Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Diet effects on methane production by goats and a comparison between measurement methodologies

SUMMARY A series of studies were carried out to measure the methane (CH4) production by Japanese goats fed 19 different diets (D1–D19) varying in nutritive composition in the open circuit respiration chamber (RC) and to compare them with CH4 estimated by the in vitro gas production test (IVGPT). Adult Japanese goats (>2 years old) with a mean body weight of 26±5·4 kg were used in these experiments. Each diet was fed to four randomly selected goats and feeding was carried out at 1·1 maintenance (M) as per National Research Council (NRC) (1981) for goats. Average CH4 emission by goats in the RC ranged from 0·23 to 0·39 (mean value 31 ml/g dry matter intake (DMI)); when it was expressed as a proportion of gross energy or, with methane conversion rate (MCR), it ranged from 5·0 to 8·2, with an average of 6·6. Incorporation of by-products like sweet potato vine silage (SPVS) (P=0·016), dried pumpkin (P=0·052) and brewers' grain in the diet suppressed (P<0·01) methanogenesis in goats, when compared with that of standard farm diet (D1). The CH4 output measured in the RC was very close to that estimated from the gas collected after 24 h and higher after 48 h of in vitro incubation. Although composition of the diets' acid detergent fibre (ADF) had a significant effect on methane emission, methane output estimated by IVGPT was very close to that measured in the RC demonstrating that this system could be used to estimate the CH4 production potential from diets in preparing a database and also in the planning of mitigation strategies in small ruminants to improve their performance as well as to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Duration times of the immature stages of Cacopsylla pyri L. (Hom., Psyllidae), estimated under field conditions, and their relationship to ambient temperature

The duration of the immature stages of Cacopsylla pyri L. was studied under field conditions by artificially infesting pear branches on several dates during the year. The duration of the egg stage decreased from winter to summer, as the season progresses and temperature rises, and slightly increased in September. It ranged from 27.4 to 6.7 days. The same trend was observed in the duration of the first three larval stages (L1−3) which ranged from 18.8 to 10.3 days. For eggs deposited during the period February–August the duration of the last two larval stages (L4−5) ranged from 17.5 to 12.1 days. However, the duration of L4−5 developed from eggs deposited in September and which give rise to winter‐form adults were the longest observed. The rate of egg development was related to average ambient temperature with a highly significant linear relationship. This relationship indicates that the egg stage requires a constant number of 158.9 (SD = 5.0) of day‐degrees above an average temperature of 2.31°C to complete development. The rate of development both of L1−3 and L4−5 were related to average ambient temperature with curvilinear relationships. These relationships indicate a proportional increase in the developmental rate as temperature rises between 10–22°C. At the higher average temperatures that occurred in the summer experiments (24–27°C) the acceleration of development of L1−3 is reduced and the developmental rate of L4−5 decreases. The developmental rates of L4−5 developed from eggs deposited in September did not follow the established relationship with temperature and they were lower than those in the other periods of the year with the same average temperature.
Hornet venom induces abundant expression of specific polypeptides in young barley leaves

Jasmonate, methyl jasmonate and salicylic acid are putative signals involved in such processes as senescence and Venom of Vespa crabro induced in barley an abundant systemic acquired resistance (Sembdner and Parthier, expression of at least five polypeptides, having the 1993; Weidhase et al., 1987; Mueller et al., 1988). Methyl same apparent molecular masses as the jasmonate- jasmonate has been found to serve as an airborne signal induced polypeptides. Treatment of venom by trypsin, upon wounding in tomato ( Farmer and Ryan, 1990; as well as addition of indomethacin prevented the Farmer et al., 1992). In barley, exogenous jasmonate appearance of the polypeptides. Separation of the induces the expression of proteins, currently named venom by gel-filtration chromatography showed that jasmonate-induced proteins (JIPS). They are believed to the fraction containing phospholipase activity was able have a protective function ( Weidhase et al., 1987; Mueller to induce expression of the 23 kDa polypeptide as et al., 1988). The exact mechanisms of induction of these revealed by 2-D electrophoresis, but the induction was proteins remain unknown and are the subject of extensive much stronger when this fraction was applied together studies in many laboratories. with the fraction of the low molecular weight peptides. This paper presents results obtained using hornet The treatment by venom did not promote senescence venom in a set of experiments performed to study the of the detached leaves as the jasmonate did and kept expression of pathogenesis-related proteins in barley. the photosynthesis, transpiration, protein content, and the intensity of labelled amino acid incorporation into proteins near the control values.
Understanding the Bond of Identification: An Investigation of its Correlates among Art Museum Members

Identification is defined as the “perceived oneness with or belongingness to an organization” of which the person is a member. The authors propose that customers, in their role as members, identify with organizations. They use social identity theory to propose and test a model that relates members’ identification with the focal organization to (1) organizational and product characteristics, (2) members’ affiliation characteristics, and (3) members’ activity characteristics. Their empirical setting consists of the members of an art museum. Their survey findings show that members’ identification is positively related to perceived organizational prestige, donating activity, tenure of membership, visiting frequency, and confirmation of member expectations with the organization's services. However, members’ participation in similar organizations is negatively related to identification with the focal organization. The authors discuss how this study can be extended to other marketing contexts and how managers can use the notion of identification in implementing marketing strategies.
Strength Adjustment and Assessment for MCTS-Based Programs [Research Frontier]

This paper proposes an approach to strength adjustment and assessment for Monte-Carlo tree search based game-playing programs. We modify an existing softmax policy with a strength index to choose moves. The most important modification is a mechanism which filters low-quality moves by excluding those that have a lower simulation count than a pre-defined threshold ratio of the maximum simulation count. Through theoretical analysis, we show that the adjusted policy is guaranteed to choose moves exceeding a lower bound in strength by using a threshold ratio. Experimental results show that the strength index is highly correlated to the empirical strength. With an index value between ? 2, we can cover a strength range of about 800 Elo ratings. The strength adjustment and assessment methods were also tested in real-world scenarios with human players, ranging from professionals (strongest) to kyu rank amateurs (weakest). For amateur levels, we tested our mechanism on two popular Go online platforms - Fox Weiqi and Tygem. The result shows that our method can adjust program strength to different ranks stably. In terms of strength assessment, we proposed a new dynamic strength adjustment method, then used it to evaluate human professionals, predicting reliably their playing strengths within 15 games. Lastly, we collected survey responses asking players about strength perception, entertainment, and general comments for different aspects of analysis. To our best knowledge, this result is state-ofthe- art in terms of the range of strengths in Elo rating while maintaining a controllable relationship between the strength and a strength index.
Does lignum rely on a soil seed bank? Germination and reproductive phenology of Muehlenbeckia florulenta (Polygonaceae)

Tangled lignum (‘lignum’) is a dioecious, multi-stemmed woody shrub that is common in flood-prone areas of inland Australia, including the Murray–Darling Basin. It is often leafless during dry periods, but maintains vegetative growth by stem layering, and responds rapidly to rainfall or flooding by production of shoots, leaves and flowers. This study considers the viability of lignum seeds (contained in achenes) under various conditions of temperature, light, moisture and storage or burial. The seeds are not innately dormant, and germinate within 14 days under ideal conditions. From 66 to 86% of fresh and dry-stored seeds germinate in fluctuating temperatures (15°C/5°C, 24°C/10°C, 31°C/15°C), and optimally at 24°C/10°C, given moisture and light. They also germinate in water (56% success), and remain buoyant for 5–25 days. Germination is inhibited by constant temperatures of 12 and 24°C (4.0–4.8% success) and continuous darkness (6.0–56.0% success), but increases on return to light. Seed viability is depressed by 10% after 70-day dry storage and by 48% after 92-day burial in soil over winter. In one year’s (2002) observations of a population on the River Murray floodplain near Morgan, South Australia, winter- and spring-seeding plants produced viable seeds 14–30 days after anthesis, and although rainfall in winter (July) produced a pulse of seedlings, none became established. Achenes were shed soon after maturation, but soil samples revealed very few germinable seeds. It therefore appears that the seeds do not persist for long on the mother plant or in the soil. The persistence of lignum in environments prone to erratic droughts and floods appears to depend mainly on its capacity to tolerate drought, maintain vegetative growth and respond quickly to watering.
Guided Depth Map Super-Resolution Using Recumbent Y Network

Low spatial resolution is a well-known problem for depth maps captured by low-cost consumer depth cameras. Depth map super-resolution (SR) can be used to enhance the resolution and improve the quality of depth maps. In this paper, we propose a recumbent Y network (RYNet) to integrate the depth information and intensity information for depth map SR. Specifically, we introduce two weight-shared encoders to respectively learn multi-scale depth and intensity features, and a single decoder to gradually fuse depth information and intensity information for reconstruction. We also design a residual channel attention based atrous spatial pyramid pooling structure to further enrich the feature’s scale diversity and exploit the correlations between multi-scale feature channels. Furthermore, the violations of co-occurrence assumption between depth discontinuities and intensity edges will generate texture-transfer and depth-bleeding artifacts. Thus, we propose a spatial attention mechanism to mitigate the artifacts by adaptively learning the spatial relevance between intensity features and depth features and reweighting the intensity features before fusion. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed RYNet over several state-of-the-art depth map SR methods.
Software architectural model discovery from execution data

During the execution of software systems, many crashes and exceptions may occur, and it is a real challenge to understand how a software system is behaving. By exploiting the data recorded during the execution of software systems, one can discover architectural models to describe the actual execution of software. An architectural model typically structures a software system in terms of components, interfaces and interactions. The discovered models provide extensive insights into the real usage of software, enable new forms of model-based testing and improvements. In addition, replaying execution data on such models helps to localize performance problems and architectural challenges.
A proposed framework for determining the environmental impact of replacing agricultural grassland with Miscanthus in Ireland

Energy crops offer an opportunity to substantially increase bioenergy resources which can replace rapidly depleting fossil fuel reserves and mitigate the effect of climate change. Energy crops are typically established within traditional agricultural systems such as tillage land or grassland. Associated land use conversion has environmental implications. The aim of this paper is to propose a framework to examine how such environmental implications can be assessed, based on (a) a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) approach which considers potential impacts at different stages of a plan across a wide range of environmental receptors and (b) a literature review. The example we used was that of Miscanthus replacing grassland farming. This scenario is particularly relevant to Ireland, where over 90% of the agricultural land is permanent pasture, but is also applicable to grassland conversion throughout Europe and the United States. Two consecutive phases of land‐use change were identified for assessment, each with a distinct set of environmental impacts. The first was a transition phase, lasting from initial livestock clearance and grassland ploughing until the Miscanthus crop became established (2–3 years). The second phase was the mature crop phase, lasting up to 25 years. Miscanthus cultivation was more likely to impact negatively on the environment during the transition phase than the mature phase, primarily due to abrupt disturbance and the time required for a new equilibrium to establish. However, a literature review of the impact on the environmental receptors revealed that replacing Irish agricultural grassland with Miscanthus had the potential to improve biodiversity, water, air and soil quality, and climatic factors once the crop became established and reached maturity. In order to confirm these findings an appropriate monitoring programme involving objectives and indicators associated with each environmental receptor would need to be developed.
Regulation of Humoral Immunity by Pim Kinases: A Dissertation

Pim (Provirus Integration site for Moloney murine leukemia virus) kinases are a family of three serine/threonine kinases involved in cell cycle, survival and metabolism. These kinases were first identified in malignant cells and are most often associated with their role in cancer. Their role in immunity and lymphocytes is less well known. To date, it has been shown that Pim 1 and/or Pim 2 are important for T lymphocyte survival and activation when the Akt signaling pathway is inhibited by rapamycin. In addition, our laboratory has shown that Pim 2 is critical for BLyS-mediated naive B lymphocyte survival in the presence of rapamycin. This thesis extends the role(s) for Pim 1 and/or 2 to include functions during B cell activation and the generation of immune responses. We found that during in vitro activation of purified resting splenic B cells from wild type mice with a variety of activators that use multiple signaling pathways, including the BCR, TLR and CD40 receptors, both Pim 1 and 2 kinases were induced by 48 hours post-activation, suggesting that they could play a role in B cell activation and differentiation to antibody secreting or memory B cells. Immunization of Pim 12 knockout mice with T cell dependent antigens showed impairment in antibody and antibody secreting cell generation as well as lack of germinal center formation clearly demonstrating an involvement of Pim 1 and/or 2 in the immune response. FACS examination of B cell populations from naive Pim 12 knockout mice revealed normal levels of splenic marginal zone and follicular B cells and T cells, however, decreased numbers of all peritoneal B cell
Feedback Synthesis for UAVs Based on the Control Hierarchy Method

For an unmanned aerial vehicle under the influence of external uncontrolled disturbances, the problem of synthesis the control law in the form of dynamic feedback which ensures the movement of the center of mass along a given spatial trajectory is considered. Within the framework of the block approach, a hierarchical procedure for the synthesis of S-shaped sigmoidal feedbacks has been developed that ensures ε-invariance of tracking errors to external disturbances, taking into account design restrictions on speed and overload. A lower-order observer is constructed for estimating derivative tracking errors from measurements of tracking errors. The results of numerical modeling of the developed algorithms are presented.
Numerical Study of the Spatiotemporally-Varying Background Ionospheric Effects on P-Band Satellite SAR Imaging

At the relatively low frequency of the P-band spaceborne SAR, the background ionosphere is no longer treated as time-invariant, together with the spatial variation in the background ionosphere, and complicates the spaceborne SAR imaging. In this paper, we systematically quantify the effects of the spatiotemporally varying background ionosphere on the imaging performance of the P-band spaceborne SAR. The signal model for a P-band spaceborne SAR is established in accordance with the range history taking account of the Earth’s rotation, based on which the 2-dimensional (2-D) signal frequency spectrum under the influence of spatiotemporally varying background ionosphere is derived. Then, the geometric distortion and defocusing phenomenon in the range and azimuth directions are quantitatively evaluated. It is found that the range shift is mainly determined by the constant component of the background ionosphere, and the contribution from the spatiotemporally varying components of the background ionosphere is non-negligible. In contrast, the azimuth shift has no dependency on the constant part of the background ionosphere, but both the spatially varying and temporally varying components of the background ionosphere could give rise to considerable azimuth shifts. Regarding the focusing quality, it is seldom impaired by the background ionosphere for the P-band spaceborne SAR with a coarse spatial resolution on a decameter scale. However, the high spatial resolution makes it difficult to maintain good focusing qualities, especially at the high solar activity. Finally, numerical simulations in terms of the single-point target responses confirm the theoretical analysis; simulations of responses of array-point targets, together with 2-D image shifts along the satellite’s track, show the disparity of background ionosphere can further affect the imaging performance of the P-band spaceborne SAR. In this respect, effects of spatiotemporally varying background ionosphere deserve special care in the signal processing of a P-band spaceborne SAR.
Distributed Feature Selection for Multi-Class Classification Using ADMM

Feature selection is an important task in data-driven control applications to identify relevant features and remove non-informative ones, for example residual selection for fault diagnosis. For multi-class data, the objective is to find a minimal set of features that can distinguish data from all different classes. A distributed feature selection algorithm is derived using convex optimization and the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers. The distributed algorithm scales well with increasing number of classes by utilizing parallel computations. Two case studies are used to evaluate the developed feature selection algorithm: fault classification of an internal combustion engine and the MNIST data set to illustrate a larger multi-class classification problem.
Comparative study of the covering reaction of the purple sea urchin, Paracentrotus lividus, under laboratory and field conditions

Abiotic and biotic aspects of the covering behaviour of the purple sea urchin, Paracentrotus lividus (Echinodermata: Echinoidea) were systematically examined in situ and in the laboratory to analyse potential intra-population differences in the nature of this behaviour. In the field, significant differences in the occurrence of covering behaviour were found between age groups. Smaller P. lividus covered at higher frequencies than larger individuals. Higher proportions of individuals were also observed to cover during afternoon sampling periods. Significant differences in the types of covering material used were found between P. lividus observed in the laboratory and in the field. These findings suggest that the benefits and/or opportunities of covering behaviour may change with size and habitat.
Relationship of Physical Fitness Parameters with Performance among the College Level Football Players

Aim: The purpose of this study was to ascertain relationship of physical fitness parameters with performance among college level football players and also to predict football performance on the basis of physical fitness parameters. Methodology: Total two hundred and fifty male football players, aged 18-25 years, from the colleges of Punjab were selected to participate in the study. Body weight of the subjects was measured with a portable weighing machine. Height measurements were taken using the standard anthropometric rod. Power was measured by applying standard test of Standing Broad Jump. Agility was measured by applying standard test of zig-zag run. Strength was measured by applying standard test of Medicine Ball Put. Speed was measured by applying standard test of 50 yard dash. Endurance was measured by applying standard test of 600-yard run-walk. The performance of the college football players was measured with the help of Dr. J.P. Thomas soccer skill test. Results: Karl Pearsons product moment co-efficient of correlation revealed that the time of the speed (p
Inhibitory effect on B16/F10 mouse melanoma cell and HT-29 human colon cancer cell proliferation and cordycepin content of the butanol extract of Paecilomyces militaris

The cultured mycelium of strain Paecilomyces militaris CMG 01 (Pm) was extracted sequentially by hexane, ethyl acetate (EtOAc) and butanol (BuOH). Among them, the BuOH extract exhibited potent anti-proliferative activity on B16/F10 mouse melanoma and HT-29 human colon cancer cells. Active chemical fractions of the Pm BuOH extract led to the isolation of a nucleoside compound, which structure was identified as cordycepin on the basis of 1H, 13C NMR and MS data. The further evaluated on cordycepin showed that cordycepin significantly inhibited B16/F10 and HT-29 cells proliferation and its content in BuOH extract was 68.89 mg/g. our results suggest that the BuOH extract of Pm is a potential source of natural anticancer agents. Key words: Paecilomyces militaris, B16/F10 mouse melanoma cell, HT-29 human colon cancer cell, cordycepin.