. The spermatophoric reaction is reconstructed, using various stages of discharge, to provide insight into the process of intradermal implantation of spermatangia of this species.
Text Analysis in Adversarial Settings

Textual deception constitutes a major problem for online security. Many studies have argued that deceptiveness leaves traces in writing style, which could be detected using text classification techniques. By conducting an extensive literature review of existing empirical work, we demonstrate that while certain linguistic features have been indicative of deception in certain corpora, they fail to generalize across divergent semantic domains. We suggest that deceptiveness as such leaves no content-invariant stylistic trace, and textual similarity measures provide a superior means of classifying texts as potentially deceptive. Additionally, we discuss forms of deception beyond semantic content, focusing on hiding author identity by writing style obfuscation. Surveying the literature on both author identification and obfuscation techniques, we conclude that current style transformation methods fail to achieve reliable obfuscation while simultaneously ensuring semantic faithfulness to the original text. We propose that future work in style transformation should pay particular attention to disallowing semantically drastic changes.
Diversity and distribution of stream bryophytes: does pH matter?

Abstract: Bryophytes can strongly influence biodiversity and ecosystem function in low-order streams. Mosses and liverworts have substantial biodiversity and biomass in streams, yet few investigators have examined which factors influence bryophyte species distributions, and fewer have examined assemblages across a wide pH gradient. We examined bryophyte assemblages across a pH gradient in 26 southeastern New York (USA) streams. We recorded bryophyte species richness, diversity, and abundance, in conjunction with pH, width, depth, canopy cover, substratum size, temperature, dissolved O2, turbidity, conductivity, current velocity, dissolved organic C, dissolved Ca, Mg, Fe, NH4+, NO3-, soluble reactive P (SRP), and abundance of other autotrophs. pH ranged from ∼4 to 7 and corresponded to the type of underlying bedrock. Nearly all streams had low or undetectable concentrations of SRP. Several species, e.g., Hygrohypnum eugyrium and Codriophorus aduncoides, were apparent pH generalists, whereas others were pH specialists. For example, Hygrohypnum ochraceum occurred only in neutral pH, whereas Andreaea rothii was restricted to low-pH sites. Vector fitting on a nonmetric multidimensional scaling ordination identified stream pH and amount of bedrock as key factors affecting species distributions. Latitude, longitude, altitude, canopy cover, and aqueous Ca, Mg, SRP, and turbidity also were correlated with species distributions, but many factors were colinear. Nearly all sites had low SRP, and species distributions were strongly related to pH, so we assayed several species and populations for Phosphomonoesterase (PMEase) activity under different pH conditions. Species and populations from low-pH streams tended to have stronger PMEase activity at lower pH than those from higher pH streams, suggesting that species and populations may be adapted to specific pH conditions. Differential PMEase activity may be one mechanism by which aquatic bryophytes persist in low-pH environments.
Production and Process Optimization of Protease using Various Bacterial Species - A Review

This review constrains mostly to protease production using various bacterial strains. Haloalkaliphilic bacterial species have found to be more profoundly used in recent days of modern enzyme production technology. The extremophiles have been known to be involved in enzyme technology for over a decade. However, their ability to survive harsh climatic changes and extreme conditions has made them more popular and useful, compared to the other bacterial species. Therefore this review would provide a clear idea on the optimization and production process of the various proteases.
Phytoplankton community structure in one sector of Guanabara Bay (RJ, Brazil) during 2011 and 2012

This study analyzed the temporal variability of phytoplankton assemblages in the surface waters of Guanabara Bay (RJ, Brazil), at six stations in front of Icarai Inlet from April/2011 to April/2012. Our results highlight the great contribution of diatoms, dinoflagellates and cyanobacteria, represented by 111 taxa typical of estuarine and coastal areas. The coexistence of benthic and planktonic species suggests considerable hydrodinamism in these waters. All variables were homogeneous (p > 0.05) between the stations, but differed between sampling periods. On average, phytoplankton abundance (107 cells.L-1) was higher than that of other estuaries and its temporal behavior was closely correlated (p < 0.01) with diatoms and cyanobacteria. The richness distribution pattern (7 to 27 taxa) was closely correlated (p < 0.01) with dinoflagellates and diatoms. Ninety per cent of all samples presented a low diversity index (< 2.0 bits.cell-1), which indicated the unstable balance of the system, typical of environments subjected to eutrophication. The population structure analysis revealed that 10% of all taxa were resident, 12% visitors and 78% accidental, suggesting the influence of continental and oceanic water influxes. Between the "typical" taxa, the most common were the cyanobacteria of the order Oscillatoriales, the diatoms Ceratoneis closterium (=Cylindrotheca closterium) and Leptocylindrus minimus and the dinoflagellate Prorocentrum triestinum.
Effect of plant growth regulators on regeneration of the endangered medicinal plant Calligonum comosum L. Henry in the Kingdom of Bahrain

The use of in vitro techniques for conserving plant biodiversity and protecting rare and endangered multipurpose plant species is considered as one of the most important ex-situ conservation policies. Development of an efficient in vitro regeneration protocol of Calligonum comosum is important and that has achieved to protect the endangered multipurpose medicinally important desert plant in the Kingdom of Bahrain. Nodal segments were used as explants source and the effect of various plant growth regulators (PGRs) were studied for responses and to regenerate the whole plants in modified Murashige and Skoog (MS) media through direct and indirect organogenesis via callus induction. 50% explants of C. comosum responded to initiate shoot in presence of 4.44 µM BAP with 2.68 µM NAA after four weeks of culture while 40% shoot initiation response was the highest value in presence of 9.29 µM KI with 5.37 µM NAA after 4 weeks of culture among the treatments of KI with NAA. The highest callus induction rate of 100% was found in media containing 9.29 µM KI and 5.37 µM NAA after four weeks. Multiple initial shoots those originated from nodal segments develop calli and showed organogenic differentiation of shoots in presence of BAP and IAA. The highest shoot multiplication frequency of 15 was observed while the shoots initiated in media contained 4.44 µM BAP with 2.85 µM IAA and were transferred to 8.56 µM IAA with 2.22 µM BAP. Shoot multiplication and shoot regeneration capacity was compared in different media and the highest performance of 234 shoots /explants after second multiplication was observed while shoots initiated in presence of 13.3 µM BAP and 5.71 µM IAA. As a precautionary approach to conserve the endangered medicinal plant species in the Kingdom of Bahrain, the application of in vitro culture is considered as an important alternative method in ex situ conservation strategy in the present study. Keywords: Calligonum comosum, endangered plants, ex situ conservation, in situ conservation, organogenesis, plant regeneration, tissue culture. African Journal of Biotechnology , Vol 13(25) 2513-2523
A Parallel-Data-Free Speech Enhancement Method Using Multi-Objective Learning Cycle-Consistent Generative Adversarial Network

Recently, deep neural networks (DNNs) have become the mainstream strategy for speech enhancement task because it can achieve the higher speech quality and intelligibility than the traditional methods. However, these DNN-based methods always need a large number of parallel corpus consisting of clean speech and noise to produce noisy data for the training of the DNN in order to improve the generalization of the network. As a result, this implies that many noisy speech signals that are collected in real environment cannot be used to train the DNN because of the lack of corresponding clean speech and noise. Additionally, as we know, noise varies with the time and scenario, so we cannot obtain parallel speech and noise due to infinite noise data and some limited speech data. Thus, the network training with unparallel speech and noise data is essential for the generalization of the network. To address this problem, we propose a novel parallel-data-free speech enhancement method, in which the cycle-consistent generative adversarial network (CycleGAN) and multi-objective learning are employed. Our method is also able to make best use of the benefits of multi-objective learning. On the training stage, we utilize two different encoders to encode the features of clean speech and noisy speech, respectively. Then, two forward generators are immediately used to predict the ideal time-frequency (T-F) mask and log-power spectrum (LPS) of clean speech. Two inverse generators are applied to map the magnitude spectrum (MS) and LPS of noisy speech, respectively. In addition, four discriminators are used to distinguish the real speech features from the generated features. Two encoders, four generators and four discriminators are simultaneously trained by using adversarial, identity-mapping, latent similarity and cycle-consistent loss. On the test stage, we directly utilize the forward generators and encoders to acquire the enhanced speech. The experimental results indicate that the proposed approach is able to achieve the better speech enhancement performance than the reference methods. Moreover, the proposed method is also effective to improve speech quality and intelligibility when the networks are trained under the parallel data.
Long‐bone circumference and weight in mammals, birds and dinosaurs

The mid-shaft circumferences of the humerus and femur are closely related to body weight in living terrestrial vertebrates. Because these elements are frequently preserved in subfossil and fossil vertebrate skeletal materials, the relationship can be used to estimate body weight in extinct vertebrates. When the allometric equations are applied to the mid-shaft circumferences of these elements in dinosaurs, the weights calculated for some giant sauropods (Brachiosaurus) are found to be lighter than previous estimates.
Modulations du métabolisme et de l’autophagie induites par l’exercice physique dans un modèle souris de sclérose latérale amyotrophique (SLA)

De plus en plus d’etudes suggerent un role important du metabolisme energetique dans la sclerose laterale amyotrophique (SLA). Ainsi, une intolerance au glucose, une resistance a l’insuline et un hypermetabolisme lipidique sont tres souvent retrouves chez les patients et dans les modeles animaux de SLA. Cependant, les bases cellulaires et moleculaires qui sous-tendent ces alterations restent largement meconnues. Une recente etude menee dans un modele souris de SLA, indique qu’un dysfonctionnement de la pyruvate deshydrogenase (PDH) induirait, dans les muscles rapides, un desequilibre des voies cataboliques vers une utilisation privilegiee des lipides, et non plus du glucose. Dans ce contexte, nous avons voulu evaluer dans quelles mesures un programme cible d’exercice physique pourrait reorienter les voies metaboliques vers une utilisation privilegiee du glucose dans les souris SOD1(G93A), modele de SLA. Nous avons compare les effets de deux types d’entrainement, l’un base sur un exercice de course de faible intensite, assimilable a un exercice d’endurance, l’autre base sur un exercice de nage a forte intensite, assimilable a un exercice de force/resistance. Contrairement a la course, l’exercice de nage reduit significativement l’intolerance au glucose, augmente le taux sanguin de lactate et le stockage lipidique dans les adipocytes. Dans le muscle rapide tibialis, touche tres precocement par la maladie, nous mettons en evidence une alteration de l’expression de GLUT4, transporteur musculaire majeur du glucose, et de la glyceraldehyde-3 phopshate deshydrogenase (GAPDH), une enzyme cle de la glycolyse. Ces alterations moleculaires sont retrouvees dans des biopsies musculaires de patients SLA. L’entrainement a la nage des souris SLA stimule l’expression de GLUT4 et de GAPDH, grâce a la reactivation de processus d’autophagie, et reactive les enzymes du metabolisme aerobie, telles que la citrate synthase, enzyme du cycle de Krebs, et la cytochrome oxydase, appartenant a la chaine respiratoire mitochondriale. L’ensemble de ces donnees indique qu’un exercice bien calibre peut ameliorer le metabolisme energetique dans un contexte de SLA, et ouvre la voie a une utilisation de l’exercice physique en complement d’une potentielle modulation pharmacologique de la PDH chez les patients.
Urban population in Germany, 1500 - 1850

In situations where few data are available to document economic activity, the size of the urban population is a valuable indicator for economic development and the spatial pattern of an economy. This study improves the basis for investigations into the quantitative urban history of Germany by constructing a novel database of the population size of 412 cities that had at least 5000 inhabitants between 1500 and 1850. Compared with earlier databases it uses a considerably larger body of sources, and it improves the resolution of data by interpolating and extrapolating annual series. The resulting series of total urban population is consistent with recent work on aggregate demographic trends in Germany. The trajectory of the urbanization rate shows that Germany began its transition from stagnation to growth around 1800, several decades before the onset of industrialization. Regional urbanization rates converged (rather than diverged) in 1815/19–1858, that is, during the transition to the first stage of industrialization. Discussion of individual regional histories suggests state formation, (proto-)industrialization and regional population density as possibly relevant determinants of urban growth in the area and time period studied.
Interacting effects of ozone and water stress on the stomatal resistance of beech (Fagus sylvatica L.).

SUMMARY Three-year-old beech trees were exposed to episodes of ozone pollution over a period of 128 d beginning in May 1991. The episodes were artificially created to correspond with the meteorological conditions under which ozone pollution normally occurs. The target concentrations were 60, 80, 100 and 120 ppb, and the cumulative dose was slightly greater than that in the UK at the present time, but not above that on parts of the European mainland. The effects of ozone on stomatal behaviour were observed both for trees that were well watered and others that were deprived of water for a period of time. In the well-watered trees there was increased stomatal resistance in the presence of ozone, but in the unwatered trees ozone reduced the increase in stomatal resistance that occurred as water stress developed. These data suggest that the effects of ozone on beech might be deleterious in two respects: (1) when the trees are well supplied with water there may be reduced CO2 uptake for photosynthesis; (2) if the stomata remain partially open when drought occurs, it may be difficult for the trees to control their water economy at critical times. It is emphasized that these findings apply to young trees under semi-controlled conditions, and further research will be needed to explore the responses of mature trees in the field.
Oral hygiene levels in primary molars restored with preformed metal crowns

INTRODUCTION: The choice of restoration material, the general health of the individual, and the distribution of caries in the different age groups is related to the level and the assessment of oral hygiene. In the treatment plan for these patients a preventive regime is necessary to be added, which includes instructions for oral hygiene improvement. AIM: The aim of this article is to examine the level of oral hygiene in primary molars restored with preformed metal crowns (PMCs) and glass-ionomer cement (GIC). MATERIALS AND METHODS: Object of the clinical study were 100 teeth with approximal dentin lesions on primary molars in 5- to 7-year-old children. The plaque index (PI) and the gingival index (GI) of Silness-Loe were used. RESULT: In the current study, Silness-Loе PI was assessed before PMC/GIC application, on the 6th month and after the first year of GIC/PMC placement. Around teeth restored with GIC more dental plaque was observed compared with the crowned teeth. PI was 1.35 for the filled teeth and 0.97 for the crowned ones. In both cases we reported moderate plaque accumulation and fair oral hygiene in the area of the first and second primary molar. The higher value of PI in the teeth restored with GIC was due to the higher rate of the minor failures of the fillings, which leads to plaque accumulation. There was no statistically significant difference in the GI for the GIC/PMC restorations at the 6th month and the first year after their application (p > 0.05). CONCLUSION: As a result, we concluded that PI for the teeth with PMCs was lower compared with the one in the natural control group of teeth. However, the average values of GI were significantly higher for the teeth with PMCs.
Voluntary intake and gastric digestion of two hays by llamas and sheep: influence of concentrate supplementation

SUMMARY The efficiency with which llamas and sheep digest various roughages was compared in France in 1993. Six llamas (three of which were rumen-cannulated) and six rumen-cannulated sheep were simultaneously given three different diets: (i) a grass hay low in N content (HLN), (ii) the same hay with barley, representing 25% of the total dry matter (HLN+B) and (iii) a cocksfoot grass hay, rich i n nitrogen (HRN). Daily forage dry matter intake was slightly, but not significantly, lower in llamas (55·9 g/kg W0·75 ν. 60·3 g/kg W0·75 in sheep). Intake behaviour was similar for the two species except that the number of rumination periods was lower with llamas (P < 0·05). With all diets, the digestibility of both organic matter and cell walls (estimated from neutral detergent fibre) was higher in llamas (Animal Nutrition, 9700 Angra do Heroismo, Azores, Portugal 5+6 and +6+5 units respectively, P < 0·001). The higher digestibility in llamas may be related to the slightly lower level of intake and to the lower dry matter turnover rate in the forestomachs compared to sheep (3·9%/h ν. 5·3%/h, P < 0·01). However, in sacco degradation of both hays were higher in llamas' forestomachs after 24 h of incubation (+6+5%, P < 0·01) and 48 h (+4+3%, P < 0·05) than in sheep. The high microbial efficiency of the llamas can be ascribed to the physical and chemical characteristics of their forestomach contents, which had a higher liquid turnover rate (+1+4%/h, P < 0·05), a lower volatile fatty acid concentration (P < 0·01), a higher and more constant pH (P < 0·01) than in sheep and a greater buffering capacity when pH was close to neutral. These results suggest the greater ability of llamas to control the physicochemical conditions of their forestomach contents to digest cell walls efficiently and to minimize the negative effects of concentrate supplementation.
NUCLEAR INTRON SEQUENCES FOR PHYLOGENETICS OF CLOSELY RELATED MAMMALS: AN EXAMPLE USING THE PHYLOGENY OF MUS

Abstract DNA sequence data from 2 nuclear introns (mitochondrial malate dehydrogenase intron 7 and acid phosphatase type V intron 2) were collected for 9 taxonomic units of rodents, 8 of which were in the genus Mus. Data were used to infer phylogenetic history of the 9 taxa, which was then compared with a consensus phylogeny taken from previous literature. In general, the nuclear intron data provided strong support (bootstrap proportions > 80) for relationships accepted in the consensus tree. The intron data disagreed with previous mitochondrial data in that 2 M. m. domesticus sequences were paraphyletic with respect to M. m. castaneus and M. m. musculus. This paraphyly, if real, likely reflects the longer lineage-sorting time of the nuclear genome compared with the mitochondrial genome. Introns seem to provide an attractive source of nuclear DNA sequence data for phylogenetic analysis, but mitochondrial data are likely to be superior for very recent divergences.
INTRASEXUAL TERRITORIALITY IN WOODCHUCKS (MARMOTA MONAX)

Abstract Species demonstrating intraspecific variation in social systems can be powerful models for understanding evolution of those systems. As a group, marmots exhibit several types of spacing systems, usually involving some degree of territoriality. Researchers have described populations of 1 species, the woodchuck, Marmota monax, as territorial and as nonterritorial, and such variation has been linked to ecological conditions. I used direct observations of individually recognized animals to describe the spacing system of a high-density population of Marmota monax in southern Maine. This population exhibited intrasexual territoriality. Home range overlap generally was higher between males and females than between same-sex individuals, and woodchucks tended to approach more members of the same sex more quickly compared with members of the opposite sex. Time spent scent marking varied across the active season but did not vary by sex. Males had larger home ranges than females, and home range sizes varied over time, perhaps in response to resources. Amount of overlap also was greater in some years than others, and such changes may be related to kinship. Philopatry and timing of dispersal also vary in this species and have implications for the evolution of sociality.